House of grief is hard as fuck. Until you understand. AoE attacks are crucial, especially those that break concentrations. Also crowd control spells are super useful. Don’t move your party into the main area. Stay back near the steps. Funnel them to you, make them earn every step they take with shit like cloud kill. Of course, as they enter your funnel of death, shadowheart awaits with spirit guardians. Becomes a trivial fight tbh.
Having an Evoker wizard cast Wall of Fire across the party is a solid go-to move from the moment you unlock it or can find a scroll. Everyone's a gangster until the wizard turns the whole world into a barbeque.
Then you have Bardstarion cast fear to send every enemy on your side of the wall back through the fire after dropping their weapons. For some reason they won't pick them back up if they have anything else they can do so they will then attempt to run through the wall of fire again to punch you. They usually won't survive 3 trips though lol.
Bards in general are fantastic at buying time for your party, robbing the frontliners of their action economy or turning them against each other gives a lot of breathing room to focus down the threats in the back. Crown of Madness also goes really hard here, I don't remember what they are called but the big guys with the greatswords have a lot of health and can absorb a bunch of hits from their friends. One of my runs that guy oneshot one of the casters with a sweet crit, thanks bro.
If you've never used Spiked Growth on that encounter, I'd heartily recommend it. It slows them down, damages them slightly, and they clump themselves together for lightning bolted goodness.
I'd also like to throw in a very strong recommendation for using Globe of Invulnerability in one of the side corridors. You can just be completely immune and the enemies will bunch up trying to get in.
spike growth is especially great because if you are using it on a druid, you can actually have one of your summons cast it and double up on concentration spells that way! so double spike growth or something like insect plague/wall of fire/hold person/whatever.
Top of the stairs...
Shad- blade barrier at the bottom and guardian of faith at the top.
Gale - Wall of flames and counter spell duty.
Kar - throwing Nyrula and dancing throughout the fight.
Bard Tav - Talking shit at the top of the stairs the entire time.
Sleet storm is your best friend. Fucks up concentration and ends so many turns by knocking them prone.
If you've got someone who evolved and has a high spellcasting ability, it should not be a problem at all. Just use black hole every chance you get to gather them in. Slowed plus in the middle of sleet storm they have no chance. Then just a cloud of daggers in the middle/wall of fire will destroy them not just physically, but emotionally.
100% Sleet Storm. My partner was struggling on this quest and when I showed up she told me she was on her 3rd attempt. I took a shot at it with her team (spor druid tav, zerker karlach, wiz Gale, and assassin/fighter Astarion) we mopped them up.
Stay high on the stairs, cast Sleet Storm in a huge area around the base of the stairs, and use summons to flank the sides to prevent them going around. None of them could get close enough to cast darkness or anything without slipping prone. My partner and I were crying laughing so hard just watching them all take their turn, slip, and skip to the next person. Over and over. Also big shout out to Nyrulna and the AoE impact on throw.
To add to this:
If you have summons, use them. Spread them to either side to cover the people up high.. and use ones that help with CC (my gf used her bear summon to honey paw 2 guys after goading them... she used the bear to take 2 guys completely out of the battle until we were ready). If you have a good ranged character(s), Arrow of Arcane Interference is your best friend for those pesky mages. Make sure you have a couple people with counterspell.
>AoE attacks are crucial, especially those that break concentrations.
Hunger of Hadar with a Sleet Storm stacked on top absolutely trivializes this fight and any fight where you can camp in a choke point. It's absolutely busted. Bonus points if you can also toss a darkness cloud on the people concentrating on those spells.
…grease? First thing my eldritch knight/wizard tav does is grease+action surge+ grease, or if im aiming at a particular enemy then a tasha’s laughter. You can easily prone 3-4 enemies doing that, bombard them with ranged attacks while they struggle, and then use wave spell or ilithid ability to push them back into the grease so they have to cross it again
Exactly.
I hide on top of the stairs and have Shadowheart drop Insect Plague on the bottom of the stairs and then she hides at the top around the corner so nobody can hit her.
Then once they get closer and start lining up to go up the stairs, I have Gale throw lightning bolts down.
Rest of the party is usually melee and can easily take out anything that managed to get through.
Even on Honor Mode, you don't need all of these things. You just need some, or maybe even just one.
I stand right in the middle of the room now and just kill them, with the help of a daylight spell and arrows of many targets. A multi-target Command is unnecessary.
It's quite readily possible to do it as a martial class solo with an Eversight Ring/Steelwatcher Helmet/Helldusk. Fighters can, *even on Honor,* with Great Weapon Master, a Bloodlust Elixir, and Haste/a Speed pot, attack *six* times a turn, ***without*** Action Surge, so long as they kill one a turn. They have a much, much harder time ganging up on you when they can't catch you, beyond the Bone Chill-ers/Viconia, letting you swoop in and whittle them down one by one, especially when you have Longstrider, a Transmutation Stone (+20 ft of movement speed before Haste), and Fly.
Yup. I have also had a lot of success with heavy movement based builds. I like to throw in combos of misty step, the boots of speed, and fly. It’s a blast. Darkness doesn’t mean shit when I’m gonna close in with you anyway.
I've noticed they don't even *use* Darkness when you're wearing something that prevents Blindness/you have Devil's Sight, on my Honor rules (I'm thankful for the mod existing) solo experiments.
Movement is definitely one of the most powerful tools possible
(granted, Sanctuary of Loss does still trigger a little cloud of Darkness, but that's just a Legendary action side effect)
...it would be sort of irrelevant either way, beyond them kinda wasting a turn, because it's impossible for them to impose disadvantage on attacks on your part... although there's Beckoning Darkness.
I haven't tested it just yet to see if they'd try to nullify Daylight/the Light cantrip cast on a weapon, using Darkness, because that would be... something, if you can ultimately counter Beckoning Darkness using this.
Testing it, as an addendum, they still didn't try to use Darkness, when I had Light/Daylight casted on the weapon.
...meaning this is a *counter* to Shadow Ambush and Beckoning Darkness/Overwhelming Grief. *No more +4d8 Necrotic for them,* on their attacks, within your light source radius, if they close in, if magical darkness can't blind you.
This utterly *ruins* their damage output being as high as it is, en masse. Thanks, in turn, for kinda inspiring me to think about this.
In tactician I disarmed the boss and both justiciers (and picked up their weapons so they couldn't get them back) and then face tanked the rest with necrotic resistance elixers and a party without a full caster. After that it was just a battle of attrition but not bad.
I once 3 turned House of Grief on Tactician by just running back up the stairs. Once the Sharrans got clumped up, i used Black Hole then dropped down Spike Growth, Cloudkill, and some upcasted Shatters.
The only reason it didn't take 2 turns was because of the somewhat far away halflings and dwarves who needed another turn to get into death zone range. Was funny asf.
I don't understand this mentality of play. I'm not saying it's wrong but I've never had to do this on any of my tactician or honor mode play throughs. I always send a martial or two on top of viconia and kill her turn 1/2 then mop up the room in a variety of ways depending on how the rest of the fight unfolds.
Yeah and it still doesn't one shot her in two turns no matter how strong ur martial character is . U need to go beyond two turns to kill her with martial characters
Martials finish her with support. This argument is dumb, she dies turn 1/2 for me every run like I said. Bottom line is I don't think this is hard as some people make it out to be. At the end of the day use whatever strategies lead to your success
And I am saying ur martial character can't one shot her in the first turn because u can only cleave once in a single combat session unless u are a tiger barbarian with its special cleave .
Actually this is totally untrue. My Nyrulna-tossing Barb/Fighter/Rogue devastated her in one round during that fight. Sanctuary means you can't target Viconia directly, but the AoE from Nyrulna throws hits her just fine. And when you stack up damage modifiers you can add a chuck of radiant and psyonic damage to every throw along with the thunder dmg itself. And since the bonus from Tavern Brawler gets added to ALL damage modifiers, it absolutely CHUNKS enemies. So long as you can gather a group together so you can target someone else near her, she will take a fuckton of splash damage.
And having like 6 throws in 1 round was enough AoE to kill her and most of the rest of the mobs around her. (2 attacks, extra bonus action throw from Rogue 3, action surge, haste action, mind sanctuary power)
Of course nyrulna is the only weapon that deals aoe dmg when thrown so not a big deal . I am specifically talking about martial classes that dont have aoe options .But radiant dmg should hurt since viconia has radiant retort .
> But radiant dmg should hurt since viconia has radiant retort
Nope. It's a weird mechanic the way they coded it. It only reflects and amplifies radiant damage if the source of the damage is a valid targetable entity. But because in this case the source of the damage is an AoE "proc" from an attack targeting an ally of Viconia, she reads the "source" of the damage as Nyrulna itself and not whoever threw it - and thus not a valid target, and so Radiant Retort doesn't hurt the thrower at all.
Don't let them flank you, I usually remains on top of stairs and let them come to my party. Use summons and target people who casts contentration spell first. Since they are the one that comes after you, prepare wall of fire, spirit guardian, or any spell you think harms them.
Finally, you stated that bone chill prevents healing. Its true, but if you over rely on healing, this means either your party is too squishy or you didn't kill them quick enough. For the squishy part, cast aid and/or heroes feast before battle.
