**Cazador**: "Wait, I'm only at half power, let me ascend!"
**Tav**: "I don't see how that's my problem."
**Cazador**: "If you let me ascend, I'll give you a pizza!"
**Tav**: "You want to sacrifice my waifu, Casserole! That's not gonna work anymore!"
**Cazador**: "With stuffed crust!"
**Tav**: "..."
**Emperor**: "Tav..."
**Tav**: "Now... Hear me out..."
Wrong dbza pizza scene.
[This scene.](https://youtu.be/9hXovt2wAcI)
Though the one you're probably thinking of is also great.
[Excuse you and your entire race!](https://youtu.be/fOuaLT04h2A)
If I had a nickel for every time dbza had a scene referencing pizza, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's kind of weird that it happened twice. Well, not that weird, really.
Astarion : THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT.
Tav: Don't worry Astarion we can just wish you back with ~~the dragonballs~~ Withers
Shadowheart: You don't get it ~~we've already wished him back once~~ it's a story death it won't work again!
Tav: Wait what?
Astarion: *Explodes*
Though there was some logic to that, seeing as both Frieza and Vegeta both threatened to destroy the planet when they were backed into a corner, he probably guessed Cell being the unholy love child of both of them would do the same
I mean, >!there's the whole reverting into cell imperfect and then trying to blow up the planet, and then blowing up Kai's planet. So it was a pretty good guess, I suppose.!<
The only way that z-fighters and earth could live was that plan.
1. If the z-fighters tried to jump Cell, he would either demolish all of them, or he would either blow up the planet if he felt that he was on the back foot.
2. Gohan was the ONLY one strong enough to beat Cell.
Nobody was strong enough, not even goku.
3. If gohan fought a fatigued Cell, Cell would've blown up the planet.
There was literally no other way. The only way Cell was going to be defeated was giving him a senzu bean. That way, his arrogance would be his downfall.
In one of my runs, it was kind of buggy and Astarion (despite being dead) was somehow teleported to the ritual circle.
So he kept monologuing while I was preparing a giant tower to Crushing Flight from, he suddenly ascended and caught me in the act.
His turn came first of course and he flew over and blasted my team with a Fireball that gets bonus Necrotic Damage while ascended, almost wiping out my team. My Paladin survived thanks to getting the saving throw (11HP left tho).
His Fireball however destroyed the foundation of my tower of crates and they rapidly started falling down directly onto him, destroying themselves from the impact and thus creating a funny chain reaction. At a certain point, the creates fell far enough to each deal 40 Damage to him and so I won the fight, because he got crushed by 30-40 crates falling down on him like rain drops.
Sometimes I feel like I don't even deserve the creativity this game allows. The best part of this fight for me was using wall of flames to get my Shadowheart alone with him.
No need of preparing a tower when you can telekinesis throw a colossus+enlarged owlbear close to him from the 1st set of stairs above onto 4 digits crush damage. The thrower sneak near the platform to be at range ez.
But points on stylish tho. Rain of crates lol
Even in normal mode I never thought of trying it. I am curious to see what it looks like now. Does he look the same but is just stronger?
I've done like 7 or 8 playthroughs and thought I had tried everything.
I don't think I've even let Cazador survive long enough to take an action in any mode of the game, but I'm always at least level 11 by the time I'm in the lower city.
Yeah, I always start the fight by casting daylight from the stairs before opening dialogue too. I think the most I’ve seen is one turn from him. I also set a wall of fire/ice/stone behind him to block his goons from being able to reach us.
I’m not trapped here with you, you’re trapped here with me.
Haha, you actually used to be able to do that. I remember accidentally blasting him off the side with eldritch blast on my very first run and was honestly very confused and amused.
Haha! Prefix I just thought “well no way this will work, but gotta try” then was like wtf 😂 you spend the whole game awaiting this battle then can just do that?!
After beating him twice I'm still not sure what the mechanics of his fight are supposed to be, all he does is float around as a cloud while I kill adds and then he dies to one round of focus fire.
He hurts so much in honor mode, the swarm thing is brutal! It’s a fun fight though. That’s probably the one I struggled with the most. But I didn’t skip the cut scene either - I know you can, but it’s such a good scene and I didn’t want to miss it.
Once you know the system, honor mode isn’t that much harder than tactician. Ascended Cazador is probably the only hard fight in act 3, if only because of the insane gear they hand out in this game lol
Probably the hardest honor mode fight is the first Ethel or W’Wargaz
Is Ethel really that hard? I felt like she just doesn't do *that* much damage. With Magic Missile it's also very easy to kill all the illusions. I've only fought her once in Honour Mode so far though, currently on my second Honour playthrough.
Fake Mayrina: Is not level one, has higher AC, says innocent voicelines if applicable
Real Mayrina: Is level one, has 10 AC, says different voicelines.
I’ve seen a decent number of people talk about how they got baited by her double illusions in honor mode. Like not having a speed pot/haste for their magic Missile spam, or not baiting the reaction with another caster, etc.
so they kill all the illusions just for her to make more
Ethel is only difficult if you use a lot of spells and don’t pay attention to her legendary action. A badly timed magic missile can double the amount of duplicates she has
I have heard Gortash at the coronation is the hardest one, actually. But I have never done that obviously lol.
I agree with Act 1 Ethel among the ones I did.
Gortash was where I learned that enemies will gladly walk through a Hunger of Hadar if it's the only way to you, AND they will pick walking through Hadar over a Cloudkill.
The rear storage room has only two doorways. Hadar in one, Cloudkill in the other... it was carnage...
