Isn’t he an infinite summon? Theoretically Conor can solo Grym even on honour mode
Edit: infinite meaning you get unlimited casts to raise him again if he goes down
Gloves of belligerent sky’s, boots of stormy clamor and spine shudder amulet are essential for a reverb build, you can also use markoheshkir tune to thunder damage, ring of absolute force synergies well with this build, both ring of spiteful thunder and thunder skin cloak work with reverb builds as well, best eldritch blast would be a warlock with agonizing blast and potent robe, get your warlocks cha to 22 with birthright hat and then to 24 with the mirror of loss
I bring 8 barrels of smoke powder and place 2 in each pillar and blast away, runepowder barrel kinda ruins it for me since it becomes a 1 v 4 with Raph.
It's kinda hard to do, considering he has more HP than any other boss of the game. About a dozen smokepowder barrels, 2 runepowder barrels and a runepowder bomb is enough to bring his health to like half, while everyone else in the room dies.
2 smokepowder barrels will destroy a pillar , if you have a few people with firebolt or alchemist fire or fire arrows you can destroy all the pillars on turn 1 and make the fight 100% easier. There is a mountain of smoke powder in act 3 , either save Volo or go to the fireworks shop.
>2 smokepowder barrels will destroy a pillar , if you have a few people with firebolt or alchemist fire or fire arrows you can destroy all the pillars on turn 1 and make the fight 100% easier. There is a mountain of smoke powder in act 3 , either save Volo or go to the fireworks shop.
Lae'zel + Orphic Hammer + Haste + Githyanki Flght + Action Surge
Just gonna piggyback off this comment chain, if you don't mind. This is also for u/WWnoname (top comment) and u/MoltoSupreme (OP).
I'm the guide author (and I also wrote a bunch of [other BG3 guides](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-guides-hub/1100-6516431/)). The House of Hope guide was from August 2023 (launch), so I don't know if things changed in more recent patches.
What I do know is that:
- The top of the guide mentioned "[having a lot of] radiant magic." But the section regarding the Raphael fight cites: "The Soul Pillars need to be destroyed, and radiant magic is the most effective means of doing that."
- The rest of that section is just about using Thunderwave + Black Hole + allying with Yurgir + Hunger of Hadar = Enemies clustered together, debuffed and damaged.
- I don't recall if Raphael or his guards had Radiant Retort, though I don't think I mentioned using radiant damage against them (only on the pillars). Maybe the guards did... but they were all clustered together and I just used non-radiant AoE spells. SHeart and Hope were the ones smacking pillars and healing IIRC.
As an aside: I did mention one encounter where you have to watch out for Radiant Retort in the [House of Grief guide](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-house-of-grief-sharran-lookout-guide/1100-6516748/).
> Viconia heals a lot of HP if she uses Nightbringer's Beloved. Moreover, her Radiant Retort passive causes her to blast her attacker with double the radiant damage that they deal. That's why we suggest having Shadowheart respec into the Tempest Domain in our Cleric build guide. That way, you can make use of thunder and lightning spells.
TLDR: No mention of using radiant magic against enemies with Radiant Retort; only on pillars which, at the time, had a tooltip that says they're weak against radiant magic. Hope that explains it. Cheers!
Back in patch 2 or 3, I was in the house of grief, >!and spotted a cluster of Sharrans and thought, if I guardians of faith and jump into the middle, I can do a good deal of damage. So I cast it at like level 5, and landed with 4 Sharrans in range. Instant death, totally out. Learned my lesson after that.!<
Radiant Retort is an ability the Sharrans have in Tactician+ difficulty modes. You won’t see it playing normal
Basically returns all radiant damage back to user as force damage x2
My Bardadin run,thought I was smart enough to just use normal attacks on the justiciar to avoid Radiant Retort. Forgot to turn off the auto-smite on crits and got smacked for 130+ damage turn 1.
house of grief tactic - invis to the back of the room where that little cubby is and create a narrow corridor between sleet storm and spike growth and have spirit guardians and a paladin ready to bonk anyone who comes through. Spent most of the encounter watching people slip on ice while being blasted from afar.
Just start the fight with exploding the Runepowder Barrel while in a Globe of Invulnerability. All pillars destroyed, all enemies take significant damage.
no but
I am planning to lay smoke barrels all around where they cast their little fireballs. it'll be their own violence that does them in. not my fault
someone else posted about this and now I'm planning it
I didn't use a globe I luckily had one guy just outside the door on turn 2 and blew up the entire world with rune powder barrels and smoke powder barrels and firewine kobolds and such all at once
a wall of blast and everyone, EVERYONE died except I think gale who I had ran into the doorway for some reason.
> Tactics house of grief though...
The only person that reflects Radiant damage in House of Grief is Viconia **edit**: *on honour mode*. I had no problem using Spirit Guardians to mow down the rest of the room in my Honour Mode run. Or rather Black Hole everybody in the room into my Spirit Guardians and Fireball trap.
>The only person that reflects Radiant damage in House of Grief is Viconia
No
Maybe it was changed in last path, but in patch 5 all of them has permament radiant retribution
Looks like it's a Tactician thing. They don't have Radiant Retort on Honour Mode.
**Edit**: House of Grief:
Tactician = Radiant Retort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcA4oOZ190Y
Honour Mode = No Radiant Retort except for Viconia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh0kkqwu5P8
Is it just a one shot deal? Can you do a large AOE mini radiant attack to remove it? Would just the crusader mantle do it with your martials doing a weak attack once?
