What am I gonna do here? I am getting plastered left and right in the beholders lair. There are the priests in the center, the ghants all around, the wandering beholder.

It's non-stop!!! I think i need that shield of Baulderan? (sp?) I looked in the adventurers mart but couldn't find it.

Can i even leave now, (now that i have one half of the rod), without screwing up the quest, to get some better equipment?

I think my party is just a bunch of weenies though. My 2 paladins charge in, get held and get slaughtered. Nalia can barely get a spell in edgewise, and the rest of my party are just archer support.

ANY tips in this region would be great! and appreciated!

This is why I always have a seperate save before going into an area from where getting out is going to be a pain ;)

About the Sheild of Balduran, do you have the Ease of Use mod. I know there is another way of getting Joluv (Copper Coronet) and Diedre (Adventurer's Mart) but I don't know of it.

Starting off from the entrance, there is a group of Drow trying to kill a gauth as you leave the entrance tube. Get rid of them all. Should be easy.
Continue East along the Northern path till you can get around the blind priests without activating them. This path now curves down and you have an ambush of Beholders and Gauths waiting for you. If you are hidden, you can sneak past them with no worries.
Go as far South as this path takes you and then take the Eastern fork. Now you have a Gauth and a Beholder to take out. The bloblike container has the second part of the rod. Take it and the two parts will automatically fuse together.
SAVE!
Put the rod in the quickslot of a member with atleast 90 Hitpoints at that point of time (not max HP). Send him out alone as the Unseeing Eye is about to make its appearence. Use the rod on it and then take it down, alone.
Now take your party West along the Southern most path. Halfway up the path the party will find a small white step to its left (door icon). Go up and then simply push open the blocked hidden door in front of you.

You can return later to make beholder omlette when you are stronger.

I don't remember any drow in there... :borg:

That's because there aren't any. I went through the Unseeing Eye quest with my new F/M/T about an hour ago or something, and there were not any drow there. I think maybe Shrikant confuse this quest with the other Beholder Lair.

Yes, the drow ambush is in the other beholder tunnels...
I don't put a foot in this area without a certain cloak, that means not before chapter 6. The quest is too hard for a low level party IMO. Normally you can leave and come back when you're stronger but it will look odd. Well, to you!

Yeah, return when you're a little higher in level. Later on you won't need the cloak or shield anymore!

St_Jeremy you should start by telling us who you have in your party, and what levels they are in.
We can't help you if we don't know the specifics. :)

Can you get out of the beholder's lair after you go down in the Unseeing Eye quest? I don't think you can. I think the stairs collapses behind you. I hope you got another save game before that.

Try webbing the priests and use AOE spells like cloudkill/skulltrap/fireball etc. if they're giving you grief but they shouldn't be too hard to kill straight-up with melee and a few buffs like haste, improved invisibility,PFE, holy might, etc. and maybe slow, chaos, confusion etc. on the priests. With enough resting Yoshimo can take out just about any monster(s) in the game with his traps. (or if you want to get really cheesy use the dualclass/trap reset trick). I think the Shield (of Balduran) is sold by the bonus merchants you get from special game edition disks but you can CLAU them into your game if you have enabled cheats ("wmart1" and "wmart2" iirc)...thats what most people do I imagine. Personally I don't think CLAUing the merchants into the game is cheating because you still have to pay big money for the items but that decision is up to you. The shield makes Beholders/Gauths as easy as pie....easier actually because all you have to do is stand there and they basically kill themselves after a while.

Ok, i'll try Shrikant's strategy tonite.

Here is my party:
Me - Paladin Lvl 9
Keldorn Lvl 9
Valygar lvl 9
Sir Anomen Cleric lvl 10 fighter lvl 7
Yoshimo lvl 12
Nalia mage lvl 11 thief lvl 4

I have never installed any mods or patches in the game. (i bought it in May 2001 new)

The only problem with bombarding the priests and such with spells, is that before Nadia can get a work in edgewise, they slam dunk her. Even when i surround her with decoys.

I have a feeling that I'm too low a level, every battle is maxing out my skills with no let up. I can't charge in, each battle must be evaluated (which is fine, but I don't like doing it EVERY time, just for the major ones).

Thanks for all the responses though.

Yes, you can get out of there before killing the monsters. You just use the regular exit - the one in the southern part of the map, middle of the screen. The problem is you have to sneak around.

If I recall correctly, each corner of the map has some beholders/gauths in it, and the center has the blind priests. Then there is a beholder in each chamber room.

Hopefully the one gauth in the northwest area you can kill. He's the only one directly in your way.

So if you really want out of there (as Imoen says :) ), there is a way to sneak to the exit. After killing the one gauth in the NW place, go northeast past the wall. Don't go too far east or else you'll fight some gauths. Go south until you hit a horizontal wall. You need to go around the wall (on the right side), head south and left and the exit is there.

If you want to sneak anywhere, I suggest you control one character at a time (not the whole bulky party formation). And hide Yoshimo or Valygar in the shadows to scout. Once you know where the exit and enemies are, the above directions make more sense.