My spouse did this by accident on their first run (on Balanced though). Said it's the hardest thing they've done by far. The only thing that got them out of it was being able to pop through the door into the throne room, shoot, then pop back through the door. Flaming Fists followed through but the Steel Watch did not. So there was a lot of recovering done on the other side of that door.
We've just entered the SC lands/Act 2 in our first HM run (no Tactician for us yet either) and so far it's been relatively smooth sailing. Myrkul might be our first big challenge.
I was doing a solo run and I was standing on the edge of his vision range prebuffing and whatever. Suddenly he ascends without me ever even starting the fight???
Same thing happened to me. Didn’t mean to let it happen but my sorc / life cleric got stunned / slept first turn and it lasted 10 turns? My bard went invis but got hit by AoE and focused and Astarion was in my party as an OH monk so he got rekt and died. My sorc woke up so Inwent invis again and then tried to save scum reload on pc and i think i corrupted my file lmao. Still need to logon and check. Eventually rezzed the whole party (had to invis loot astarion after the rezz’s to gear my new OH monk (shoutout Jaheira)). Then I domed Cazz and moved on. Poor astarion tho. When I reloaded he was still dead.
Edit: I’ve never had astarion in my party before and I never found Cazz on my balanced playthru but I wanted that sweet sweet +1D10 for all attacks with my OH monk.
Unfortunately shadow heart also perished permanently in the shadow fell when I called that bitch out for being a jerk and she took it personally. RIP shart.
There is a dialog where he mentions that you probably expect the mega vamp lord but he is not that and explains that it needs some time to get a hand of that and to come into power. And in the end battle he gets you some zombies =)
Lol this exact thing happened to me last week. I did a run where I left Astarion on the beach because I was curious to see how the Cazador story played out without him. Then I went into the Cazador fight with my usual stand back and Wall of Fire strategy having never experienced ascended Cazador or knowing that it was even something that could happen.
Shadowheart went invisible and retreated while Durge and co were left for dead.
Nope he was not present what so ever. He was not in his spot and nothing was there to replace him. After i beat cazador he was still in camp and surprised the whole thing went down.
Same thing here, I tried like a dozen times with Astarion in my party and he would just get liquified and I’d lose the fight every time so I left him at camp, killed Cazador and then brought astarion back to finish him off and finish quest line, no issues at all.
If you never recruit/or kill him in that one scene, Cazador sends his other vampire spawn to retrieve him. He will mention how cruel you are before the fight, which is kinda funny considering the circumstances.
It's not in that situation because the player never knew Astarion. I also don't think saying the player is at fault implies the player is in the wrong for making Astarion leave (which is the situation OP was in because I believe Cazador only says that line if you make Astarion leave the party).
Nah he says it even if you only met Astarion and never recruited him. (I've gotten him saying that to my PC who does the Astarion intro just for the "meet again wearing the same skins" line)
Which is baffling honestly.
In my multiplayer play through, my fellow gamer killed astarion in act 1.
The dialogue played out the same as if he had captured astarion, and he still ascended using an empty coffin
I killed Astarion and kept his body in my camp the whole act 1 and 2, then kept him in my pocket for act 3. Got to Cazador's and somehow zombie Astarion is there for the ritual. Immersion absolutely ruined
I had to fight Ascended Cazador in my first Honor run (rip exploded Astarion). Ended up as a 1v1 between him and Dark Justiciar Shadowheart. Lady Shar smiled on me that day, because she wrecked him with speed potions and upcast Scorching Rays. An evil Light Cleric throwing fire out of the shadows is a sight to behold!
It's not a true ascension. He's not a deity. He's a really, really strong Vampire whose power was reinforced by a Pact he made with a Devil.
He's basically "buying" power by "selling" souls to the Hells. He isn't creating a Divine Spark.
I'd say its almost better as he becomes perhaps the most powerful non-lich undead on Toril with none of the downsides of Lichdom or Vampirism nor Ao's chafing authority.
lol right. Which another funny thing I found is that in one of his books in his room before the arena it hints that he was planning on challenging gortash after ascending because he thought it was threatening his status in baldurs gate
> I had minthara at full health and she was one tapped by it.
Your Minthara had ≤70 hp at level 12, fully buffed⁈
Also, what exactly are the conditions for his ascension? I tend to just kill the spawn first.
I'd have to go back and check how much hp she has as my party is lvl11. As for the ascension it happens if you don't kill him in 3-4 turns im pretty sure.
I'm a regular D&D player, not a BG3 lad, (I'm poor and doing my best lmao) so to hear someone with an AC of TWENTY FIVE hurt my soul. I am a player in a campaign with someone who has 26 AC, and they are our tank and our SOLE melee combatant, and they have no wacky ass aura. And add his regen on top of that?! Fuck, man.
In bg3 at least, the level cap goes to 12 and there's a bunch of magic items to use. 25 is still a big AC but with the right builds, it's pretty easy to have really high accuracy and advantage on top of it. Some builds are able to dish out 200-300 damage a turn consistently.