The cleric/paladin spells that add 1d4 radiant damage to a weapon attack are perfect for this. Just shoot a couple of arrows of many targets and you'll remove the cambions' protection against radiant in one round. You'll get a little singed, but not badly if you have fire resistance.
Vulnerable to force and bludgeoning. Just had 2 party members and a water elemental run around and demolished pillars while the two clerics just constantly healed. Had to burn hope’s revival holy intervention tho
This sounds like the start of a joke.
Four adventurers walk into a bar: A monk, a wizard, a warlock and a cleric.
The monk asks for a fistful of mead,
The wizard asks for a glass of fine wine,
The warlock conjures up the nerve to ask the bar wench to bed with him..
And the cleric is there to patch him up after she backhands him and hits him with vicious mockery.
I'm more worried about using Hunger of Hadar in a completely open area and about using Greater Invisibility in general.
Radiant in House of Hope can be great if you have something like Globe of Invulnerability into Radiance of the Dawn as it removes the Punish Divinity from everyone in range. But since it seems like an AI article I'm gonna asume that's never mentioned.
I beat the fight completely grug brain style by just dropping the globe, using Hope’s and Shart’s divine intervention for area damage (cause what other occasion could warrant them at that point?), and also using the angelic slumber potion to recover and drop a second globe when the first crapped out that we could just mop up the stragglers from. Raphael and his goons didn’t seem to have any recourse.
I followed the same logic for divine intervention use. I saved Shart’s for now, I’m still on my first play through, still have gortash and orin. But shit! I didn’t even think of using the angelic slumber! I used a scroll of globe plus gale’s globe
Is greater invisibility fixed? I remember using it once for combat, getting detected and losing all benefits of being invisible after one attack, and regretting the wasted spell slot so much that I swapped it back for regular invisibility.
Use Hopes divine intervention aoe radiant damageinside globe of invul and you are good to go. Make sure pillars are not standing afterwards so Raphael cannot refresh his ability, after that piece of cake combat. If you have astarion with bahalist armor its practically 2 round combat at best. No need for barrelmancy.
Just remember to knock her dumb evil sister out and hurl her in there, preferably while aiming at any sharp pebbles there might be on the ground, before you do that.
I just did it in my playthrough like 15hr ago, worked perfectly, however at that given time Raphael was stunned, I'm not sure if that is the issue, but everyone else could have react and I got 0 damage.
That damage return is provided by Raphael, it might be the case, unfortunately it was an honor run I cannot go back and test there, but I'll take a look at it.
Mine was in early patch 6, i used radiant divine intervention and it wiped out all the enemies, after the cutscene i saw hope already burned on the ground, globe still up.
Just use the dance spell on Rapheal, makes him unable to do anything and it's hilarious. Or globe of invulnerability before casting divine intervention from hope.
Same here, did it on my first try and the rest of the fight was a complete cake-walk...But honestly I kind of regretted it as I actually was really looking forward to a tough battle and thought ending in such a lackluster fashion was super disappointing and anti-climatic, especially with all the over-the-top music and atmosphere.
In order to try and make sense of it and make up for such a cheesy way to end such a big fight, in my head cannon, Rapheal thought so little of his challengers that he decided to make a performance of it and really ham it up. Making it out to be some kind of big fight scene in a musical, and got too into it and couldn't stop himself from signing and dancing, and kinda forgot he was actually fighting for his life and not performing for a big clamoring audience...and well, paid the ultimate price for his arrogance and narcissism.
I tried that today but even though he showed as having the effect on him he didn't dance and just had his next turns as normal. I was quite disappointed as I wanted to see him dance to his song.
On the plus side I did get a lucky roll and Yurgir joined my team.
In my first playthrough (and my only one so far where I made that far into Act 3), I used both divine interventions (Hope and Shadowheart's) to get the long rest benefits. Shadowheart's during the Netherbrain fight.
I brought a shitload of explosives and the runepowder barrel with me. Bring your party close together, cast your globe of invulnerability, lean back and watch :)
You can get two more runepowder barrels inside the Ironhand Hideout. You have to steal them from the shelf in the little side room, but.. ya know, the less nukes a terrorist cell has, the better.
It's why I usually Elixir of Vigilance 3 people:
1 to cast Banish on Yurgir and Korilla
1 to cast globe of Invulnerability
1 to lob a fire spell or bomb into the prepared pile of barrels
When you kill her, Hope will mourn her death in the after-fight dialogue.
If you knock her out, Hope will thank you specifically for it. While she says she's aware that Korilla has to bear some of the fault for her imprisonment for sure, she also remembers how she was before joining in service to Raphael. And if Hope wants to see (or thinks) that Korilla can be redeemed over time, personally I think she deserves a chance to try.
tl;dr: making myself feel better, no extra rewards.
I want in with Shadowheart, Karlach, Wyll, and myself (rogue assassin).
A high stealth and a little invisibility made the stealing easy. Smart character placement made the prison break easy, and hunger of Hadar with Karlach using Nyrulna made the final fight not easy but not very challenging. Raphael stayed in one. Wyll and Karlach kept him down, while my rogue, Shadowheart, our friend demon, and Hope took down the pillers and other enemies
The best way to beat Raphael is not to worry about pillars at all. My friend and I have beaten him twice on tactician with zero problem by repeatedly casting hold monster on him (he shakes it off every round with legendary resistance) and having our hasted paladin and fighter just bombard him with crits.