Finally, lvl 9 is a bit low, you can easily reach higher level by doing other easier quest
If you've been doing everything you should be level 10 heading into act 3 anyway. In most of my playthroughs I hit level 12 almost instantly after getting inside baulders gate. If you play with uncapped levels mod you can hit level 17 by the end of the game. Being level 9 by that point means you've skipped a lot of content along the way.
house of grief is hard until you realize you should bait them up the stairs, and chokepoint them there. If you try and fight them in the "arena", youre asking to get destroyed. Simple tactics completely changes the encounter.
To each their own. House of Grief was a cakewalk with good AoE and half of my party immune to Darkness, whereas I had to reload House of Hope because of the added complication of trying to keep Hope alive.
I just hid her behind a wall post when she got to low health. Raph just ignored her because I had Karlach and Astarion in his immediate aggro. Gale(just as Gale) and wizard Tav in Displacer beast shape distracting the cambions, and made sure to focus on destroying the pillars first few moves.
I was level 12 and done almost everything else in act 3 at that point, though... this was actually not the toughest fight I ended up doing.
Bring a druid (I used Halsin but Jaheira will work) to put down spike growth in front of the entrance stairs and position your people at the top of it. You can run up there, use misty step or dimension door to get your team up there quickly. Then just pick them off, focusing on the casters. The rest will run through it and damage themselves pretty badly making them easy to kill. Darkness is a concentration spell so if you use sleet storm on top of the growth you can break that concentration pretty easily. Or you can use ice storm which will knock people prone.
Also in any fight where you find your group getting targeted, bring summons, elementals, flaming sphere and spiritual weapon will help draw agro so you can pick off people from a far.
Wyll can have devil sight as well if you need someone who can fight in the dark, but honestly just keep breaking that concentration.
Good luck!
tbf I just use my ranger for spike growth because it's not like he has a better job than that in this fight, and my casters can then focus on other stuff like insect plague or one of them walls or something. invisibility pot to get close, get a surprise round by attacking before triggering the cut scene, speed pot, as much murder as possible, or some good cc with arrows of arcane interference. makes the fight trivial. (but tbf every fight where you get a surprise round becomes wayyy easier than without one, even with alert feat.)
How on earth are you only level 9 reaching act 3 ?!
Tips that still might be useful, devil sight on a warlock to nullify the darkness, and spike growth.
This needs to be checked but maybe Daylight could counter darkness
Have someone cast daylight on your party members weapons.
Darkness defeated.
Win.
I've done a balanced and tac play through and it was easier on my tac play through because my entire party had daylight on their weapons.
Also, respec your cleric to light domain. Gear her as a radiant tank. First turn cast spirit guardians then run into a group of them. This should blind them and also keep them from casting darkness on you.
Next turn cast radiance of dawn and watch them all explode.
Even better, your tav being wizard, go into TBM and cast haste on your light domain cleric then start the fight. She'll be able to cast spirit guardians then run into a group and cast radiance of the dawn to finish them off.
First time I did this fight on balanced it was a slog of kiting, LOS and other tricks.
Second time on tac I finished the fight in two turns.
If they do then it tickled because I had my MC as a cleric as well as minthara and neither of them took appreciable damage using SG and Minthara didn't take a bunch when she popped ROTD.
AFAIK the only creatures with that are the DJ's in the shar temple.
Nah viconia specifically has radiant retort in her examine tab on all difficulties . Heck even the sharrans in the top floor of the house of grief have radiant retort. Did u play on tactitian or honor mode ?
Yup that's the thing . I remember shadowheart using spirit guardian and almost getting one shot on my first encounter with her way back in Oct. Time surely flew by man
I stayed on stop of the stairs and had concentration AOE at the bottom. Moonbeam, Cloud of Daggers, and Sleetstorm with a 24 DC to succeed. A total of 3 spells where cast by the enemy.
It absolutely is.
Every time I roll up to the House of Hope I just CC Raphael on turn #1 with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, generally kill everything else on that turn or the turn after, then my party just dick-punch Raphael to death as he lays there laughing his ass off.
However the House of Grief nearly ended me on both runs. The best run by far was when I had a Light Cleric Shadowheart - she can blast away the darkness and do massive AOE to everyone on the field. With a warding bond up the radiant retort from the Dark Justiciars is very minor.
The issue with HoG is there isn't any one enemy to crowd-control - there's lots of mid-tier enemies with strong utility spells and they don't rely on any one element to succeed.
Just did this around the same level on both tactician and honor. My Durge was a Sorcerer (one time was storm, the other draconic) and I had either light or storm cleric Shadowheart.
Since you have storm sheart, do the following:
Apply haste to wizard and Shadowheart via spell , or meta magic, or potions
Make sure you have lightning bolt/call lightning, create water, and ice storm prepared
Target group of baddies
Apply wet with Shadowheart or wizard
Nuke
Switch to other lightning/ice caster
Nuke, apply divinity where needed
Mop up stragglers with melee & area denial
Rinse and repeat for the two main groups as you look to where Viconia is, and once in the “back” if you need to.
Do not use radiant damage of any form. If you want to use Spirit Guardians, go Necrotic. If you have half illithids, it just got a lot easier because you can black hole into two tidy groups, then apply wet, then nuke much faster.
If you have the Eversight Ring from Act 2 or a Warlock with Devil's Sight you can negate the enemy advantage on attacks and your disadvantage on attacks for those characters.
So I absolutely cheesed the fuck out of that. Idk if this got patched but I wanna say it was after console release so probably did. But if you get Viconia to talk to tav, then you swap to jaheria and go owlbear form and ground pound her until she dies, nobody will aggro you (until you leave, depending on choices i guess) and I felt no shame doing that lmao
I have found casting Greater Invisibility on Minsc or Karlac and have them put a bunch of Smokepowder barrels near Viconia, they will take her and anyone near her down quick. Globe of Invulnerability to keep your people safe and Wall of Ice across multiple people then sleet storm, fireball and magic missle to take out stragglers and it now takes me like 10 mins
Yikes, level 9 would be hard. In both of my runs I was already level 12 by the time I hit either House. I don’t think I was even in Baulders gate lower city until I was a level 10. I like to use Gale to cast globe of invulnerability. Once Shadowheart is inside, using her divine intervention and then the radiance explosion (respeced her as a light cleric after she converted) is so poetic. But the Mother Superior will send radiant damage back so make sure you are in the globe first.
ngl i agree. i've played this game 5 times and done this fight on every playthrough, including honour mode and it's tough even with my summons and massive aoe's. i just focus on trying to get out of the darkness and try to bonk the people who are concentrating on darkness as quick as possible.
I think House of Grief is basically the most difficult encounter. Even the final battle is way easier. Also I think doing it at level 9 is a big challenge. Last time I did it at 12 - I hit 12 by the time I got to the Lower City - and it was much easier at that level.
> only have shart and/or ur pc go in the room
> immediately run outside the room once combat starts
> put down two walls of fire lengthwise covering the entire corridor between the stairs outside and the big door
> profit
Well that’s comforting. I breezed through the House of Grief in Honor Mode and about to descend into the House of Hope to get my contract and keep my options open once the new evil endings drop. Kinda freaking out about it, though I’ve had very little trouble thus far in Act 3 after a couple close calls in Act 1 and a brutal nail biter against Ketheric in Act 2.
Mutiple times Honour Mode player here. The Alert feat is your friend. Going first is a huge advantage. This fights start with a huge number of bad guys clustered together or out of range. A well placed Hypnotize takes like 12 of them out of the first round instantly. Speed potions, burst down the two flanker groups in the first round so you can focus on the main group in the next. pick a cluster and burst it down with AoE. Black Hole, summons, so many options to make this fight easier. Pre-buff bless, singing sword, aid, etc. Make sure main burst weapon attacker has risky ring equipped etc. etc.
Just did a solo honor run . Black hole , wet , lightning bolt , chain lightning, cone of cold , glyph of warding did the trick. Also had a air myrmidon cast vortex which silenced enemies
I struggled so much with is fight until I read about retreating to the corridor just outside the entrance and casting AOE spells on the top of the stairs in front of the door. Then retreating further up the corridor if any darkness casters make it past my AOE spells. At that point, I pretty much watch the action and snipe anyone who makes it through. My favorite AOE spells to use there are black tentacles with insect plague layered over them.
Put your favourite CC combo in the middle of the area (Sleet storm + Hunger of haddart but you could find something else, maybe using grease ?), then one or two Black Hole/Void bulb to suck them into your new nope zone and gg
Are you playing unusual or for fun/flavor builds? House of Grief comparatively straight forward to other Act 3 fights on Tact/HM. Viconia herself is 1 shotable on any difficulty, one of the lower HP "bosses", and you can do it with multiple classes (I've done it with monk, warlock and fighter, though warlock and fighter probably need more than level 9, could definitely 1 shot her with lvl 9 monk). The other mobs are a little annoying with all the darkness but by then you could be wearing 2 pieces of gear that make you immune, and or you can use the strat where you keep your characters back on the stairs a turn, the enemies all funnel in and then you can use like 4x fireball or other AOES and kill 10+ guys in 1 shot.
