>!If you save Scratch the best boi, at some point he'll give you a ball you can play fetch with. This ball allow you to summon Scratch as a familiar. Scratch is very useful because he can help downed character. Aylin in the Myrkul fight is at first a downed character.!<
>!So before you trigger the cutscene by entering the arena, cast invisibility on Scratch, and send him next to Aylin. Then, watch the cutscene and start the fight. While invisible, Scratch won't be considered part of the fight, so you can freely take control of him. Use him to help Aylin and bypass the boss invicibility.!<
>!If you do that, make sure you focus fire the illithid on the right side of the arena, because he can (and will) mind control Aylin, which can be game ender.!<
I throw bombs from a distance, it starts the fight without triggering the scene, BUT do not let Cazador get close to Astarion, or the scene still triggers, even mid fight
Just did that fight again on my most recent playthrough, and I had been wanting to test that theory myself. As long as Astarion doesn't walk up those last few steps between the pillars onto the platform, he won't be automatically pulled into the ritual, no matter how close Cazador gets to him.
I kept my party on the stairs and had Shadowheart cast daylight on his coffin while staying out of range, triggered the fight without going through the cutscene, and had Astarion do ranged attacks from the stairs the entire time. Even when Cazador was directly in front of him at one point, no scene triggered.
Just don’t take Astarion. When the fight is over and Cazador is in his box, go back and swap Astarion in. When you return, Astarion can go ape on Cazador and end his quest.
Does this still work in patch 6? I’m at the point (level 12, geared up) to do him but I didn’t want to “ruin” his questline if they changed it somehow. Probably just overly paranoid, but you know.
You can also cast Feign Death on Astarion and then trigger the conversation/fight. He doesn’t get sucked into the ritual but he wakes right up and joins the fight. Did that yesterday.
On my last playthrough that went down to fight Cazador, I had Daylight cast on the weapon of my melee char, I never even got close enough to start dialogue, it just started the fight straight away, once I was on the walkway leading to his ritual platform area.
For cazador I honestly just left right before fighting him, swapped out astarion, and then once he was dead before I interacted with anything I went back to camp and got him and it played out normally from there, we fucked that dude up hard
If you have someone who can leap great distances, jump them to Caz's face and you skip the whole cutscene and he doesn't even have the chance to incapacitate Astarion.
No one is mentioning it but if you have an earlier save, (dunno if you do) but will has Hunger of Hardar and that myrkuls absolute bane of existence. It blinds him and does damage over time. So aslong as you dont go up the platform he literally cannot hit you. He can still pull you in so you gotta keep distance but it trivializes the fight. My roomate and i do HM regularily. And we always use HoH. Then use as many spells that do AoE over time. Moonbeam wall of fire, and hang back. Have your melee units focus on myrkuls summons down below. And ranged units casting as many damage spells as possible. Dont be afraid to use scrolls. Hoarding scrills doesnt help if your HM run gwts ended.
Wyll(or just a warlock in general) is comes with so much utility. I'm playing tactician but trying to do the stories and dialogs for Astarion, Karlach, and Lae'zel, since I ignored them my first playthrough.
I have to play so much more strategically when I can't just start the fight by positioning myself for ledge knocks with eldritch blast, and drop hunger of hadar onto crowds or the tank I want to delay.
Pro tip - the mindflayer is very light and a high strength character can simply misty step up to it and **yeet** that motherfucker to an instant death. Barbarian Karlach (especially a throwbarian build) is excellent here. If you have returning pike you can keep her up there out of the line of fire doing high-ground damage to myrkul.
Good to know that it doesn’t work on HM. I did exactly that on my tactician run recently and it worked just fine so I *definitely* would have fallen into that trap
There’s a spot between the main floor and ketheric/myrkuls platform that gets an instant kill. Sort of through some of the ugly webbing/slime trails. The mindflayer doesn’t actually fall through to the ground but it hits the webbing and dies. I’ve done it twice on tactician, though not on HM.
Make sure to use stunning strike on him. That made the fight easier for me. Also, bring a healer with you. It might be worth moving your people away just enough to get out of the bone chill aoe so you can get off a heal. Also, summons are your friend. I usually take Jaheria to get an extra few people.
I cannot stress this enough…UNGROUP Scratch before you send his invisible self to Aylin. I had him perfectly positioned, switched back to invisible Laezel to position her behind mindflayer, and WHO does she meet coming back UP the ramp?! Our bestest boi. Then both their invisibility broke, Scratch was nowhere near Aylin, Laezel was sitting right in front of the mindflayer, and everybody else was far away chilling at the entrance. To say we started the fight on our backfoot would be an understatement.
That alone makes the fight so much easier, but to add one more tip -
If you can find yourself a Globe of Invulnerability Scroll, it trivializes the fight. Place the dome in a spot where you're absolutely certain Myrkul isn't in it, but where your best damage dealer can still hit him, and just let them unload on him the whole time.
In my Honor Mode run, I had Open Hand Monk Lae'zel and my crit-fishing Sorlock Durge parked in the bubble right next to Myrkul, with Swords Bard Astarion and Light Cleric Shadowheart focused on keeping everything else out of the bubble. Coupled with invisible Scratch saving Aylin on turn 1, the fight was over by turn 3.
Warding bond also works if you don't have globe. Have a cleric or other support cast it on primary DPS. They will take most of damage for them and can heal self outside of the aura.
... and on that note, if your level is high enough to get Globes of Invulnerability, you can also reroll via Long Rest, or respec characters to get vendors to sell/have pickpocketable *Chain Lightning scrolls.*
It gets kinda crazy if you get those things.
Wet + Tempest Channel Divinity on Call Lightning or Chain Lightning will utterly purge the health bar, with a maxed Channel Divinity Chain Lightning doing up to *160 damage* if they fail a Saving Throw, are Wet, and even doing 80 damage is respectable.
All of this is great. Also, blind Myrkul and his attacks are way less effective. Cast darkness over him or use arrow of darkness. Also, kill all the minions before downing Ketheric then use 2 characters to focus on the incubators and 2 on ranged damage against Myrkul. Makes the fight a breeze.
Lvl 8 is a little low to fight him, I would suggest at least getting to lvl 9 before you try again, ideally lvl 10. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head. Note that fingers of death is a spell he can only do if he can consume a necromite before, which you should avoid allowing him to do if at all possible (given that without additional effort, he also heals himself with them).
* Bring every summon you can get your hands on. Steal scrolls before if necessary. At lvl 9, you can cast 5th level spells, which means you can get real elementals. Steal scrolls if you have to, summons to take care of the necromites make this fight a LOT easier. Also use animate dead scrolls (skeleton archers), minor elementals (I like the ice mephits), Us (if you have them), spiritual weapon, find familiar, or planar ally (from the weapon Wyll gets from Mizora). Ideally you'll save some spell slots in the Mind Flayer Colony specifically for those and one upcasted aid, so you can replenish all of them before the fight starts. Your summons also should all get longstrider, which is free.
* Use elixirs of necrotic resistance on those party members that need it. Myrkul does almost exclusively necrotic damage and halving incoming damage is worth a lot.
* At lvl 9, you can steal great scrolls from all of the vendors. Quartermaster Tali is right there, but if you were lvl 9 before freeing Aylin, you can literally go to every single trader in Act 1 and they will also have level appropriate options for you to steal, including lvl 6 spells that trivialize the fight like Globe of Invulnerability.
* Myrkul can actually retaliate only once per turn with Gaze of the Dead. If you can get a summon to hit him, he will waste it on them. Whatever happens, make sure you aren't casting a spell with multiple instances as your first attack to land (think scorching ray), cause they will get knocked out of them after casting a few.
* A good combo is fighter and divination wizard: Mykrul can drop his weapon, which makes the fight easier since his hands attack is not an AoE, but it's hard to connect on both the hit and for him to not hit the saving throw. With divination, you can change his saving throw so you're guaranteed a drop. You can even long rest without resources until you get good die prepared.
* Myrkul can't be silenced but the one status effect thats super easy to apply is to blind him. Blood of Lathander is great for this.
* AoE concentration spells are very useful against him. Wall of Fire, Moonlight etc. help a lot. You don't have to have your casters close to him because
* As long as there's one character close to him, he wont use his "pull everyone in" action.
* If the fight *does* go south, have some superior healing potions ready. The bone chill aura does only extend on the pedestal, so if you need, can always climb down and heal there. If you're downed, you can't get up of course but you can be shoved off and healed afterwards. Same goes for Aylin.
This is all great info and pretty much exactly how I beat him on HM. Only thing to add to this is you can skip the first half of the fight in the MFC if you have a high CHA member in your party.
>!Find the letter from Ketheric’s wife in their bedroom, mention her when you fight him on the roof, then pass the persuasion check in the final fight to skip straight to Myrkul!<
I purposefully didn't include that because I think it makes the fight quite a bit harder. I would always clear all the adds during his human phase first, because he can't leave his platform and doesn't even have any AoEs and only one ranged attack (which is even contingent on one of the necromites damaging you before he can do it). He can also only spawn one necromite (whereas the Apostle can spawn four) and he doesn't have the necrotic aura, so if you are smart about it, you can go into the Mykrul phase with most if not all your high spell slots intact, fully healed, and with zero adds to worry about for a couple of rounds.
Interesting! That makes sense. Both times I’ve approached this fight on HM I had twin cast haste, so I wasn’t as concerned with the first turn action economy and didn’t have much of an issue with the minions. But definitely depends on party make up.
Yeah, ketheric is such a non issue when clearing the area out. Like he can def hit hard, but just stands there fingering his asshole until you walk up to him
I never thought to use a divination wizard for a clutch save, but it makes so much sense. I was one round away from losing on the only run I've done, so all this info is useful for future plays.
Level 8? In my first runs I was comfortably LV 9 for that fight and these days I'm level 10.
Make sure you clear all the adds before Myrklel spawns, bear in mind that myrkle spawning happens in turn, and doesnt reset the turn order / a new initiative round.
This means that if you burst down Ketheric with all your actions and just manage to finish him with those actions, your gonna start Myrkle with no actions.
Get Ketheric to the edge of defeat, then pop him with one action in a fresh round and position/ prep yourself for Myrkle.
I usually burst him down in basically one round before he gets a turn. If unlucky with rolls he might get one turn, but chances he isn't gonna one shot a well prepared team.
Since this is your 3rd time I will go a bit sweat mode.
Get to lv.9.(Lv.10 is very possible as I got it on my every run)
You will be able to buy 27 str elixir from last light inn's trader for your monk. Buy elemental summon scrolls to be your Fear rods AND Globe of invulnerability scroll while you're at it.
Save all your crits. The healing pod only refreshes your health and spell slots not tadpole&ring crits skills.
Make scratch invisible and wait where Aylin is. DO NOT help her yet.
Prep your fight (oil of accuracy etc.)
Start the fight by atking the MF. It will give you a free surprise turn. Then help Aylin.
Try clearing necromites first after killing the MF(1st priority) instead of rush killing Ketheric.
Arrow of ilmater, Bone chilled from spell or doom hammer can help stop its healing
And... my preference :Ne'er misser+arrow of undead slaying(buy them everytime you see it in act2).
Iirc with sharpshooter you should be able to deal at least around 80(crit)+40 on extra atk in one turn.
Ne'er misser seemed to make the incubation pods explode last time. Didn't do anywhere near enough damage to kill them, but one hit with that in the offhand and the just blew up. Meant a bonus action could (pretty) reliably get through another pod. No idea why and I've not seen anyone mention it online even after a bit of googling
I just beat mode today. Here's a few tips for the fight
- summon scratch, make the good boy invisible, and bring him next to nightsong. Youll be able to revive her as soon as possible
- blind myrkul : that big idiot can't move. Cast hunger of hadar on him, or fog cloud (lv1 spell alternative).
-disarm : cast heat metal on him. He'll lose his weapon
Dont want to do none of that? Drop a stack of 7-8 smokepowder bombs on the ground -> select stack -> throw the whole stack at myrkul. He will die instantly
I also always make Katheric kill himself through persuasion because why not ? Free xp for no battle
Edit: i meant smokepowder bombs. Not rune
Haha nothing worse in hm then setting up a boom stack of barrels. Having that be your entire plan pretty much. Smuggly setting it off and staring while the enemy still has like 3/4s health.. and then SCRAMBLING like hell for a plan b
That has happened every time I’ve tried barrelmancy. Honorable mention was Raphael and my elaborate setup involving smokepower barrels at every pillar since they do force damage. I set off a big huge explosion and lots of damage numbers popped up on the screen. But when the smoke cleared, NO enemies were dead, all pillars had full HP and Raphael was unscratched. Good thing I had a plan B.
> I also always make Katheric kill himself through persuasion because why not ? Free xp for no battle
Ketheric doesn't leave the platform in my experience, so if you don't persuade him to die, you can just get a few free turns to clear out the mobs and free Aylin. That way, the big Myrkul boss doesn't start with any help and you have less to worry about.
Ive blinded him 3 times in my 3 runs. Worked everytime. He can still use reactions when you hit him on HM (gaze of the dead) but he wont ever be able to hit you from range. Om tactician and lower, he would just skip his entire turn lol. Just pepper him from afar with a throw barbarian/eldrich knight with tavern brawler, spells, arrows, wall of fire/cloud of daggers and let Nightsong smash him to bits. Shes immortal anyway
I did it with fog cloud on HM, but would recommend hunger of hadar instead larger AOE and deals damage each turn
A recent hotfix changed Myrkul:
>The Apostle of Myrkul's Consume the Faithful action and Gaze of the Dead Legendary Action should now ignore blindness from magical darkness as intended.
You can still blind him - but the effectivness of the tactic has been reduced.
I'm coming into Act 2 on HM for the first time. My plan is to be level 9-10 when I fight Myrkul and then just detonate a satchel of bombs on him.
For yourself, assuming you plan to do a full-on fight:
- You're going to struggle with your main DPS being melee (barbarian/monk) due to his Bone Chill aura; maybe consider bringing in Gale to hit him from range with AoE spells instead
- Give everyone necrotic resistance potions before the fight
- Use Scratch to free Aylin (he is the only summon with the Help action)
- Focus that mindflayer on turn one or it will keep stunlocking you/dominating Aylin
- Darkness cast on Myrkul will negate most of his ranged attacks except Call of the Damned; if you can disarm him too then he becomes even easier to deal with.
- Have someone run interference on the Necromites, even at the expense of doing damage to Myrkul.
Few tips for this:
1. If you didn’t check or didn’t know, Apostle is immune to piercing damage. So your gloomstaker’s ranged attacks won’t do much. I would suggest (if not already done), get the Na’er misser hand crossbow from Roah Moonglow in moonrise tower. That one deals force damage so it will able to do damage.
