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BG3: all glory to Mystra! and Shar, I guess
I finally got through the nautiloid with Larissa's team! And something really cool happened this time.
It was "finally" because I decided to try seriously playing out the fight with the Commander Zhalk, the level 8(!) boss with 135 HP. Spoilers on how it went!
The game urges you to let the mind flayer take his hits and rush through the transponder sequence, but it is technically possible to defeat him and loot his body for his really cool burning sword. A bunch of the potential damage is done by the mind flayer if he hits (often he doesn't), so in every previous time, I'd used Shadowheart to heal the mind flayer in the hopes of getting a few more 15-pt hits out of him.
However, I'd osmosed that the path to victory is actually the cleric spell Guiding Bolt (a fantastic spell in D&D generally; it does 4d6 radiant damage at level 1 and can be upcast, so my three clerics and celestial warlock in actual D&D all leaned heavily on it). It's radiant rather than fire damage, and gives the next attacker advantage if it hits. Shadowheart is thus usually essential to victory, and I always rescue her, anyway. But because Larissa is also a cleric, that meant four uses of Guiding Bolt instead of two against Zhalk's very high AC (Guiding Bolt uses a straight spell attack roll). On top of that, I'd figured that Larissa, as a sage and a knowledge cleric, would mostly be intrigued by the intellect devourer and be curious to see what it did (cue Entrapta cackle), so we had also recruited Us, resulting in an effective four-person team—but of level 1 characters.
I made a major tactical error the first time through, by using Us to fight the lesser enemies while the others attacked Zhalk, though we still did a respectable ~100 pts of damage. So I re-loaded. The next time, I used Us to attack Zhalk and to field some of the hits, since it has more HP than any of the main characters at that point. Meanwhile, I used all four spell slots (Shadowheart's and Larissa's) on Guiding Bolt attempts and then just concentrated on repeating the Sacred Flame cantrip (which hit about half the time for ~5 damage a hit). Two Guiding Bolts failed, but two hit critically, and Lae'zel managed to get a couple of small hits in to take Zhalk out, and sent the loot to Larissa.
Then the mind flayer decided we were no longer useful and straight-up murdered Larissa in one shot, while other forces were converging (two heavy-hitting cambions and a group of smaller infernal foes). I let Lae'zel and Us absorb the lesser damage (luckily the imps/boar missed Lae'zel twice) and raced Shadowheart to the transponder while Us (surprisingly) actually was willing to attack the mind flayer (friendship is magic, I guess?). Larissa passed her death saving throws, and Shadowheart hit the transponder right before the cambions arrived, ending the battle and automatically reviving Larissa. So it took a pretty specific strategy along with quite a bit of luck to do it, but I got the ever-burning sword and the achievement!
It was "finally" because I decided to try seriously playing out the fight with the Commander Zhalk, the level 8(!) boss with 135 HP. Spoilers on how it went!
The game urges you to let the mind flayer take his hits and rush through the transponder sequence, but it is technically possible to defeat him and loot his body for his really cool burning sword. A bunch of the potential damage is done by the mind flayer if he hits (often he doesn't), so in every previous time, I'd used Shadowheart to heal the mind flayer in the hopes of getting a few more 15-pt hits out of him.
However, I'd osmosed that the path to victory is actually the cleric spell Guiding Bolt (a fantastic spell in D&D generally; it does 4d6 radiant damage at level 1 and can be upcast, so my three clerics and celestial warlock in actual D&D all leaned heavily on it). It's radiant rather than fire damage, and gives the next attacker advantage if it hits. Shadowheart is thus usually essential to victory, and I always rescue her, anyway. But because Larissa is also a cleric, that meant four uses of Guiding Bolt instead of two against Zhalk's very high AC (Guiding Bolt uses a straight spell attack roll). On top of that, I'd figured that Larissa, as a sage and a knowledge cleric, would mostly be intrigued by the intellect devourer and be curious to see what it did (cue Entrapta cackle), so we had also recruited Us, resulting in an effective four-person team—but of level 1 characters.
I made a major tactical error the first time through, by using Us to fight the lesser enemies while the others attacked Zhalk, though we still did a respectable ~100 pts of damage. So I re-loaded. The next time, I used Us to attack Zhalk and to field some of the hits, since it has more HP than any of the main characters at that point. Meanwhile, I used all four spell slots (Shadowheart's and Larissa's) on Guiding Bolt attempts and then just concentrated on repeating the Sacred Flame cantrip (which hit about half the time for ~5 damage a hit). Two Guiding Bolts failed, but two hit critically, and Lae'zel managed to get a couple of small hits in to take Zhalk out, and sent the loot to Larissa.
Then the mind flayer decided we were no longer useful and straight-up murdered Larissa in one shot, while other forces were converging (two heavy-hitting cambions and a group of smaller infernal foes). I let Lae'zel and Us absorb the lesser damage (luckily the imps/boar missed Lae'zel twice) and raced Shadowheart to the transponder while Us (surprisingly) actually was willing to attack the mind flayer (friendship is magic, I guess?). Larissa passed her death saving throws, and Shadowheart hit the transponder right before the cambions arrived, ending the battle and automatically reviving Larissa. So it took a pretty specific strategy along with quite a bit of luck to do it, but I got the ever-burning sword and the achievement!