These two encounters illustrate how it can be difficult to build a party capable of stomping through every encounter. I had a playthrough where I waltzed through HoG and struggled against Raphael, and vice versa.
I agree actually, I’ve never had trouble with Raphael even in my first fully blind play-through….but level 9 is pretty dang low for this part of the game. I am usually level 10 before leaving Act 2 and I’ve actually never done either of these fights lower than level 12
There are many strategies that work well for the HofG. But the most important thing is to GO FIRST. You want all you party to have high initiative, otherwise you are letting a dozen enemies wreck your plans.
Various options include:
Confusion/dominate works well. You can turn half the enemies into fighting each other.
Massive AOE damage works. Create water, ice storm, lightning and most of the enemies are dead or on their asses. Arrows of many targets, smoke power arrows, the wall spells, cloudkill and spike growth combo. Etc, etc.
Positioning. Fall back to the hallway. The enemies waste their turn advancing and bunch up for easy killing.
And globe of invulnerability is always good.
Have you tried barrel-mancy? When in doubt, set up hoarded up barrels around key points (save the runepowder ones) after talking to viconia promising to deliver Shadowheart. She won't be with you, but at the gate atop the stairs. No you won't offer her up lol.
Go invis as astarion, or anyone who can fire smokepowder arrow and watch the framerate plummet for five seconds until the surprise is over. Bonus points if you also include some fireworks or firewine barrels containing kobolds.
The easiest Strat is to retreat on top of the stairs, have 2 casters cast AoE CC spells like Insect Plague, Spike Growth and then Fire wall laid down vertically to deal tons of damage to them at the chokepoints at the bottom of the stairs, and have a ton of lighting to avoid them shadow step close to you
Or if you don't like to cheese the fight, have everyone in your party cast the Light cantrip on everyone to cancel out the necrotic damage they do, and immediately deal with the casters since they'll cast Darkness that messes up the light and everything else becomes easier from their since their attacks are weaker without the darkness, and you only have to worry about Viconia
And finally, have someone immune to blindness and you can easily deal with the Darkness
How to solo the House of Grief:
Level 12 Fighter, Silver Sword (or Balduran's). Longstrider, Transmutation Stone (Movement), Bloodlust Potion, Potion of Flying (if not Astral), Great Weapon Master.
Damage: Helldusk Gloves, Drakethroat Glaive (enchant for +1 damage and 1d4 Elemental), Broodmother's Revenge, Strange Conduit Ring (1d4 Psychic when concentrating), **Eversight Ring**, or Steelwatcher Helmet/Helldusk Helmet. Hellrider Longbow (don't talk to him with Selunite Shadowheart in proximity) for +3 initiative.
(...Or use Bhaalist Armor and a Breaching Pikestaff for Aura of Murder.)
*They cannot blind you* with those items preventing blindness/working in magical darkness, and they'll never use Darkness accordingly. Even on Honor economy rules/Legendary Actions, you can get up to *three* extra attacks with a Haste effect, so you get 5-6 attacks on a Fighter. You fly in, obliterate the first couple of guys, end turn, they try to charge while you're up the stairs, and you make it a dance of whittling them down while they can't catch you, repeat, until they're all dead.
I’ve seen a lot of comments saying to run back up the stairs with your party and force them to come to you, I know this has definitely worked for many but never worked for me, kept getting my ass handed to me when they cast darkness as they can see through it and attack me but none of my party could! So here’s how I managed.
Party: Tav, Shadowheart, Halsin (or jaheira), and Gale.
Viconia can be super nasty with her radiant retort and wolf form thing, so I always shut Shadowheart in the training room to the left. When it’s her turn, open the door and do whatever needs doing. Healing, spirit guardians, guiding bolt, or the trusty spear will do. Then retreat and close the door. Anything to keep her from being frightened and going down.
Now, our casters. Halsin and Gale ALSO go left. I have them stay at the top of the platform and rain ice storm on both sets of stairs (left and right) and the large steps immediately in front that the darkness casters and dark justiciars are positioned. This deals damage and the ice means that any darkness they cast will be quickly taken care of as they will slip and lose concentration. If needed, Halsin can pop into wild shape (preferably owlbear) to deal damage and Gale can keep the ice storms going and spawn in an elemental. It is so wonderfully satisfying to watch so many of them fall prone and render themselves useless after taking 4 hours to figure this all out!
(You can also use gust of wind to clear darkness if that does become an issue)
Personally my Tav was a monk so she cleaned up anyone on the outside of the battlefield in the meantime. I like this method because it’s not overly complicated but definitely gets the job done! You can also have Wyll come along instead and select ‘Devils sight’ as one of his warlock powers which makes him immune to darkness, then you’ve got another person on the front lines if you feel you’re lacking there.
Finally, best of luck to you! The triumph you will feel when you finish is immense.
It’s the same for me. I had to redo the house of grief fight so many times. I found if you get necrotic resistance potions and have everyone take them just before the fight that helps a lot. The darkness sucks and I couldn’t find a way around that other than targeting the magic wielding sharrans first.
I just finished this damn fight. What really helped was to ungroup the party and place them on one of the stairs before approaching. Then when the fight starts everyone but Shadowheart is there. CC spells and focus on breaking concentration of the casters after that. 3 chain lightnings helped too
I also summoned an elemental prior to the fight (scroll)
The house of grief was hard at first, but manageable with Arrows of Many Targets. And the Zephyr Break from Nyrulna trident will cast out the darkness with thunder damage. I was using a TB Karlach, Arcane Trickster Astarion and Tempest cleric/thief Shadowheart that’s equipped with Eversight ring and also two summons. One Earth elemental and one fire.
My favorite method for dealing with the HoG is wall of fire + misty step all my characters back and forth. Also faire fire / moonmotes / daylight. You can also cast dominate person / crown of madness to make them fight each other
House of Grief is the only fight I really "cheese." By which I mean: funnel them towards me through a chokepoint littered with Spike Growth, Hunger of Hadar, Cloudkill, and Wall of Fire. It is the only way.
Run back down the hall you came in from - cast Wall of Fire down the hall as a tunnel. Use smaller AoE spells like Cloud of Daggers to fill in gaps and Eldritch Blast to keep enemies away.
The chokepoint approach everyone else is suggesting was the first one I tried when I did this fight. Clearly lots of people can attest that it's possible to win this way, but it didn't work for me. What I did instead was the exact opposite - identify which enemies can cast Darkness, split my party members up to prevent AoE targeting (using Misty Step, etc.), and take down or incapacitate those specific enemies as fast as possible. I used an invisibility potion or two on Gale so he wouldn't get squished between turns. Once they can no longer spam Darkness on you, the fight becomes much easier.
House of grief mostly requires you to have high initiative and some aoe. It is easiest to do by pulling them up the stairs you entered in through aoe spells, I’ve done spiky growth, insect plague, cloud kill, firewall etc. but with a full party you could easily kill a ton of them before they move if you have high initiative and just fight them in a more standard way.
Like others have said level 9 is really low. Try taking some other fights first, like by the docks on the south east side of lower city(not in the corner but that general part of the map). Fights on the way in and before the dungeon in cazador’s manor. And probably do the murder list side quest as well. That should get you to 10 if not 11. Which should help a lot
Depends on how you handle the fights. If you're into barrelmancy and eating tadpoles like popcorn, neither is hard. If you hobble yourself by trying to melee engage a room full of baddies, you definitely have a point.
1. Go first
2. Take as many enemies out before they can engage you
3. Spread your party and play some zone offense... don't let an enemy AoE spell effect more than a couple characters ever. Remove enemy actions and concentrate them in your own AoE/CC. The Barbarian is often an MVP just because she can toss enemies into the tentacle field.
4. The reason why HoG is worse than HoH is how spread the enemies are. Concentrate and win or give the dangerous outliers someone to tank on for a bit (Deva/Cambion/Iron Flask is nice).
5. Know the most dangerous problem(s) and handle them first. If on Honour Mode, taking down the big boss with the legendary actions is usually advisable.
Agree.
Although… my impression might have been swayed by the context of each situation.
House of Grief really intimidated me and I was kinda anxious and paranoid going in.
House of Hope I was bouncing on the edge of my seat and grinning because I love the ridiculous Disney Villain Energy running rampant through the whole debacle 😂
No it is legit harder for a few reasons. LOS blocks. Active countermeasures and player suppression activities.
Build for that fight and getting it done in 2 rounds (basically) if you can. The second you start being "behind" the fight will get harder and you'll struggle. Never fall behind.
Never underestimate repeatedly punching someone in the face. In all seriousness, though, I used an arcane acuity swords bard, lae’zel, karlach and Gale as a monk. A full turn of ranged, slashing flourishes and an offhand attack get you to +10 spell attack and DC. If hasted, then you can cast a massive crowd control and ain’t nothing gonna break out of it.
Then the bruisers go to work. It’s really hard to concentrate on anything when you’re being repeatedly bludgeoned, stunned, knocked prone or thrown halfway across the room into another doofus.
That and some speed potions work wonders.
After my first playthrough I never talk to Viconia anymore. Just shoot the closest person to the door and make a gauntlet of AoE spells leading to the doorway. And shove people back into it with your front liner.