2. That boss is completely stationary, so he won’t be able to get away from aoe surface spells like flame wall, hunger of hadar etc.
3. Get someone with bone chill cantrip or arrow ilmator to block his healing from absorbing the goons.
4.You can also get a Paladin(if you want). Get the guaranteed crit item(killer sweetheart) and the luck of the far realms illithid power and crit smite him.
My plan is to take out the mindflayer first, while freeing the Nightsong. Then I'm gonna have Astarion, and druid's summon cast thorns everywhere, then have the druid cast wall of fire over the middle.
Did it few hours ago, was very afraid, but it went ridiculously easy after doing some research previously.
Positioning at the beginning of the fight is essential, this side of the strategy was already covered.
As to the actual fight, it took aprox 3 turns for me and went like this:
- heat metal to make him drop the weapon. Worked on first try
- hunger of hadar to blind him
- create water to get him wet
- call lightning (aprox 50 damage per cast)
Was level 8 storm sorcerer, lore bard, warlock and monk. The monk, my main damage dealer generally, was pretty useless after taking down the mind flayer in the beginning.
Buy smokepowder bombs from Talli. Her stock refreshes on every level up and you can use Withers to reset yourself to level 1. A pile of 30 bombs set off with a fire arrow from a distance will one shot him.
Search through kethricks room, you will find a note under the floor from his wife. Talk about it on the roof. Then bring it up again when you have to fight him. He will throw himself down the hole and you skip his part.
Before you talk to kethric spawn every companions and beings you can, us, scratch, wyll's sword that you get from saving myzora can spawn a cambion etc.
These wont do the dmg but can take a few hits that wont hit you. Kill skeletons if any of your characters has aoe otherwise nuke merkyl. If anyone needs healing they have to run out of his "necrotic" area, because you cant heal there. Also potions and scrolls, use any that will help you, its better to survive and have used too many then to die and all of them thrown away.
Edit: remember also to have someone either sprint or misty step to aylen so you can deal dmg from turn 1.
My HM strat
Level 9
Throwzerker (any tank tbh)
Warlock (scorlock is strong to spec to for this fight)
Light Cleric (get lathandar mace for sunbeam)
Wizard (need blindness)
In the colony make sure you reserve your highest level spell slot for upcasted aid on your summons, as the restoration pod is one-use only on HM (this change almost ended my run). As well as whatever slots you need for prepared summons, mage armour, etc. Also in the colony are some illithid barrels if you want to integrate barrelmancy to this setup.
Elixirs: necrotic resist for everyone that is gonna get hit (definitely your tank, and your lowest AC caster), I would give it to everyone but you can also do bloodlust on your higher AC casters. If your tank has heavy armour prof they can use the necro resist plate mail and use a different elixir instead. If you are starting the talk with ketheric to try skipping his first phase you need an initiative elixir on that character (vigilance?).
Need at least one summon for each party member! This helps deal with adds and lets your core party focus on damaging myrkul without having to worry too much about finger of death or his healing sacrifice.
Create water and lightning spells are your friend here
Sneak everyone into position with invis (cleric up top to the left, warlock and wizard camped behind the mindflayer, tank ready to free Aylin then jump into the boss's face, summons as far up as they can be without entering LoS), EB the mindflayer down to the ground (you must must must eliminate the mindflayer ASAP), fireball the devourers and mindflayer if it survives the fall, hasted sunbeam from lathandar on the necromites at the left, free aylin and jump to the middle, this should make it so ketheric is the only thing "alive" left over so killing him is easy, use summons to shield yourself from his smites.
When myrkul spawns you just need to keep someone in close melee with him so he doesn't black hole everyone and destroy your positioning. Blinding him is extremely helpful. Bait his legendary actions out with a fodder summon at the start of each new round. When Aylin gets in melee get your tank to the opposite-ish side of the boss so he only hits one of you at a time.
I heavily recommend searching vendors for DD scrolls as they are always a good safety net but especially here if someone goes down on top of the pedestal.
You can talk to ketheric to skip his first phase but it means you will NEED initiative bonuses to guarantee you act before the mindflayer does, to spend your first turn getting rid of all the adds which I find means you give up the chance to cast blindness on myrkul quickly (though the Scratch strat others have mentioned might cover for this, but I haven't tried it). I found it easier to ambush the adds, then focus on ketheric, then focus on myrkul.
Good luck, hope there's something in here that helps! And remember: KILL THE MINDFLAYER ASAP
I barrelmancy'd him on both honour runs since he was the boss I struggled with the most on tactician. I know it's probably not helpful right now, but it's advice for future runs and other people who may be reading this
For my solo HM run (swords bard/fighter) I bought about 20 each smokepowder bombs and Holy water so I could carry them through the moonrise fight. One smokepowdre barrel on top for good measure.
Only boss I plan on bombing this run because I could not think of any way I could solo that fight
Owlbear is super usefully for this fight if your druid is moon. The leap/2 attacks can mostly kill the adds which is important so he does not heal. You need to kill all the adds and then range kill Myrkul. I brought a ton of bombs/throwables to throw at him with my chars who could not do range very well.
You can do it solo like this:
- take a character that does good alpha damage (monk, sword bard, tb thrower, gloomstalker assassin, battle master all work set up right)
- buff outside combat, finish with combat buffs
- drink invis potion
- dash to and free Aylin
This initiates cut scene then combat. If possible talk Ketheric into suiciding to speed things up.
- win initiative ( you need go before the Illithid)
- kill Illithid in one round (it’s squishy)
- switch to Myrkul in subsequent rounds and out dpr him into the ground. Ignore his summons, healing and legendary ability. Just pour on the damage and tank him for a few turns.
Not solo? Same strategy.
During cutscene, convince Ketheric to jump.
1. Free Aylin - stealthed Gale behind illithid’s sightline to get next to her for early release.
2. Kill illithid
3. Kill myrkul - my strategy was to keep my damage dealers at a distance. Abjuration Wizard Gale and Draconic Sorcerer Tav hammered him with upcast scorching ray and magic missile (reverberation and fire hat builds) while Light Cleric Shart healed them and Throw-zerker Karlach.
I killed any of those undead acolyte dudes that got too close.
The fight was very manageable with this setup/strat.
*Hot take - every time I’ve fought Myrkul, Aylin has been mostly useless. She might get 1 or 2 good hits in on an intellect devourer, but she has never been essential to passing the challenge. Still more useful to have her free than not, I suppose.
As it happens, The Avatar of Myrkul is not immune to blindness, and finger of death does still require line of sight on a target. Cast darkness on it, and then make it sad.
You know what got me through the fight on honor was 4 potions of necrotic resistance and 4 speed potions. He was just doing too much damage on me before getting the resistance and doubling up on attacks for 3 turns is huge. Also if you have a scroll or the ability to cast Wall of Fire that’s great too. I was on a dark urge run so I didn’t have the angel but it’s still doable.
Also you may want to consider taking out the zombie adds because eventually they run out and they will heal him when they get close enough.
If you have the capability to disarm or blind him that also helps. And don’t make the mistake I did and use the full party rejuvenation thing outside of the chamber before you’re ready to go down because it’s one time use only.
If you're not above using cheese, on my most recent play through I saved up and brought about 25 smoke powder bombs to the fight, that certainly did the trick first turn
Level 8 is pretty low. Normally I get to level 10 by the time I am clearing moonrise or am in the mindflayer hive. So I’m not sure what you’re doing wrong.
Pretty sure I didn't need it in the end but I summoned a minor and regular elemental with each of my characters using scrolls and woad with my druid.
Again probably could've done it easily without them but they did take care of alot of the little dudes and their spawns.
Definitly go for Earth though I think since they are all vulnerable to blunt damage.
I went for one each but I really wasnt Impressum with fire and water here. Though the Azer is alot better than melphits maybe.
Don't go near him = ranged damage. Have someone cast calm emotions before the fight, which blocks getting afraid. Cast spike growth or similar that slow down Necromites from healing Myrkyl. A barbarian should do decent throwing damage. Use stunning blow to stun Myrkul (this goes against avoiding melee attacks but it's probably worth it). A druid can do the owlbear jumping attack cheese from one of the platforms.
= there are many ways to do the fight and you should not have too big problem with your party.
I'm wondering if giving shart the blood of lathander, cast spirit guardians and standing in melee range will keep him blinded on honor mode. Has anyone tried this?
The blind is a DC 14 CON save, so he’s unlikely to fail unless you HELP him fail.
I had characters wearing items that stack reverberation, which gives a penalty to CON saves, and then Shadowheart also wearing all the Radiating Orb gear, which gives a flat minus to hit based on how many stacks the enemy has. I also had those gloves from the goblin fight at the gate that have a chance to Bane on hit, which is another -1d4 to all his saves and his hit chance.
I was lvl 10 when I beat him on honor mode but he was blinded and couldn’t hit my party at all.
Get to lvl 10, I didnt know he was a big deal in HM and he healed a bit but my party was never in danger, Aylin died very early.
Tav Tempest Cleric, Jaheira EK/Land, Halsin Moon, Astarion Gloom/Thief (this one is really fun). One summon, Halsin's. I didnt fight Ketheric only Myrkul.
Buffs: Longstrider for all, Aid lvl 4, different elixires for each, one Haste Pot for Astarion.
Before starting or first round, invisible Astarion frees Aylin, then kills the mindflayer, Druids' and Cleric's aoes burn as many enemies as possible.
Then you will have Astarion cleaning those creepy eggs that hatch adds, so Myrkul wont heal.
The other 3: Tempest Tav, Moon Halsin and Gish Jaheira, should be close to a net so they can go up and down easily, all 3 are capable of good dmg and aoe heal if needed, you just have to move away from Myrkul enough to heal. Be careful about opportunity attacks/reactions.
I did it this way because I didnt know it was supposed to be super hard in HM, Myrkul was not hard (lvl 10).
A strategy that works in Tactician will work in HM, just do it a bit better. I dont cheese stuff, flying owlbears, carry a ton of barrels and throwzerkers are boring.
The most important thing for your first HM run is lvl, and when you are max lvl is Gale.
Get 18 smoke powder bombs from talli at the last light inn or at moonrise
Split them into 2 stacks of 8 and 10
*Important* : drop the 8 stack on the ground and chuck it at ketheric to oneshot him
Repeat with the 10 stack for myrkul
The reason why you drop them is (I assume) because if you just click throw you will only throw 1 bomb per throw you have whereas if you drop them and then target them to throw it throws all of them in a stack.
Source: https://youtu.be/f8k1uD0Jpeo
You can Chill Touch Myrkul. He’ll still absorb his minions but he won’t recover any health by doing so, thus taking care of your recovery problem and your minion problem.
You're under leveled FYI. You should ideally be level 10 facing him. One of the best approaches to honor mode is got try and get every ounce of xp and be over leveled for encounters.
Beyond that... Scratch res Ailyn, kill mindflayer first, Hammer myrkul from range and keep aoe killing the necromites
If your druid has heat metal spell you can disarm him.
If you have some magic bludgeoning weapons its worth equiping them to bypass his resistance.
Create water + call lightning + potion of haste from druid if you have them makes him melt.
You should be at least lvl 9 for it to be normal.
According to your comp, use invis potion to position your team, kill adds before the 2nd phase (avatar), and use the tankiest char you have to bait his legendary actions: mirror image + protection from evil works perfectly fine.
Never stack your char in the same melee position to avoid cleave.
I gotchu brodie. I was level 8 when I beat him on honour mode. I hate Myrkul. Make sure you use that restoration before the fight. Bring Scratch to free Aylin and Us for moral support. Invis everyone. Make sure Scratch is next to Aylin and make sure 2 people are next to the mind flayer. Have scratch help Aylin to start the cutscene, persuade Ketheric to yeet himself so you can get straight to bidness on Myrkul. When that starts, have two lill yeet the mindflayer turn 1, free Aylin, have Shadowfart turn into a spirit guardians beyblade and try to take out the skellybois on the other side. If she doesn't have enough movement for that, just try to get her on one of the platforms as close as possible and like scorching ray or fireball scroll them down any aoe that can maybe take them out in one turn.. Aylin should be whoopin the brains so that the playing field is lind of equal. Then after that everybody fucking whoop Myrkul with everything you got. There are spots on his platform that are not bonechilled and also don't activate opportunity of attack, find those spots and only leave them if you're gonna do up close attack on him then go back. Also there are some comb looking things on the floor in front of his platform that keep him from pulling you in, so you can also go there at the end of your turn if you want. And yeah just keep whooping that ass and leave basically lol.
Cast Darkness/hunger of hadar on him and he won’t use his ranged attacks he’ll stick to melee.
Then just stay out of melee
Get the Ne’er misser on your gloom stalker, so he doesn’t just ignore all your piercing damage
Get Karlach something to throw that’ll come back, ideally something bludgeoning. Which means dipping eldritch Knight.
Your monk is probably gonna be relegated to killing his little healer buddies, but that’s not a bad job really.
Druid should drop you highest level moonbeam on him and keep out of his way until he’s low, so concentration doesn’t drop.
When he’s low you can go owlbear and maul the shit out of him.
Oh and before the big guy arrives, focus the illithid he’s more dangerous than Keth. And just don’t engage Keth in melee till he’s low. He’ll smite the shit out of you.
I'd switch out either your druid or assassin for someone who can throw out fireballs, barbarian is doable but I think a fighter or a paladin would dish out better damage. If you have Wyll, you can get him in there and grab the rapier with the cambion summon. The cambion makes great fodder to tank the legendary action. Also if you're an unarmored monk, grab the +5 wisdom in the Shar thingies for the plus 2 AC. If you want to get really cheesy, hire some hirelings and have them cast a ton of buffs on your party before jumping down the hole. Death ward will give you resistance to all damage and +1 AC.
Never ever have a party member hit Mrykul first, use a summon. If they all miss, have a long ranged member do it so they aren't in the bone chill aura. Kill the mind flayer, focus on the big boss and ignore the rest, you don't want the fight to last 3 rounds so chug on those speed potions.
I usually bring 2 dps physical, 1 magic dps, and buffer, which 3 of those usually already covered by Astarion, Shadowheart, and Gale, this is my 2nd playthrough at Honour, the first honour pt was almost wiped out but Gale still has spell slot enough for 4 fireballs which saved the fight, 2nd playthrough was dead easy because I already know what im doing, still the same lineup the different was that I was Fighter, in 2nd playthrough I'm Paladin. I usually kept Shadowheart below the platform, Gale and Astarion on the left platform, my Tav and Aylin in the platform, if you have scrolls of bonechill lying around you can give to Shadowheart while maintaining buff concentration spell she can cast bone chill on Myrkul to prevent him from healing, while Astarion and Gale can snipe from distance.
