Yeah, the one with the bear. I buffed up my fighter to get his AC as high as possible. Also, I think I had my druid charm the bear or maybe just mezzed it. Have to get some lucky rolls in that fight. If you can summon creatures use them as fodder.

I eventually beat him by casting Web + summoning spiders and pelting him with ranged weapons. I charmed his bear a few times, but he usually takes it out in one round.

It doesn't make sense that large creatures don't suffer a penalty to AC vs ranged weapons, but that's D&D for you. Also, Web is definitely OP in this game.

I'm finally in the temple proper now. One thing I've noticed is that enemies are easier to aggro compared to the original unpached version. In the vanilla game, you could take out a group of enemies with another group not far away that wouldn't join the battle if they were a certain distance offscreen.

Now the AI radius is expanded, and it can make some battles significantly more epic. I had a real bitch of a time completing the quest for Grud where I had to bring him the giant gar. Every enemy on that map converged on me within 3-4 rounds. Granted, it's a very small map, but it made for a frustrating series of tries until I used part of the map to bottleneck the onslaught.

That Sea Hag can be deadly in that battle and the giant toad. Nice magic items in that swamp. My ranger became a badass after that fight.

Yep, my ranger is sporting a +2 longsword now. I gave the purple Elven chainmail to my cleric. She needed better AC, and heavier armors were taking up too much of her weight allowance.

I had to cheese that fight though. By retreating to the SW corner of that map, you essentially take the gar and the king frog out of the fight because anything larger than medium size can't follow you into that area. Once everything else was delt with, I just pelted the frog with ranged weapons until it croaked (har har) and then the gar was an easy fight by itself.

I recently picked this playthrough back up from where I left off and finished it a few days ago. My party was level 12 when I defeated Zuggtmoy and also included Zaxis the Bard, the Wizard Falrinth from the temple, and Darley the demon Sorceress from the Fire node.

Some of the battles towards the end were a lot harder than I remember, but I think the CO8 guys might have buffed a few of those bosses. The Balor in the Fire node was particularly frustrating without being properly prepared.

It's surprising how well this game has aged, but a lot of that has to do with the mod community. It wouldn't be nearly as good without CO8 and Temple+.

Yeah, the Co8 mod really has extended the life of this game. You may want to try the Keep on the Borderlands or the new high-level areas they placed after the Temple. I enjoyed the new content also.

I played this game one year ago when I finished in hospital for one week.

I created party of 5, each by my family characteristics.

Male lawful good human Paladin (me)
Female true neutral half orc Ranger (wife)
Male neutral good elf Wizard (then 5y old son)
Female chaotic good elf Rogue (then 2.5y old daughter)
Male neutral good dwarf Cleric (then 2 months old son)

Don't tell your wife you made her a half-orc. You may end up in the hospital again ;)

Well that was the reason I choose her. I am 198cm and 74kg too kind for my own good. So I wanted strong warrior woman that would compliment my gene pool so kids would not have issue being too thin like me.
So I got more than I asked for. :D

Heh heh I had to use Google to convert that to ft+in and lbs. You probably have a hard time finding chainmail that fits. ;)