Ganking the Githyanki
At this stage of early access, this is arguably the hardest fight of the game. The bulette, in comparison, is a pushover. The minotaurs? There are ways to slaughter them. But four level 5 Githyanki, that’s not a fair fight. But how to even the odds?
Scenario 1: You go in together, with Lae’zel, she breaks from the party.
If you attack, Lae’zel joins the other Gith. It’s a short fight. You lose.
If you play it through and they attack, it’s up close and personal and they have the initiative. It’s a short fight. You lose. You can (try to) summon ogres to help. They die too.
If you negotiate carefully, you get out alive, you get the creche coordinates, Lae’zel is still bossy, and the Gith leave, taking their enchanted weapons and most of the XP with them. (You get 100 XP for evading the fight, but – pitifully- the level 5 Gith only give 50 XP anyway, for some reason).
Scenario 2: You leave Lae’zel in the camp and take the fight to them without her.
Huzzah! Armour (plate and scale) and +1 weapons galore: shortsword, longsword, greatsword, heavy crossbow, and at least 200 XP.
But how?
Githyanki encounter: playing to win
There are a lot of ways to go about this, most of them at a distance, though one person worked out how to solo it up close and personal!
You can mix and match these tactics, but here’s what I found:
1. The later you leave it in the game (because of all the good enchanted items), the better your chances.
2. I’m too stingy, but throwing gold at the fight can make it easier. So, plenty of Greater Healing Potions, Invisibility and Speed, bombs etc.
Your weakling mage or warlock will have little chance of shoving a Gith off the ledge. However, if they gulp down a Potion of Hill Giant Strength, then shove…
3. Take out the ladders before the encounter. They can and will use them to get to you. If they reach you, you probably wipe soon after, even with ogres helping.
4. Hide at the top of the cliff and stay hidden as much as possible.
5a. Grease trap
Before battle – you lay (throw) a line of Grease bottles in front of them; five will do it. The reason here is they hesitate to cross once the fighting starts.
Note that you are dropping them as a deterrent, a line in the sand, do not hit and aggro the Gith!
Do not set fire to the Grease in battle!
The aim is to keep the melee from being able to leap up to you, or throw missiles, and – harder – to keep the ranged Gith from firing enchanted arrows at you.
Their Area of Silence is particularly nasty if you have a party of spellcasters.
5b. Barrelmancy
(And or) you can place a lot more around and detonate them as needed, but you can legitimately carry around 3 barrels of oil (and perhaps a few of the lighter barrels of gunpowder) to the fight and SHOVE them to shatter in front of the Gith.
Note: Again, you are spreading oil as a trap, not targetting the Gith. Do not him them (yet)!
6. Duck and dive, boys, duck and dive.
Fire an arrow and hide (press ‘c’ for speed). Ideally, make Sarth Beretha your focus target.
Rinse and repeat.
Sometimes they’ll reset, just keep going. Eventually, they’ll detect you, having taken some damage.
Then it’s on!
7. Who has initiative is a factor, but – hopefully – you do, or at least, or enough to make a difference.
8. Battle tactics
If you spread oil, gunpowder, etc around them, now is the time to use a fire spell or fire arrow to ignite it!
Uses spells or scrolls of Hold Person on them, especially the named Githyanki (Sarth Bertha). You do not want that one reaching you!
Magic Missile is good as it doesn’t miss. (The Sapphire Spark amulet is great here).
Between a 4d6 attack with a 25% and a 1d10 attack at 75% chance, I’d take the latter.
Poison your weapons, every bit helps. If you have a ranger, coating their arrows with Wyvern Poison (7d6 vs Con), and a Warlock (to Hex constitution), that can be deadly too.
Don’t underestimate the Mage Hand cantrip. Firstly, it presents another target; if they are attacking the hand, they are not attacking you. Secondly, it’s good for shoving them off the platform if they reach it. Flaming Sphere can help in a similar way, either as extra party attacks (2d6), or as a distraction.
Summoning the Ogres can help, but really, only if they reach you on the clifftop – by which time it’s probably too late for you anyway :/
Youtube examples
BARRELS:
I don’t talk, so feel free to skip through mine as you prefer. In this first one, I went for a barrel attack.
GREASE:
In this second video, I used the grease attack. I could have sped things up with exotic potions and Ogres in the fray, but I wanted it to be realistic. My party is level 4, but they don’t have the best gear around. They have explored the Underdark, but haven’t killed any of the goblins, nor the Hag, nor the gnolls, the crew at the Tollhouse… A number of those items would have made the fight a lot easier, particularly for healing.
Fair fight
It is possible, but it can take a lot of tries. This one, below, took me nearly 30 minutes. At the end – after the fight is won – I do summon the Ogres. They are not happy they missed all the fun :D
Ogres, and a wing and prayer:
Not bothering to upload this one, but it was a 20 minute, straight play battle. No cheese involved. I won. Well, no, I didn’t wipe.
The warrior Gith Sarth died fast, thanks to wyvern poison and Hold spells, but without the grease two of Gith quickly made the platform.
My mage died fast, got pulled up, died again, twice, then got a coup-de-gras and was permanently dead. (Revivify needed).
Wyll got blasted off the cliff, died, failed a save, died again. permanently. (Revivify needed).
The Ogres I summoned to help were in the way more than they were helpful, one ran around doing nothing, a second was a little better, and I couldn’t get past the third to attack properly. The third died fast though. Hardly an epic win.
This last one I found on Youtube, it’s by user Ami XP, who is soloing the game as a Battlemaster fighter. Looked at a couple of her guides, she’s really rather good.
Below, impressively, she solo’s the Githyanki patrol. There is a little stitching going, so it’s not as seamless as it looks, and a few gear changes would have made it a little easier, but even so, she did it and fair play to her!
Links
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