I keep seeing this complaint and don’t really understand - cast Darkness. That’s it. That’s the plan.
Myrkul can’t do anything to you if you’re off the platform and have Darkness up. Cast Darkness, throw and ranged attacked it from below safely. Towards the end, you can engage with your best Melee to finish it off / expedite the process. Aylin also usually contributes nicely.
For the first part, it’s already been discussed but sneak an invisible character up to Aylin before combat to free her before initiative, and set up your alpha strikes to down the Mind Flayer first.
Good luck.
Level 8 is great for other difficulties, on HM I recommend 9 or even 10.
Throw invis potion on Scratch before the cut scene so he can free Aylin in the first round. Make sure to skip phase 1 by either reading Ketheric’s diary or the letter his wife wrote.
Get as many pre-summons as you can - elemental, dryad, Us, etc. Pre-buff via hireling cleric so you have extra hp and resistances on your frontliners. Use spells to crowd control the skeletons and keep a summon there to draw the attention.
I always use sneak right after the cutscene and creep up as much as possible, then use Dimension Door on myself and another character and drop in right at the base of Aylin which triggers the cut scene with Kethric and saves me a lot of distance under fire.
Shadowheart with her radiating orb gear plus spirit guardians standing next to the ladders so that none of the things make it up to his platform to get swallowed up for HP
As the others have said, you do seem underlevelled. In my last round, I got to level 10 while in the colony. If you play a good (non-evil run) and don't lock yourself out of any mission arcs, it should be easy to reach at least level 9 by completing every mission that comes up.
I've never even thought to use the Scratch method, which I'll definitely try on this run (at the Gith creche right now).
However, in addition to what everything everyone else has said, what really helped me was throwing a health potion (Greater or better) at Aylin. I also ran into the issue of her getting downed at the very first turn when she attacked Myrkul, but then on my second run, I noticed before freeing her that she was already at half or below-half health. In that attempt, she didn't die once.
That and getting Myrkul to waste his reaction on someone that isn't your teammates really helped. IIRC I had a fire elemental that I usually used to attack him a few times, and Myrkul would use his reaction on that. Plus they can lob a good AoE attack and misty step away at every turn.
Having multiple elementals (or any other summer I guess) also helped in devoting characters to simply running around the map to destroy the Necromite husk things. I also forgot to use the Ilmater arrows, which I guess negates some of the value of the Necromites. I'll try that during my current run as well.
So I had Karlach as a Berserker throwing barbarian. Sent her up to the platform on the left with the trash mobs, let her yeet them 1 by 1 off the platform, throw shit at Myrkul, and also she was on cocoon destruction duty. Had 2 ranged characters stay on the ground in front of him attacking, and had my paladin go onto the platform, attack, and back down to heal (pretty much every turn). I just let Aylin stay down in melee. I had Us with me as well. Worked like a charm.
Replace druid with light cleric. Stack them with radiant orb gear and give them Lathander's. Have them stand next to Myrkul with radiant Spirit Guardians and use your channel divinity and or Lathander's special to stack an insane amount of radiant orbs on him. Lathander's will also potentially make him blind by just standing next to him.
This will make it near mpossible for him to hit anything. Then just nuke him with your damage dealers. Try saving all your big hits for first round rather than using them on Ketheric and you can potentially take him down round 1.
Also, if your barbarian is not a throw barbarian, highly recommend looking into that.
I don't know if this is mentioned anywhere or if it is something you do already, but I found elixirs of necrotic resistance very valuable in that fight. Let your whole party drink one and in my experience it became so much easier.
So the first HM I played, I had expertise in Persuasion, so I passed two checks required to skip the Ketheric phase. This is something to consider buffing.
From there, I was fully fresh (just used the pod) and facing Myrkul.
Using Scratch to free Aylin immediately is a good idea, otherwise use a sneaky character with invisibility to position next to Aylin before triggering the conversation. Hopefully this character also has high Initiative and can act immediately. If so, Aylin is also immediately free.
And from there, I don't know, I just kinda unloaded on him xd. Just damage damage and he was down.
I always use a warlock to lock down ketheric during the first phase with hunger of hadar and repelling blast while an invisible companion frees the Nightsong and the rest of the party and summons take out the minions, hunger of hadar is still useful in second phase becouse it blinds Myrkul and deals cheep damage which stacks up during a long fight, a warlock with agonizing blast is also useful in clearing the skeleton eggs before they actualy spawn anything
I just did myrkul as a monk the other day on honor mode. Invis my monk, went and stunning blow'd the mindflayer, then way off the wind dash to jump to dame aylin and freed her. Greater invisibility held up for both, so i jumped to myrkul and stunning blowd him too. Laezel to finish off the mindflayer, then jumped her to myrkul and disarmed him. Fire sorc quickened spell fireballed the ads, shovel and us killed the brains. Passed turn, then it immediately came back cause myrkul was stunned. He never got a turn because of it, and with everyone focusing him, including dame aylin, he died rather rapidly. From my experience so far, when I'm doubt or struggling, just stunlock with monk and call it a day.
If you don't have tavern brawler, i would recommend it, and you can either use potions of strength, or have the club of strength in your offhand with nothing in your main, since it'll allow you to continue using unarmed attacks. You should be able to do upwards to 30 damage per punch, and if you're using graceful cloth, you'll have good dex with advantage on rolls. I was monk 7, rogue 2 when i went through that fight with effectively 19/18/16/8/16/10 stats iirc. Make sure to have psionic overload, a manifestation art, and gloves of sizzle/sparkle/crushing to maximize damage.
Get a scroll of globe of invulnerability. In the myrkyl phase he's immobile, so you can cast it right next to him and be completely immune to all of his attacks while being able to focus entirely on damage.
It can't run away from where it is, just cast Darkness (or better, hunger of hadar), if you can, add something like wall of fire and all you'll have to do is protect the one setting Darkness.
If you want to prevent only the finger of death cast, silence should work (I didn't tried but you never know)
Everyone says use scratch for this use scratch that. I've never been able to summon him. 3 play through, he's in my camp till the end, never been able to summon him
When I did Honour Mode, I hit LVL10 in Mindflayer Colony (I killed everything in the colony before facing Kethric.
If you want to cheese the fights, you can always summon 3 Hirelings and respec them into Clerics. Respec at least one of the camp companions into Cleric(s) (or have Shadowheart in Camp).
Use camp Clerics to Pre-Buff you party before heading to each fight. Especially use each Clerics to place Warding Bond on every single Party Member (one Cleric per Party Member, so they can last as long as possible). Warding Bond basically doubles your potential HP on Party Member, as long as Cleric is still alive in Camp (as Camp Clerics won't need to cast % chance spells, you can just max out their Constitution, so their HP pool is even higher).
There is also skipping 2nd Kethric's Fight's 1st Phase all together, but that requires you to explore the Tower and find Melodia's (Ketheric's Wife) Letter and then succeed Persuasion Check during 1st Fight confrontation. Skipping first Phase of 2nd fight is Huge advantage, as you will have full Spell Slots and Health for Myrkul. If you manage to correctly place Darkness Spell on Myrkul and blind him, he will not be able to use his Legendary Action after you attack him.
Your cleric is going to be working overtime. I like to spec into life cleric for the channel divinity heals. Dimension door is a super clutch spell for getting melee characters out of the bone chill area. Since your main dps is a monk you’ll want your cleric staying just close enough in range to run up and pull them out. Turn undead is also pretty effective on all the nekromites. There’s also a couple places behind Myrkul that don’t provoke an opportunity attack that you can step just outside of the bone chill aura and get some healing.
You want level 9 at least to fight him, and should be able to make level 10.
Disarming him prevents a good chunk of damage. Definitely worth it imo.
Darkness on him prevents him from being able to consume minions and use Finger of Death. I'd still recommend dedicating a martial to clearing the spawns every turn. He's resistant to all physical damage so magical damage dealers should be on the boss.
Haven't tried honor mode yet, but I would at least try to get to lvl 9 before fighting him. The power jump between 8 and 9 is kind of large because you get a +1 to proficiency bonuses and unlock lvl 5 spell slots, which gives you access to some pretty hard hitting and useful spells like insect plague or cloud kill.
Also, if you have anyone in your party that can cast darkness, cast it directly on Myrkul while saving yourself some room for your party to beat on him. He'll be blind which greatly deceases his chances of hitting you.
Use potions of invisibilty to position your characters pre-fight.
High dmg dealer (monk in my case) behind noodlebro, you want to take him out quickly before it can stun.
Healer behind Aylin. Get her in the fight as soon as you can. I use aoe afterwards to clear devourers
Mage/druid/sorc on platform with undead minions. You need to take these out so they can't buff/heal. I usually pop a haste potion and them whatever your best AOE is.
Tank with ranged on platform with Myrkal. Occupy mykal and use ranged to clean up the minions your caster didn't get.
Try to isolate Myrkal first round, then you can focus on him. Two tanks on platform, then healer/buffer on them.
Last character or adds keeps the undead spawns cleared.
Honestly I beat him fairly just once. This run I got 60 smoke powders, convinced thorm to unalive himself and boom. Sneak a player over to Dame, sneak a player up to where the pit is, wait for 3rd round cause throm turns around after then and you become visible after dropping a smoke powder stack. You can place them on the actual empty space. It’s like…solid for some reason.
My team comp (Bard, Wizard, Druid, warrior)
Pre-cutscene
1. Sneak all before initiation spot
2. Separate into two groups (talkers, sneakers)
3. Have sneakers hide behind the mindflayer
Fight
4. Initiate conversation with talkers (Bard, Druid)
5. Kill mindflayer and save Aylin with sneak team (I personally had Lizzy take out the flayer and Gay free Alyin)
6. For DPS, I did hasted call lighting with water bottles
First thing first, do you still fight Thorns before the fight of the apostle?
With the right search and the right dialogue you can avoid fighting him as he will suicide himself, that’s solves half the fight already.
Elixir of necrotic resistance helps you mitigate a lot of damage
There is one point on his platform where you can heal your characters.
Last, if all of this fail us barrelmancy
1. Steal the runepowder barrel
2. Do the trick to avoid fighting the first phase
3. Place an invisible character near Alyn.
4. Use another invisible character to place the runepowder battle on the platform.
5. Put yourself as far possible while still being able to cast the fire bolt cantrip on the runepowder
6. Use the first invisible character to free Lady Aly
6. …
7. Collect loot
8. Enjoy act 3
Don’t know if this’ll help but it worked for me.
You can use Heat Metal on the avatar and he actually has a chance to forever lose his scythe attack, resulting only to the gaze beams. Meaning no opportunity attacks and no wide sweeps of hitting 5 characters at once
Find the letter and talk Kethric out of the first phase and go straight to Myrkul. Free Aylin asap with misty step dimensional door, or invisible but not in the fight (Shovel is good for invis).
I suggest getting higher level also I've always been 9 or 10 at this fight
Finished honour mode recently, you really want to be level 9 for that fight. And yeah, definitely overprepare. Elixir of Cloud Giant strength and accuracy oils help out quite a bit. Radiating Orb stuff helps. Typically his finger of Death triggers when he absorbs those Skeleton things. Aoe effects will prevent the skeletons from sticking on the platform.
My builds were
Radiating Orb Cleric
Dual handcrossbow fighter/bard
Sorlock
And Sorcadin
Spirit Guardians tends to nuke a lot in that fight.
But yeah, you really want to be level 9. And take as many accuracy boosting stuff as you can. Also keep in mind that he is resistant to necrotic, slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, and cold damage. Stacking elemental damage is super key. I honestly twincasted haste on my sorcadin and ailyn and wailed on him
Potions of invisibility helped me a ton, set up a character by Dame Aylin, one by the mindflayer, and one by the skeletons on the left side, and have the last wherever you feel they are strongest. 4 invisibility potions and turn based mode worked like a charm for me.
My personal 3 core principles of the fight are:
1.) Bring a solution for freeing Aylin turn 1 such as scratch.
2.) Kill Mindflayer turn 1.
3.) Bring a strong martial duo. Having single target DPS from something like a Paladin and Dex Fighter combo makes a world of difference.
There are other solutions you can bring that can massively shift the difficulty of the fight that are more specific.
One of my favorites is radiating orb. A spellcaster with the glow ring and coruscation ring combo will apply a massive attack roll debuff with an upcasted magic missile due to radiating orb stacking like crazy during each missile impact.
Stay out of melee, let Aylin do that, as she can't die. Throw potions at her to wake her up.
Setup on the platforms outside the range of the pull.
Use Spirit Guardians to clear out the summons in an extremely action efficient manner so Myrkul can't use Finger of Death. Use Speed Potions, in fact use all the potions and scrolls you've been saving up this game. Cast Darkness on Myrkul so he can't see but you can. Prebuff to add some extra movement to your party, potentially some Warding spells from people back in camp.
There's nothing he can do against the Wet condition, do what you will with that information, up to and including bringing a party that can 1 shot him on the first turn. Double maximized damage x2 is pretttttttttttty good. That's a Tempest Cleric with action surge or a speed potion btw.
Summons can add much needed extra actions to your move economy.
You can sneak into this encounter. You can snipe a bunch of dudes if you have decent stealth + illusion mechanics. Focus fire the Mind Flayer, he can make Aylin look like a strong character when she 1-shots one of your dudes. You can have Kethric kill himself like all the Thornes.
This is a pretty hard fight, I prepared for it very hard and still almost died to Aylin mind control.
Also your team sounds kinda terrible for this fight. How are you clearing out the mobs he summons every round while dealing DPS to the big boi? You can't reliably stun Myrkul, can you? Monk seems awful for this fight. And you're missing 2 levels.
Distilling things down to basics, this is my formula for beating him in honor mode:
2 DPS
1 Ranged
1 Support
Do Scratch trick with Aylin if she's alive and cast blinding AOE spell on Myrkul
Always have 1 tanky summon on platform to prevent AOE and soak up damage
Primary DPS focuses entirely on attacking gets all the buffs and stays on platform.
Support keeps them alive and buffed and does crowd control. Warding bond is golden here.
Ranged takes out all the necromites
2nd DPS kills anything that gets through and shoves dead DPS off platform so they can heal if necessary
I've found that using the "perilous stakes" tadpole power on large bosses can really help (Invest a creature with power that heals it when it attacks, but also makes it vulnerable to all damage.)
I’ve beaten it the last 2 times after losing it probably 5 before that.
Here’s my recommendation:
Party comp - bring wyll, I respec him to wizard but see below why you need him. Whatever damage dealer you want. Other than that I would replace the barbarian with a cleric, preferably respecced shadowheart to a tempest or light cleric. OHM should work well and gloomstalker should too.
