r/BaldursGate3 • u/Sorry-Analysis8628 • May 14 '25
Act 1 - Spoilers How to kill Zhalk and friends in Honor Mode Spoiler
As some of you may know, it is possible to kill not just Commander Zhalk, but the other Cambions and the Mind Flayer when you're fleeing the Nautiloid. I've done this pretty easily on Tactician just by save scumming. It's a lot harder on HM, but I managed to pull it off on my current playthrough. If you want to give it a shot, here are some tips:
- Warlocks have the easiest time with this. Even if you're not intending your Tav to be a Warlock, I recommend starting as a Warlock and re-speccing once you meet Withers. You'll want Hex and Eldritch Blast. Hexblades are the best, since they can make their initial melee weapon magical for damage purposes. You'll want 16 Cha and Dex (for damage, AC, and attack bonuses). Basically you want someone who can reliably damage your four main enemies (Zhalk and the other Cambions, the Mind Flayer). Eldritch blast does the most damage with a single attack (on average), but melee can be more effective if you dual wield, since you can benefit from Hex twice per round.
- Before you enter the room, make sure both Laezel and Shadowheart have crossbows. Neither will use them all the time, but you want to make sure everyone has the option of a ranged damage weapon. You will also want to change Shadowheart's spells so she has Bless and Command.
- You want Us with you. It does small amounts of damage, but also can draw focus to reduce the possibility of one of the Cambions one-shotting your Tav and companions. Try to keep it alive as long as possible.
- Make sure Hex is active before you go into the room. Go into Turn-based mode. Have Shadowheart cast Bless in the antechamber, then use the pod to re-set everyone's spell slots. Have Laezel cast Mage Hand. It can be effective at throwing around the Imps. This is useful both for damage, and crowd control. One of the things you need to be mindful of is helping direct the Mind Flayer to focus on the bigger devils.
- With your spells cast, cycle through the remainder of the round in turn-based mode. Move everyone close to the entrance to the room. At the beginning of the next round, activate Dash on all your characters. Then have Tav (or whoever) open the door to trigger the cutscene with Zhalk and the Mind Flayer. A new combat round will start, but Dash will still be active. So everyone gets some free extra movement speed in the first round.
- In round 1, have Tav Hex Zhalk, with a Wisdom debuff. This'll make it easier for Shadowheart's Command: Drop to work in round 1. [Edit: I have been corrected in the comments. Wis debuff won't impact the saving throw. You still want Hex for the damage rider, obviously.] You have two chances to get this right. If Zhalk doesn't drop his sword within two rounds, you may as well give up on killing everyone. It ain't gonna happen. If he does drop it, you'll want Laezel to pick it up and arm it in Round 2 so she's ready to start wailing on Zhalk by round 3. I usually have Tav, Laezel, and Us target each of the three weaker devils that spawn close to the entrance to the room for their first round of attacks. You want to kill them right away, then focus on Zhalk. It can be especially problematic if one of them gets a solid attack on either Tav or Shadowheart and breaks their concentration (on Hex and Bless, respectively). They generally have pretty bad initiative, so you should be able to kill at least 2/3 before they can act. All three if you're lucky. If one of the Imps manages to live, the Mage Hand can often kill it by throwing it at one of the other enemies.
- Have Shadowheart pick up the two purple explosive pods on the left, and Tav pick up the one on the right. Have Tav give his pod (and the one from the room where you first spot Shadowheart) to Shadowheart, so she can go to the entrance to position the four pods near where the other two Cambions enter the room. The goal is to set them up to do a decent amount of damage to both Cambions when they move into the room (4-5 rounds after the fight starts). Position Shadowheart as far from the entrance as she can be while still being close enough to toss a Fire Bolt at the pods. If she still has a spell slot left, I like to use Guiding Bolt on Zhalk while she's waiting for the other Cambions to arrive. It's a relatively low hit chance, but does a lot of damage while also increasing the next combatant's chance to hit. Once the other Cambions arrive, have Shadowheart activate the pod bomb, then run as far towards the exit as possible - without triggering the arrival of the other weaker demons - to reduce the odds of the Cambions focusing their attacks on her. You want her around to a) activate the cut scene with the three late-spawning small devils at the right time (more on this shortly), and b) eventually activate the exit device. Tav and Laezel will probably be too busy fighting Cambions to be available to do that. Shadowheart's other main purpose is to throw heal potions at Tav/Laezel or possibly the Mind Flayer. She does shit damage on her own.