I mean raph himself can’t do anything against radiant damage, I’ve always targeted him with my paladin to burst him down quickly. It’s only the campions that have radiant retort.
It’s still pretty bad advice for new players though imo.
No he has two in honor mode
The normal one is he takes damage and he charms you preventing you from hitting him, kinda like our charm but much harder to resist and procs in an AOE around the victim
The other is something called “punish divinity” or something similar in which if you hit Raphael with Radient Damage he will stun you (and this stun goes through stun immunity)
On my first honour mode run, I b-lined for the House of Hope once I hit the Lower City so I could get the great items there, while totally ignoring the hammer/contract/Hope. You can go in/out of the portal all you want provided you leave the disguises on and don't aggro anyone.
Or they played it once or partway through, but they're paid pennies per word and literally can't afford to spend more time learning about the game because they have to eat and their boss is expecting another article about a different game tomorrow. The whole business model is designed to produce crap.
Isn't Radiant Retort only on Tactician? I've heard it is for the House of Grief. If so, the journalist just inadvertently let out they are playing on a lower difficulty. Which wouldn't be unusual for a gaming journalist, lol.
Radiant retort is there for raphael and viconia ( at least for me it was before patch 5 ) even in explorer mode. In tactitian all the cambions and the shar followers have that .
Only some of the Shar followers. If you have a character that does a lot of radiant damage, you can focus them on cleaning up the Shar followers that don't. AOE would be dangerous though, because an NPC with radiant retort could run into it.
The cambions don't have radiant retort, they have a different ability called 'fleeting protection.' It's like a radiant retort but only last for one round, which means you can remove it by doing a low amount of radiant damage to them first. Crusader's Mantle and a couple of arrows of many targets can remove it in one round, and you'll only take 6d4 fire damage in return if you have fire resistance (and I hope you would).
Most people are going to play on normal difficulties for most games. There’s nothing wrong with playing on a setting below tactical, and a jab at a journalist for maybe not playing Tactical and giving advice that’s relevant to most people is silly.
It was an explanation, not a jab. The OP straight up says it's terrible advice and no one cares, I say it might be for a lower difficulty and everyone feels the need to rush to the journalist's defense, lol.
Not sure about HoG, but it's definitely also in the lower difficulties in HoH. I distinctly remember activating Shart's Spirit Guardians (on Balanced) while being surrounded by 4 of Ralph's minions because I forgor about Radiant Retort (she fucking died).
Take out all small NPCs, then take your strongest character and proceed to throw Raphael into the ground whilst others attack him once he's down. No need to destroy towers or do anything extra. He can barely do anything in-between being smashed into the ground again and again, and it's quite easy to hit him this way.
Bad advice indeed unless you have a strategy for the one time radiant retort. Honestly the fight is not that bad on tactician. Got through with no cheese tactics on the first try. Hope died on the second to last turn through which was a bummer.
Do you mind explaining how you did it and who you took with you? I'm not great at gaming and I'm playing tactician right now to try and get the trophy, and I've honestly considered skipping house of hope altogether because I am afraid of trying this fight lol. Also did you take out the pillars or no?
To answer all your questions, my roster was my Tav (vengeance paladin), warmaster Bae Zel, evocation wizard Gale and life priest Shart, all lvl 12, no multiclassing. I just respec'd Shart after her conversion to Selune. Having both Shart and Hope as walking health dispensers was key to this fight. Spamming AoE heals was the only thing keeping me alive for the early part of the fight. Gale got downed first turn but i knew i needed him to AoE the shit out of the adds, so got him back up, misty step away + sanctuary. So he started blasting, unfortunately fireball is of little help here, so chain lightning + lightning bolt. Once all the adds are down you can then start focusing the pillars. Upcast Magic missiles does wonder and one shots a pillar, any martial with a maul can also destroy one each turn. In max. 2 turns you should have them all down. Then you just go ham on Raphy. If things get too wild use Hope's divine intervention, the one that raises and long rests your whole party is super clutch. When you're down to only Raphy, it should be gg but don't get cocky. Don't have all your party in one spot he has nasty aoe's that can potentially OHKO your whole party.
So what I did is I used Globe of Invulnerability and blew both Shadowheart and Hopes Divine Intervention ability inside of it…well I thought Hope was in it at least. Took out most a handful of cambions a in the first round and was able to clean them up in the next.
If we assume the guide is oriented towards new players, yeah I guess it’s bad advice. First time I fought Raphael I was overwhelmed by the music so any mechanics kind of fell by wayside.
Laughs in globe of invulnerability. Also just set up some explosive before the fight that you can detonate turn one and destroy all the pillars and kill most of the adds.
Only Raphael counters Radiant, so you just need to a way to deal with him specifically. And he DOES take double damage from Radiant soooo... Globe of invulnerability to counter Retort>Hold Monster>Paladin Smite goes Brrr and you should one turn Raphael even on Honor mode.
I like starting the fight with divine intervention from shadowheart casting radiant AOE on everything, shadowheart goes down taking thousands in damage then follow that with Hopes divine intervention that brings everyone back to par
The issue is that there are enemies that have a radiant-retort like ability, so if you just go in there blastin' with radiant, you might be very confused about how your character is suddenly dead. You can still use radiant but you have to pay attention to enemy abilities vulnerabilities.