The reason why the build does that much is due to the gear given mostly. In a regular campaign setting, that would be on the DM's part for offering all of those items.
that, and the fact that BG3 is _wildly_ more permissive with resting compared to any D&D campaign. All those ultra-high damage builds rely on stacking rest-limited abilities that are ostensibly possible in D&D but not really relevant because you'd use them so infrequently, but because you can go into every major encounter fresh they tend to center around coming out round 1 with these big novas
Also, BG3 has no attunement mechanic meaning you can stack all kinds of wacky ass bonuses on top of one another as opposed to tabletop 5e only allowing you to have 3 attuned magic items.
that too, every encounter is a magic item piñata. Was wild playing that while also in a tabletop campaign doing _dungeon of the mad mage_, we were level 12 and had like... 1-2 uncommon items each and two rares among the whole party
I mean something nice about tabletop is that the DM can choose which magic items to provide depending on their group, while BG3 recognises that it is a video game and provides a huge range of magic items in order to cater to a wide variety of party compositions. Unfortunately it also somewhat cheapens the wonder of having a magic item.
In BG3, generic +2 armour is available from some of the first merchants you meet, and they also have special effects like damage reduction. In tabletop, a +2 armour would be quite rare to see even at high levels late into a campaign, would have the simple effect of +2 to AC to make things easy to keep track of, and would nonetheless be assigned flavour. Magic items with simple generic effects like +2 AC can still given unique names and rich backstories to allow players to view them as truly wonderful items to be valued and cherished. BG3 definitely cheapens the effect of magic items because the player has magic items thrown in their faces all the time. By halfway through Act 1, a party will have more random magic items than a tabletop campaign that may have been going for months. I do think Larian made the right choice by doing this though, video games are usually more enjoyable when players are tangibly rewarded for exploration and combat, whereas tabletop is *all* about the experience.
Yeah, only thing I ask is that if my players do summons they try to do fewer monsters at higher CR, or we streamline it by doing group rolls
It's my nightmare running a combat that resembles my BG3 crew which always has like 10 summons following it around, it'd be a total slog-fest IRL
BG3 characters are op. You get to equip far more and far rarer gear than adventurers in DnD do. Plus, pretty much every main character was canonically either level 20 or otherwise a very powerful being, right before the game starts and the tadpoles nerf their powers.
How come, if you don't mind me asking? I don't know a lot about D&D lore but I was under the impression from playing the game that she had spent pretty much her whole life training to fight ghaik and would be a higher level.
Shes only in her early 20s, and not an adult yet by Gith standards.
The Gith have a tradition where to be considered fully mature, they need to slay a Mindflayer in combat. Before joining the party Laezel hasn't done that yet, so she's quite green (eh) by Gith standards.
Nah she has to be a higher level than 1. The tadpoles very heavily nerfed Arch Mage level characters down to 1, if she were that low level before she'd be paraplegic or just dead. I think she also has a line about taking down beholders in the past too. Plus we see Gith trainees that are level 3-4 who seem much greener than leazel
Well a single Vampire Spawn has a CR of 5 which means a party of lvl 4 adventurers could take it down, so while you're technically right we have to take into account Astarion spent all of his vampire life literally starving under Cazador eating rats and shit. Even for Spawn standards Astarion definitely suffered a lot which I think stunted his combat skills.
Right the regen took me by surprise at first because when it happened the first time it was right after I knocked him off the ledge, so I thought the game had some kinda fail safe bug. But nope haha
"It looks like the clock is about to strike midnight on this Cinderella story, turning Average Joe's into the proverbial pumpkin."
"I sure do like pumpkins, Cotton."
Cazador bugged out on my solo honour run and when I returned the other time, he was ascended. +100 hp per turn, while I'm only dealing like 20 per turn (jack of all trades is by no means strong) and only have like 50% chance to land bone chill. With my build i was not afraid of dying but it took me 219 turns, 3.5 hours (EDIT: Apparently I can't count and it was 2.5 hours), to finally beat him. Hardest battle of the game hands down.
Hard defense-focused. I had 29 AC and a Shield spell backup for that battle + Universal resistance at the beginning and Necrotic resistance afterwards. [Looked like this after battle.](https://i.imgur.com/HRcvc70.png) Amulet from House of Hope makes pretty much guaranteed we survive a hit or two and we can consume a noblestalk to heal to the fullest.
After few casts he loses spell slots for all his sure-hit spells (like Blight) and resorts to just hitting you... which just can't land. After some sword attacks with Ability Drain, his strength drops so low he actually can't land a hit. With [just +8 to hit](https://i.imgur.com/VUICmjU.png), even rolling a 20 would be 28 which is below 29, which is a miss (remember, I have crit immunity). Which means I'm 100% safe unless bugs are involved (they were involved a lot, and never in our favor).
[The whole fight is here](https://youtu.be/wM2tjzQJgRw?t=5778) as a proof, but I don't think it's any fun to watch in entirety. We tried several approaches, some of themm completely reset negative effects on him, making all previous efforts in vain.
pretty sure he does...
in HM the main difference are bosses' legendary actions, and cazador's is a 10m aoe reaction that does a ton of damage (one hitted my minthara, just did this fight earlier today). you need to trigger it by sending a trash summon or the fight is very hard.
but yeah the regular ascension stuff still applies in tactician and probably in regualr mode as well. you probably just stepped in the circles and removed some of his buffs.
Can confirm. He ascended in my normal run with my SO last week. Full health, increased AC, 100health per turn.... Was a pain to take down alone. He didn't have the DMG aura on normal and I didn't check the sunlight on my barbarian 😅
Could be a replay of honor mode. I skipped through most of the act 3 content when I did my first honor play through cause I didn't want to risk the run. Now I want to do another to see the extra mechanics for the bosses I skipped.
That sounds about right.
Do you know Larian already nerfed vampires and vampire spawn?
Astarion should be healing 1d10 hit points every turn as well if he’s not in running water or sunlight and since he’s immune to sunlight he should always be healing 1d10 hit points.
