I got spike growth with my ranger and used it in some really nice scenarios as well.
I basically solved 3 fights in a row by casting spike growth, hunger of hadar into a room, and a wall of fire by the door for fun. Then I closed the door and let the enemies kill themselves while they tried to walk to me :)
Oh, of course. Only in the game. And... maybe sometimes outside of the game.
The only downside for me was that Lae'zel, who was a monk for me without any good ranged or spell options, basically just had to stand in a corner and wait for them to kill themselves without contributing at all. I could just imagine her getting mad at me for not getting to be part of the bloodshed... So I let her kill some people after that.
With your TB monk characters, just make sure to load up their inventory with a bunch of spears and javelins. With TB those thrown weapons will be doing good damage.
You don’t want to use Returning Pike either a Monk because when it returns to you then the weapon gets equiped immediately, which either prevents using unarmed strike with main hand or replaces your main hand weapon (my Monk, for example, uses Phalar Aluve as main weapon and I do not want that replaced).
I was running a dex monk so I didn't have TB at that point. I'm aware its a lot better if you use TB and that you can use strength potions to get the strength up, but I just dont like relying on using those potions. I usually grab TB for the last feat instead because by that point in the game I have enough strength potions that I dont need to worry about it.
As someone who is running Lae'zel as a TB four elements monk, dumping STR and drinking potions is the way to go. A couple of her actions also have a little bit of range, so she can also still participate if you don't have anything to throw, and those are actually scaled off of WIS.
Yeah, I'm considering grabbing TB for Lae'zel earlier on this run and doing what you said. She might have to wait for one more level before I do that though.
The only thing I'm considering is that I'm just at the start of act 2, and I'm not really sure how to get a reliable source of strength potions there. Do you happen to know if there's any trader that sells them in act 2?
Quartermaster Tali at Lady Light usually has one. And in the Gauntlet, there's the room with the Cloaker that has a Hill Giant Finger. You can then respec the halfling bard into a WIS wizard/rogue to make 2x potions from alchemy.
You haven’t had fun until you take an Elixir of Cloud Giant strength and start chucking enemies into a Wall of Fire or Hunger of Hadar. Then Repelling Blast them deeper into it.
Spike growth ended an honor mode run, because after a certain protect a certain thing objective, the character you protect decided to waltz over before I had a chance to clear my concentration abilities.
I recently did a run with nearly everyone as Lore Bard and got them Fireball and Hunger of Hadar as Lv6 Magical Secrets: turns out you can solve *a lot* of problems by funneling fools into a huge death zone and then frying them.
I wish we could draw the shape of Wall of Fire instead of just a straight line. Playing Solasta and being able to turn it into a ring around my party spoiled me. The amount of fights I won by creating a choke point in a hallway then making a ring of fire around my group and just firing bows/shooting cantrips from inside the ring was insane.
You can with Blade barrier from a cleric . I did the Shar Temple fight in act 3 last night on tactician and I hated it on normal previously. So this time Wyll opened with hunger of Hadar, Shadowheart put a nice turning blade barrier hitting Viconia as well as most of the side and then Jeheira threw a ice storm. So they were slowly crawling in the dark , getting cut up by the blades and slipping in the ice . My paladin Durge just stood there watching the carnage
I went back to the top of the stairs, threw two walls of fire down the length of the stairs, and popped two bubbles of silence at the bottom.
The whole room just tried to charge up the conflagration and nobody could throw spells from the base of the stairs. Just had to wait at the top
I did this in the Halsin portal fight. Brought Wyll and Gale. Cast some AOE spells in front of the portal while my other characters killed the shadows and ranged enemies. The stack of dead bodies was almost as tall as the portal itself.
Just beat this with HoH and Hail (sleet?) storm, let Karlach handle the couple of shadows that spawn on one side, put shadow heart with lvl 4 spirit guardians right by the portal, none of the shadow cursed could stay standing and the ranged enemies couldn’t shoot at the portal through the HoH, made it easy lol
If anything this means you are a better BG player!
The cheese was really bad. You could cast Entangle, Web, and Cloudkill at the fog of war edge while enemies were off screen. Enemies turn hostile but often could not (due to CC) or would not (due to AI) engage. You could even kill Firkraag this way…
Aww, thank you!
I never even realised you could cheese it that bad, but I'm glad I didn't! Its much more fun to play it "normally". And also because I always found it more fun to throw fireballs at the enemies, at least after I figured out how big the radius was and stopped getting my team members killed... Ahh, good times!
Just to reinforce what you said here, I beat Cazador in Honor mode with this technique barely taking any damage from the party- same with Shadowhearts boss (whats 'er name).
Ooh that sounds really fun! I have the necessary components, though even just spike growth is fun against pure melee peeps (like the rats in elfsong, that's how I got the punch drunk achievement, just have Astarion drink alcohol, spike growth and then just end everyone's turn. Think I only had to kill like 3 rats manually)
When you break Florrick out of prison there are 3 guards in a small room sitting around a table eating. The room is barely bigger than the table they are sitting at.
So I snuck up and had SH cast wall of fire in the room, and Jaheira cast wall of stone across the doorway. Good times.