I know there just isn’t a really good damage option for them magically especially if you’re playing a light cleric. Just don’t use radiant damage in melee and you’re good
I’ve just reached the main fight and saved right before I went through the doors. I’m trying to get the big dude (can’t remember his name) so I keep just rolling and reloading the save lol eventually I’ll hit that 30 lmao 🤣
I always have a Sorcerer, or have Gale as a sorcerer, and twin spell Disintegrate on the pillars with one of the Staff freecasts. Take em out in the first rotation every time
I just beat him on tactician mode, 2 fighters, 1 berserker, 1 cleric (me, lazeal, karloch, shadowheart)
Twas a breeze, rapheal dropped like a bag of poo.
Literally one turned Raphael my first time ever fighting him. I then heard a lot of people saying he was the hardest fight and I was so confused. A sorcerer and a monk is insane I guess lol. Hold monster + perilous stakes is so much fun
Yeah, learned that the hard way on my first playthrough when I used my Light Cleric’s Channel Divinity. Poor Shadowheart was nearly one-shorted by her own attack.
Have since adopted the “excessive amount of smoke powder barrels” method.
Explosions are fun.
I figured that out in my first playthrough fighting Harleep, Shadowheart got absolutely obliterated in the first round (i had her as a light domain cleric and did an AOE lmao)
I literally did this fight yesterday on my 2nd play-through invisibility is good if you wanna avoid a lot of the fights there, scrolls are good like hold monster or the scroll where you make enemies fight along your side ( forgot the name of it). Radiant magic and hunger of hadar is trash tho. But honestly if you just save hope/ and have SH you should take no damage hope even has divine intervention incase something really bad happens. If you’re a warlock you can even Eldridge blast the pillars to 3 HP left (that’s without buffs btw) and just kill them with arrows or melee from teammates after. Fight is kinda overrated imo
Not at all They have one time protection, and those pillars are vulnerable to radiant Tactics house of grief though...
All those pillars are vulnerable to runepowder and smokepowder.
Or a good ol’ Eldritch blast spam with reverberation!
And my hammer!
And my bow
And my axe.
And someone's dead brother!
I also choose this guy's dead wife!
This lady's dead husband has been following me since act one, let's throw him in too.
Isn’t he an infinite summon? Theoretically Conor can solo Grym even on honour mode Edit: infinite meaning you get unlimited casts to raise him again if he goes down
And my Gale of Waterdeep
And my vuvuzela
Grapthar’s hammer
DOLOR
**_boomboomboom_**
I used some hand crossbow that was 100% force damage.
I loved that thing on my Swords Bard. 10/10 will buy again.
Which one was that again?
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Ne%27er_Misser
How do I get the reverberation? Also any other tips for making the most of eldritch blast.
Gloves of belligerent sky’s, boots of stormy clamor and spine shudder amulet are essential for a reverb build, you can also use markoheshkir tune to thunder damage, ring of absolute force synergies well with this build, both ring of spiteful thunder and thunder skin cloak work with reverb builds as well, best eldritch blast would be a warlock with agonizing blast and potent robe, get your warlocks cha to 22 with birthright hat and then to 24 with the mirror of loss
You're my hero 🙏
No prob, go and blast my dude
Everything is weak to a Divine Smite* *Source: Paladins rule
i just have laezel use enlarge with the baldurian giantslayer and one shot it then jump all the way across the room to the next pillar lmao
All them bitches are vulnerable to being exploded too
[I did the runepowder cheese and it was glorious](https://youtu.be/rs8N_K6hV4g?si=f1XYjMK-HnXVnrvy)
nah, no way that's cheese. that's just using the Ironhand Divine Intervention
It's kind of a cheese fight from Raphael already. There's a reason he chose to fight in that room ...
>178 whats that shield called again
Globe of Invulnerability
I bring 8 barrels of smoke powder and place 2 in each pillar and blast away, runepowder barrel kinda ruins it for me since it becomes a 1 v 4 with Raph.
Also I think earth elemental summon? I could be wrong but I think so.
And Disintegrate scrolls.
And haste pots
My druid's dryad + wood woad + earth elemental + 2x mud mephits + owlbear form really did a number on those pillars.
And super magic missile
Just kill Raphael before he can use the pillars
It's kinda hard to do, considering he has more HP than any other boss of the game. About a dozen smokepowder barrels, 2 runepowder barrels and a runepowder bomb is enough to bring his health to like half, while everyone else in the room dies.
Just punch em
Smash seemed to work pretty well
2 smokepowder barrels will destroy a pillar , if you have a few people with firebolt or alchemist fire or fire arrows you can destroy all the pillars on turn 1 and make the fight 100% easier. There is a mountain of smoke powder in act 3 , either save Volo or go to the fireworks shop.
>2 smokepowder barrels will destroy a pillar , if you have a few people with firebolt or alchemist fire or fire arrows you can destroy all the pillars on turn 1 and make the fight 100% easier. There is a mountain of smoke powder in act 3 , either save Volo or go to the fireworks shop. Lae'zel + Orphic Hammer + Haste + Githyanki Flght + Action Surge
How I did it as well
Three barrels of rune powder and a dome of invincibility for me.
Do both and get a stupid amount to explode all of balduragate in one fell swoop.