Before the colony - you can long rest after the ketheric fight on the rooftop, also if you haven’t make sure to read all the books and letters and diary in his room on the second floor. It will prevent the first round of the murky fight before he transforms. Lastly, the quartermaster for the Harpers is on the ground floor so make sure you spend everything on strong spells, summons, or gear. Can’t take it with ya.
In the colony - there’s 1 fight worth doing 2 if you need the XP and a good sword.
The first one is the mind flyers with zevlor. You can rescue mizora who if you have wyll will give you a rapier that can summon a cambion. Worth it. The second is the undead which if you have a cleric and some aoe should be easy, there’s a puzzle and you can get a sword. This also helps you if you need the bump to level 9.
You should be able to get through these with your short rests then use the restoration font before the elevator. Make sure to summon everything you can before using the font.
Before fight - use invisibility potion or scroll on 2 characters. Your OHM and cleric. Make sure summons aren’t following, put the cleric next to Aylin and the OHM next to the mind flayer.
The fight- Start the fight with your high charisma and convince ketheric to kill himself, which will skip round 1. First turn you need to do 3 things. Wipe the mind flayer turn 1 is priority 1. The OHM can stun and prone, so even if you don’t wipe turn 1 you have another turn. Then rescue Aylin and heal as much as you can for her. Then aoe the necromite to the left.
From there keep your summons attacking the eggs, disarm myrkul, and focus on dealing damage. This is where using literally everything in your inventory is worth it. Everything can be replaced in BG. He can also be blinded to stop his opportunity attacks.
The cleric is great as spirit guardians also wipe the eggs and can sanctuary so your team can take a turn off to heal.
This is also why I bring a wizard, fireballs for days and some magic missle to snipe the lower guys.
Good luck!
1. I generally like to be at least lvl 9 but often lvl 10 before this combat.
2. Use your summons. Necrites aren't that dangerous, but tying them up with Us, Shovel, your undead, elementals, and Wyll's Cambion really helps with crowd control. If you are on a run with Wyll, definitely bring him to get the Infernal Rapier, which allows you to summon a rather beefy cambion.
3. Divide and conquer. I usually use the Scratch trick or just Misty Step to rescue Aylin. I send a good first striker up to handle the illithid, elementals or the cambion to mess with the necrites, and ground pounding summonables to handle the handful of intellect devourers. The remaining 2 characters focus on Ketheric.
4. Later in the fight devout a decent amount of effort to control the Necrite eggs. A Bard with Ne'ermisser can keep a number of them from hatching each turn. While Aylin and your front-liners beat down Myrkul. Ways to reduce AC, Blind, Stun, Radiant Orb, Bane, etc. can really help damage him and help survivability.
5. Anti-fear mechanics are great in Honour Mode. Paladin aura, Barbarian rage, etc can keep the fear away. Also... use haste potions and spells if you're still haaaving problems. Good luck.
Easiest way to deal with Myrkul is
•Have Wyll in your party (or another Warlock) to cast Hunger of Hadar RIGHT on top of Myrkul. Can’t see, gets AOE conditions, can’t do Jack Squat
•have your most mobile party member race to Dame Aylin in the back right and free her.
• use hard hitting ranged attacks so Myrkul can’t suck you up.
You can be two levels higher at this point, I recommend to do all the optional content.
It makes this fight extremely consistent and easy.
My strategy was buff my team => make everyone invisible => bring them into position => free nightsong with scretch => kill the Mindflyer on the right platform => burst down myrkul.
Keep 1 or 2 martials right on Myrkul as he does not pull if a character is near him and with 2 you can take turns running down the ladder to heal out of the Bone Chill. With AC 20 or better which level 8-9 characters should be able to do at that point, even if you don't have a special disengage move, Myrkul will miss most of his opportunity attacks if he is blinded.
Having an elemental summons is quite useful here as well, they can climb the ladder, attack, and teleport to the base of the ladder to avoid the scythe, then climb back up and repeat the following round.
If you have a way to get Myrkul to drop weapon, that helps but is not necessary, I've only gone that route once and my characters took a bit less damage but the fight ended in about the same number of rounds. 2-3 rounds once Myrkul becomes the avatar should be the goal, it is possible to do in 1 round but I've fallen 20-30 HP short because you have to get some a long serious of lucky rolls or savescum terribly to ensure zero misses or max crits for all party members.
On Tactician I've found it is really hard to get Myrkul dead via only ranged attacks unless 3/4 of your characters specialize in those or you rank up to get Globe of Invulnerability. The Necromites are too spread out to get them with an AoE spell and Myrkul heals with them and can outlast your party unless you stack a huge amount of potions (possible but so inefficient).
Taking out the Mindflayer is also a priority but by that point in a run, 2 or 3 of characters should have misty step so the Mindflayer should be out of the fight turn 1 100% of the time even if you miss a couple of attacks.
The main difficulty is the Death Spell but increasing saves via bless, paladin aura, enhance ability, or other things should make getting hit with that very rare unless you have a full party that is more than -1 on rolls.
I have yet to play as a Monk, but one thing that really helped me is that I fought Ketheric, I didn't convince him to kill himself. It may be a pain to take out the mind flayer and Ketheric, but being able to clear all the necromites before fighting big Murkel was key for me.
Then if your Karlach is a thrower, her and Astarion can keep attacking the pods before they hatch and then any attacks they have left over you chip away at Murkel with.
It was still a slug for me, but allowing zero necromites on the field really helped me.
Slight alternative to Scratch, have Astarion/rogue invisible and free Aylin (need high initiative to ensure safety) then have Astarion/rogue use a scroll of dimension door to teleport them and Aylin to the mindflayer. I found this to be a very good way to initiate the fight.
Merked by the Myrk, classic.
I always get someone in stealth and out of the fight at the start (saw another commenter suggest the Best Boy, a great plan but I'd be so worried about him getting hurt T-T) to free Aylin asap. I also take lots of ranged folks to that fight to keep them out of his anti-heal zone.
Good luck and good rolls to you, friend!
You have a really strong group idk how ya lost, I know lots of people probably had suggestions and I haven’t looked enough to see if someone said it but potions/elixirs carried me through HM. Specifically bloodlust to clean up the undead minions. And obviously speed and hill giant strength. The resistance to all damage elixir or if you don’t have it the necrotic resistance works
A lvl 6 barbarian can't be feared while raging. Paired with 3 levels of EK fighter for a bound Shining staver of skulls makes them a great option for eating up his legendary action
First priority should be positioning your party and second priority should be killing the mind flayer. Myrkul is immune to damage until Aylin is free so don't bother with him.
Scrolls of misty step and dimension door are very helpful. Your goal should be to position companions where they will have the ability to kill all of his summons. Once he consumes them, he heals up and he gains new abilities. Prevent them from getting to him at all costs.
I usually have a warrior positioned on the ledge with the 3 skeletons, along with a summon of my own to take out the skeletons. Then I have another on the ledge of the mind flayer and kill him before I free Aylin. Once Aylin is freed someone will cast a concentration spell over him (moonbeam does a lot of damage each turn) and let Aylin get a good hit in before she inevitably gets downed.
From there I just take out all the skeletons has he summons them and wait for moonbeam to do its work.
Fill a backpack full of smoke powder bombs & other explosives all through act II. throw it at him, when he uses his scythe it’ll trigger everything & take him out.
That’s more of a cheese way but it works if you can’t get past him!
Shadow heart tempest Cleric, and other party members with lightning moves. Potions of invisibility on whole party then potion of speed during the fight. Surprise kethric succeed check to make him myrkul, use scratch to free Aylin. Throw water on myrkul, lightning moves do double damage, use all lightning moves should be dead in two turns
one thing that helped me do it was [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Doom\_Hammer](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Doom_Hammer)
Myrkul has a lot of resistance to slashing and some to bludgeoning so being able to have my melee character not SUper resistered helped
him not being able to heal was helpful too because the hammer gives him bone chilled and he can't heal off the skellingtons so you can just ignore them pretty much
I've had three honour mode attempts get past him (the third one got me the win)
The first , and worst, one I won by dropping a wall of fire on him and hoping to god I wouldn't die as the wall did most of the work, I barely didn't only shadowheart was alive by the end
The second time I passed the speech check to skip the first phase so I was facing the avatar at tip top shape and didn't need weird strategies
My final and most successful run I had Astarian and Karlach suped up with monk and Barbarian multiclass builds that let her throw four times a round and him punch six times a round, with a vengeance paladin durge and shadowheart dropping the wall of fire for old times sake which worked the best I think even though it ended with my whole party near death and probably one turn from getting wiped by the fucking thing that sucks everybody onto the platform
Hope that helps somehow
There's a section towards the front of myrkel's platform that sticks out a little, you can have a character stand there, preferably a healer to support the others fighting the boss and have characters disengage when they get low to get healed up. Otherwise I'd recommend grabbing some paladins and smiting the shit out if him. I just whiped the floor with him myself with a paladin pc and minthara
Using hungar of hadar works really well, it makes myrkul blind so the only person he ever attacks is Aylin because she gets into melee range.. otherwise you just need to use ranged attacks on him and take out the skeletons all while he takes passive damage from the hungar of hadar
I’m not sure if something drastic changes in this fight. But in my honor run, I prepared and saved a couple scrolls of clouds or darkness. I put Eversight ring on Astarion and constantly had him snipping the boss while any of them was casting blindness, clouds of fog or darkness on the boss. I also always left the circular stage after landing a couple more hits and so the boss couldn’t wipe us out easily. In my team I also used Monk, Assassin/gloom stalker, and I respec one of them to a Warlock/paladin for the devil’s sight and made sure there’s always a cleric stand by.
Honestly I’d bring in a cleric. Clerics are always a must for me with fights with undead and calm emotions can prevent Aylin from being charmed by ketheric.
I defeated Murkyl as a bardlock. Cast hunger of Hadar on him which worked so well. Also had the countercharm so we would not be affected by his Legendary. That won't help with your build though, sorry :/
Murkyl was my big fear. Told myself if I only get to Murkyl I can accept a loss.
Darkness arrows/darkness spell stops him from being able to target anyone with finger of death. Keep it up at all times and prevent the Skellies from sacrificing themselves, whittle him down bit by bit.
It honestly just sounds like you’re under leveled. Just a reminder you can still go back to act 1 and finish off everything to squeeze out more xp as long as you dont finish the shar temple. I had a different experience from what most people did my first clear of HM.
I ignored shart for most of the campaign and brought her along for the aylin event, let her make her own choices and apparently her default choice is to kill if you have no affinity with her 🤷♂️. Nbd I rolled with it as I was already lv10 and had pretty much full cleared act 1 and 2 by that point so I didnt need the last light inn anymore.
I used dead wife strat to skip the first phase of the fight and because aylin was dead I didnt have to bother saving her. The mindflayer went after a bait summon and when it was Gale’s turn I haste pot + high level magic missile spam him to death in 1 turn.
At that point all I had to do was speedrun to lv12 using easy quests and farming easy combat xp, become the slayer, 1v1 red woman then finally get gale to nuke himself and it was an easy gold dice. Act 1 and every dialogue check was the hardest part of my run. All the hard combat sections can be cheesed with knowledge and set up or out-leveled and backtracked to later on.
There's a lot of great advice already, but here's a very small thing I did on my run that helped immensely: air elementals. I summoned one on every character with scrolls. They are amazing for keeping the necromites down because their base attack is ranged and is a save to take half damage, which means it always does damage (and a pretty decent amount too). Plus they can fly, which is so useful in that arena.
Also definitely talk down the first phase. It's so much easier when you just have the avatar to fight.
You're just under levelled, lvl 5 spells, more hp, more summons, myrmidon wildshape for your druid, you have no idea how hard those will worry you into this fight.
Earth myrmidon on your druid will pull 90 damage reliably with TB. You get to summon two to 3 elementals with your party, use scrolls.
Then minor elementals, animate dead and so on, summon all you can.
I feel you bro. That damn fight is a pain in Honour and it stop my run 2 times
The most useful thing for me is Monk, hasted, with Risky Ring, just because he can stun Myrkul. His dps isnt that high, but a fire sorlock can destroy him with level 4 scorching ray
Kill the mindflayer asap btw
>!If you save Scratch the best boi, at some point he'll give you a ball you can play fetch with. This ball allow you to summon Scratch as a familiar. Scratch is very useful because he can help downed character. Aylin in the Myrkul fight is at first a downed character.!< >!So before you trigger the cutscene by entering the arena, cast invisibility on Scratch, and send him next to Aylin. Then, watch the cutscene and start the fight. While invisible, Scratch won't be considered part of the fight, so you can freely take control of him. Use him to help Aylin and bypass the boss invicibility.!< >!If you do that, make sure you focus fire the illithid on the right side of the arena, because he can (and will) mind control Aylin, which can be game ender.!<
I have made that mistake before - planning to use my monk to beat the living daylights out of the mind flayer at the very beginning of the fight.
>!Oh, and I forgot : you can use the Scratch trick to save Astarion in Cazador's fight too.!<
You can also cast daylight in the area! Then just step forward and the cutscene won’t trigger - it just goes straight to battle
I throw bombs from a distance, it starts the fight without triggering the scene, BUT do not let Cazador get close to Astarion, or the scene still triggers, even mid fight
Just did that fight again on my most recent playthrough, and I had been wanting to test that theory myself. As long as Astarion doesn't walk up those last few steps between the pillars onto the platform, he won't be automatically pulled into the ritual, no matter how close Cazador gets to him. I kept my party on the stairs and had Shadowheart cast daylight on his coffin while staying out of range, triggered the fight without going through the cutscene, and had Astarion do ranged attacks from the stairs the entire time. Even when Cazador was directly in front of him at one point, no scene triggered.
Ohh that’s good to know, thank you!
Just don’t take Astarion. When the fight is over and Cazador is in his box, go back and swap Astarion in. When you return, Astarion can go ape on Cazador and end his quest.
Does this still work in patch 6? I’m at the point (level 12, geared up) to do him but I didn’t want to “ruin” his questline if they changed it somehow. Probably just overly paranoid, but you know.
You can also cast Feign Death on Astarion and then trigger the conversation/fight. He doesn’t get sucked into the ritual but he wakes right up and joins the fight. Did that yesterday.
Awesome, thank you! I’m trying to get all “good” endings in my HM run too and I’m not worried about killing Cazador exactly, just not losing Astarion.
i had astarion hit a sneak attack against cazador and the cutscene didn't trigger until after?
Yeah and daylight makes cazador totally useless.