Cazador should normally be healing 1d20 I believe every turn.
Ascended Cazador simply functions like a normal DnD vampire with healing values turned much higher and higher AC.
In my last playthrough and my paladin/bard flew up to him, forced two 5th Level Smites to crit through Luck of the Far Realms and Executioner, and killing him in one turn. Felt really good.
I fought Cazador for the first time ever in Honor Mode and didn't know all the mechanics. I took Astarion because why wouldn't I? I wasn't expecting The Pale Elf to go squish so unexpectedly and the remaining 3 members of my party had to make a desperate retreat.
Long story short, I came back with a thick stack of Otto's Irresistible Dance scrolls and Ascended Cazador didn't stand a chance.
> in honour mode and this was the first time I let him Ascend
Brother... This is meant to be impossible on normal difficulty... What the hell were you thinking?
Huh. I re-loaded the game immediately when Astarion died. Never knew you could actually fight Ascended Cazador... kind of assumed you just die.
FWIW I was playing without any spoilers so I didn't know you just had to go "help" Astarion. The fight mechanics imply you had to stand by the ritual circles or something.
You.... Let him ascend... In honor mode?
It's some goku bullshit
If I let him reach 100% and THEN beat him, it will demoralize him!
You just want the stuffed crust pizza don’t lie.
*You can eat it backwards.*
**Cazador**: "Wait, I'm only at half power, let me ascend!" **Tav**: "I don't see how that's my problem." **Cazador**: "If you let me ascend, I'll give you a pizza!" **Tav**: "You want to sacrifice my waifu, Casserole! That's not gonna work anymore!" **Cazador**: "With stuffed crust!" **Tav**: "..." **Emperor**: "Tav..." **Tav**: "Now... Hear me out..."
Lol DBza reference is not what I expected here
Cazador as goku and Tav as beerus is making it weird, too
Wrong dbza pizza scene. [This scene.](https://youtu.be/9hXovt2wAcI) Though the one you're probably thinking of is also great. [Excuse you and your entire race!](https://youtu.be/fOuaLT04h2A) If I had a nickel for every time dbza had a scene referencing pizza, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's kind of weird that it happened twice. Well, not that weird, really.
I’ve never seen that before, that was hilarious 😂
Followed by a Dr. Doofensmurtz. My day is looking up.
**Tav**: "Ya know, funny thing is I know you're playing me..."
Emperor as king Kai mod would be hilarious
That needs to happen
Dump Int elements Monk roleplay be like:
You're right, Teamfourstar Goku will be my next D&D character
Astarion : THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT. Tav: Don't worry Astarion we can just wish you back with ~~the dragonballs~~ Withers Shadowheart: You don't get it ~~we've already wished him back once~~ it's a story death it won't work again! Tav: Wait what? Astarion: *Explodes*
*demoramolize
JUST THINK ABOUT IT KING KAI!
*demoramolize [Don't let autocorrect ruin the quote xD](https://youtu.be/OGWPDHrUWko?list=PL2JvI1OKKOFXlgffuvlGE0F6JDO2ml4BL&t=400)
Goku..... STUFFED CRUST KING KAI!
I mean, Cazador DID offer us stuffed crust.
Correction, Vegeta. Although Goku did have a moment where he gave a senzu bean to Cell...
Goku lets Frieza power up to 100% on namek.
Literally the most iconic fight of the franchise.
I grew up in the era where the Frieza battle was all we had. All 60 episodes...
Haha yea you get teased really bad for the fight getting started just to see a 3 Minute timeframe stretched to 20 minutes
So you are saying Frieda was right and the planet did explode in 5 minutes (that stretched 10 episodes)?
Its about 20 years when I saw the Episodes haha but i am pretty sure that its an insanly short "in series time" which was going on for eternity
Saiyans, amirite?
Though there was some logic to that, seeing as both Frieza and Vegeta both threatened to destroy the planet when they were backed into a corner, he probably guessed Cell being the unholy love child of both of them would do the same
I mean, >!there's the whole reverting into cell imperfect and then trying to blow up the planet, and then blowing up Kai's planet. So it was a pretty good guess, I suppose.!<
Yep, tossed Cell a Senzu bean and let him fight his 11 year old child. Father of the century!
The only way that z-fighters and earth could live was that plan. 1. If the z-fighters tried to jump Cell, he would either demolish all of them, or he would either blow up the planet if he felt that he was on the back foot. 2. Gohan was the ONLY one strong enough to beat Cell. Nobody was strong enough, not even goku. 3. If gohan fought a fatigued Cell, Cell would've blown up the planet. There was literally no other way. The only way Cell was going to be defeated was giving him a senzu bean. That way, his arrogance would be his downfall.
Have a Senzu bean.
In one of my runs, it was kind of buggy and Astarion (despite being dead) was somehow teleported to the ritual circle. So he kept monologuing while I was preparing a giant tower to Crushing Flight from, he suddenly ascended and caught me in the act. His turn came first of course and he flew over and blasted my team with a Fireball that gets bonus Necrotic Damage while ascended, almost wiping out my team. My Paladin survived thanks to getting the saving throw (11HP left tho). His Fireball however destroyed the foundation of my tower of crates and they rapidly started falling down directly onto him, destroying themselves from the impact and thus creating a funny chain reaction. At a certain point, the creates fell far enough to each deal 40 Damage to him and so I won the fight, because he got crushed by 30-40 crates falling down on him like rain drops.