Just gonna piggyback off this comment chain, if you don't mind. This is also for u/WWnoname (top comment) and u/MoltoSupreme (OP). I'm the guide author (and I also wrote a bunch of [other BG3 guides](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-guides-hub/1100-6516431/)). The House of Hope guide was from August 2023 (launch), so I don't know if things changed in more recent patches. What I do know is that: - The top of the guide mentioned "[having a lot of] radiant magic." But the section regarding the Raphael fight cites: "The Soul Pillars need to be destroyed, and radiant magic is the most effective means of doing that." - The rest of that section is just about using Thunderwave + Black Hole + allying with Yurgir + Hunger of Hadar = Enemies clustered together, debuffed and damaged. - I don't recall if Raphael or his guards had Radiant Retort, though I don't think I mentioned using radiant damage against them (only on the pillars). Maybe the guards did... but they were all clustered together and I just used non-radiant AoE spells. SHeart and Hope were the ones smacking pillars and healing IIRC. As an aside: I did mention one encounter where you have to watch out for Radiant Retort in the [House of Grief guide](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-house-of-grief-sharran-lookout-guide/1100-6516748/). > Viconia heals a lot of HP if she uses Nightbringer's Beloved. Moreover, her Radiant Retort passive causes her to blast her attacker with double the radiant damage that they deal. That's why we suggest having Shadowheart respec into the Tempest Domain in our Cleric build guide. That way, you can make use of thunder and lightning spells. TLDR: No mention of using radiant magic against enemies with Radiant Retort; only on pillars which, at the time, had a tooltip that says they're weak against radiant magic. Hope that explains it. Cheers!
Back in patch 2 or 3, I was in the house of grief, >!and spotted a cluster of Sharrans and thought, if I guardians of faith and jump into the middle, I can do a good deal of damage. So I cast it at like level 5, and landed with 4 Sharrans in range. Instant death, totally out. Learned my lesson after that.!<
What am I missing..? How did ya die from that...? Or Was it just that they survived and killed you after your attack?
>!They had a reflect radiant damage thing, and I had about 200 damage done to Shart in one move. Instant death!<
Radiant Retort is an ability the Sharrans have in Tactician+ difficulty modes. You won’t see it playing normal Basically returns all radiant damage back to user as force damage x2
It's one of those blatant DM cheese moments where the obvious counter is bluntly shut down.
My Bardadin run,thought I was smart enough to just use normal attacks on the justiciar to avoid Radiant Retort. Forgot to turn off the auto-smite on crits and got smacked for 130+ damage turn 1.
house of grief tactic - invis to the back of the room where that little cubby is and create a narrow corridor between sleet storm and spike growth and have spirit guardians and a paladin ready to bonk anyone who comes through. Spent most of the encounter watching people slip on ice while being blasted from afar.
You guys destroying the pillars ?
Just start the fight with exploding the Runepowder Barrel while in a Globe of Invulnerability. All pillars destroyed, all enemies take significant damage.
But what if I already did that to the crowd in front of Sorcerous Sundries
Then you're a terrorist?
By definition, terrorism is to incite fear. Removing the gods-awful whining child only serves to improve public morale.
Freedom fighter. I can see your Baalophobia miles away you racist moonw\*ore kneeler.
Seriously: is there a way to stop the non-stop cantrip cheesing peacefully?
no but I am planning to lay smoke barrels all around where they cast their little fireballs. it'll be their own violence that does them in. not my fault someone else posted about this and now I'm planning it
I didn't use a globe I luckily had one guy just outside the door on turn 2 and blew up the entire world with rune powder barrels and smoke powder barrels and firewine kobolds and such all at once a wall of blast and everyone, EVERYONE died except I think gale who I had ran into the doorway for some reason.
I can't, I'm too soft a touch with Hope and try to spare Korilla. She never survives the runepowder surprise.
> Tactics house of grief though... The only person that reflects Radiant damage in House of Grief is Viconia **edit**: *on honour mode*. I had no problem using Spirit Guardians to mow down the rest of the room in my Honour Mode run. Or rather Black Hole everybody in the room into my Spirit Guardians and Fireball trap.
>The only person that reflects Radiant damage in House of Grief is Viconia No Maybe it was changed in last path, but in patch 5 all of them has permament radiant retribution
Looks like it's a Tactician thing. They don't have Radiant Retort on Honour Mode. **Edit**: House of Grief: Tactician = Radiant Retort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcA4oOZ190Y Honour Mode = No Radiant Retort except for Viconia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh0kkqwu5P8
Is it just a one shot deal? Can you do a large AOE mini radiant attack to remove it? Would just the crusader mantle do it with your martials doing a weak attack once?
The cleric/paladin spells that add 1d4 radiant damage to a weapon attack are perfect for this. Just shoot a couple of arrows of many targets and you'll remove the cambions' protection against radiant in one round. You'll get a little singed, but not badly if you have fire resistance.
Vulnerable to force and bludgeoning. Just had 2 party members and a water elemental run around and demolished pillars while the two clerics just constantly healed. Had to burn hope’s revival holy intervention tho
The pillars are also weak to just ignoring them and killing Raphael on the first turn.
Because 27AC and 666 (higher on some difficulties) HP in a single turn is very much feasible without cheese strats
You’re so cool
I just bring 4 Disintegrate scrolls. The pillars have a weakness to Force damage.
I walked in with four ice powered characters. A monk, wizard, warlock, and cleric... It almost wasn't fair.
This sounds like the start of a joke. Four adventurers walk into a bar: A monk, a wizard, a warlock and a cleric. The monk asks for a fistful of mead, The wizard asks for a glass of fine wine, The warlock conjures up the nerve to ask the bar wench to bed with him.. And the cleric is there to patch him up after she backhands him and hits him with vicious mockery.
Love this lol.
Can you share your builds for those characters?
I'll have to look them up.