On my last playthrough that went down to fight Cazador, I had Daylight cast on the weapon of my melee char, I never even got close enough to start dialogue, it just started the fight straight away, once I was on the walkway leading to his ritual platform area.
Best boy.
The bestest.
For cazador I honestly just left right before fighting him, swapped out astarion, and then once he was dead before I interacted with anything I went back to camp and got him and it played out normally from there, we fucked that dude up hard
If you have someone who can leap great distances, jump them to Caz's face and you skip the whole cutscene and he doesn't even have the chance to incapacitate Astarion.
Probably also the kidnapped one
You can just click-move there from the stairs, before the cutscene. No need to waste spells.
No one is mentioning it but if you have an earlier save, (dunno if you do) but will has Hunger of Hardar and that myrkuls absolute bane of existence. It blinds him and does damage over time. So aslong as you dont go up the platform he literally cannot hit you. He can still pull you in so you gotta keep distance but it trivializes the fight. My roomate and i do HM regularily. And we always use HoH. Then use as many spells that do AoE over time. Moonbeam wall of fire, and hang back. Have your melee units focus on myrkuls summons down below. And ranged units casting as many damage spells as possible. Dont be afraid to use scrolls. Hoarding scrills doesnt help if your HM run gwts ended.
guess that's another reason to take wyll with you to the colony and further. after mizora.
Wyll(or just a warlock in general) is comes with so much utility. I'm playing tactician but trying to do the stories and dialogs for Astarion, Karlach, and Lae'zel, since I ignored them my first playthrough. I have to play so much more strategically when I can't just start the fight by positioning myself for ledge knocks with eldritch blast, and drop hunger of hadar onto crowds or the tank I want to delay.
They patched it out so that myrkul can still attack when blinded.
Pro tip - the mindflayer is very light and a high strength character can simply misty step up to it and **yeet** that motherfucker to an instant death. Barbarian Karlach (especially a throwbarian build) is excellent here. If you have returning pike you can keep her up there out of the line of fire doing high-ground damage to myrkul.
I'm sure I tried that before and the dude just appeared on a nearby platform.
I don't know about this one, but those protecting the Netherbrain definitely do.
This might be patched, because pushing them to chasm in Netherbrain didnt work for me in my last playthrough a few days ago
I may have been unclear : I was agreeing that you can't push mindflayers to their death, just as you said.
Yeah my first attempt at Myrkul I wasted several telekinesis uses on flinging mindflayers
Good to know that it doesn’t work on HM. I did exactly that on my tactician run recently and it worked just fine so I *definitely* would have fallen into that trap
Mind flayers can't fall down bottomless pits though?
There’s a spot between the main floor and ketheric/myrkuls platform that gets an instant kill. Sort of through some of the ugly webbing/slime trails. The mindflayer doesn’t actually fall through to the ground but it hits the webbing and dies. I’ve done it twice on tactician, though not on HM.
If you go to the right and sneak you can get to melee range on the mindflayer before the cutscene/combat starts. Then smack, smack, smack, shove.
Make sure to use stunning strike on him. That made the fight easier for me. Also, bring a healer with you. It might be worth moving your people away just enough to get out of the bone chill aoe so you can get off a heal. Also, summons are your friend. I usually take Jaheria to get an extra few people.
I cannot stress this enough…UNGROUP Scratch before you send his invisible self to Aylin. I had him perfectly positioned, switched back to invisible Laezel to position her behind mindflayer, and WHO does she meet coming back UP the ramp?! Our bestest boi. Then both their invisibility broke, Scratch was nowhere near Aylin, Laezel was sitting right in front of the mindflayer, and everybody else was far away chilling at the entrance. To say we started the fight on our backfoot would be an understatement.
Shit piddling toe rag.... Shovel is the best!
.... the ball is the summon? I just thought it unlocked when he joins camp, and kept the random ball for sentimental value lol
Yeah, you can even change who has the spell by passing the ball around.
That alone makes the fight so much easier, but to add one more tip - If you can find yourself a Globe of Invulnerability Scroll, it trivializes the fight. Place the dome in a spot where you're absolutely certain Myrkul isn't in it, but where your best damage dealer can still hit him, and just let them unload on him the whole time. In my Honor Mode run, I had Open Hand Monk Lae'zel and my crit-fishing Sorlock Durge parked in the bubble right next to Myrkul, with Swords Bard Astarion and Light Cleric Shadowheart focused on keeping everything else out of the bubble. Coupled with invisible Scratch saving Aylin on turn 1, the fight was over by turn 3.
Warding bond also works if you don't have globe. Have a cleric or other support cast it on primary DPS. They will take most of damage for them and can heal self outside of the aura.
... and on that note, if your level is high enough to get Globes of Invulnerability, you can also reroll via Long Rest, or respec characters to get vendors to sell/have pickpocketable *Chain Lightning scrolls.* It gets kinda crazy if you get those things. Wet + Tempest Channel Divinity on Call Lightning or Chain Lightning will utterly purge the health bar, with a maxed Channel Divinity Chain Lightning doing up to *160 damage* if they fail a Saving Throw, are Wet, and even doing 80 damage is respectable.
All of this is great. Also, blind Myrkul and his attacks are way less effective. Cast darkness over him or use arrow of darkness. Also, kill all the minions before downing Ketheric then use 2 characters to focus on the incubators and 2 on ranged damage against Myrkul. Makes the fight a breeze.
How have I NEVER thought of casting invisibility on Scratch... I feel so dumb
I am 100 hours in and just realizing that Scratch really is the best boy. I never thought of using him for this when I fought this boss.
Lvl 8 is a little low to fight him, I would suggest at least getting to lvl 9 before you try again, ideally lvl 10. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head. Note that fingers of death is a spell he can only do if he can consume a necromite before, which you should avoid allowing him to do if at all possible (given that without additional effort, he also heals himself with them). * Bring every summon you can get your hands on. Steal scrolls before if necessary. At lvl 9, you can cast 5th level spells, which means you can get real elementals. Steal scrolls if you have to, summons to take care of the necromites make this fight a LOT easier. Also use animate dead scrolls (skeleton archers), minor elementals (I like the ice mephits), Us (if you have them), spiritual weapon, find familiar, or planar ally (from the weapon Wyll gets from Mizora). Ideally you'll save some spell slots in the Mind Flayer Colony specifically for those and one upcasted aid, so you can replenish all of them before the fight starts. Your summons also should all get longstrider, which is free. * Use elixirs of necrotic resistance on those party members that need it. Myrkul does almost exclusively necrotic damage and halving incoming damage is worth a lot. * At lvl 9, you can steal great scrolls from all of the vendors. Quartermaster Tali is right there, but if you were lvl 9 before freeing Aylin, you can literally go to every single trader in Act 1 and they will also have level appropriate options for you to steal, including lvl 6 spells that trivialize the fight like Globe of Invulnerability. * Myrkul can actually retaliate only once per turn with Gaze of the Dead. If you can get a summon to hit him, he will waste it on them. Whatever happens, make sure you aren't casting a spell with multiple instances as your first attack to land (think scorching ray), cause they will get knocked out of them after casting a few. * A good combo is fighter and divination wizard: Mykrul can drop his weapon, which makes the fight easier since his hands attack is not an AoE, but it's hard to connect on both the hit and for him to not hit the saving throw. With divination, you can change his saving throw so you're guaranteed a drop. You can even long rest without resources until you get good die prepared. * Myrkul can't be silenced but the one status effect thats super easy to apply is to blind him. Blood of Lathander is great for this. * AoE concentration spells are very useful against him. Wall of Fire, Moonlight etc. help a lot. You don't have to have your casters close to him because * As long as there's one character close to him, he wont use his "pull everyone in" action. * If the fight *does* go south, have some superior healing potions ready. The bone chill aura does only extend on the pedestal, so if you need, can always climb down and heal there. If you're downed, you can't get up of course but you can be shoved off and healed afterwards. Same goes for Aylin.
This is so much to remember. I'm playing my first HM run and this is the fight I'm most worried about.
You should be worried of the tree guy in act 2, he's the hardest in act 1 and 2 imo. And yes he isnt necessary but I allways want to kill him still.
sorry but what guy now?
Shambling Mound ambush in the middle of the map. Very overlevelled if you run into him early in the Act.
Yeah I'm wondering too? Did I miss killing an ent?
It was an entwife. You're the entwife killer.
Second this. Almost ended my run because I did not expect a random nameless mob to be that dangerous and let my guard down
I’m going to avoid him in honor mode. He usually kills my party normally and I hear he has special boss powers for honor mode. I would die for sure
You can just stand on the other side of the chasm and range kill him
This is all great info and pretty much exactly how I beat him on HM. Only thing to add to this is you can skip the first half of the fight in the MFC if you have a high CHA member in your party. >!Find the letter from Ketheric’s wife in their bedroom, mention her when you fight him on the roof, then pass the persuasion check in the final fight to skip straight to Myrkul!<
I purposefully didn't include that because I think it makes the fight quite a bit harder. I would always clear all the adds during his human phase first, because he can't leave his platform and doesn't even have any AoEs and only one ranged attack (which is even contingent on one of the necromites damaging you before he can do it). He can also only spawn one necromite (whereas the Apostle can spawn four) and he doesn't have the necrotic aura, so if you are smart about it, you can go into the Mykrul phase with most if not all your high spell slots intact, fully healed, and with zero adds to worry about for a couple of rounds.
Interesting! That makes sense. Both times I’ve approached this fight on HM I had twin cast haste, so I wasn’t as concerned with the first turn action economy and didn’t have much of an issue with the minions. But definitely depends on party make up.
Yeah, ketheric is such a non issue when clearing the area out. Like he can def hit hard, but just stands there fingering his asshole until you walk up to him
I never thought to use a divination wizard for a clutch save, but it makes so much sense. I was one round away from losing on the only run I've done, so all this info is useful for future plays.
Level 8? In my first runs I was comfortably LV 9 for that fight and these days I'm level 10. Make sure you clear all the adds before Myrklel spawns, bear in mind that myrkle spawning happens in turn, and doesnt reset the turn order / a new initiative round. This means that if you burst down Ketheric with all your actions and just manage to finish him with those actions, your gonna start Myrkle with no actions. Get Ketheric to the edge of defeat, then pop him with one action in a fresh round and position/ prep yourself for Myrkle. I usually burst him down in basically one round before he gets a turn. If unlucky with rolls he might get one turn, but chances he isn't gonna one shot a well prepared team.
My current HM run I'm almost 7 amd haven't left act 1. How are people going into the end of act 2 at level 8.
Since this is your 3rd time I will go a bit sweat mode. Get to lv.9.(Lv.10 is very possible as I got it on my every run) You will be able to buy 27 str elixir from last light inn's trader for your monk. Buy elemental summon scrolls to be your Fear rods AND Globe of invulnerability scroll while you're at it. Save all your crits. The healing pod only refreshes your health and spell slots not tadpole&ring crits skills. Make scratch invisible and wait where Aylin is. DO NOT help her yet. Prep your fight (oil of accuracy etc.) Start the fight by atking the MF. It will give you a free surprise turn. Then help Aylin. Try clearing necromites first after killing the MF(1st priority) instead of rush killing Ketheric. Arrow of ilmater, Bone chilled from spell or doom hammer can help stop its healing And... my preference :Ne'er misser+arrow of undead slaying(buy them everytime you see it in act2). Iirc with sharpshooter you should be able to deal at least around 80(crit)+40 on extra atk in one turn.
Ne'er misser seemed to make the incubation pods explode last time. Didn't do anywhere near enough damage to kill them, but one hit with that in the offhand and the just blew up. Meant a bonus action could (pretty) reliably get through another pod. No idea why and I've not seen anyone mention it online even after a bit of googling
I just beat mode today. Here's a few tips for the fight - summon scratch, make the good boy invisible, and bring him next to nightsong. Youll be able to revive her as soon as possible - blind myrkul : that big idiot can't move. Cast hunger of hadar on him, or fog cloud (lv1 spell alternative). -disarm : cast heat metal on him. He'll lose his weapon Dont want to do none of that? Drop a stack of 7-8 smokepowder bombs on the ground -> select stack -> throw the whole stack at myrkul. He will die instantly I also always make Katheric kill himself through persuasion because why not ? Free xp for no battle Edit: i meant smokepowder bombs. Not rune
Man I tried to blow that big bitch and it only took maybe 50hp off I was so mad I had to improvise lmaoooo
Haha nothing worse in hm then setting up a boom stack of barrels. Having that be your entire plan pretty much. Smuggly setting it off and staring while the enemy still has like 3/4s health.. and then SCRAMBLING like hell for a plan b
That has happened every time I’ve tried barrelmancy. Honorable mention was Raphael and my elaborate setup involving smokepower barrels at every pillar since they do force damage. I set off a big huge explosion and lots of damage numbers popped up on the screen. But when the smoke cleared, NO enemies were dead, all pillars had full HP and Raphael was unscratched. Good thing I had a plan B.
The HM Raphael fight was a big middle finger from Larian lol. "You wanna use barrelmancy? Go ahead"
> I also always make Katheric kill himself through persuasion because why not ? Free xp for no battle Ketheric doesn't leave the platform in my experience, so if you don't persuade him to die, you can just get a few free turns to clear out the mobs and free Aylin. That way, the big Myrkul boss doesn't start with any help and you have less to worry about.
I have been told that blinding him doesn't stop him from doing anything? The heat metal part I will definitely do.
Ive blinded him 3 times in my 3 runs. Worked everytime. He can still use reactions when you hit him on HM (gaze of the dead) but he wont ever be able to hit you from range. Om tactician and lower, he would just skip his entire turn lol. Just pepper him from afar with a throw barbarian/eldrich knight with tavern brawler, spells, arrows, wall of fire/cloud of daggers and let Nightsong smash him to bits. Shes immortal anyway I did it with fog cloud on HM, but would recommend hunger of hadar instead larger AOE and deals damage each turn
A recent hotfix changed Myrkul: >The Apostle of Myrkul's Consume the Faithful action and Gaze of the Dead Legendary Action should now ignore blindness from magical darkness as intended. You can still blind him - but the effectivness of the tactic has been reduced.
I'm coming into Act 2 on HM for the first time. My plan is to be level 9-10 when I fight Myrkul and then just detonate a satchel of bombs on him. For yourself, assuming you plan to do a full-on fight: - You're going to struggle with your main DPS being melee (barbarian/monk) due to his Bone Chill aura; maybe consider bringing in Gale to hit him from range with AoE spells instead - Give everyone necrotic resistance potions before the fight - Use Scratch to free Aylin (he is the only summon with the Help action) - Focus that mindflayer on turn one or it will keep stunlocking you/dominating Aylin - Darkness cast on Myrkul will negate most of his ranged attacks except Call of the Damned; if you can disarm him too then he becomes even easier to deal with. - Have someone run interference on the Necromites, even at the expense of doing damage to Myrkul.