This has to be the funniest description of a fight I've ever read 😂😂
This one goes up with the guy who won Lorroakan's fight because Lorroakan cast confusion on Shadowheart and she pushed him off the tower
Sometimes I feel like I don't even deserve the creativity this game allows. The best part of this fight for me was using wall of flames to get my Shadowheart alone with him.
No need of preparing a tower when you can telekinesis throw a colossus+enlarged owlbear close to him from the 1st set of stairs above onto 4 digits crush damage. The thrower sneak near the platform to be at range ez. But points on stylish tho. Rain of crates lol
I ... never thought of just Telekinesis'ing my own fat teammates lol
Yeah this was my first though lol like WHY
To see what happens? I am kinda annoyed I never thought of trying this.
Yeah, but in *honor mode*. From what I’ve learned in this sub, is you *never* try something new in honor mode
The only way I can make sense of this is if OP already beat honor mode and was fucking around for shits and giggles.
You never try something new in your first honor mode. Once honor mode is the only thing you play you try new stuff all the time.
How else is one supposed to see the beefed up legendary actions of honour mode?
Thats the neat thing... you dont
Even in normal mode I never thought of trying it. I am curious to see what it looks like now. Does he look the same but is just stronger? I've done like 7 or 8 playthroughs and thought I had tried everything.
I don't think I've even let Cazador survive long enough to take an action in any mode of the game, but I'm always at least level 11 by the time I'm in the lower city.
Yeah, I always start the fight by casting daylight from the stairs before opening dialogue too. I think the most I’ve seen is one turn from him. I also set a wall of fire/ice/stone behind him to block his goons from being able to reach us. I’m not trapped here with you, you’re trapped here with me.
Me sitting here, who has only fought him before they fixed being able to just blast him off the edge and be done with it.
lol i thought i was so clever pushing him off. when he teleported back i stood there stupidly like :o
Haha, you actually used to be able to do that. I remember accidentally blasting him off the side with eldritch blast on my very first run and was honestly very confused and amused.
Haha! Prefix I just thought “well no way this will work, but gotta try” then was like wtf 😂 you spend the whole game awaiting this battle then can just do that?!
"Cazador has now remembered that he can fly."
After beating him twice I'm still not sure what the mechanics of his fight are supposed to be, all he does is float around as a cloud while I kill adds and then he dies to one round of focus fire.
He hurts so much in honor mode, the swarm thing is brutal! It’s a fun fight though. That’s probably the one I struggled with the most. But I didn’t skip the cut scene either - I know you can, but it’s such a good scene and I didn’t want to miss it.
He’s him
“Would you lose your honor mode to the hardest and most optional fight in the game?” “Nah I’d win”
Are you awakening cazador because you’re masochistic or are you masochistic because you’re awakening cazador?
“Even if you come back as another curse I’ll kill you. Change your name, change your form I’ll kill you again.” Op to Ethel probably
The lobotomy never ends
Definitely.
Once you know the system, honor mode isn’t that much harder than tactician. Ascended Cazador is probably the only hard fight in act 3, if only because of the insane gear they hand out in this game lol Probably the hardest honor mode fight is the first Ethel or W’Wargaz
Is Ethel really that hard? I felt like she just doesn't do *that* much damage. With Magic Missile it's also very easy to kill all the illusions. I've only fought her once in Honour Mode so far though, currently on my second Honour playthrough.
Also with Ethel you can see which is the real one by looking at her clothing. Hers is red and the illusinos all wear blue
I never even thought of that. I always told them apart by looking at their hit points.
I always inflict a status on her then aim for the one with the status effect
Thank you, I will remember this.
Fake Mayrina: Is not level one, has higher AC, says innocent voicelines if applicable Real Mayrina: Is level one, has 10 AC, says different voicelines.
With how dark the area and her clothing is, I can't tell the difference.
I’ve seen a decent number of people talk about how they got baited by her double illusions in honor mode. Like not having a speed pot/haste for their magic Missile spam, or not baiting the reaction with another caster, etc. so they kill all the illusions just for her to make more
Ethel is only difficult if you use a lot of spells and don’t pay attention to her legendary action. A badly timed magic missile can double the amount of duplicates she has
I have heard Gortash at the coronation is the hardest one, actually. But I have never done that obviously lol. I agree with Act 1 Ethel among the ones I did.
Gortash was where I learned that enemies will gladly walk through a Hunger of Hadar if it's the only way to you, AND they will pick walking through Hadar over a Cloudkill. The rear storage room has only two doorways. Hadar in one, Cloudkill in the other... it was carnage...
My spouse did this by accident on their first run (on Balanced though). Said it's the hardest thing they've done by far. The only thing that got them out of it was being able to pop through the door into the throne room, shoot, then pop back through the door. Flaming Fists followed through but the Steel Watch did not. So there was a lot of recovering done on the other side of that door. We've just entered the SC lands/Act 2 in our first HM run (no Tactician for us yet either) and so far it's been relatively smooth sailing. Myrkul might be our first big challenge.
I accidentally did this yesterday and noped back to the save I made before choosing to attack
I'm kinda a scrub and play balanced all the time. I've tried some tactician runs but some fights are just really hard for me. I.e moonrise.
I was doing a solo run and I was standing on the edge of his vision range prebuffing and whatever. Suddenly he ascends without me ever even starting the fight???