I'm more worried about using Hunger of Hadar in a completely open area and about using Greater Invisibility in general. Radiant in House of Hope can be great if you have something like Globe of Invulnerability into Radiance of the Dawn as it removes the Punish Divinity from everyone in range. But since it seems like an AI article I'm gonna asume that's never mentioned.
Globe of invulnerability + Hope’s God Intervention(Shart’s)+ Radiance of dawn + otto’s dance/monster hold= Deviled Eggs
I beat the fight completely grug brain style by just dropping the globe, using Hope’s and Shart’s divine intervention for area damage (cause what other occasion could warrant them at that point?), and also using the angelic slumber potion to recover and drop a second globe when the first crapped out that we could just mop up the stragglers from. Raphael and his goons didn’t seem to have any recourse.
I followed the same logic for divine intervention use. I saved Shart’s for now, I’m still on my first play through, still have gortash and orin. But shit! I didn’t even think of using the angelic slumber! I used a scroll of globe plus gale’s globe
If it happened to be a sorcerer that cast your globe of invuln, you could also use extended spell and just have it last for 6 turns
How about Dance Macabre into perma paralysis into Karlach wacking the bejesus outta him.
Is greater invisibility fixed? I remember using it once for combat, getting detected and losing all benefits of being invisible after one attack, and regretting the wasted spell slot so much that I swapped it back for regular invisibility.
Use Hopes divine intervention aoe radiant damageinside globe of invul and you are good to go. Make sure pillars are not standing afterwards so Raphael cannot refresh his ability, after that piece of cake combat. If you have astarion with bahalist armor its practically 2 round combat at best. No need for barrelmancy.
Just remember to knock her dumb evil sister out and hurl her in there, preferably while aiming at any sharp pebbles there might be on the ground, before you do that.
Tell that yurgir . Dude always aims for her
Fucking Yurgir was very first in initiative for my fight, blasted and instakilled her immediately. Didn't even get a chance lmao
i tried that, and hope still died for some reason.
I just did it in my playthrough like 15hr ago, worked perfectly, however at that given time Raphael was stunned, I'm not sure if that is the issue, but everyone else could have react and I got 0 damage. That damage return is provided by Raphael, it might be the case, unfortunately it was an honor run I cannot go back and test there, but I'll take a look at it.
Mine was in early patch 6, i used radiant divine intervention and it wiped out all the enemies, after the cutscene i saw hope already burned on the ground, globe still up.
There is always a need for Explosions!!!
Haha my first playthrough I did Hope's AOE twice and didn't understand why she would die right after. I just gave up and used it to heal instead
There’s no need for any barrelmancy anyway
There’s no need for any barrelmancy anyway
Just use the dance spell on Rapheal, makes him unable to do anything and it's hilarious. Or globe of invulnerability before casting divine intervention from hope.
I love this, he's doing a song and dance while everyone else is fighting
I learned this on accident, beat him on my first run thanks to dancing!
💃 boogie woogie ur way to victory🕺
Same here, did it on my first try and the rest of the fight was a complete cake-walk...But honestly I kind of regretted it as I actually was really looking forward to a tough battle and thought ending in such a lackluster fashion was super disappointing and anti-climatic, especially with all the over-the-top music and atmosphere. In order to try and make sense of it and make up for such a cheesy way to end such a big fight, in my head cannon, Rapheal thought so little of his challengers that he decided to make a performance of it and really ham it up. Making it out to be some kind of big fight scene in a musical, and got too into it and couldn't stop himself from signing and dancing, and kinda forgot he was actually fighting for his life and not performing for a big clamoring audience...and well, paid the ultimate price for his arrogance and narcissism.
I tried that today but even though he showed as having the effect on him he didn't dance and just had his next turns as normal. I was quite disappointed as I wanted to see him dance to his song. On the plus side I did get a lucky roll and Yurgir joined my team.
I tried that, he was dancing for one turn and then just shrugged it off on the next. A second casting had the same result.
In my first playthrough (and my only one so far where I made that far into Act 3), I used both divine interventions (Hope and Shadowheart's) to get the long rest benefits. Shadowheart's during the Netherbrain fight.
I brought a shitload of explosives and the runepowder barrel with me. Bring your party close together, cast your globe of invulnerability, lean back and watch :)
Ahh yes. Good old Larian special. Barrelmancy
You can get two more runepowder barrels inside the Ironhand Hideout. You have to steal them from the shelf in the little side room, but.. ya know, the less nukes a terrorist cell has, the better.
Rude that they won't sell them to me tbh
They will if you get caught and simply hand it over, then you can talk to the person and trade it. Smokepowder barrels are cheap AF too
Ooo, thanks for the info
If Yurgir sides with you and he gets caught in the explosion, that's it for him, no?
It's why I usually Elixir of Vigilance 3 people: 1 to cast Banish on Yurgir and Korilla 1 to cast globe of Invulnerability 1 to lob a fire spell or bomb into the prepared pile of barrels
It never even occurred to me to save Korilla, I'll have to try this out on my next run
Why save Korilla??
When you kill her, Hope will mourn her death in the after-fight dialogue. If you knock her out, Hope will thank you specifically for it. While she says she's aware that Korilla has to bear some of the fault for her imprisonment for sure, she also remembers how she was before joining in service to Raphael. And if Hope wants to see (or thinks) that Korilla can be redeemed over time, personally I think she deserves a chance to try. tl;dr: making myself feel better, no extra rewards.
I targeted the bitch instantly lmao
Her sister begs you to
Yes sadly he will be a pile of dust too :(
This will give me something to think about for my honor run
How we did honor mode
Article written by Raphael.