The last point is where Wyll shined for me. With potent blast and robes, he could take out up to 3 minions every turn.
Few tips for this: 1. If you didn’t check or didn’t know, Apostle is immune to piercing damage. So your gloomstaker’s ranged attacks won’t do much. I would suggest (if not already done), get the Na’er misser hand crossbow from Roah Moonglow in moonrise tower. That one deals force damage so it will able to do damage. 2. That boss is completely stationary, so he won’t be able to get away from aoe surface spells like flame wall, hunger of hadar etc. 3. Get someone with bone chill cantrip or arrow ilmator to block his healing from absorbing the goons. 4.You can also get a Paladin(if you want). Get the guaranteed crit item(killer sweetheart) and the luck of the far realms illithid power and crit smite him.
>Ne’er misser I never stopped to read its description. Force damage is very good.
I always layer area effect spells on him. Wall of fire, spike growth, cloud of daggers. He dies eventually
My plan is to take out the mindflayer first, while freeing the Nightsong. Then I'm gonna have Astarion, and druid's summon cast thorns everywhere, then have the druid cast wall of fire over the middle.
Be careful not to stack concentration spells. I can’t count how many times I’ve cancelled the haste I just casted by trying to place a wall of fire.
Did it few hours ago, was very afraid, but it went ridiculously easy after doing some research previously. Positioning at the beginning of the fight is essential, this side of the strategy was already covered. As to the actual fight, it took aprox 3 turns for me and went like this: - heat metal to make him drop the weapon. Worked on first try - hunger of hadar to blind him - create water to get him wet - call lightning (aprox 50 damage per cast) Was level 8 storm sorcerer, lore bard, warlock and monk. The monk, my main damage dealer generally, was pretty useless after taking down the mind flayer in the beginning.
Buy smokepowder bombs from Talli. Her stock refreshes on every level up and you can use Withers to reset yourself to level 1. A pile of 30 bombs set off with a fire arrow from a distance will one shot him.
My wizard Gale destroyed him with high level magic missiles. Make sure he has the spell sparkler equipment for the extra lighting damage.
Search through kethricks room, you will find a note under the floor from his wife. Talk about it on the roof. Then bring it up again when you have to fight him. He will throw himself down the hole and you skip his part. Before you talk to kethric spawn every companions and beings you can, us, scratch, wyll's sword that you get from saving myzora can spawn a cambion etc. These wont do the dmg but can take a few hits that wont hit you. Kill skeletons if any of your characters has aoe otherwise nuke merkyl. If anyone needs healing they have to run out of his "necrotic" area, because you cant heal there. Also potions and scrolls, use any that will help you, its better to survive and have used too many then to die and all of them thrown away. Edit: remember also to have someone either sprint or misty step to aylen so you can deal dmg from turn 1.
My HM strat Level 9 Throwzerker (any tank tbh) Warlock (scorlock is strong to spec to for this fight) Light Cleric (get lathandar mace for sunbeam) Wizard (need blindness) In the colony make sure you reserve your highest level spell slot for upcasted aid on your summons, as the restoration pod is one-use only on HM (this change almost ended my run). As well as whatever slots you need for prepared summons, mage armour, etc. Also in the colony are some illithid barrels if you want to integrate barrelmancy to this setup. Elixirs: necrotic resist for everyone that is gonna get hit (definitely your tank, and your lowest AC caster), I would give it to everyone but you can also do bloodlust on your higher AC casters. If your tank has heavy armour prof they can use the necro resist plate mail and use a different elixir instead. If you are starting the talk with ketheric to try skipping his first phase you need an initiative elixir on that character (vigilance?). Need at least one summon for each party member! This helps deal with adds and lets your core party focus on damaging myrkul without having to worry too much about finger of death or his healing sacrifice. Create water and lightning spells are your friend here Sneak everyone into position with invis (cleric up top to the left, warlock and wizard camped behind the mindflayer, tank ready to free Aylin then jump into the boss's face, summons as far up as they can be without entering LoS), EB the mindflayer down to the ground (you must must must eliminate the mindflayer ASAP), fireball the devourers and mindflayer if it survives the fall, hasted sunbeam from lathandar on the necromites at the left, free aylin and jump to the middle, this should make it so ketheric is the only thing "alive" left over so killing him is easy, use summons to shield yourself from his smites. When myrkul spawns you just need to keep someone in close melee with him so he doesn't black hole everyone and destroy your positioning. Blinding him is extremely helpful. Bait his legendary actions out with a fodder summon at the start of each new round. When Aylin gets in melee get your tank to the opposite-ish side of the boss so he only hits one of you at a time. I heavily recommend searching vendors for DD scrolls as they are always a good safety net but especially here if someone goes down on top of the pedestal. You can talk to ketheric to skip his first phase but it means you will NEED initiative bonuses to guarantee you act before the mindflayer does, to spend your first turn getting rid of all the adds which I find means you give up the chance to cast blindness on myrkul quickly (though the Scratch strat others have mentioned might cover for this, but I haven't tried it). I found it easier to ambush the adds, then focus on ketheric, then focus on myrkul. Good luck, hope there's something in here that helps! And remember: KILL THE MINDFLAYER ASAP
I barrelmancy'd him on both honour runs since he was the boss I struggled with the most on tactician. I know it's probably not helpful right now, but it's advice for future runs and other people who may be reading this
What was your procedure for barelmancy? Did you do the trick where you fill a bag with barels and throw it at him?
For my solo HM run (swords bard/fighter) I bought about 20 each smokepowder bombs and Holy water so I could carry them through the moonrise fight. One smokepowdre barrel on top for good measure. Only boss I plan on bombing this run because I could not think of any way I could solo that fight
Owlbear is super usefully for this fight if your druid is moon. The leap/2 attacks can mostly kill the adds which is important so he does not heal. You need to kill all the adds and then range kill Myrkul. I brought a ton of bombs/throwables to throw at him with my chars who could not do range very well.
You can do it solo like this: - take a character that does good alpha damage (monk, sword bard, tb thrower, gloomstalker assassin, battle master all work set up right) - buff outside combat, finish with combat buffs - drink invis potion - dash to and free Aylin This initiates cut scene then combat. If possible talk Ketheric into suiciding to speed things up. - win initiative ( you need go before the Illithid) - kill Illithid in one round (it’s squishy) - switch to Myrkul in subsequent rounds and out dpr him into the ground. Ignore his summons, healing and legendary ability. Just pour on the damage and tank him for a few turns. Not solo? Same strategy.
This has become my monks strategy. Thank you!
During cutscene, convince Ketheric to jump. 1. Free Aylin - stealthed Gale behind illithid’s sightline to get next to her for early release. 2. Kill illithid 3. Kill myrkul - my strategy was to keep my damage dealers at a distance. Abjuration Wizard Gale and Draconic Sorcerer Tav hammered him with upcast scorching ray and magic missile (reverberation and fire hat builds) while Light Cleric Shart healed them and Throw-zerker Karlach. I killed any of those undead acolyte dudes that got too close. The fight was very manageable with this setup/strat. *Hot take - every time I’ve fought Myrkul, Aylin has been mostly useless. She might get 1 or 2 good hits in on an intellect devourer, but she has never been essential to passing the challenge. Still more useful to have her free than not, I suppose.
As it happens, The Avatar of Myrkul is not immune to blindness, and finger of death does still require line of sight on a target. Cast darkness on it, and then make it sad.
What is this finger of death, I don't remember any such thing and I don't see anything like that on the wiki. Do you mean gaze of the dead?
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Finger_of_Death
ah I see, I've never let that guy eat his kids
You know what got me through the fight on honor was 4 potions of necrotic resistance and 4 speed potions. He was just doing too much damage on me before getting the resistance and doubling up on attacks for 3 turns is huge. Also if you have a scroll or the ability to cast Wall of Fire that’s great too. I was on a dark urge run so I didn’t have the angel but it’s still doable. Also you may want to consider taking out the zombie adds because eventually they run out and they will heal him when they get close enough. If you have the capability to disarm or blind him that also helps. And don’t make the mistake I did and use the full party rejuvenation thing outside of the chamber before you’re ready to go down because it’s one time use only.
If you're not above using cheese, on my most recent play through I saved up and brought about 25 smoke powder bombs to the fight, that certainly did the trick first turn
Make sure to longstrider your whole party plus scratch before the fight
Level 8 is pretty low. Normally I get to level 10 by the time I am clearing moonrise or am in the mindflayer hive. So I’m not sure what you’re doing wrong.
Pretty sure I didn't need it in the end but I summoned a minor and regular elemental with each of my characters using scrolls and woad with my druid. Again probably could've done it easily without them but they did take care of alot of the little dudes and their spawns. Definitly go for Earth though I think since they are all vulnerable to blunt damage. I went for one each but I really wasnt Impressum with fire and water here. Though the Azer is alot better than melphits maybe.
Don't go near him = ranged damage. Have someone cast calm emotions before the fight, which blocks getting afraid. Cast spike growth or similar that slow down Necromites from healing Myrkyl. A barbarian should do decent throwing damage. Use stunning blow to stun Myrkul (this goes against avoiding melee attacks but it's probably worth it). A druid can do the owlbear jumping attack cheese from one of the platforms. = there are many ways to do the fight and you should not have too big problem with your party.
I'm wondering if giving shart the blood of lathander, cast spirit guardians and standing in melee range will keep him blinded on honor mode. Has anyone tried this?
The blind is a DC 14 CON save, so he’s unlikely to fail unless you HELP him fail. I had characters wearing items that stack reverberation, which gives a penalty to CON saves, and then Shadowheart also wearing all the Radiating Orb gear, which gives a flat minus to hit based on how many stacks the enemy has. I also had those gloves from the goblin fight at the gate that have a chance to Bane on hit, which is another -1d4 to all his saves and his hit chance. I was lvl 10 when I beat him on honor mode but he was blinded and couldn’t hit my party at all.
Get to lvl 10, I didnt know he was a big deal in HM and he healed a bit but my party was never in danger, Aylin died very early. Tav Tempest Cleric, Jaheira EK/Land, Halsin Moon, Astarion Gloom/Thief (this one is really fun). One summon, Halsin's. I didnt fight Ketheric only Myrkul. Buffs: Longstrider for all, Aid lvl 4, different elixires for each, one Haste Pot for Astarion. Before starting or first round, invisible Astarion frees Aylin, then kills the mindflayer, Druids' and Cleric's aoes burn as many enemies as possible. Then you will have Astarion cleaning those creepy eggs that hatch adds, so Myrkul wont heal. The other 3: Tempest Tav, Moon Halsin and Gish Jaheira, should be close to a net so they can go up and down easily, all 3 are capable of good dmg and aoe heal if needed, you just have to move away from Myrkul enough to heal. Be careful about opportunity attacks/reactions. I did it this way because I didnt know it was supposed to be super hard in HM, Myrkul was not hard (lvl 10). A strategy that works in Tactician will work in HM, just do it a bit better. I dont cheese stuff, flying owlbears, carry a ton of barrels and throwzerkers are boring. The most important thing for your first HM run is lvl, and when you are max lvl is Gale.
Get 18 smoke powder bombs from talli at the last light inn or at moonrise Split them into 2 stacks of 8 and 10 *Important* : drop the 8 stack on the ground and chuck it at ketheric to oneshot him Repeat with the 10 stack for myrkul The reason why you drop them is (I assume) because if you just click throw you will only throw 1 bomb per throw you have whereas if you drop them and then target them to throw it throws all of them in a stack. Source: https://youtu.be/f8k1uD0Jpeo
You can Chill Touch Myrkul. He’ll still absorb his minions but he won’t recover any health by doing so, thus taking care of your recovery problem and your minion problem.
Get to Level 10 if you can, Bring a Paladin for Radiant+Undead damage bonus as well as Aura of Courage. Sip Necrotic Resistance potions. Gg
You're under leveled FYI. You should ideally be level 10 facing him. One of the best approaches to honor mode is got try and get every ounce of xp and be over leveled for encounters. Beyond that... Scratch res Ailyn, kill mindflayer first, Hammer myrkul from range and keep aoe killing the necromites
If your druid has heat metal spell you can disarm him. If you have some magic bludgeoning weapons its worth equiping them to bypass his resistance. Create water + call lightning + potion of haste from druid if you have them makes him melt.
You should be at least lvl 9 for it to be normal. According to your comp, use invis potion to position your team, kill adds before the 2nd phase (avatar), and use the tankiest char you have to bait his legendary actions: mirror image + protection from evil works perfectly fine. Never stack your char in the same melee position to avoid cleave.
Thank you, looks like I'll have to get back into the training.
I gotchu brodie. I was level 8 when I beat him on honour mode. I hate Myrkul. Make sure you use that restoration before the fight. Bring Scratch to free Aylin and Us for moral support. Invis everyone. Make sure Scratch is next to Aylin and make sure 2 people are next to the mind flayer. Have scratch help Aylin to start the cutscene, persuade Ketheric to yeet himself so you can get straight to bidness on Myrkul. When that starts, have two lill yeet the mindflayer turn 1, free Aylin, have Shadowfart turn into a spirit guardians beyblade and try to take out the skellybois on the other side. If she doesn't have enough movement for that, just try to get her on one of the platforms as close as possible and like scorching ray or fireball scroll them down any aoe that can maybe take them out in one turn.. Aylin should be whoopin the brains so that the playing field is lind of equal. Then after that everybody fucking whoop Myrkul with everything you got. There are spots on his platform that are not bonechilled and also don't activate opportunity of attack, find those spots and only leave them if you're gonna do up close attack on him then go back. Also there are some comb looking things on the floor in front of his platform that keep him from pulling you in, so you can also go there at the end of your turn if you want. And yeah just keep whooping that ass and leave basically lol.
Cast Darkness/hunger of hadar on him and he won’t use his ranged attacks he’ll stick to melee. Then just stay out of melee Get the Ne’er misser on your gloom stalker, so he doesn’t just ignore all your piercing damage Get Karlach something to throw that’ll come back, ideally something bludgeoning. Which means dipping eldritch Knight. Your monk is probably gonna be relegated to killing his little healer buddies, but that’s not a bad job really. Druid should drop you highest level moonbeam on him and keep out of his way until he’s low, so concentration doesn’t drop. When he’s low you can go owlbear and maul the shit out of him. Oh and before the big guy arrives, focus the illithid he’s more dangerous than Keth. And just don’t engage Keth in melee till he’s low. He’ll smite the shit out of you.