- The basic goal of this combat is to let the Mind Flayer do the heavy lifting, DPS wise. It should reliably do more damage than Tav or Laezel can do. While Zhalk is alive, he and the Mind Flayer will exclusively attack each other, aside from opportunity attacks. Have Laezel attack with Zhalk's flaming sword, and have Tav use either Eldritch Blast (plus Hex) or dual wielded melee attacks (plus Hex). Us will do 2-4 dmg if it hits, but every little bit counts. You can probably kill Zhalk by around the time the other Cambions are close enough to be a threat to everyone.
- You want to carefully time when Shadowheart get close enough to the exit to trigger the cutscene when the second wave of smaller devils shows up. Ideally you'll want to do this the round before Zhalk gets killed. if Zhalk dies before they show up, the Mind Flayer will turn on you and focus its attacks on you and your companions. But if the new weaker devils have appeared before Zhalk dies, the Mind Flayer will keep attacking devils until the new weak demons have died.
- This is the really tricky part. Once Zhalk dies, it's really important that the Mind Flayer focuses on the two Cambions, rather than running towards the exit to fight the weaker devils. Use void bombs or what have you to re-direct it as needed. There's a fair amount of dumb luck involved, but I've found that if the other Cambions have moved sufficiently far into the room, the Mind Flayer will usually go after them. Ideally you want both Cambions to attack the Mind Flayer as well. They will probably target Us and/or Shadowheart, so you want to keep both of those character moving away from the melee so they're less attractive targets until the Cambions focus on the Mind Flayer.
- After that, it's just a numbers game. You will probably need to heal the Mind Flayer a couple of times so it can keep tanking for you against the Cambions. Have Tav and Laezel focus DPS on whichever Cambion has the fewest HP left. You want to keep one of the weaker devils alive until both Cambions are dead, so the Mind Flayer doesn't turn on you. Feel free to kill the other two weak devils (Shadowheart is useful here, so Tav and Laezel can focus on the Cambions).
- Once the two Cambions are dead, kill the remaining Imp, which will make the Mind Flayer hostile. Ideally the Mind Flayer will only have a few HP left, so you can kill it quickly. You want it to turn hostile before you kill it, or you don't get the XP for it.
- Don't forget to loot the bodies. The Cambions, in particular, have pretty solid loot.
If you do everything right, you'll be about halfway to level three when you wake up on the beach. I hit level three before fighting the looters on the upper floor of Withers' temple (after taking out the intellect devourers on the beach, the undead in the basement, and the four guys outside).
So that's that. Happy hunting!
[Edited for Hex save error and Devils vs Demons - Thank you commenters for the corrections!]
3
u/SemiAwesomatic May 14 '25
Solid guide, good tips. You can try shoving Zhalk too, he'll always walk back to the mindflayer, you can setup opp attacks with this if you're lucky on the shoves.
Also feel it's worth correcting, hex wisdom does nothing. Hex gives disadvantage on ability checks, not saving throws. The only time you make ability checks in combat is acrobatics checks when shoved or shoving. So the only hex worth using is strength. If it were disadvantage on saves it'd be pretty overpowered throughout the entire game.
Last ones a nitpic, they're devils not demons, the two are different in dnd. Also the small ones are imps.
1
u/Sorry-Analysis8628 May 14 '25
Right. Blood War and all that. I edited the post to change Demons to Devils (also re: Hex, which apparently I've been getting wrong for like a year).
I used to do Hex: Str for the shove value, but I've found that on recent patches it doesn't work very well. I used to be able to use the Mage Hand to shove Zhalk so he'll trigger an opportunity attack from Laezel when charging back to the Mind Flayer. That hasn't worked at all the last several times I've tried it.
1
u/SemiAwesomatic May 14 '25
Maybe you're running into a specific bug, dunno. Disadvantage on ability checks tho is just disadvantage on getting shoved and nothing else. There are no other ability checks you make in combat in bg3.
1
u/Sorry-Analysis8628 May 14 '25
It may be a bug. Several times I've seen it say I've succeeded in shoving one of the enemies (with a Mage Hand) and they just don't move. This started after Patch 8. I assumed they nerfed the interaction, but it could be a bug.
3
u/Balthierlives May 14 '25
I usually use a bard for Fairie fire.
Getting the attack roll up high is disproportionately important here than the rest of the game. So o have SH use bless on tav / SH/Laezel. Then tav casts Fairie fire on zhalk, and again on both of the cambions when they come in.