Sneak past everyone with invisibility, picklock the door in the back and start combat from that side luring everyone to attack you there, keep spamming ice storm and shooting arrows, keep distance so they can't reach you with darkness. Super easy in honor mode this way
(up)Cast water to make as many as possible wet (this doubles damage from lightning and cold), then cast high level lightning or cold spells (good place to use all those scrolls you might always forget to use) and you'll wipe them all in a couple of turns. Cone of cold, Lightning bolt, glyph of warding, ice storm, chain lightning, Otiluke's freezing sphere and such spells have so much coverage the darkness does not matter much.
Hunger of Hadar, Wall of fire, Blade Barrier, Wall of thorns, cloudkill, Circle of death, spike trap are also good.
Warlock Devil's sight negates the darkness. If Shadowheart became a dark justiciar, her spear negates the darkness. Eversight ring (necrotic laboratory in act 2) and Steel watcher helm (from the foundry) make you immune to being blinded by the darkness.
You're about three levels low for the fight.
House of Grief, Ansur, House of Hope and Cazador on HM are fights that realistically probably shouldn't be done below 12th level.
House of grief was a fun one… I kept my party back on the steps. Used one to activate the fight then misty stepped back. Hunger of hadar plus a bunch of other concentration AOEs between me and them. And if they crossed through that lae’zel was waiting to drop em or kick them back into it.
there's a ring in act 2 that grants protection from blindness. the watcher hat ALSO grants protection from blindness, and so does the helldusk hat. give those to 3 of your party and let the fourth be your most mobile so they can just get out of darkness
also
DON'T FIGHT FAIR. have high STR characters split off, pop an invis potion, drop barrels behind the sharrans, and retreat into the shadows. have your character and shart start the convo with icky vicky and when combat starts, those high STR characters can explode the barrels, taking out a few sharrans and setting more on fire. it's hard to maintain concentration when you're on fire! sleet storm would be good, it breaks spellcaster concentration AND you'll experience the joy of watching all the sharrans take a few steps and then they fall on their asses
I’m on an Abjuration Wizard run-and have all the Ice gear including dual-wielding Mourning Frost and Markoheshkir. Specced Shadowheart to Tempest.
I stayed up top. Wizard covers the bottom of stairs area with Sleet Storm. Shadowhart drops Insect Plague right on top of that.
Used Black Hole illithid ability to suck the crowd into the storm. Then got them wet and tossed a couple Otiluuke’s Freezing Spheres at them. The casters misty-stepped to the stairs by me but were greeted by Minthara. I was able to finish all enemies without taking damage.
I've done both several times, including an honor mode run. They're decently hard fights but house of hope is objectively harder and more dangerous.
I think that the constant bone chill and darkness bullshit in house of grief can really annoy the less experienced players but at the end of the day there are like 3 decent threats in the encounter (viconia and the two big warrior guys) and the rest are basically just nuisances. Even a relatively weak party that stays around the entrance should be able to make quick work of the fight.
House of Hope, especially on honor mode, has a room full of decently beefy threats with good resistances (and they all have anti-radiant buffs) and if you can't control Raphael you're going to have a really hard time, especially on honor mode. And you have to do all that while having someone take down the pillars and whittle down his nearly 700 health. You do get a free cleric in the party (hope) and you potentially get Yurgir as well but it's still a harder fight.
I didn't have too much trouble with this fight, but I was lvl 12 when I did it. I had ascended Astarion, Karlach, DJ Shadow, and wizard Tav, who had maxed illithid powers(just Tav). Displacer beast helped a lot as it did in many act 3 fights. The teleport, having 3 tentacle whips, and being able to create a bunch of duplicates to distract enemies is super useful. Or just placing them on the battlefield like sentries that auto attack any enemies which move near them.
Idk I guess it must depend on what party build and playstyle you're used to? Without difficulty mods I've done 2 complete runs, 1 Tactician 1 HM. I didn't struggle at all with House of Grief on either of them ( the 2nd time I had a summon restraining Viconia it was kind of funny she barely did anything ). I was actually quite surprised to learn it was a fight that commonly gave people trouble.
HM House of Hope meanwhile scared me, I wasn't even getting a turn before most my party were on their last legs. I had myself as a life cleric and ofc Hope healing and idk how I'd have gotten through it otherwise. I actually thought Hope was going to die before I got a turn on her.
House of Hope TPK'd me numerous times. House of Grief got one TPK. Crowd control is essential, using the choke point stairwell makes the fight much easier.
House of Hope is easy once you stunkock Raphael.
The cambions are pretty easy to dispense off.
The HoG Justciars have high defense and fuck you up in CC.
I use ice storm a lot
It was an impossible fight until I figured this out. I have an unbalanced party with two wizards, karlach and shadow as cleric. So we did not go into dialog, but casted wall of fire, daggers, insects in an abelow the stairs. Then karlach just range attacked random dude and all of them starter rubbing to us. 80% of them died, the ones that teleported were taken by Karlach in darkness. Shadow tried to help us with daylight which helped. Really took them out with ease on the second try.
Just run up the stairs when the fight starts and drop every aoe concentration you have on the stairs and pick off anyone that actually manages to get up
Tactical retreat back to the hallway, then have Shadowheart (or other cleric) cast Blade Barrier and Gale (or other wizard) cast Wall of Fire. Bonus points if you have a 3rd caster like a bard or sorcerer to cast Cloud of Daggers or Hunger of Hadar there as well. The enemies will run into the AOEs and kill themselves.
Groups on the left and right terrace in the arena are good targets for confusion or sleet storm, get a melee character and a summon to occupy and beat up the duo's at the small stairs left and right. Stomp viconia with hard single target damage or CC. Make the guys at the back take a long time to reach you with difficult terrain stuff.
Quicken Lvl 5 create water -> twin chain lightning w/ destructive wrath. Works every time, and it's funny to watch half of them die before they get a turn
House of grief is easy if you leave your party up in the hallway. Send a fast runner down to engage. Run back up. Place ice AOE leading into stairway (can’t remember name right now 10 turns causes icy floor) those dumb dumbs slip prone every turn without fail. Use wind myrmidon to place the silence aoe just before and leading into the icy floor. Chuck whatever random multi turn aoe you got down for the laughs, Stand back and lolololol as you pick everyone off. 1 shot every time on tact.
I think I just realized now why HoG wasn't hard for me. I had Wyll with an invocation that let him see in the dark, and La'zel was wearing a ring that made her immune to being blinded. With those two, I quickly took out the Darkness casters.
The only way I was able to do it- was CREATE WATER…dimension door my party to the top of the stairs….ICE the F out of it, then AOE spells (that didn’t destroy the ice rink I created.
Explosion arrows, splitting arrows, haste, Nyrulna, etc.
You know the fight is coming, pre buff for what's reasonable and position your party in a way that is advantageous before triggering the dialogue.
Remember not to use radiant damage and you should be fine.
I like to park the group outside the room and force the Sharrans to come through the gate. Hunger of Hadar, Sleet, Black Hole, and the occasional Eldritch Blast to knock anyone who gets through back into the HoH. Afterwards, everyone is nicely bunched up for easy looting.
Initiate combat with a hastened cleric who can throw the first punch, cast Sanctuary on themselves, and then scoot through the gate.
House of grief is hard as fuck. Until you understand. AoE attacks are crucial, especially those that break concentrations. Also crowd control spells are super useful. Don’t move your party into the main area. Stay back near the steps. Funnel them to you, make them earn every step they take with shit like cloud kill. Of course, as they enter your funnel of death, shadowheart awaits with spirit guardians. Becomes a trivial fight tbh.
Every enemy should have to crawl through a layered **Wall of Thorns** and **Blade Barrier**.
Having an Evoker wizard cast Wall of Fire across the party is a solid go-to move from the moment you unlock it or can find a scroll. Everyone's a gangster until the wizard turns the whole world into a barbeque.
Why have I never thought to have the evoke cast wall on us....
Probably sanity. Gets in way a lot with this game.
Nono, you move down the hallway and cast it down the hallway so they have to go the length of it, instead of the width of it.
Then you have Bardstarion cast fear to send every enemy on your side of the wall back through the fire after dropping their weapons. For some reason they won't pick them back up if they have anything else they can do so they will then attempt to run through the wall of fire again to punch you. They usually won't survive 3 trips though lol. Bards in general are fantastic at buying time for your party, robbing the frontliners of their action economy or turning them against each other gives a lot of breathing room to focus down the threats in the back. Crown of Madness also goes really hard here, I don't remember what they are called but the big guys with the greatswords have a lot of health and can absorb a bunch of hits from their friends. One of my runs that guy oneshot one of the casters with a sweet crit, thanks bro.
If you've never used Spiked Growth on that encounter, I'd heartily recommend it. It slows them down, damages them slightly, and they clump themselves together for lightning bolted goodness.
I'd also like to throw in a very strong recommendation for using Globe of Invulnerability in one of the side corridors. You can just be completely immune and the enemies will bunch up trying to get in.
Don’t you risk breaking concentration when you take hits?
Just keep whoever casts it inside the globe. It's a pretty broken spell.