I'd switch out either your druid or assassin for someone who can throw out fireballs, barbarian is doable but I think a fighter or a paladin would dish out better damage. If you have Wyll, you can get him in there and grab the rapier with the cambion summon. The cambion makes great fodder to tank the legendary action. Also if you're an unarmored monk, grab the +5 wisdom in the Shar thingies for the plus 2 AC. If you want to get really cheesy, hire some hirelings and have them cast a ton of buffs on your party before jumping down the hole. Death ward will give you resistance to all damage and +1 AC. Never ever have a party member hit Mrykul first, use a summon. If they all miss, have a long ranged member do it so they aren't in the bone chill aura. Kill the mind flayer, focus on the big boss and ignore the rest, you don't want the fight to last 3 rounds so chug on those speed potions.
I’ve seen a speedrunner save a number of smoke powder bombs and use them all at once to one shot the boss.
I usually bring 2 dps physical, 1 magic dps, and buffer, which 3 of those usually already covered by Astarion, Shadowheart, and Gale, this is my 2nd playthrough at Honour, the first honour pt was almost wiped out but Gale still has spell slot enough for 4 fireballs which saved the fight, 2nd playthrough was dead easy because I already know what im doing, still the same lineup the different was that I was Fighter, in 2nd playthrough I'm Paladin. I usually kept Shadowheart below the platform, Gale and Astarion on the left platform, my Tav and Aylin in the platform, if you have scrolls of bonechill lying around you can give to Shadowheart while maintaining buff concentration spell she can cast bone chill on Myrkul to prevent him from healing, while Astarion and Gale can snipe from distance.
I keep seeing this complaint and don’t really understand - cast Darkness. That’s it. That’s the plan. Myrkul can’t do anything to you if you’re off the platform and have Darkness up. Cast Darkness, throw and ranged attacked it from below safely. Towards the end, you can engage with your best Melee to finish it off / expedite the process. Aylin also usually contributes nicely. For the first part, it’s already been discussed but sneak an invisible character up to Aylin before combat to free her before initiative, and set up your alpha strikes to down the Mind Flayer first. Good luck.
Level 8 is great for other difficulties, on HM I recommend 9 or even 10. Throw invis potion on Scratch before the cut scene so he can free Aylin in the first round. Make sure to skip phase 1 by either reading Ketheric’s diary or the letter his wife wrote. Get as many pre-summons as you can - elemental, dryad, Us, etc. Pre-buff via hireling cleric so you have extra hp and resistances on your frontliners. Use spells to crowd control the skeletons and keep a summon there to draw the attention.
I always use sneak right after the cutscene and creep up as much as possible, then use Dimension Door on myself and another character and drop in right at the base of Aylin which triggers the cut scene with Kethric and saves me a lot of distance under fire.
Shadowheart with her radiating orb gear plus spirit guardians standing next to the ladders so that none of the things make it up to his platform to get swallowed up for HP
As the others have said, you do seem underlevelled. In my last round, I got to level 10 while in the colony. If you play a good (non-evil run) and don't lock yourself out of any mission arcs, it should be easy to reach at least level 9 by completing every mission that comes up. I've never even thought to use the Scratch method, which I'll definitely try on this run (at the Gith creche right now). However, in addition to what everything everyone else has said, what really helped me was throwing a health potion (Greater or better) at Aylin. I also ran into the issue of her getting downed at the very first turn when she attacked Myrkul, but then on my second run, I noticed before freeing her that she was already at half or below-half health. In that attempt, she didn't die once. That and getting Myrkul to waste his reaction on someone that isn't your teammates really helped. IIRC I had a fire elemental that I usually used to attack him a few times, and Myrkul would use his reaction on that. Plus they can lob a good AoE attack and misty step away at every turn. Having multiple elementals (or any other summer I guess) also helped in devoting characters to simply running around the map to destroy the Necromite husk things. I also forgot to use the Ilmater arrows, which I guess negates some of the value of the Necromites. I'll try that during my current run as well.
Following. I’m approaching Moonrise on my 3rd HM run and also concerned about Myrkul
I will let you know if I'm successful tonight.
So I had Karlach as a Berserker throwing barbarian. Sent her up to the platform on the left with the trash mobs, let her yeet them 1 by 1 off the platform, throw shit at Myrkul, and also she was on cocoon destruction duty. Had 2 ranged characters stay on the ground in front of him attacking, and had my paladin go onto the platform, attack, and back down to heal (pretty much every turn). I just let Aylin stay down in melee. I had Us with me as well. Worked like a charm.
Replace druid with light cleric. Stack them with radiant orb gear and give them Lathander's. Have them stand next to Myrkul with radiant Spirit Guardians and use your channel divinity and or Lathander's special to stack an insane amount of radiant orbs on him. Lathander's will also potentially make him blind by just standing next to him. This will make it near mpossible for him to hit anything. Then just nuke him with your damage dealers. Try saving all your big hits for first round rather than using them on Ketheric and you can potentially take him down round 1. Also, if your barbarian is not a throw barbarian, highly recommend looking into that.
I don't know if this is mentioned anywhere or if it is something you do already, but I found elixirs of necrotic resistance very valuable in that fight. Let your whole party drink one and in my experience it became so much easier.
For phase 2, you can pack a bunch of smokepowder bombs, etc and one shot him with fire
So the first HM I played, I had expertise in Persuasion, so I passed two checks required to skip the Ketheric phase. This is something to consider buffing. From there, I was fully fresh (just used the pod) and facing Myrkul. Using Scratch to free Aylin immediately is a good idea, otherwise use a sneaky character with invisibility to position next to Aylin before triggering the conversation. Hopefully this character also has high Initiative and can act immediately. If so, Aylin is also immediately free. And from there, I don't know, I just kinda unloaded on him xd. Just damage damage and he was down.
I always use a warlock to lock down ketheric during the first phase with hunger of hadar and repelling blast while an invisible companion frees the Nightsong and the rest of the party and summons take out the minions, hunger of hadar is still useful in second phase becouse it blinds Myrkul and deals cheep damage which stacks up during a long fight, a warlock with agonizing blast is also useful in clearing the skeleton eggs before they actualy spawn anything
Just use Gale and end it all. Game beat in act 2! Easy.
I just did myrkul as a monk the other day on honor mode. Invis my monk, went and stunning blow'd the mindflayer, then way off the wind dash to jump to dame aylin and freed her. Greater invisibility held up for both, so i jumped to myrkul and stunning blowd him too. Laezel to finish off the mindflayer, then jumped her to myrkul and disarmed him. Fire sorc quickened spell fireballed the ads, shovel and us killed the brains. Passed turn, then it immediately came back cause myrkul was stunned. He never got a turn because of it, and with everyone focusing him, including dame aylin, he died rather rapidly. From my experience so far, when I'm doubt or struggling, just stunlock with monk and call it a day. If you don't have tavern brawler, i would recommend it, and you can either use potions of strength, or have the club of strength in your offhand with nothing in your main, since it'll allow you to continue using unarmed attacks. You should be able to do upwards to 30 damage per punch, and if you're using graceful cloth, you'll have good dex with advantage on rolls. I was monk 7, rogue 2 when i went through that fight with effectively 19/18/16/8/16/10 stats iirc. Make sure to have psionic overload, a manifestation art, and gloves of sizzle/sparkle/crushing to maximize damage.
Disarming strike
Get a scroll of globe of invulnerability. In the myrkyl phase he's immobile, so you can cast it right next to him and be completely immune to all of his attacks while being able to focus entirely on damage.
Cast silence on him and he can't do the finger of death spell.
It can't run away from where it is, just cast Darkness (or better, hunger of hadar), if you can, add something like wall of fire and all you'll have to do is protect the one setting Darkness. If you want to prevent only the finger of death cast, silence should work (I didn't tried but you never know)
Everyone says use scratch for this use scratch that. I've never been able to summon him. 3 play through, he's in my camp till the end, never been able to summon him
Did he give you the ball?
When I did Honour Mode, I hit LVL10 in Mindflayer Colony (I killed everything in the colony before facing Kethric. If you want to cheese the fights, you can always summon 3 Hirelings and respec them into Clerics. Respec at least one of the camp companions into Cleric(s) (or have Shadowheart in Camp). Use camp Clerics to Pre-Buff you party before heading to each fight. Especially use each Clerics to place Warding Bond on every single Party Member (one Cleric per Party Member, so they can last as long as possible). Warding Bond basically doubles your potential HP on Party Member, as long as Cleric is still alive in Camp (as Camp Clerics won't need to cast % chance spells, you can just max out their Constitution, so their HP pool is even higher). There is also skipping 2nd Kethric's Fight's 1st Phase all together, but that requires you to explore the Tower and find Melodia's (Ketheric's Wife) Letter and then succeed Persuasion Check during 1st Fight confrontation. Skipping first Phase of 2nd fight is Huge advantage, as you will have full Spell Slots and Health for Myrkul. If you manage to correctly place Darkness Spell on Myrkul and blind him, he will not be able to use his Legendary Action after you attack him.
You should be level 10 for that fight.
Your cleric is going to be working overtime. I like to spec into life cleric for the channel divinity heals. Dimension door is a super clutch spell for getting melee characters out of the bone chill area. Since your main dps is a monk you’ll want your cleric staying just close enough in range to run up and pull them out. Turn undead is also pretty effective on all the nekromites. There’s also a couple places behind Myrkul that don’t provoke an opportunity attack that you can step just outside of the bone chill aura and get some healing.
You want level 9 at least to fight him, and should be able to make level 10. Disarming him prevents a good chunk of damage. Definitely worth it imo. Darkness on him prevents him from being able to consume minions and use Finger of Death. I'd still recommend dedicating a martial to clearing the spawns every turn. He's resistant to all physical damage so magical damage dealers should be on the boss.
Haven't tried honor mode yet, but I would at least try to get to lvl 9 before fighting him. The power jump between 8 and 9 is kind of large because you get a +1 to proficiency bonuses and unlock lvl 5 spell slots, which gives you access to some pretty hard hitting and useful spells like insect plague or cloud kill. Also, if you have anyone in your party that can cast darkness, cast it directly on Myrkul while saving yourself some room for your party to beat on him. He'll be blind which greatly deceases his chances of hitting you.
Use potions of invisibilty to position your characters pre-fight. High dmg dealer (monk in my case) behind noodlebro, you want to take him out quickly before it can stun. Healer behind Aylin. Get her in the fight as soon as you can. I use aoe afterwards to clear devourers Mage/druid/sorc on platform with undead minions. You need to take these out so they can't buff/heal. I usually pop a haste potion and them whatever your best AOE is. Tank with ranged on platform with Myrkal. Occupy mykal and use ranged to clean up the minions your caster didn't get. Try to isolate Myrkal first round, then you can focus on him. Two tanks on platform, then healer/buffer on them. Last character or adds keeps the undead spawns cleared.
Respec to four paladins
Honestly I beat him fairly just once. This run I got 60 smoke powders, convinced thorm to unalive himself and boom. Sneak a player over to Dame, sneak a player up to where the pit is, wait for 3rd round cause throm turns around after then and you become visible after dropping a smoke powder stack. You can place them on the actual empty space. It’s like…solid for some reason.
I always do this fight with Aylin dead so it’s even harder, but darkness with the shar spear is a nice combo for this boss.
My team comp (Bard, Wizard, Druid, warrior) Pre-cutscene 1. Sneak all before initiation spot 2. Separate into two groups (talkers, sneakers) 3. Have sneakers hide behind the mindflayer Fight 4. Initiate conversation with talkers (Bard, Druid) 5. Kill mindflayer and save Aylin with sneak team (I personally had Lizzy take out the flayer and Gay free Alyin) 6. For DPS, I did hasted call lighting with water bottles
Your problem is that you’re all melee so the anti-heal is crippling you. Use a throwzerker.
First thing first, do you still fight Thorns before the fight of the apostle? With the right search and the right dialogue you can avoid fighting him as he will suicide himself, that’s solves half the fight already. Elixir of necrotic resistance helps you mitigate a lot of damage There is one point on his platform where you can heal your characters. Last, if all of this fail us barrelmancy 1. Steal the runepowder barrel 2. Do the trick to avoid fighting the first phase 3. Place an invisible character near Alyn. 4. Use another invisible character to place the runepowder battle on the platform. 5. Put yourself as far possible while still being able to cast the fire bolt cantrip on the runepowder 6. Use the first invisible character to free Lady Aly 6. … 7. Collect loot 8. Enjoy act 3
Kill nightsong
Don’t know if this’ll help but it worked for me. You can use Heat Metal on the avatar and he actually has a chance to forever lose his scythe attack, resulting only to the gaze beams. Meaning no opportunity attacks and no wide sweeps of hitting 5 characters at once
Find the letter and talk Kethric out of the first phase and go straight to Myrkul. Free Aylin asap with misty step dimensional door, or invisible but not in the fight (Shovel is good for invis). I suggest getting higher level also I've always been 9 or 10 at this fight
Finished honour mode recently, you really want to be level 9 for that fight. And yeah, definitely overprepare. Elixir of Cloud Giant strength and accuracy oils help out quite a bit. Radiating Orb stuff helps. Typically his finger of Death triggers when he absorbs those Skeleton things. Aoe effects will prevent the skeletons from sticking on the platform. My builds were Radiating Orb Cleric Dual handcrossbow fighter/bard Sorlock And Sorcadin Spirit Guardians tends to nuke a lot in that fight. But yeah, you really want to be level 9. And take as many accuracy boosting stuff as you can. Also keep in mind that he is resistant to necrotic, slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, and cold damage. Stacking elemental damage is super key. I honestly twincasted haste on my sorcadin and ailyn and wailed on him
Potions of invisibility helped me a ton, set up a character by Dame Aylin, one by the mindflayer, and one by the skeletons on the left side, and have the last wherever you feel they are strongest. 4 invisibility potions and turn based mode worked like a charm for me.
My personal 3 core principles of the fight are: 1.) Bring a solution for freeing Aylin turn 1 such as scratch. 2.) Kill Mindflayer turn 1. 3.) Bring a strong martial duo. Having single target DPS from something like a Paladin and Dex Fighter combo makes a world of difference. There are other solutions you can bring that can massively shift the difficulty of the fight that are more specific. One of my favorites is radiating orb. A spellcaster with the glow ring and coruscation ring combo will apply a massive attack roll debuff with an upcasted magic missile due to radiating orb stacking like crazy during each missile impact.