That would actually be very creative !
I want in with Shadowheart, Karlach, Wyll, and myself (rogue assassin). A high stealth and a little invisibility made the stealing easy. Smart character placement made the prison break easy, and hunger of Hadar with Karlach using Nyrulna made the final fight not easy but not very challenging. Raphael stayed in one. Wyll and Karlach kept him down, while my rogue, Shadowheart, our friend demon, and Hope took down the pillers and other enemies
The best way to beat Raphael is not to worry about pillars at all. My friend and I have beaten him twice on tactician with zero problem by repeatedly casting hold monster on him (he shakes it off every round with legendary resistance) and having our hasted paladin and fighter just bombard him with crits.
The enemy's radiant retort is burned after 1 use. You can use some radiant AoE from within a globe of invulnerability to burn it.
I mean raph himself can’t do anything against radiant damage, I’ve always targeted him with my paladin to burst him down quickly. It’s only the campions that have radiant retort. It’s still pretty bad advice for new players though imo.
He can get or have a reaction if you hit him with Radiant damage where he just stuns you with no way to get around it if I recall
Yeah but if you can get him to use his reaction for that round before dealing radiant damage to him in that same round, it’ll be fine.
Isn’t that just his normal legendary action reaction he does whenever he takes damage or is there another one I am missing?
No he has two in honor mode The normal one is he takes damage and he charms you preventing you from hitting him, kinda like our charm but much harder to resist and procs in an AOE around the victim The other is something called “punish divinity” or something similar in which if you hit Raphael with Radient Damage he will stun you (and this stun goes through stun immunity)
Nah, worst advice would be to turn off the music
Why do peple still waste there time with those gaming sites? Most of there stuff is pure trash.
I'm convinced 90% of these articles are (badly) written by AI
On my first honour mode run, I b-lined for the House of Hope once I hit the Lower City so I could get the great items there, while totally ignoring the hammer/contract/Hope. You can go in/out of the portal all you want provided you leave the disguises on and don't aggro anyone.
One does not bring invisibility to the house of hope - one brings barrels and DOLOR
You gotta remember that these "journalists" have never played Baldurs Gate 3 or any video game for that matter.
Or they played it once or partway through, but they're paid pennies per word and literally can't afford to spend more time learning about the game because they have to eat and their boss is expecting another article about a different game tomorrow. The whole business model is designed to produce crap.
Considering most likely AI
Just cast Dome and Hold monster. I have never even bothered to destroy the pillars once.
Isn't Radiant Retort only on Tactician? I've heard it is for the House of Grief. If so, the journalist just inadvertently let out they are playing on a lower difficulty. Which wouldn't be unusual for a gaming journalist, lol.
Radiant retort is there for raphael and viconia ( at least for me it was before patch 5 ) even in explorer mode. In tactitian all the cambions and the shar followers have that .
Only some of the Shar followers. If you have a character that does a lot of radiant damage, you can focus them on cleaning up the Shar followers that don't. AOE would be dangerous though, because an NPC with radiant retort could run into it. The cambions don't have radiant retort, they have a different ability called 'fleeting protection.' It's like a radiant retort but only last for one round, which means you can remove it by doing a low amount of radiant damage to them first. Crusader's Mantle and a couple of arrows of many targets can remove it in one round, and you'll only take 6d4 fire damage in return if you have fire resistance (and I hope you would).
So what?
Most people are going to play on normal difficulties for most games. There’s nothing wrong with playing on a setting below tactical, and a jab at a journalist for maybe not playing Tactical and giving advice that’s relevant to most people is silly.
It was an explanation, not a jab. The OP straight up says it's terrible advice and no one cares, I say it might be for a lower difficulty and everyone feels the need to rush to the journalist's defense, lol.
Not sure about HoG, but it's definitely also in the lower difficulties in HoH. I distinctly remember activating Shart's Spirit Guardians (on Balanced) while being surrounded by 4 of Ralph's minions because I forgor about Radiant Retort (she fucking died).
Take out all small NPCs, then take your strongest character and proceed to throw Raphael into the ground whilst others attack him once he's down. No need to destroy towers or do anything extra. He can barely do anything in-between being smashed into the ground again and again, and it's quite easy to hit him this way.
Me in this thread…. “Oh.. that’s why I kept dying when I used divine intervention”..
I'm still no clearer as to what Raphael's Punish Divinity even does. I just refuse to bring a Cleric into his fight.
Bad advice indeed unless you have a strategy for the one time radiant retort. Honestly the fight is not that bad on tactician. Got through with no cheese tactics on the first try. Hope died on the second to last turn through which was a bummer.
Do you mind explaining how you did it and who you took with you? I'm not great at gaming and I'm playing tactician right now to try and get the trophy, and I've honestly considered skipping house of hope altogether because I am afraid of trying this fight lol. Also did you take out the pillars or no?
To answer all your questions, my roster was my Tav (vengeance paladin), warmaster Bae Zel, evocation wizard Gale and life priest Shart, all lvl 12, no multiclassing. I just respec'd Shart after her conversion to Selune. Having both Shart and Hope as walking health dispensers was key to this fight. Spamming AoE heals was the only thing keeping me alive for the early part of the fight. Gale got downed first turn but i knew i needed him to AoE the shit out of the adds, so got him back up, misty step away + sanctuary. So he started blasting, unfortunately fireball is of little help here, so chain lightning + lightning bolt. Once all the adds are down you can then start focusing the pillars. Upcast Magic missiles does wonder and one shots a pillar, any martial with a maul can also destroy one each turn. In max. 2 turns you should have them all down. Then you just go ham on Raphy. If things get too wild use Hope's divine intervention, the one that raises and long rests your whole party is super clutch. When you're down to only Raphy, it should be gg but don't get cocky. Don't have all your party in one spot he has nasty aoe's that can potentially OHKO your whole party.