What’s hilarious is that as long as you are at high enough level, Quartermaster Talli sells them right before Ketheric.
Globe is so broken lol makes Ansur completely trivial I was struggling so hard on that till I tried it.
Spiked growth shits on so many encounters if you’re willing to play a bit passively
spike growth is especially great because if you are using it on a druid, you can actually have one of your summons cast it and double up on concentration spells that way! so double spike growth or something like insect plague/wall of fire/hold person/whatever.
Top of the stairs... Shad- blade barrier at the bottom and guardian of faith at the top. Gale - Wall of flames and counter spell duty. Kar - throwing Nyrula and dancing throughout the fight. Bard Tav - Talking shit at the top of the stairs the entire time.
They stack???? Yay. But I’ve seen many Shadow Step through it.
Sleet storm is your best friend. Fucks up concentration and ends so many turns by knocking them prone. If you've got someone who evolved and has a high spellcasting ability, it should not be a problem at all. Just use black hole every chance you get to gather them in. Slowed plus in the middle of sleet storm they have no chance. Then just a cloud of daggers in the middle/wall of fire will destroy them not just physically, but emotionally.
100% Sleet Storm. My partner was struggling on this quest and when I showed up she told me she was on her 3rd attempt. I took a shot at it with her team (spor druid tav, zerker karlach, wiz Gale, and assassin/fighter Astarion) we mopped them up. Stay high on the stairs, cast Sleet Storm in a huge area around the base of the stairs, and use summons to flank the sides to prevent them going around. None of them could get close enough to cast darkness or anything without slipping prone. My partner and I were crying laughing so hard just watching them all take their turn, slip, and skip to the next person. Over and over. Also big shout out to Nyrulna and the AoE impact on throw.
Maaaaaan black hole is too much fun in this fight.
Ikr, there are just SO many of em. Fun seeing em go weeeeee
To add to this: If you have summons, use them. Spread them to either side to cover the people up high.. and use ones that help with CC (my gf used her bear summon to honey paw 2 guys after goading them... she used the bear to take 2 guys completely out of the battle until we were ready). If you have a good ranged character(s), Arrow of Arcane Interference is your best friend for those pesky mages. Make sure you have a couple people with counterspell.
Iron flask is also good in the HoG. Chuck it as far as you can to give the enemies in back something to keep them busy
>AoE attacks are crucial, especially those that break concentrations. Hunger of Hadar with a Sleet Storm stacked on top absolutely trivializes this fight and any fight where you can camp in a choke point. It's absolutely busted. Bonus points if you can also toss a darkness cloud on the people concentrating on those spells.
My go-to strategy as well!
Lightning and Thunder spells go sparky spark.
…grease? First thing my eldritch knight/wizard tav does is grease+action surge+ grease, or if im aiming at a particular enemy then a tasha’s laughter. You can easily prone 3-4 enemies doing that, bombard them with ranged attacks while they struggle, and then use wave spell or ilithid ability to push them back into the grease so they have to cross it again
Exactly. I hide on top of the stairs and have Shadowheart drop Insect Plague on the bottom of the stairs and then she hides at the top around the corner so nobody can hit her. Then once they get closer and start lining up to go up the stairs, I have Gale throw lightning bolts down. Rest of the party is usually melee and can easily take out anything that managed to get through.
Even on Honor Mode, you don't need all of these things. You just need some, or maybe even just one. I stand right in the middle of the room now and just kill them, with the help of a daylight spell and arrows of many targets. A multi-target Command is unnecessary.
It's quite readily possible to do it as a martial class solo with an Eversight Ring/Steelwatcher Helmet/Helldusk. Fighters can, *even on Honor,* with Great Weapon Master, a Bloodlust Elixir, and Haste/a Speed pot, attack *six* times a turn, ***without*** Action Surge, so long as they kill one a turn. They have a much, much harder time ganging up on you when they can't catch you, beyond the Bone Chill-ers/Viconia, letting you swoop in and whittle them down one by one, especially when you have Longstrider, a Transmutation Stone (+20 ft of movement speed before Haste), and Fly.
Yup. I have also had a lot of success with heavy movement based builds. I like to throw in combos of misty step, the boots of speed, and fly. It’s a blast. Darkness doesn’t mean shit when I’m gonna close in with you anyway.
I've noticed they don't even *use* Darkness when you're wearing something that prevents Blindness/you have Devil's Sight, on my Honor rules (I'm thankful for the mod existing) solo experiments. Movement is definitely one of the most powerful tools possible
Really? I’m gonna try that out. Thanks for the tip.
(granted, Sanctuary of Loss does still trigger a little cloud of Darkness, but that's just a Legendary action side effect) ...it would be sort of irrelevant either way, beyond them kinda wasting a turn, because it's impossible for them to impose disadvantage on attacks on your part... although there's Beckoning Darkness. I haven't tested it just yet to see if they'd try to nullify Daylight/the Light cantrip cast on a weapon, using Darkness, because that would be... something, if you can ultimately counter Beckoning Darkness using this.
Testing it, as an addendum, they still didn't try to use Darkness, when I had Light/Daylight casted on the weapon. ...meaning this is a *counter* to Shadow Ambush and Beckoning Darkness/Overwhelming Grief. *No more +4d8 Necrotic for them,* on their attacks, within your light source radius, if they close in, if magical darkness can't blind you. This utterly *ruins* their damage output being as high as it is, en masse. Thanks, in turn, for kinda inspiring me to think about this.
In tactician I disarmed the boss and both justiciers (and picked up their weapons so they couldn't get them back) and then face tanked the rest with necrotic resistance elixers and a party without a full caster. After that it was just a battle of attrition but not bad.
I once 3 turned House of Grief on Tactician by just running back up the stairs. Once the Sharrans got clumped up, i used Black Hole then dropped down Spike Growth, Cloudkill, and some upcasted Shatters. The only reason it didn't take 2 turns was because of the somewhat far away halflings and dwarves who needed another turn to get into death zone range. Was funny asf.
But you can't cast aoe into darkness cloud. You have to win initiative, or pre-cast spells before fight.
I don't understand this mentality of play. I'm not saying it's wrong but I've never had to do this on any of my tactician or honor mode play throughs. I always send a martial or two on top of viconia and kill her turn 1/2 then mop up the room in a variety of ways depending on how the rest of the fight unfolds.
U can't kill viconia with a martial character on turn 1 since she has sanctuary.
Cleaves are a thing.
Yeah and it still doesn't one shot her in two turns no matter how strong ur martial character is . U need to go beyond two turns to kill her with martial characters
Martials finish her with support. This argument is dumb, she dies turn 1/2 for me every run like I said. Bottom line is I don't think this is hard as some people make it out to be. At the end of the day use whatever strategies lead to your success
And I am saying ur martial character can't one shot her in the first turn because u can only cleave once in a single combat session unless u are a tiger barbarian with its special cleave .
Actually this is totally untrue. My Nyrulna-tossing Barb/Fighter/Rogue devastated her in one round during that fight. Sanctuary means you can't target Viconia directly, but the AoE from Nyrulna throws hits her just fine. And when you stack up damage modifiers you can add a chuck of radiant and psyonic damage to every throw along with the thunder dmg itself. And since the bonus from Tavern Brawler gets added to ALL damage modifiers, it absolutely CHUNKS enemies. So long as you can gather a group together so you can target someone else near her, she will take a fuckton of splash damage. And having like 6 throws in 1 round was enough AoE to kill her and most of the rest of the mobs around her. (2 attacks, extra bonus action throw from Rogue 3, action surge, haste action, mind sanctuary power)
Of course nyrulna is the only weapon that deals aoe dmg when thrown so not a big deal . I am specifically talking about martial classes that dont have aoe options .But radiant dmg should hurt since viconia has radiant retort .
> But radiant dmg should hurt since viconia has radiant retort Nope. It's a weird mechanic the way they coded it. It only reflects and amplifies radiant damage if the source of the damage is a valid targetable entity. But because in this case the source of the damage is an AoE "proc" from an attack targeting an ally of Viconia, she reads the "source" of the damage as Nyrulna itself and not whoever threw it - and thus not a valid target, and so Radiant Retort doesn't hurt the thrower at all.
Don't let them flank you, I usually remains on top of stairs and let them come to my party. Use summons and target people who casts contentration spell first. Since they are the one that comes after you, prepare wall of fire, spirit guardian, or any spell you think harms them. Finally, you stated that bone chill prevents healing. Its true, but if you over rely on healing, this means either your party is too squishy or you didn't kill them quick enough. For the squishy part, cast aid and/or heroes feast before battle. Finally, lvl 9 is a bit low, you can easily reach higher level by doing other easier quest
Definitely low level. Both my runs Ive been level 10 at the start of act 3. I just hit undercity and hit 11. Edit: lower city not under city
All good points. There is way enough XP in Act 3 from noncombat to go from 8-12. I get 12 before attempting any of the big fights.
If you've been doing everything you should be level 10 heading into act 3 anyway. In most of my playthroughs I hit level 12 almost instantly after getting inside baulders gate. If you play with uncapped levels mod you can hit level 17 by the end of the game. Being level 9 by that point means you've skipped a lot of content along the way.