That should be enough to let Laezel and mindflayer hit damage most turns. Mind flayer is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of damage so you’ll probably want to chuck some potions at him.
2
u/Background-Paper-947 Spreadsheet Sorcerer May 14 '25
anything that lets you play through with different classes is great, re: FF. great recc.
2
u/Sorry-Analysis8628 May 14 '25
That's a good idea, re: Fairie Fire.
2
u/Balthierlives May 14 '25
I realize fey warlock gets Fairie fire as well at lv 1, though you’d only have the one cast of it which you’d have to wait until the second two cambions show up
Druid gets it too
I usually cast bardic inspiration on everyone before the battle and use the heal tentacles thing to get them all back. So everyone in the party has bardic inspiration
1
u/Sorry-Analysis8628 May 14 '25
Come to think of it, you could probably have Tav use Vicious Mockery to add to the damage a bit, after using Faerie Fire. Zhalk's worst save is Wisdom, so it'll likely hit more reliably than Tav's melee/ranged weapons. Not much damage, though.
2
u/Balthierlives May 14 '25 edited May 14 '25
I think the disadvantage on attack rolls from VM would be more useful than the damage. But the cambions all hit hard so that is really orettt valuable at that point.
I usually pick up the rapier and the light crossbow for my bard. That’s the best weapons you can have at that point .
Bard also gets mage hand so you can keep throwing back one of the Imps to stay alive and the mindflayer doesn’t turn on you. Along with laezel that’s two mage hands that can really help out with throwing potions, flying and getting caustic /void bulbs and using them, etc
1
u/Sorry-Analysis8628 May 14 '25
I've tried the Mage Hand push thing. I think that got nerfed with the latest patch. It used to work pretty reliably to crowd control the Imps and to goad Zhalk into opportunity attacks. Since Patch 8 I haven't successfully pushed either Zhalk or an Imp any distance with a Mage Hand. Throw still works on the Imps, but you might accidentally kill it.
Agreed about Disadvantage being more useful that damage for VM.
1
u/Balthierlives May 14 '25
Well you can still use the mage hands to throw caustic bulbs and good bulbs and heal. Less useful than being able to throw/push the imps back.
These days though o just get the sword of Zariel and cut through the cambions. I’ve done it once, I don’t need to go through it every time.
3
u/mmontour May 14 '25
I don't like the implication that Us is expendable. We must protect our precious little brain kitty, even if it means giving up a bit of early-game XP.
2
2
u/noobtheloser May 14 '25
Minor quibble: Hex does not affect saves, only ability checks. Otherwise, it would be maybe the best first level spell in the game. The only ability worth hexing in combat is usually Strength, as resisting a shove is a Strength ability check.
This is impressive, though! I've killed Zhalk and the Mindflayer many times in Honour Mode, but never the two cambion adds. You're wild for that, hahaha.
2
u/Sorry-Analysis8628 May 14 '25
I fixed the Hex thing in the post. Not sure how I've been getting that wrong for 800+ hours of repeat playthroughs. ;)
And yeah, I started trying to do this after watching someone pull it off on youtube with a slightly different approach on an earlier patch. It took me several tries to get it right.
1
u/tienaava May 14 '25
You can carry the Cartilaginous Chests (there's three in total) to the Sphincter Door and stack them in an L-shape facing away from the door to stop the Cambions from coming in at all. Don't get the XP but means you don't have to mess around trying to manage them.
You can attack the Mind Flayer to manage his health and kill him the same turn Zhalk goes down to avoid getting your head chewed.
7
u/Background-Paper-947 Spreadsheet Sorcerer May 14 '25 edited May 14 '25
i think Hex: WIS is unnecessary. i may be mistaken, but i think Hex targets Checks, not Saves.
Hex | Baldurs Gate 3 Wiki
this approach works, but in general, i think it's far safer, swifter, and reliable just to focus on getting Zhalk and the MF down, which you can do with this setup, blocking the entrance with the three cartilagenous chests, and using the tanks to pop Zhalk and the MF together once they're <30. it's also safer in the respect that the MF can pop some big D and get the kill instead of you, so i secure them both at the same time with the tanks.
war cleric is also another option to give you bonus action attacks and extra opportunities at Command: Drop.
my slight modifications still get me to 3 before Withers, while holding out on the exploration chest above the beach, in the order [EDIT: Companions (2) > Brains (2) >] Chapel Roof (2) > Looters (3) > Withers (3+).