If you can kill individual beholders, you can even sneak to the bottom right chamber, kill the beholder and get the rod half and finish the quest.

ok how about this for the priests? First set traps just out of visual range in case you have to retreat. Then hide in shadows with Yoshimo and walk him up until you can just see the enemies (this way Nalia can see them too). Then cast web with Nalia from well behind Yoshi (she will walk foward). Cast it on the closest of the enemies ...not their center ground. She should be able to pull it off. As she is casting bring in your ranged fighters. Free action on your Paladin would help a lot too. If you can keep em webbed you should be able to take them out....remember webs stack. If they are immoble you can do whatever you like...just dont cloudkill your own guys.

PS-Maybe the problem is you have too many fighters and not enough mages?

:bang: You must be right. They use the same map both times.
I just wand of Cloudkill the priests. Add Web and Stinking Cloud and you can sit back and relax.
Once you have slid down into the feeding pit, you cant get out except from the Beholder lair.

@Blog
Even if you are trying to sneak out of that place, you can still complete the quest.
Afterall, how hard is it to beat up one punk gauth (sorry Isshy :p ), take the rod, trample the Unseeing Eye since from there to the exit you wont find any other eyeballs in your path.

Isshy didn't hear that punk remark...he was off chasing cats :yum:

Couldn't agree with most of that more :) Personally I like the SoB even if it is cheesy :)

Where you can get it apart from the Ease of Use mod, is here on SP, I believe, you need the the fixpack for plain old SoA, and there is a fix pack for the addon, but you want the SoA one, the other one won't work, but that from memory puts only one shopkeeper in, not sure if it's Deidre(Adv Mart) or Joluv(Copper Coronet). There is also a very small zip file containing the two areas with the two shopkeepers, that should also be on SP, which I install as well. If you can't find either of these patches I'll take a look or email them :)

Other than that for fighting those blind priests, yep, I'll agree easiest is a thief hiding, til he sees them, then have him walk out, one bit at a time, til the closest one you can see him, then he fades out of vision, then send your mage and cloudkill/fireball the area. Amazingly they don't like I think it's 2 or 3 cloudkills. I think I only used cloudkill, off the wand from the Irenicus' Dungeon :)

Spoiler ahead maybe on how you should kill the Unseeing Eye
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Yes well you have any character with good ac, grab eq off your other characters if need be, but the main thing is use your character with the best thac0, that's really important. As for connecting the item....
Step by step for killing him, or what I always use:
1) When you find the hole with the second half, which you should have the first half from the temple way down stairs with the undead saint (good undead). (NB: You turn undead in that area, you'll probably botch the whole unseeing eye quest up, bad idea.)
2) Don't loot it.
3) Make sure you're ready to pause the game.
4) Loot it, then pause IMMEDIATELY.
5) Go through the player inventories til you find where they put the device.
6) Equip it in a quick slot.
7) Haste the character or drink a potion of speed.
8) Leave the party at the loot hole.
9) Send party member round the corrridor.
10) Do Not attack the unseeing eye or use the device as soon as it appears, else you can't kill it, I don't believe.
11) Wait for the UE to spell up.
12) Use the device (it gets rid of it's spell protections)
13) Now attack.
14) Dead UE Beholder :)

Never fails :)

Hmm, i always lured the Gauths and Beholders one by one to my party, i did this by letting 5 party stick to to areas entrance, what is located to the west, i put my melee fighters on front, spellcasters and long-ranged ones behind them, and i summoned lotz of beasties ahead of the party.
So when i encounter an enemie, (no priests included) i try to lure it back to my party, and because the enemies is forced to go to a small corridor, you can get them down one by one.
This doesn't, however, always works.

Another lower-level AoE spell you might use on the priests is Silence 15' radius. Some will save, but it will cut down on thier spells. Holy Smite and Stinking Cloud might be good too. One other spell Nalia is high enough level to cast is Greater Malison. Never underestimate how useful this spell is for softning up targets, a -4 on saves can make many AoE spell much more effective. If lobbed in from out of sight, most enemies won't react to a Greater Malison at all (or Slow, but throw the GM first).

I have had very little success with luring gauths and beholders out one by one. They always converged around the one that you hit. How do you do it?

I think the Priests are best avoided. IIRC, none of them drops anything valuable, and it isn't that much experience. I've always done the Unseeing Eye early, so I don't think a level 9 party is too low a level - in fact, I believe the quest gets harder if you're at higher level. Individual Gauths and Beholders aren't too much problem with a little ingenuity, but when they start coming in groups, things get ugly ;)

Just summon as much creatures as possible and hope as hell that the Beholders get to them before they get to you. While they are busy dealing with the summoned creatures, take thm out with missle or melee.

As for the Priests, always prepare Silence'15 spells. It does wonders in taking down puny priests!

A tip for anyone hving trouble with beholders - their AI is kinda wonky. They only attack PC's with their eye effects and they can't see invisible.

So...

Summon some goons (animate dead is fun), have one character invis/stealth, and attack with only your summons. the beholders/gauths will attack with bite only. :)

OK, OK, it stinks of stilton, but it beats reloading until you die of old age...

Are blind priests SO nasty too fight in melee?

No they are not, they are actually quite easy. I mean, I did that quest recently with my party, and my characters weren't very good.

Thanks everyone, it all worked out great. (took me long enough, finals and all)