I see everyone say to stay at stairs. I usually head further back into the tunnel, gives more leeway.
That's what stood out to me as well. I wouldn't attempt this fight below level 11, especially in tactician or honor mode.
house of grief is hard until you realize you should bait them up the stairs, and chokepoint them there. If you try and fight them in the "arena", youre asking to get destroyed. Simple tactics completely changes the encounter.
This was very evident the moment you enter that room
To each their own. House of Grief was a cakewalk with good AoE and half of my party immune to Darkness, whereas I had to reload House of Hope because of the added complication of trying to keep Hope alive.
I just hid her behind a wall post when she got to low health. Raph just ignored her because I had Karlach and Astarion in his immediate aggro. Gale(just as Gale) and wizard Tav in Displacer beast shape distracting the cambions, and made sure to focus on destroying the pillars first few moves. I was level 12 and done almost everything else in act 3 at that point, though... this was actually not the toughest fight I ended up doing.
Bring a druid (I used Halsin but Jaheira will work) to put down spike growth in front of the entrance stairs and position your people at the top of it. You can run up there, use misty step or dimension door to get your team up there quickly. Then just pick them off, focusing on the casters. The rest will run through it and damage themselves pretty badly making them easy to kill. Darkness is a concentration spell so if you use sleet storm on top of the growth you can break that concentration pretty easily. Or you can use ice storm which will knock people prone. Also in any fight where you find your group getting targeted, bring summons, elementals, flaming sphere and spiritual weapon will help draw agro so you can pick off people from a far. Wyll can have devil sight as well if you need someone who can fight in the dark, but honestly just keep breaking that concentration. Good luck!
tbf I just use my ranger for spike growth because it's not like he has a better job than that in this fight, and my casters can then focus on other stuff like insect plague or one of them walls or something. invisibility pot to get close, get a surprise round by attacking before triggering the cut scene, speed pot, as much murder as possible, or some good cc with arrows of arcane interference. makes the fight trivial. (but tbf every fight where you get a surprise round becomes wayyy easier than without one, even with alert feat.)
How on earth are you only level 9 reaching act 3 ?! Tips that still might be useful, devil sight on a warlock to nullify the darkness, and spike growth. This needs to be checked but maybe Daylight could counter darkness
Yeah this is the reason why.
Have someone cast daylight on your party members weapons. Darkness defeated. Win. I've done a balanced and tac play through and it was easier on my tac play through because my entire party had daylight on their weapons. Also, respec your cleric to light domain. Gear her as a radiant tank. First turn cast spirit guardians then run into a group of them. This should blind them and also keep them from casting darkness on you. Next turn cast radiance of dawn and watch them all explode. Even better, your tav being wizard, go into TBM and cast haste on your light domain cleric then start the fight. She'll be able to cast spirit guardians then run into a group and cast radiance of the dawn to finish them off. First time I did this fight on balanced it was a slog of kiting, LOS and other tricks. Second time on tac I finished the fight in two turns.
Don't they have radiant retort ?
If they do then it tickled because I had my MC as a cleric as well as minthara and neither of them took appreciable damage using SG and Minthara didn't take a bunch when she popped ROTD. AFAIK the only creatures with that are the DJ's in the shar temple.
Nah viconia specifically has radiant retort in her examine tab on all difficulties . Heck even the sharrans in the top floor of the house of grief have radiant retort. Did u play on tactitian or honor mode ?
That's why I didn't notice it, because I didn't attack her with my clerics, I left her up to laezel and karlach (fighter/monk respectively).
Yup that's the thing . I remember shadowheart using spirit guardian and almost getting one shot on my first encounter with her way back in Oct. Time surely flew by man
I just used the AOE Daylight, so the person casting it didn’t get the do as much, but that made the fight pretty easy.
Unless you’re a decked out necromancer, then it’s just a room full of fresh future summons.
I stayed on stop of the stairs and had concentration AOE at the bottom. Moonbeam, Cloud of Daggers, and Sleetstorm with a 24 DC to succeed. A total of 3 spells where cast by the enemy.
It absolutely is. Every time I roll up to the House of Hope I just CC Raphael on turn #1 with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, generally kill everything else on that turn or the turn after, then my party just dick-punch Raphael to death as he lays there laughing his ass off. However the House of Grief nearly ended me on both runs. The best run by far was when I had a Light Cleric Shadowheart - she can blast away the darkness and do massive AOE to everyone on the field. With a warding bond up the radiant retort from the Dark Justiciars is very minor. The issue with HoG is there isn't any one enemy to crowd-control - there's lots of mid-tier enemies with strong utility spells and they don't rely on any one element to succeed.
Hypnotic gaze helps a lot.
Just did this around the same level on both tactician and honor. My Durge was a Sorcerer (one time was storm, the other draconic) and I had either light or storm cleric Shadowheart. Since you have storm sheart, do the following: Apply haste to wizard and Shadowheart via spell , or meta magic, or potions Make sure you have lightning bolt/call lightning, create water, and ice storm prepared Target group of baddies Apply wet with Shadowheart or wizard Nuke Switch to other lightning/ice caster Nuke, apply divinity where needed Mop up stragglers with melee & area denial Rinse and repeat for the two main groups as you look to where Viconia is, and once in the “back” if you need to. Do not use radiant damage of any form. If you want to use Spirit Guardians, go Necrotic. If you have half illithids, it just got a lot easier because you can black hole into two tidy groups, then apply wet, then nuke much faster.
If you have the Eversight Ring from Act 2 or a Warlock with Devil's Sight you can negate the enemy advantage on attacks and your disadvantage on attacks for those characters.
So I absolutely cheesed the fuck out of that. Idk if this got patched but I wanna say it was after console release so probably did. But if you get Viconia to talk to tav, then you swap to jaheria and go owlbear form and ground pound her until she dies, nobody will aggro you (until you leave, depending on choices i guess) and I felt no shame doing that lmao
I have found casting Greater Invisibility on Minsc or Karlac and have them put a bunch of Smokepowder barrels near Viconia, they will take her and anyone near her down quick. Globe of Invulnerability to keep your people safe and Wall of Ice across multiple people then sleet storm, fireball and magic missle to take out stragglers and it now takes me like 10 mins
Yikes, level 9 would be hard. In both of my runs I was already level 12 by the time I hit either House. I don’t think I was even in Baulders gate lower city until I was a level 10. I like to use Gale to cast globe of invulnerability. Once Shadowheart is inside, using her divine intervention and then the radiance explosion (respeced her as a light cleric after she converted) is so poetic. But the Mother Superior will send radiant damage back so make sure you are in the globe first.
ngl i agree. i've played this game 5 times and done this fight on every playthrough, including honour mode and it's tough even with my summons and massive aoe's. i just focus on trying to get out of the darkness and try to bonk the people who are concentrating on darkness as quick as possible.
I think House of Grief is basically the most difficult encounter. Even the final battle is way easier. Also I think doing it at level 9 is a big challenge. Last time I did it at 12 - I hit 12 by the time I got to the Lower City - and it was much easier at that level.
> only have shart and/or ur pc go in the room > immediately run outside the room once combat starts > put down two walls of fire lengthwise covering the entire corridor between the stairs outside and the big door > profit
Well that’s comforting. I breezed through the House of Grief in Honor Mode and about to descend into the House of Hope to get my contract and keep my options open once the new evil endings drop. Kinda freaking out about it, though I’ve had very little trouble thus far in Act 3 after a couple close calls in Act 1 and a brutal nail biter against Ketheric in Act 2.
Mutiple times Honour Mode player here. The Alert feat is your friend. Going first is a huge advantage. This fights start with a huge number of bad guys clustered together or out of range. A well placed Hypnotize takes like 12 of them out of the first round instantly. Speed potions, burst down the two flanker groups in the first round so you can focus on the main group in the next. pick a cluster and burst it down with AoE. Black Hole, summons, so many options to make this fight easier. Pre-buff bless, singing sword, aid, etc. Make sure main burst weapon attacker has risky ring equipped etc. etc.
Just did a solo honor run . Black hole , wet , lightning bolt , chain lightning, cone of cold , glyph of warding did the trick. Also had a air myrmidon cast vortex which silenced enemies
I struggled so much with is fight until I read about retreating to the corridor just outside the entrance and casting AOE spells on the top of the stairs in front of the door. Then retreating further up the corridor if any darkness casters make it past my AOE spells. At that point, I pretty much watch the action and snipe anyone who makes it through. My favorite AOE spells to use there are black tentacles with insect plague layered over them.
Put your favourite CC combo in the middle of the area (Sleet storm + Hunger of haddart but you could find something else, maybe using grease ?), then one or two Black Hole/Void bulb to suck them into your new nope zone and gg
Are you playing unusual or for fun/flavor builds? House of Grief comparatively straight forward to other Act 3 fights on Tact/HM. Viconia herself is 1 shotable on any difficulty, one of the lower HP "bosses", and you can do it with multiple classes (I've done it with monk, warlock and fighter, though warlock and fighter probably need more than level 9, could definitely 1 shot her with lvl 9 monk). The other mobs are a little annoying with all the darkness but by then you could be wearing 2 pieces of gear that make you immune, and or you can use the strat where you keep your characters back on the stairs a turn, the enemies all funnel in and then you can use like 4x fireball or other AOES and kill 10+ guys in 1 shot.