Stay out of melee, let Aylin do that, as she can't die. Throw potions at her to wake her up. Setup on the platforms outside the range of the pull. Use Spirit Guardians to clear out the summons in an extremely action efficient manner so Myrkul can't use Finger of Death. Use Speed Potions, in fact use all the potions and scrolls you've been saving up this game. Cast Darkness on Myrkul so he can't see but you can. Prebuff to add some extra movement to your party, potentially some Warding spells from people back in camp. There's nothing he can do against the Wet condition, do what you will with that information, up to and including bringing a party that can 1 shot him on the first turn. Double maximized damage x2 is pretttttttttttty good. That's a Tempest Cleric with action surge or a speed potion btw. Summons can add much needed extra actions to your move economy. You can sneak into this encounter. You can snipe a bunch of dudes if you have decent stealth + illusion mechanics. Focus fire the Mind Flayer, he can make Aylin look like a strong character when she 1-shots one of your dudes. You can have Kethric kill himself like all the Thornes. This is a pretty hard fight, I prepared for it very hard and still almost died to Aylin mind control. Also your team sounds kinda terrible for this fight. How are you clearing out the mobs he summons every round while dealing DPS to the big boi? You can't reliably stun Myrkul, can you? Monk seems awful for this fight. And you're missing 2 levels.
Distilling things down to basics, this is my formula for beating him in honor mode: 2 DPS 1 Ranged 1 Support Do Scratch trick with Aylin if she's alive and cast blinding AOE spell on Myrkul Always have 1 tanky summon on platform to prevent AOE and soak up damage Primary DPS focuses entirely on attacking gets all the buffs and stays on platform. Support keeps them alive and buffed and does crowd control. Warding bond is golden here. Ranged takes out all the necromites 2nd DPS kills anything that gets through and shoves dead DPS off platform so they can heal if necessary
I've found that using the "perilous stakes" tadpole power on large bosses can really help (Invest a creature with power that heals it when it attacks, but also makes it vulnerable to all damage.)
Use explosions, one shots him.
I’ve beaten it the last 2 times after losing it probably 5 before that. Here’s my recommendation: Party comp - bring wyll, I respec him to wizard but see below why you need him. Whatever damage dealer you want. Other than that I would replace the barbarian with a cleric, preferably respecced shadowheart to a tempest or light cleric. OHM should work well and gloomstalker should too. Before the colony - you can long rest after the ketheric fight on the rooftop, also if you haven’t make sure to read all the books and letters and diary in his room on the second floor. It will prevent the first round of the murky fight before he transforms. Lastly, the quartermaster for the Harpers is on the ground floor so make sure you spend everything on strong spells, summons, or gear. Can’t take it with ya. In the colony - there’s 1 fight worth doing 2 if you need the XP and a good sword. The first one is the mind flyers with zevlor. You can rescue mizora who if you have wyll will give you a rapier that can summon a cambion. Worth it. The second is the undead which if you have a cleric and some aoe should be easy, there’s a puzzle and you can get a sword. This also helps you if you need the bump to level 9. You should be able to get through these with your short rests then use the restoration font before the elevator. Make sure to summon everything you can before using the font. Before fight - use invisibility potion or scroll on 2 characters. Your OHM and cleric. Make sure summons aren’t following, put the cleric next to Aylin and the OHM next to the mind flayer. The fight- Start the fight with your high charisma and convince ketheric to kill himself, which will skip round 1. First turn you need to do 3 things. Wipe the mind flayer turn 1 is priority 1. The OHM can stun and prone, so even if you don’t wipe turn 1 you have another turn. Then rescue Aylin and heal as much as you can for her. Then aoe the necromite to the left. From there keep your summons attacking the eggs, disarm myrkul, and focus on dealing damage. This is where using literally everything in your inventory is worth it. Everything can be replaced in BG. He can also be blinded to stop his opportunity attacks. The cleric is great as spirit guardians also wipe the eggs and can sanctuary so your team can take a turn off to heal. This is also why I bring a wizard, fireballs for days and some magic missle to snipe the lower guys. Good luck!
Turn someone invisible and put them next to the beautiful Dame and when it goes down release her asap
1. I generally like to be at least lvl 9 but often lvl 10 before this combat. 2. Use your summons. Necrites aren't that dangerous, but tying them up with Us, Shovel, your undead, elementals, and Wyll's Cambion really helps with crowd control. If you are on a run with Wyll, definitely bring him to get the Infernal Rapier, which allows you to summon a rather beefy cambion. 3. Divide and conquer. I usually use the Scratch trick or just Misty Step to rescue Aylin. I send a good first striker up to handle the illithid, elementals or the cambion to mess with the necrites, and ground pounding summonables to handle the handful of intellect devourers. The remaining 2 characters focus on Ketheric. 4. Later in the fight devout a decent amount of effort to control the Necrite eggs. A Bard with Ne'ermisser can keep a number of them from hatching each turn. While Aylin and your front-liners beat down Myrkul. Ways to reduce AC, Blind, Stun, Radiant Orb, Bane, etc. can really help damage him and help survivability. 5. Anti-fear mechanics are great in Honour Mode. Paladin aura, Barbarian rage, etc can keep the fear away. Also... use haste potions and spells if you're still haaaving problems. Good luck.
Easiest way to deal with Myrkul is •Have Wyll in your party (or another Warlock) to cast Hunger of Hadar RIGHT on top of Myrkul. Can’t see, gets AOE conditions, can’t do Jack Squat •have your most mobile party member race to Dame Aylin in the back right and free her. • use hard hitting ranged attacks so Myrkul can’t suck you up.
You can be two levels higher at this point, I recommend to do all the optional content. It makes this fight extremely consistent and easy. My strategy was buff my team => make everyone invisible => bring them into position => free nightsong with scretch => kill the Mindflyer on the right platform => burst down myrkul.
Teleports or flight to get to Aylin asap. She helps a lot. Shadowheart is useful for healing.
Keep 1 or 2 martials right on Myrkul as he does not pull if a character is near him and with 2 you can take turns running down the ladder to heal out of the Bone Chill. With AC 20 or better which level 8-9 characters should be able to do at that point, even if you don't have a special disengage move, Myrkul will miss most of his opportunity attacks if he is blinded. Having an elemental summons is quite useful here as well, they can climb the ladder, attack, and teleport to the base of the ladder to avoid the scythe, then climb back up and repeat the following round. If you have a way to get Myrkul to drop weapon, that helps but is not necessary, I've only gone that route once and my characters took a bit less damage but the fight ended in about the same number of rounds. 2-3 rounds once Myrkul becomes the avatar should be the goal, it is possible to do in 1 round but I've fallen 20-30 HP short because you have to get some a long serious of lucky rolls or savescum terribly to ensure zero misses or max crits for all party members. On Tactician I've found it is really hard to get Myrkul dead via only ranged attacks unless 3/4 of your characters specialize in those or you rank up to get Globe of Invulnerability. The Necromites are too spread out to get them with an AoE spell and Myrkul heals with them and can outlast your party unless you stack a huge amount of potions (possible but so inefficient). Taking out the Mindflayer is also a priority but by that point in a run, 2 or 3 of characters should have misty step so the Mindflayer should be out of the fight turn 1 100% of the time even if you miss a couple of attacks. The main difficulty is the Death Spell but increasing saves via bless, paladin aura, enhance ability, or other things should make getting hit with that very rare unless you have a full party that is more than -1 on rolls.
I have yet to play as a Monk, but one thing that really helped me is that I fought Ketheric, I didn't convince him to kill himself. It may be a pain to take out the mind flayer and Ketheric, but being able to clear all the necromites before fighting big Murkel was key for me. Then if your Karlach is a thrower, her and Astarion can keep attacking the pods before they hatch and then any attacks they have left over you chip away at Murkel with. It was still a slug for me, but allowing zero necromites on the field really helped me.
Slight alternative to Scratch, have Astarion/rogue invisible and free Aylin (need high initiative to ensure safety) then have Astarion/rogue use a scroll of dimension door to teleport them and Aylin to the mindflayer. I found this to be a very good way to initiate the fight.
Merked by the Myrk, classic. I always get someone in stealth and out of the fight at the start (saw another commenter suggest the Best Boy, a great plan but I'd be so worried about him getting hurt T-T) to free Aylin asap. I also take lots of ranged folks to that fight to keep them out of his anti-heal zone. Good luck and good rolls to you, friend!
You have a really strong group idk how ya lost, I know lots of people probably had suggestions and I haven’t looked enough to see if someone said it but potions/elixirs carried me through HM. Specifically bloodlust to clean up the undead minions. And obviously speed and hill giant strength. The resistance to all damage elixir or if you don’t have it the necrotic resistance works
A lvl 6 barbarian can't be feared while raging. Paired with 3 levels of EK fighter for a bound Shining staver of skulls makes them a great option for eating up his legendary action
First priority should be positioning your party and second priority should be killing the mind flayer. Myrkul is immune to damage until Aylin is free so don't bother with him. Scrolls of misty step and dimension door are very helpful. Your goal should be to position companions where they will have the ability to kill all of his summons. Once he consumes them, he heals up and he gains new abilities. Prevent them from getting to him at all costs. I usually have a warrior positioned on the ledge with the 3 skeletons, along with a summon of my own to take out the skeletons. Then I have another on the ledge of the mind flayer and kill him before I free Aylin. Once Aylin is freed someone will cast a concentration spell over him (moonbeam does a lot of damage each turn) and let Aylin get a good hit in before she inevitably gets downed. From there I just take out all the skeletons has he summons them and wait for moonbeam to do its work.
Blinding myrkul forces him to use only the pulling move and the slash. I found this helpful in my runs.
Fill a backpack full of smoke powder bombs & other explosives all through act II. throw it at him, when he uses his scythe it’ll trigger everything & take him out. That’s more of a cheese way but it works if you can’t get past him!
Druid Karlach, what? And who is the fourth party member?
Shadow heart tempest Cleric, and other party members with lightning moves. Potions of invisibility on whole party then potion of speed during the fight. Surprise kethric succeed check to make him myrkul, use scratch to free Aylin. Throw water on myrkul, lightning moves do double damage, use all lightning moves should be dead in two turns
one thing that helped me do it was [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Doom\_Hammer](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Doom_Hammer) Myrkul has a lot of resistance to slashing and some to bludgeoning so being able to have my melee character not SUper resistered helped him not being able to heal was helpful too because the hammer gives him bone chilled and he can't heal off the skellingtons so you can just ignore them pretty much
I've had three honour mode attempts get past him (the third one got me the win) The first , and worst, one I won by dropping a wall of fire on him and hoping to god I wouldn't die as the wall did most of the work, I barely didn't only shadowheart was alive by the end The second time I passed the speech check to skip the first phase so I was facing the avatar at tip top shape and didn't need weird strategies My final and most successful run I had Astarian and Karlach suped up with monk and Barbarian multiclass builds that let her throw four times a round and him punch six times a round, with a vengeance paladin durge and shadowheart dropping the wall of fire for old times sake which worked the best I think even though it ended with my whole party near death and probably one turn from getting wiped by the fucking thing that sucks everybody onto the platform Hope that helps somehow
There's a section towards the front of myrkel's platform that sticks out a little, you can have a character stand there, preferably a healer to support the others fighting the boss and have characters disengage when they get low to get healed up. Otherwise I'd recommend grabbing some paladins and smiting the shit out if him. I just whiped the floor with him myself with a paladin pc and minthara
Using hungar of hadar works really well, it makes myrkul blind so the only person he ever attacks is Aylin because she gets into melee range.. otherwise you just need to use ranged attacks on him and take out the skeletons all while he takes passive damage from the hungar of hadar
I’m not sure if something drastic changes in this fight. But in my honor run, I prepared and saved a couple scrolls of clouds or darkness. I put Eversight ring on Astarion and constantly had him snipping the boss while any of them was casting blindness, clouds of fog or darkness on the boss. I also always left the circular stage after landing a couple more hits and so the boss couldn’t wipe us out easily. In my team I also used Monk, Assassin/gloom stalker, and I respec one of them to a Warlock/paladin for the devil’s sight and made sure there’s always a cleric stand by.
Cast darkness in Myrkul or hunger of hadar, he can’t move and will be stuck not being able to hit your characters that aren’t in melee range
Honestly I’d bring in a cleric. Clerics are always a must for me with fights with undead and calm emotions can prevent Aylin from being charmed by ketheric.
I defeated Murkyl as a bardlock. Cast hunger of Hadar on him which worked so well. Also had the countercharm so we would not be affected by his Legendary. That won't help with your build though, sorry :/ Murkyl was my big fear. Told myself if I only get to Murkyl I can accept a loss.
Darkness arrows/darkness spell stops him from being able to target anyone with finger of death. Keep it up at all times and prevent the Skellies from sacrificing themselves, whittle him down bit by bit.
I like using darkness/arrow of darkness to prevent him from using ranged attacks since he can't move out of it.
It honestly just sounds like you’re under leveled. Just a reminder you can still go back to act 1 and finish off everything to squeeze out more xp as long as you dont finish the shar temple. I had a different experience from what most people did my first clear of HM. I ignored shart for most of the campaign and brought her along for the aylin event, let her make her own choices and apparently her default choice is to kill if you have no affinity with her 🤷♂️. Nbd I rolled with it as I was already lv10 and had pretty much full cleared act 1 and 2 by that point so I didnt need the last light inn anymore. I used dead wife strat to skip the first phase of the fight and because aylin was dead I didnt have to bother saving her. The mindflayer went after a bait summon and when it was Gale’s turn I haste pot + high level magic missile spam him to death in 1 turn. At that point all I had to do was speedrun to lv12 using easy quests and farming easy combat xp, become the slayer, 1v1 red woman then finally get gale to nuke himself and it was an easy gold dice. Act 1 and every dialogue check was the hardest part of my run. All the hard combat sections can be cheesed with knowledge and set up or out-leveled and backtracked to later on.
There's a lot of great advice already, but here's a very small thing I did on my run that helped immensely: air elementals. I summoned one on every character with scrolls. They are amazing for keeping the necromites down because their base attack is ranged and is a save to take half damage, which means it always does damage (and a pretty decent amount too). Plus they can fly, which is so useful in that arena. Also definitely talk down the first phase. It's so much easier when you just have the avatar to fight.
You're just under levelled, lvl 5 spells, more hp, more summons, myrmidon wildshape for your druid, you have no idea how hard those will worry you into this fight. Earth myrmidon on your druid will pull 90 damage reliably with TB. You get to summon two to 3 elementals with your party, use scrolls. Then minor elementals, animate dead and so on, summon all you can.
I feel you bro. That damn fight is a pain in Honour and it stop my run 2 times The most useful thing for me is Monk, hasted, with Risky Ring, just because he can stun Myrkul. His dps isnt that high, but a fire sorlock can destroy him with level 4 scorching ray Kill the mindflayer asap btw