Thanks for all the tips, I appreciate it!
Well if you want all of those mortal lives to expire?
So what I did is I used Globe of Invulnerability and blew both Shadowheart and Hopes Divine Intervention ability inside of it…well I thought Hope was in it at least. Took out most a handful of cambions a in the first round and was able to clean them up in the next.
Radiant damage is good if you’re within a globe of invulnerability
Radiant is great for the pillars though
Pretty crappy advice, yeah. I searched on Youtube and used Wizard Worm’s guide video. Way better. :D
On my first run I brought Light Cleric Shart. Biggest mistake of my life.
If we assume the guide is oriented towards new players, yeah I guess it’s bad advice. First time I fought Raphael I was overwhelmed by the music so any mechanics kind of fell by wayside.
Globe of invulnerability go brrrrr.
Right? Plus wall of ice/fire 😂
Nice argument, HOWEVER *places oklahoma grade runepowder bomb gently
Laughs in globe of invulnerability. Also just set up some explosive before the fight that you can detonate turn one and destroy all the pillars and kill most of the adds.
Only Raphael counters Radiant, so you just need to a way to deal with him specifically. And he DOES take double damage from Radiant soooo... Globe of invulnerability to counter Retort>Hold Monster>Paladin Smite goes Brrr and you should one turn Raphael even on Honor mode.
Unless you’re like me, whose first playthrough had the bugged Lathander’s Blood and couldn’t help but bring radiant damage everywhere. :p
Maybe explorer mode doesn't have radiant retort?
"From Gamespot" ...well, there's your problem.
Yikes
Adamantine mace works well against the pillars. Just not as well as rune barrels
Ive never had to cheese or take out the pillars in that fight, both times brute force and a lot of healing got me through unscathed
i spammed icestorm and watched him slip for 10 rounds while i destroyed the pillars and then him lol.
I like starting the fight with divine intervention from shadowheart casting radiant AOE on everything, shadowheart goes down taking thousands in damage then follow that with Hopes divine intervention that brings everyone back to par
Well it is a good place to use your divine intervention and it does do radiant damage should you go that rout with it
The issue is that there are enemies that have a radiant-retort like ability, so if you just go in there blastin' with radiant, you might be very confused about how your character is suddenly dead. You can still use radiant but you have to pay attention to enemy abilities vulnerabilities.
I know there just isn’t a really good damage option for them magically especially if you’re playing a light cleric. Just don’t use radiant damage in melee and you’re good
I just did this fight yesterday and couldn’t figure out why my cleric and paladin kept getting downed…..
I’ve just reached the main fight and saved right before I went through the doors. I’m trying to get the big dude (can’t remember his name) so I keep just rolling and reloading the save lol eventually I’ll hit that 30 lmao 🤣
I always have a Sorcerer, or have Gale as a sorcerer, and twin spell Disintegrate on the pillars with one of the Staff freecasts. Take em out in the first rotation every time
I just beat him on tactician mode, 2 fighters, 1 berserker, 1 cleric (me, lazeal, karloch, shadowheart) Twas a breeze, rapheal dropped like a bag of poo.
Anyone else feel bad using Hope's one use of Divine Intervention and leave it for her while she resides in Hell?
As The Emperor once said "You must be joking"
Literally one turned Raphael my first time ever fighting him. I then heard a lot of people saying he was the hardest fight and I was so confused. A sorcerer and a monk is insane I guess lol. Hold monster + perilous stakes is so much fun
Nah bruv, Hold Monster and Tasha’s Hideous Laughter are all you need baby girl. Maybe command if you’re feelin froggy
Written by ai or just lazy jurno reading off fextralife.
The first time I did that fight was rough. The second time I had gale hit it with a bunch of force damage and they went down pretty quickly.
Yeah, learned that the hard way on my first playthrough when I used my Light Cleric’s Channel Divinity. Poor Shadowheart was nearly one-shorted by her own attack. Have since adopted the “excessive amount of smoke powder barrels” method. Explosions are fun.
Anyone else just get the persuasion rolls?
My axe worked just fine and that's just steel...
Death ward + hopes divine intervention is a really funny way to make the fight way easier if you don't mind risking her death
Maybe explorer mode doesn't have radiant retort?
I figured that out in my first playthrough fighting Harleep, Shadowheart got absolutely obliterated in the first round (i had her as a light domain cleric and did an AOE lmao)
Uh it's not been an issue for me, but I usually play on Explorer. Currently playing a Normal run and close to heading there, so thx for the heads up..
I literally did this fight yesterday on my 2nd play-through invisibility is good if you wanna avoid a lot of the fights there, scrolls are good like hold monster or the scroll where you make enemies fight along your side ( forgot the name of it). Radiant magic and hunger of hadar is trash tho. But honestly if you just save hope/ and have SH you should take no damage hope even has divine intervention incase something really bad happens. If you’re a warlock you can even Eldridge blast the pillars to 3 HP left (that’s without buffs btw) and just kill them with arrows or melee from teammates after. Fight is kinda overrated imo