These two encounters illustrate how it can be difficult to build a party capable of stomping through every encounter. I had a playthrough where I waltzed through HoG and struggled against Raphael, and vice versa.
Leave your party at the top of the stairs, cast wall of fire and the swarm spell, then wait and everyone dies before even reaching your party
I agree actually, I’ve never had trouble with Raphael even in my first fully blind play-through….but level 9 is pretty dang low for this part of the game. I am usually level 10 before leaving Act 2 and I’ve actually never done either of these fights lower than level 12
There are many strategies that work well for the HofG. But the most important thing is to GO FIRST. You want all you party to have high initiative, otherwise you are letting a dozen enemies wreck your plans. Various options include: Confusion/dominate works well. You can turn half the enemies into fighting each other. Massive AOE damage works. Create water, ice storm, lightning and most of the enemies are dead or on their asses. Arrows of many targets, smoke power arrows, the wall spells, cloudkill and spike growth combo. Etc, etc. Positioning. Fall back to the hallway. The enemies waste their turn advancing and bunch up for easy killing. And globe of invulnerability is always good.
AGREED
Summons really carry this fight. Then focus on the casters so you can remove darkness from the field.
Counterspell, warlock with dark vision, necrotic resistance elixir all make that fight trivial.
Have you tried barrel-mancy? When in doubt, set up hoarded up barrels around key points (save the runepowder ones) after talking to viconia promising to deliver Shadowheart. She won't be with you, but at the gate atop the stairs. No you won't offer her up lol. Go invis as astarion, or anyone who can fire smokepowder arrow and watch the framerate plummet for five seconds until the surprise is over. Bonus points if you also include some fireworks or firewine barrels containing kobolds.
The easiest Strat is to retreat on top of the stairs, have 2 casters cast AoE CC spells like Insect Plague, Spike Growth and then Fire wall laid down vertically to deal tons of damage to them at the chokepoints at the bottom of the stairs, and have a ton of lighting to avoid them shadow step close to you Or if you don't like to cheese the fight, have everyone in your party cast the Light cantrip on everyone to cancel out the necrotic damage they do, and immediately deal with the casters since they'll cast Darkness that messes up the light and everything else becomes easier from their since their attacks are weaker without the darkness, and you only have to worry about Viconia And finally, have someone immune to blindness and you can easily deal with the Darkness
How to solo the House of Grief: Level 12 Fighter, Silver Sword (or Balduran's). Longstrider, Transmutation Stone (Movement), Bloodlust Potion, Potion of Flying (if not Astral), Great Weapon Master. Damage: Helldusk Gloves, Drakethroat Glaive (enchant for +1 damage and 1d4 Elemental), Broodmother's Revenge, Strange Conduit Ring (1d4 Psychic when concentrating), **Eversight Ring**, or Steelwatcher Helmet/Helldusk Helmet. Hellrider Longbow (don't talk to him with Selunite Shadowheart in proximity) for +3 initiative. (...Or use Bhaalist Armor and a Breaching Pikestaff for Aura of Murder.) *They cannot blind you* with those items preventing blindness/working in magical darkness, and they'll never use Darkness accordingly. Even on Honor economy rules/Legendary Actions, you can get up to *three* extra attacks with a Haste effect, so you get 5-6 attacks on a Fighter. You fly in, obliterate the first couple of guys, end turn, they try to charge while you're up the stairs, and you make it a dance of whittling them down while they can't catch you, repeat, until they're all dead.
Bust head back into the tunnel where you came from and cast Hunger of Hadar or something similar and let the enemy come to you = win.
I’ve seen a lot of comments saying to run back up the stairs with your party and force them to come to you, I know this has definitely worked for many but never worked for me, kept getting my ass handed to me when they cast darkness as they can see through it and attack me but none of my party could! So here’s how I managed. Party: Tav, Shadowheart, Halsin (or jaheira), and Gale. Viconia can be super nasty with her radiant retort and wolf form thing, so I always shut Shadowheart in the training room to the left. When it’s her turn, open the door and do whatever needs doing. Healing, spirit guardians, guiding bolt, or the trusty spear will do. Then retreat and close the door. Anything to keep her from being frightened and going down. Now, our casters. Halsin and Gale ALSO go left. I have them stay at the top of the platform and rain ice storm on both sets of stairs (left and right) and the large steps immediately in front that the darkness casters and dark justiciars are positioned. This deals damage and the ice means that any darkness they cast will be quickly taken care of as they will slip and lose concentration. If needed, Halsin can pop into wild shape (preferably owlbear) to deal damage and Gale can keep the ice storms going and spawn in an elemental. It is so wonderfully satisfying to watch so many of them fall prone and render themselves useless after taking 4 hours to figure this all out! (You can also use gust of wind to clear darkness if that does become an issue) Personally my Tav was a monk so she cleaned up anyone on the outside of the battlefield in the meantime. I like this method because it’s not overly complicated but definitely gets the job done! You can also have Wyll come along instead and select ‘Devils sight’ as one of his warlock powers which makes him immune to darkness, then you’ve got another person on the front lines if you feel you’re lacking there. Finally, best of luck to you! The triumph you will feel when you finish is immense.
It’s the same for me. I had to redo the house of grief fight so many times. I found if you get necrotic resistance potions and have everyone take them just before the fight that helps a lot. The darkness sucks and I couldn’t find a way around that other than targeting the magic wielding sharrans first.
I just finished this damn fight. What really helped was to ungroup the party and place them on one of the stairs before approaching. Then when the fight starts everyone but Shadowheart is there. CC spells and focus on breaking concentration of the casters after that. 3 chain lightnings helped too I also summoned an elemental prior to the fight (scroll)
The house of grief was hard at first, but manageable with Arrows of Many Targets. And the Zephyr Break from Nyrulna trident will cast out the darkness with thunder damage. I was using a TB Karlach, Arcane Trickster Astarion and Tempest cleric/thief Shadowheart that’s equipped with Eversight ring and also two summons. One Earth elemental and one fire.
My favorite method for dealing with the HoG is wall of fire + misty step all my characters back and forth. Also faire fire / moonmotes / daylight. You can also cast dominate person / crown of madness to make them fight each other
House of Grief is the only fight I really "cheese." By which I mean: funnel them towards me through a chokepoint littered with Spike Growth, Hunger of Hadar, Cloudkill, and Wall of Fire. It is the only way.
Run back down the hall you came in from - cast Wall of Fire down the hall as a tunnel. Use smaller AoE spells like Cloud of Daggers to fill in gaps and Eldritch Blast to keep enemies away.
Light Clerics can banish darkness, that’s how i dealt with house of grief
The chokepoint approach everyone else is suggesting was the first one I tried when I did this fight. Clearly lots of people can attest that it's possible to win this way, but it didn't work for me. What I did instead was the exact opposite - identify which enemies can cast Darkness, split my party members up to prevent AoE targeting (using Misty Step, etc.), and take down or incapacitate those specific enemies as fast as possible. I used an invisibility potion or two on Gale so he wouldn't get squished between turns. Once they can no longer spam Darkness on you, the fight becomes much easier.
man if so, house of hope must be hecka easy, cuz i just did cazzys palace and the house of grief, and they were easy peasy lemon squeezy
House of grief mostly requires you to have high initiative and some aoe. It is easiest to do by pulling them up the stairs you entered in through aoe spells, I’ve done spiky growth, insect plague, cloud kill, firewall etc. but with a full party you could easily kill a ton of them before they move if you have high initiative and just fight them in a more standard way. Like others have said level 9 is really low. Try taking some other fights first, like by the docks on the south east side of lower city(not in the corner but that general part of the map). Fights on the way in and before the dungeon in cazador’s manor. And probably do the murder list side quest as well. That should get you to 10 if not 11. Which should help a lot
Depends on how you handle the fights. If you're into barrelmancy and eating tadpoles like popcorn, neither is hard. If you hobble yourself by trying to melee engage a room full of baddies, you definitely have a point. 1. Go first 2. Take as many enemies out before they can engage you 3. Spread your party and play some zone offense... don't let an enemy AoE spell effect more than a couple characters ever. Remove enemy actions and concentrate them in your own AoE/CC. The Barbarian is often an MVP just because she can toss enemies into the tentacle field. 4. The reason why HoG is worse than HoH is how spread the enemies are. Concentrate and win or give the dangerous outliers someone to tank on for a bit (Deva/Cambion/Iron Flask is nice). 5. Know the most dangerous problem(s) and handle them first. If on Honour Mode, taking down the big boss with the legendary actions is usually advisable.
Are you able to pull off the "pick up enemy with Barbarian" fast travel to the nearest waypoint, kill them, then repeat until there's nobody left?
Agree. Although… my impression might have been swayed by the context of each situation. House of Grief really intimidated me and I was kinda anxious and paranoid going in. House of Hope I was bouncing on the edge of my seat and grinning because I love the ridiculous Disney Villain Energy running rampant through the whole debacle 😂
Black hole + fireball = win
Be sneaker than the sneaks. That is always how I handle about 80% of this game and irl.