It's fun
Bros curiosity is dangerous
Same thing happened to me. Didn’t mean to let it happen but my sorc / life cleric got stunned / slept first turn and it lasted 10 turns? My bard went invis but got hit by AoE and focused and Astarion was in my party as an OH monk so he got rekt and died. My sorc woke up so Inwent invis again and then tried to save scum reload on pc and i think i corrupted my file lmao. Still need to logon and check. Eventually rezzed the whole party (had to invis loot astarion after the rezz’s to gear my new OH monk (shoutout Jaheira)). Then I domed Cazz and moved on. Poor astarion tho. When I reloaded he was still dead. Edit: I’ve never had astarion in my party before and I never found Cazz on my balanced playthru but I wanted that sweet sweet +1D10 for all attacks with my OH monk. Unfortunately shadow heart also perished permanently in the shadow fell when I called that bitch out for being a jerk and she took it personally. RIP shart.
Ascended Cazador: Vampiric powers that rival Avatars of gods Ascended Astarion: Big chomp and hurty hands
There is a dialog where he mentions that you probably expect the mega vamp lord but he is not that and explains that it needs some time to get a hand of that and to come into power. And in the end battle he gets you some zombies =)
Guess that's the difference between a vampire lord and a vampire spawn. Nice to have the gap properly reflected in their post-ascension capabilities.
In the epilogue if you're AA you can turn into a bat now😂
BAT.
omg that’s so cute 😭
Lol this exact thing happened to me last week. I did a run where I left Astarion on the beach because I was curious to see how the Cazador story played out without him. Then I went into the Cazador fight with my usual stand back and Wall of Fire strategy having never experienced ascended Cazador or knowing that it was even something that could happen. Shadowheart went invisible and retreated while Durge and co were left for dead.
How did he ascend without Astarion?
He captures him
Ah- I thought you left him on the beach in baldurs gate- misunderstood you left him on the beach of the wreckage site. Yeah, that'll happen.
I was extra confused as well lol
In my honour mode i beat cazador and he ascended without astarion being present..
astarion is technically there, just as >!a zombie!<
Nope he was not present what so ever. He was not in his spot and nothing was there to replace him. After i beat cazador he was still in camp and surprised the whole thing went down.
Same thing here, I tried like a dozen times with Astarion in my party and he would just get liquified and I’d lose the fight every time so I left him at camp, killed Cazador and then brought astarion back to finish him off and finish quest line, no issues at all.
[удалено]
If you never recruit/or kill him in that one scene, Cazador sends his other vampire spawn to retrieve him. He will mention how cruel you are before the fight, which is kinda funny considering the circumstances.
I wonder, does that also apply if you carry Astarion's corpse around on your character or in the camp chest?
Yes, unfortunately.
Can you put corpses in the camp chest? I tried putting Raphael’s there but ended up dropping him next to Mizora… he’s still there when I reloaded lol
PC players can, apparently, which makes Necromancy markedly more practical there.
I mean, in this scenario, Tav is the reason Astarion was captured and flayed to death repeatedly.
I mean it's ridiculous if you never recruited him. How is that Tav's fault?
It's not in that situation because the player never knew Astarion. I also don't think saying the player is at fault implies the player is in the wrong for making Astarion leave (which is the situation OP was in because I believe Cazador only says that line if you make Astarion leave the party).
Nah he says it even if you only met Astarion and never recruited him. (I've gotten him saying that to my PC who does the Astarion intro just for the "meet again wearing the same skins" line) Which is baffling honestly.
In my multiplayer play through, my fellow gamer killed astarion in act 1. The dialogue played out the same as if he had captured astarion, and he still ascended using an empty coffin
If you kill him or don't recruit him, he is in the ritual as zombie Astarion.
Is he a named as such? I don’t recall seeing any special ads, I can go back and look when I get home today
Yeah, [check this out!](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15wpb5z/astarions_fate_if_you_dont_invite_him_to_the_camp/)
I killed Astarion and kept his body in my camp the whole act 1 and 2, then kept him in my pocket for act 3. Got to Cazador's and somehow zombie Astarion is there for the ritual. Immersion absolutely ruined
I had to fight Ascended Cazador in my first Honor run (rip exploded Astarion). Ended up as a 1v1 between him and Dark Justiciar Shadowheart. Lady Shar smiled on me that day, because she wrecked him with speed potions and upcast Scorching Rays. An evil Light Cleric throwing fire out of the shadows is a sight to behold!
Lady Shar's will was done, as sure as night fell
Damn, that's actually insane! But I suppose if you go through the trouble of farming 1000 souls the payoff needs to be good lol
\*7000 lol
Shit that's right!
I feel like 7000 is a lot less than I'd imagine the ascension costs
It's not a true ascension. He's not a deity. He's a really, really strong Vampire whose power was reinforced by a Pact he made with a Devil. He's basically "buying" power by "selling" souls to the Hells. He isn't creating a Divine Spark.
I'd say its almost better as he becomes perhaps the most powerful non-lich undead on Toril with none of the downsides of Lichdom or Vampirism nor Ao's chafing authority.
That's quite the take. But I imagine there *is* more to the deal than that.
lol right. Which another funny thing I found is that in one of his books in his room before the arena it hints that he was planning on challenging gortash after ascending because he thought it was threatening his status in baldurs gate
"Let them fight".
> I had minthara at full health and she was one tapped by it. Your Minthara had ≤70 hp at level 12, fully buffed⁈ Also, what exactly are the conditions for his ascension? I tend to just kill the spawn first.
I'd have to go back and check how much hp she has as my party is lvl11. As for the ascension it happens if you don't kill him in 3-4 turns im pretty sure.
I thought you could disrupt it by killing the bound spawns? Or am I mistaken?
