(I’m limiting spoilers here to the House of Hope. I’m still in my first playthrough, so I haven’t seen it all yet.)
We were warned more than a few times that it was a fool’s errand, but when my party learned the Orphic Hammer was at Raphael’s place, and acquired the means to get there, the prospect of a heist was irresistable.
Of course, Raphael showed up just as we were about to leave, and he wanted blood. It was the toughest fight we’ve had so far. Here’s what worked:
Party Members: (All level 12. AC range 17-20. Companions as their default classes.)
- My College of Lore bard
- Shadowheart
- Karlach
- Gale
Followers & significant summons:
- Conjure Elemental: Air Myrmidon
- Conjure Elemental: Earth Myrmidon
- Create Undead: Ancient Servant (mummy)
- Hope
Especially notable tools:
- Envoy’s Amulet (bard)
- Sussur Greatsword (Karlach)
- Staff of Cherished Necromancy (Gale)
- Fire resistance elixirs
- Maybe 15-20 healing potions (mostly greater, some superior and regular)
Preparation:
- Fire resistance elixirs for everyone. (They were already active from earlier fights.)
- Defeat all enemies in the house before trying to leave, so they couldn’t wander in and make the final fight harder. (Some of their corpses were useful in the next step…)
- Summon the mightiest summons we could that weren’t made of fire, water, or ice.
- Drink deeply from the boudoir faucets, to replenish everyone’s resources.
- Persuade Yurgir the orthon to turn against Raphael and join our side. This was a DC 30 skill check IIRC, so probably not available to every party. Fortunately for us, my bard is a persuasion expert, was fully inspired, and had the Envoy’s Amulet and Shadowheart’s Guidance. We talked him into it after a re-roll or two.
- Enjoy the battle song.
Battle:
- Cast Planar Binding on Raphael immediately. Maybe twice. He shakes it off quickly (I think it’s just one turn) but it keeps him and some of his minions busy just long enough for us to have a chance at retreating.
- Leave the foyer ASAP. With all those fiends on raised platforms and moving to surround us, there was just too much heat in that room. Let our summons tank for us as we cast some debuffs and run for the door, and then have them follow us out.
- Regroup at the far end of the passage to the feast hall. This let us choose our positioning in a meaningful way, and provided a choke point for the enemies.
- Engage the fiends one or two at a time as they trickle through the door. Gale’s staff-boosted necrotic attacks work well. AoE damage and debuffs (like the air myrmidon’s Raging Vortex) keep them from being too threatening. Meanwhile, let Yurgir work on them from behind.
- Heal mostly with potions, since quaffing only consumes bonus actions, leaving spell slots and actions for enemies. Toss potions at the feet of party members in need before their next turn, and whenever two or more are clustered closely enough to hit with a single potion. Heal Yurgir with spells when possible, since he doesn’t spend much time in potion range.
- Continue until Raphael is the last enemy standing.
Master of the house:
- Hit Raphael with all the debuffs we can; especially Silence. Karlach does great work with the Sussur Greatsword, and the myrmidon’s Raging Vortex seems to work well. This keeps him (somewhat) less dangerous long enough for the next step.
- Send the summons past Raphael, through the door, and back into the foyer to destroy the pillars. Their teleportation abilities are great for this. It really pissed off Raphael, and he killed them all, but not before they could finish the job.
- Summon new summons. The more the merrier! Quothe the raven and Scratch were with us, though not much use beyond a couple brief distractions.
- Lure Raphael close to a relatively open area, where the party can take aim at him without bunching up too much. (His AoE combos can be tough to heal through if they hit more than two targets each.)
- Resume the debuffs, and pour into him every damage source available that he can’t nullify or retaliate against. (Avoid radiant damage.) Necrotic and force damage work well.
I was skeptical more than once that we could win… but somehow, we did. Whew.
Yurgir had so much fun that he offered to join us later in the campaign. I guess bard school pays off. :)
Anyone else have a strategy that turned out brilliant or failed hilariously?
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Enjoy the battle song.
It saddens me deeply knowing that someone might have played the game and missed the song. It’s truly absolutely amazing.
Might be a spoiler but the orphic hammer deals massive damage to the pillars, it’s kinda a big part of the boss fight that isn’t hinted at, also if you rescue hope she has a divine intervention skill ready to go.
This fight got a lot of patches over the years, i remember being able to use Tasha’s hideous laughter on Raphael the first times around but on my last playthrough I couldn’t get it to work even by scum saving
I tried the hammer on the pillars earlier in the visit, before the big fight, because they really looked like they had some nefarious purpose. Unfortunately, they were invulnerable at the time.
Anything force based does. The best thing to blow them up is a caster with eldritch blast or artistry of war. Usually one shots them.
What about Otto’s Irresistible Dance instead of Tasha’s Hideous Laughter?
That fight was hard, but I don’t think I did anything special (and wasn’t level 12) to beat it. Hope can banish people who aren’t Rafael and hope and shadowheart can keep people up. I pretty much just spaced people out and sent summons around the corners to take the pillars I think.
I was just on default, not whatever brutal options are above that though.
Hope spent most of our fight talking to herself back around a corner. She entered turn-based combat range to heal once or maybe twice, but that’s about it.
The icon on her special ability looked the same as the Banishment spell, which wouldn’t have been all that helpful once we had the enemies funneling through the choke point, so I didn’t bother with it. I didn’t realize until afterward (when someone mentioned it online) that Revoke Guest Status is considerably more powerful than Banishment.
Edit: I might have to use Revoke Guest Status in a future play-through when I don’t have a persuasive bard to make an ally of Yurgir.
It’s been a minute, but Revoke Guest Status is definitely what I meant.
I swear I could control her actions though. Unless I’m just imagining shit.
Oh, you can control her actions. I just forgot about her once she was out of combat range, because the game never activated her as the combat rounds advanced.
Yeah, the fight on Honour Mode is unreal. You need to be on point with your strat.
Honor mode is definitely a step too far for me. It’s a great game and it has a hell of a lot of replayability through different party construction and different choices in key encounters, but I have too much other stuff competing for my time to be willing to dump a 100 hour save because I got a couple really unlucky rolls in a row in a brutal fight.
I have managed to avoid save scumming decisions, and wiping wasn’t super common (that fight might be the only fight I failed more than once; I started the dragon fight multiple times because I was on steam deck and had the battery die), but the game has more than enough to occupy my time than trashing a bunch of heavy time investments to try for a perfect run.
I had a funny moment when I left with half of the map’s enemies on my ass and a rolling lava bolder trying to bring down a gate I had magically locked.
Then, as I expected, I triggered the huge boss fight… With the demon you met in the house of char, pretty pissed, on top of that.
It was a true mess, the enemies outside of the boss arena were still using their turns trying to break the locked doors. It was funny at first, but annoying loss of time in the end…
Best fight of the game.
