In older versions of the smarter dragons component of the Tactics Mode, Firkraag was practically on top of you as soon as you entered his lair a second time. I prefered it this way. It was more challenging.

Now he loiters around the back end of his lair, and lets your party spread out and approach at their leisure.

What's up with that?

Is there anyway to get the older version of the improved Firkraag?

I noticed that too, don't know how to get him back the way he was. I find him to be easy as long as I get projected from fire.

How about some other ways to improve him?

Spell Shield with Spell Immunity: Abjuration(in that order, else Spell Shield is ineffective). Spell Shield protects against Ruby ray which cancels Spell Immunity. Spell Immunity takes care of most of the others (including Spell Strike, Pierce Shield, Warding Whip) and also makes breach ineffective, these cancellation spells tend to be Abjuration IIRC.

With that, Firk should be able to cast Stoneskins and give a party some trouble trying to get rid of them through magic. Once the spell protections are taken out, he re-casts them a few rounds later. He should cast stoneskin either 2 rounds after it being destroyed or on a successful physical hit.

In order to use breach on him a party would need to blow one spell on the spell shield then cast ruby ray, and finally breach. To make Ruby Ray ineffective you'd need him to be immune to Alteration and that would make stoneskin useless. Still, its more of a hassle than before.

In addition to that improve his magic resistence(just a little bit) and especially his saving throws. I just checked Firk's saving throws in SK and his lowest is 3 for death, his save vs. spell is 6. That is rather weak compared to the AC, THAC0, exp, and loot he has, not to mention high level parties easily surpass that. Let's make it a little be harder for a party with Vorpal to get lucky. Also using a rather simple spell like spook would easily make this enormous dragon run around like a school girl, it should be more difficult even if you get his magic resistence down.

I had trouble with Firk in my last game using a sorceror(installed smarter dragons). First, I made the very bad mistake of not being prepared with fire resistence spells. Second, he constantly fireballed my PC sorceror even if I was shadow doored and it didn't matter where I was either. Once I slept and casted some protections against fire he was easy.

I've already made that Firkraag battle much tougher. The files are sitting on my comp right now. The difficulty of it borders on the ludicrous, but if you guys are up for the challenge, I'll send you the mod.

Sounds pretty cool and I'd love to try.

Do you jack up the hit points as well?

Question: I have a standard free Hotmail account (quiet chevalier! ;) ), so will I have enough room for the attachment?

I didn't touch Firkie's files at all, I just gave him a souped-up script. Hotmail should be able to handle the attachment (If you've got weidu already, the file is less than 10kb.)