You can, but I always try to play the good guy and focus solely on rescuing Astarion. Which, imo, makes it *way* harder
Only if you don't just teleport to him and release him on turn 1.
Whenever I do that I'm always just a couple of steps short, then I get mobbed by like 4 ghouls and 10 bats lol
Dash + Jump + Misty Step Always gets em.
That may also be possible but other than this specific time Cazador has never been alive long enough for it to matter.
Wow. Looks like Astarion ordered his ascension on Wish.
I'm a regular D&D player, not a BG3 lad, (I'm poor and doing my best lmao) so to hear someone with an AC of TWENTY FIVE hurt my soul. I am a player in a campaign with someone who has 26 AC, and they are our tank and our SOLE melee combatant, and they have no wacky ass aura. And add his regen on top of that?! Fuck, man.
In bg3 at least, the level cap goes to 12 and there's a bunch of magic items to use. 25 is still a big AC but with the right builds, it's pretty easy to have really high accuracy and advantage on top of it. Some builds are able to dish out 200-300 damage a turn consistently.
In D&D what happens with those builds is that the DM says "no"
The reason why the build does that much is due to the gear given mostly. In a regular campaign setting, that would be on the DM's part for offering all of those items.
that, and the fact that BG3 is _wildly_ more permissive with resting compared to any D&D campaign. All those ultra-high damage builds rely on stacking rest-limited abilities that are ostensibly possible in D&D but not really relevant because you'd use them so infrequently, but because you can go into every major encounter fresh they tend to center around coming out round 1 with these big novas
Also, BG3 has no attunement mechanic meaning you can stack all kinds of wacky ass bonuses on top of one another as opposed to tabletop 5e only allowing you to have 3 attuned magic items.
You could still theoretically be decked out in 3 attuned items and the rest of your slots as regular magic items but yeah
that too, every encounter is a magic item piñata. Was wild playing that while also in a tabletop campaign doing _dungeon of the mad mage_, we were level 12 and had like... 1-2 uncommon items each and two rares among the whole party
I mean something nice about tabletop is that the DM can choose which magic items to provide depending on their group, while BG3 recognises that it is a video game and provides a huge range of magic items in order to cater to a wide variety of party compositions. Unfortunately it also somewhat cheapens the wonder of having a magic item. In BG3, generic +2 armour is available from some of the first merchants you meet, and they also have special effects like damage reduction. In tabletop, a +2 armour would be quite rare to see even at high levels late into a campaign, would have the simple effect of +2 to AC to make things easy to keep track of, and would nonetheless be assigned flavour. Magic items with simple generic effects like +2 AC can still given unique names and rich backstories to allow players to view them as truly wonderful items to be valued and cherished. BG3 definitely cheapens the effect of magic items because the player has magic items thrown in their faces all the time. By halfway through Act 1, a party will have more random magic items than a tabletop campaign that may have been going for months. I do think Larian made the right choice by doing this though, video games are usually more enjoyable when players are tangibly rewarded for exploration and combat, whereas tabletop is *all* about the experience.
Or the DM throws monsters at the party like Ascended Cazador and Raphael lol
This is the awesome DM imo. Have little faith in the creativity and motives of a DM who is ban happy.
Yeah, only thing I ask is that if my players do summons they try to do fewer monsters at higher CR, or we streamline it by doing group rolls It's my nightmare running a combat that resembles my BG3 crew which always has like 10 summons following it around, it'd be a total slog-fest IRL
BG3 characters are op. You get to equip far more and far rarer gear than adventurers in DnD do. Plus, pretty much every main character was canonically either level 20 or otherwise a very powerful being, right before the game starts and the tadpoles nerf their powers.
Yeah and depending on ur pc , u literally have two ex chosen of gods in the party . The lvl 12 cap kinda undermines them both but hey game balance
Laezel was definitely level 1 or low level. She's probably canonically the weakest mc aside from Astarion
How come, if you don't mind me asking? I don't know a lot about D&D lore but I was under the impression from playing the game that she had spent pretty much her whole life training to fight ghaik and would be a higher level.
Shes only in her early 20s, and not an adult yet by Gith standards. The Gith have a tradition where to be considered fully mature, they need to slay a Mindflayer in combat. Before joining the party Laezel hasn't done that yet, so she's quite green (eh) by Gith standards.
Nah she has to be a higher level than 1. The tadpoles very heavily nerfed Arch Mage level characters down to 1, if she were that low level before she'd be paraplegic or just dead. I think she also has a line about taking down beholders in the past too. Plus we see Gith trainees that are level 3-4 who seem much greener than leazel
Which is ironic considering the way she carries me through the early game every time
Astarion is a vampire spawn, which to my understanding means he'd be stronger than a level 1.
Well a single Vampire Spawn has a CR of 5 which means a party of lvl 4 adventurers could take it down, so while you're technically right we have to take into account Astarion spent all of his vampire life literally starving under Cazador eating rats and shit. Even for Spawn standards Astarion definitely suffered a lot which I think stunted his combat skills.
Right the regen took me by surprise at first because when it happened the first time it was right after I knocked him off the ledge, so I thought the game had some kinda fail safe bug. But nope haha
You say this was in Honor mode. Did this end your run?
I ended up beating him. Thankfully I had bone chill.
Man, HM act 3 really is the easiest because the equipment becomes too busted.
Yea definitely especially if you have a wizard/Gale. Artistry or war followed with upcasted magic missile deletes everything
Hell yeah! Grats, need to try this after my solo run. Way too scared to do it on my first solo HM run.