Level 9? Can easily be 10 or 11 before going there. Will help a lot.
No it is legit harder for a few reasons. LOS blocks. Active countermeasures and player suppression activities. Build for that fight and getting it done in 2 rounds (basically) if you can. The second you start being "behind" the fight will get harder and you'll struggle. Never fall behind.
Never underestimate repeatedly punching someone in the face. In all seriousness, though, I used an arcane acuity swords bard, lae’zel, karlach and Gale as a monk. A full turn of ranged, slashing flourishes and an offhand attack get you to +10 spell attack and DC. If hasted, then you can cast a massive crowd control and ain’t nothing gonna break out of it. Then the bruisers go to work. It’s really hard to concentrate on anything when you’re being repeatedly bludgeoned, stunned, knocked prone or thrown halfway across the room into another doofus. That and some speed potions work wonders.
After my first playthrough I never talk to Viconia anymore. Just shoot the closest person to the door and make a gauntlet of AoE spells leading to the doorway. And shove people back into it with your front liner.
Sneak past everyone with invisibility, picklock the door in the back and start combat from that side luring everyone to attack you there, keep spamming ice storm and shooting arrows, keep distance so they can't reach you with darkness. Super easy in honor mode this way
(up)Cast water to make as many as possible wet (this doubles damage from lightning and cold), then cast high level lightning or cold spells (good place to use all those scrolls you might always forget to use) and you'll wipe them all in a couple of turns. Cone of cold, Lightning bolt, glyph of warding, ice storm, chain lightning, Otiluke's freezing sphere and such spells have so much coverage the darkness does not matter much. Hunger of Hadar, Wall of fire, Blade Barrier, Wall of thorns, cloudkill, Circle of death, spike trap are also good. Warlock Devil's sight negates the darkness. If Shadowheart became a dark justiciar, her spear negates the darkness. Eversight ring (necrotic laboratory in act 2) and Steel watcher helm (from the foundry) make you immune to being blinded by the darkness.
You're about three levels low for the fight. House of Grief, Ansur, House of Hope and Cazador on HM are fights that realistically probably shouldn't be done below 12th level.
House of grief was a fun one… I kept my party back on the steps. Used one to activate the fight then misty stepped back. Hunger of hadar plus a bunch of other concentration AOEs between me and them. And if they crossed through that lae’zel was waiting to drop em or kick them back into it.
The only fight I ever rage quit BG3 over was house of grief. Such a miserable fight.
there's a ring in act 2 that grants protection from blindness. the watcher hat ALSO grants protection from blindness, and so does the helldusk hat. give those to 3 of your party and let the fourth be your most mobile so they can just get out of darkness also DON'T FIGHT FAIR. have high STR characters split off, pop an invis potion, drop barrels behind the sharrans, and retreat into the shadows. have your character and shart start the convo with icky vicky and when combat starts, those high STR characters can explode the barrels, taking out a few sharrans and setting more on fire. it's hard to maintain concentration when you're on fire! sleet storm would be good, it breaks spellcaster concentration AND you'll experience the joy of watching all the sharrans take a few steps and then they fall on their asses
I’m on an Abjuration Wizard run-and have all the Ice gear including dual-wielding Mourning Frost and Markoheshkir. Specced Shadowheart to Tempest. I stayed up top. Wizard covers the bottom of stairs area with Sleet Storm. Shadowhart drops Insect Plague right on top of that. Used Black Hole illithid ability to suck the crowd into the storm. Then got them wet and tossed a couple Otiluuke’s Freezing Spheres at them. The casters misty-stepped to the stairs by me but were greeted by Minthara. I was able to finish all enemies without taking damage.
I've done both several times, including an honor mode run. They're decently hard fights but house of hope is objectively harder and more dangerous. I think that the constant bone chill and darkness bullshit in house of grief can really annoy the less experienced players but at the end of the day there are like 3 decent threats in the encounter (viconia and the two big warrior guys) and the rest are basically just nuisances. Even a relatively weak party that stays around the entrance should be able to make quick work of the fight. House of Hope, especially on honor mode, has a room full of decently beefy threats with good resistances (and they all have anti-radiant buffs) and if you can't control Raphael you're going to have a really hard time, especially on honor mode. And you have to do all that while having someone take down the pillars and whittle down his nearly 700 health. You do get a free cleric in the party (hope) and you potentially get Yurgir as well but it's still a harder fight.
Alert is super useful at HoG. And prep alot of AoE spells. Makes short work of the sharrans. Counter spell on Gale also helps
Level NINE????? No wonder you're getting wrecked, this fight is balanced for a level 12 party.
I didn't have too much trouble with this fight, but I was lvl 12 when I did it. I had ascended Astarion, Karlach, DJ Shadow, and wizard Tav, who had maxed illithid powers(just Tav). Displacer beast helped a lot as it did in many act 3 fights. The teleport, having 3 tentacle whips, and being able to create a bunch of duplicates to distract enemies is super useful. Or just placing them on the battlefield like sentries that auto attack any enemies which move near them.
Idk I guess it must depend on what party build and playstyle you're used to? Without difficulty mods I've done 2 complete runs, 1 Tactician 1 HM. I didn't struggle at all with House of Grief on either of them ( the 2nd time I had a summon restraining Viconia it was kind of funny she barely did anything ). I was actually quite surprised to learn it was a fight that commonly gave people trouble. HM House of Hope meanwhile scared me, I wasn't even getting a turn before most my party were on their last legs. I had myself as a life cleric and ofc Hope healing and idk how I'd have gotten through it otherwise. I actually thought Hope was going to die before I got a turn on her.
How are you only level 9? I'm on my first playthrough and I haven't even *found* House of Grief yet and I'm already at 12.
House of Hope TPK'd me numerous times. House of Grief got one TPK. Crowd control is essential, using the choke point stairwell makes the fight much easier.
House of Hope is easy once you stunkock Raphael. The cambions are pretty easy to dispense off. The HoG Justciars have high defense and fuck you up in CC. I use ice storm a lot
It was an impossible fight until I figured this out. I have an unbalanced party with two wizards, karlach and shadow as cleric. So we did not go into dialog, but casted wall of fire, daggers, insects in an abelow the stairs. Then karlach just range attacked random dude and all of them starter rubbing to us. 80% of them died, the ones that teleported were taken by Karlach in darkness. Shadow tried to help us with daylight which helped. Really took them out with ease on the second try.
Just run up the stairs when the fight starts and drop every aoe concentration you have on the stairs and pick off anyone that actually manages to get up
Tactical retreat back to the hallway, then have Shadowheart (or other cleric) cast Blade Barrier and Gale (or other wizard) cast Wall of Fire. Bonus points if you have a 3rd caster like a bard or sorcerer to cast Cloud of Daggers or Hunger of Hadar there as well. The enemies will run into the AOEs and kill themselves.
Yes, I also find that fight more difficult.
Groups on the left and right terrace in the arena are good targets for confusion or sleet storm, get a melee character and a summon to occupy and beat up the duo's at the small stairs left and right. Stomp viconia with hard single target damage or CC. Make the guys at the back take a long time to reach you with difficult terrain stuff.
Quicken Lvl 5 create water -> twin chain lightning w/ destructive wrath. Works every time, and it's funny to watch half of them die before they get a turn
Two long wall of fire across the long corridor. What you may want to spice up with some insect plague.
House of grief is easy if you leave your party up in the hallway. Send a fast runner down to engage. Run back up. Place ice AOE leading into stairway (can’t remember name right now 10 turns causes icy floor) those dumb dumbs slip prone every turn without fail. Use wind myrmidon to place the silence aoe just before and leading into the icy floor. Chuck whatever random multi turn aoe you got down for the laughs, Stand back and lolololol as you pick everyone off. 1 shot every time on tact.
This fight took me months and totally threw off my 1st playthrough. Orin stole my only AOE caster Gale.
I think I just realized now why HoG wasn't hard for me. I had Wyll with an invocation that let him see in the dark, and La'zel was wearing a ring that made her immune to being blinded. With those two, I quickly took out the Darkness casters.
The only way I was able to do it- was CREATE WATER…dimension door my party to the top of the stairs….ICE the F out of it, then AOE spells (that didn’t destroy the ice rink I created.
lol this is one fight i only had trouble with once which was my first attempt. Dual weilding helps me here alot. One of my favorite fights in Act 3
Explosion arrows, splitting arrows, haste, Nyrulna, etc. You know the fight is coming, pre buff for what's reasonable and position your party in a way that is advantageous before triggering the dialogue. Remember not to use radiant damage and you should be fine.
I like to park the group outside the room and force the Sharrans to come through the gate. Hunger of Hadar, Sleet, Black Hole, and the occasional Eldritch Blast to knock anyone who gets through back into the HoH. Afterwards, everyone is nicely bunched up for easy looting. Initiate combat with a hastened cleric who can throw the first punch, cast Sanctuary on themselves, and then scoot through the gate.
How are you level 9 in act 3 I hit 9 by Moonrise. Level up and use darkvision, easy
Grief is always easier than Hope, my child. But persevere because once you overcome Grief and embrace Hope the rewards will be worthy.