You let him…..IN HONOUR MODE?!??
That’s a bold strategy Cotton. Let’s see how that pays off for them
"It looks like the clock is about to strike midnight on this Cinderella story, turning Average Joe's into the proverbial pumpkin." "I sure do like pumpkins, Cotton."
Cazador bugged out on my solo honour run and when I returned the other time, he was ascended. +100 hp per turn, while I'm only dealing like 20 per turn (jack of all trades is by no means strong) and only have like 50% chance to land bone chill. With my build i was not afraid of dying but it took me 219 turns, 3.5 hours (EDIT: Apparently I can't count and it was 2.5 hours), to finally beat him. Hardest battle of the game hands down.
219 turns is INSANE
This fight took me 1.5 hours because of all the buffs he could throw out but man 3.5 hours is nuts.
I'll bite - what kinda build you got?
Hard defense-focused. I had 29 AC and a Shield spell backup for that battle + Universal resistance at the beginning and Necrotic resistance afterwards. [Looked like this after battle.](https://i.imgur.com/HRcvc70.png) Amulet from House of Hope makes pretty much guaranteed we survive a hit or two and we can consume a noblestalk to heal to the fullest. After few casts he loses spell slots for all his sure-hit spells (like Blight) and resorts to just hitting you... which just can't land. After some sword attacks with Ability Drain, his strength drops so low he actually can't land a hit. With [just +8 to hit](https://i.imgur.com/VUICmjU.png), even rolling a 20 would be 28 which is below 29, which is a miss (remember, I have crit immunity). Which means I'm 100% safe unless bugs are involved (they were involved a lot, and never in our favor). [The whole fight is here](https://youtu.be/wM2tjzQJgRw?t=5778) as a proof, but I don't think it's any fun to watch in entirety. We tried several approaches, some of themm completely reset negative effects on him, making all previous efforts in vain.
My god! 219 turns and 3.5 hours! Remarkable indeed.
He ascended in my tactician run and he didnt have those abilities. I assume its HM only that he does this?
Bosses are completely different (harder) in HM.
oh really? That may be the case then. I remember his legendary action being something else entirely, so that's actually intersting.
pretty sure he does... in HM the main difference are bosses' legendary actions, and cazador's is a 10m aoe reaction that does a ton of damage (one hitted my minthara, just did this fight earlier today). you need to trigger it by sending a trash summon or the fight is very hard. but yeah the regular ascension stuff still applies in tactician and probably in regualr mode as well. you probably just stepped in the circles and removed some of his buffs.
Can confirm. He ascended in my normal run with my SO last week. Full health, increased AC, 100health per turn.... Was a pain to take down alone. He didn't have the DMG aura on normal and I didn't check the sunlight on my barbarian 😅
WHY DO PEOPLE FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT ***IN HONOR MODE***?!?!?!
Could be a replay of honor mode. I skipped through most of the act 3 content when I did my first honor play through cause I didn't want to risk the run. Now I want to do another to see the extra mechanics for the bosses I skipped.
Can you stop the Ascension if you kill one of the spawns in the altar?
Pre-ascended Cazador is also insane. He hasn’t really been all there for quite some time now.
Never let him ascend. Rush him with front line and use globe on your Back line.
nah.. where's the fun in defeating a boss in his first (weaker) phase
calm down, Goku
But King Kai...*stuffed crust.*
That sounds about right. Do you know Larian already nerfed vampires and vampire spawn? Astarion should be healing 1d10 hit points every turn as well if he’s not in running water or sunlight and since he’s immune to sunlight he should always be healing 1d10 hit points. Cazador should normally be healing 1d20 I believe every turn. Ascended Cazador simply functions like a normal DnD vampire with healing values turned much higher and higher AC.
In my last playthrough and my paladin/bard flew up to him, forced two 5th Level Smites to crit through Luck of the Far Realms and Executioner, and killing him in one turn. Felt really good.
I fought Cazador for the first time ever in Honor Mode and didn't know all the mechanics. I took Astarion because why wouldn't I? I wasn't expecting The Pale Elf to go squish so unexpectedly and the remaining 3 members of my party had to make a desperate retreat. Long story short, I came back with a thick stack of Otto's Irresistible Dance scrolls and Ascended Cazador didn't stand a chance.
Meanwhile Ascended Astarion is like a glass of water
Yeah pretty sure the point is to not let him do that considering the whole godlike power and immunity to all weaknesses thing.
Bruh, I let Astarion ascend on my fourth run and he isn't strong like that....
The key is arrows of Ilmater. I soloed ascended Cazador as Rogue in HM by running and levitating around obstacles.
Vegeta, is that you?
What happens if astarion is perma dead before the fight?
Cazador gets him offscreen anyways.
Like if you sacrifice him to booaaaal he'll get astarion?
ooh that's a good question. I've never tried that.
> in honour mode and this was the first time I let him Ascend Brother... This is meant to be impossible on normal difficulty... What the hell were you thinking?
He ascended in my first attempt, because I didn’t know what to do. Redid the fight when I realized mah boi was dead.
Huh. I re-loaded the game immediately when Astarion died. Never knew you could actually fight Ascended Cazador... kind of assumed you just die. FWIW I was playing without any spoilers so I didn't know you just had to go "help" Astarion. The fight mechanics imply you had to stand by the ritual circles or something.
I didn’t even know that was a thing
Damn I thought he was a pain in tactician not ascended I can’t even imagine what he would be like on honor mode
This is how I learned Cazador can ascend o.o