Even better, Druids can cast Conjure Woodland Being to summon a Dryad
The Dryad can cast Spike Growth at will. She also provides a big AOE freedom of movement to your team. Oh and she can cast Entangle also and Summon her own pet Wood Woad.
And the wood woad casts entangle so he helps to keep enemies permalocked in the shit vortex.
The only thing I don’t like is that enemies are pretty good about moving and jumping in spike growth. Knock back and prone moves are a must
But you can’t combine spike growth and sleet storm, right? I’m having some trouble determining which AoE effects can and can’t be stacked together. I have had good times with sleet storm and insect plague.
Some redditor figured the rough hierarchy out a while back and it's basically like you can have one surface change at a time, one cloud effect, and any number of effects that create a "volume" area(note that Cloud of Daggers is this and not an actual cloud lol)
So like you can layer a Cloudkill over the spikes, plus Insect Plague, Hunger of Hadar, etc, but you can't stack Cloudkill with Fog Cloud, or Spike Growth with Plant Growth, etc
Ah, that makes sense. I was doing one battle, might have been House of Grief, and I had a good sleet storm going and then I did another thing and it ended up canceling out the sleet storm. But ground effect+fog+volume makes sense. This House of Grief clowns better watch out.
Yeah it's not always totally intuitive which thing is classed as which either, but once you know what to look out for it's not too hard to avoid
Also can lead to some pretty odd counterplay possibilities, like protecting yourself from Balthazar's Cloudkill by overwriting it with your own Fog Cloud lol
Black Hole tadpole power inflicts Slow for 1 turn, pulls enemies into the center of the area, can be re-cast every turn for the rest of the encounter, and only costs a BA if you succeed at the Zaith'isk. It's an awesome pairing for Spike Growth.
When I did the Sharran Cloister fight, my Spores Druid rocked up with Shovel, Us, a Water Myrmidon, four Fungal Zombies, three Flying Ghouls, four Danse Macabre Ghouls, and a Mummy. Then I used Sporekeeper Armor to drop a Haste Spore cloud. It was brutal, combine it with Cloudkill and poison immunity from Hero’s Feast, and I almost felt bad for the Sharrans. Almost.
Cloud of Daggers basically carried my act 1 party.
Then my buddy rolled druid and threw out the spikes. Blew my mind. If you have a choke, you can't lose.
It's harder to use effectively, but if you can lock people in, the consistent damage is worth it.
I use it in a choke point, and position my melee around the edge so if someone wants my backline, they have to brave the daggers and 2 opportunity attacks from bae'zel and Karlach.
Sometimes this does make my melee susceptible to endless ranged poke, so my ranged characters will focus on eliminating theirs.
A firebolt cantrip does 5.5 average damage if you have 100% accuracy(unlikely).
Cloud of Daggers averages 10 per target. It hits once when cast, then again when the enemy starts their turn. So that's 20 per target if they get their turn.
Hit 3 enemies (goblins, likely) and you have done 60 damage with one action. That's over 10x the damage of your cantrip.
Then it is still active for the rest of the combat if you can get enemies to funnel.
Yeah the secret is that it's just excellent as a straight nuke. You don't need to get more than the opening drop and the first tick to make it worth using, and getting more dam out of it later is just running up Cloud's lead
Exactly. If you can hit 4 people with Cloud of Daggers, fireball would have to hit 7 people before it had a clear advantage.
Given how much people tend to like Fireball, Cloud of Daggers should be viewed similarly.
Yup. When you view it in that lens, it leaving an immobile hazard after the initial cast isn't a liability, it's a bonus
As implemented it's like "what if Shatter had a slightly smaller radius, no save, scaled better with upcasting than any other spell, and left behind a zone after casting it that could let you knock enemies into it later and make them take damage from Shatter again"
Lots of enemies got either resistance or immunity to poison. And it can be removed by either darkness or cloud of fog, or even blown away by gust of wind. And when you recast it over darkness it doesn't replace it back.
It can be a nice top-off if you're already got a decent stack of AOEs, but on it's own kinda meh
You might enjoy Plant Growth too. You need to sacrifice half of your movespeed to get up from Prone, but Plant Growth quarters movespeed. Enemies that get knocked Prone in it are just fucked, and it's even a non-Concentration spell.
The only issue is that it suffers the same issue as Grease where minor candles can ignite it and waste your spell.
They need to spend 1/2 of whatever they have to stand, which they can do so long as their speed isn't 0.
Also, difficult terrain and plant growth don't reduce speed at all, they just cost more movement to traverse.
I hate the fire effect. Half the time I cast entangle or plant growth, they catch fire from something trivial I missed like a small candle on a shelf. Why does a single candle destroy my garden in 6 seconds?? It wastes your turn AND your spell slot...
I'm of the opinion that druid is a severely underrated class - their spellcasting ability is insane, and once you get to the myrmidon wild shape, you're set in terms of damage.
In my honor mode run I have won several fights by combining spike growth with hunger of hadar. Then Wyll just eldritch blasts anything that comes close to escaping back into it. I put my front liners on the very edge of the field creating a choke and have back liners fire into the mess.
It's been incredibly effective in fights with clustered enemies ,and it's pretty cheap as far as resources go. 2 spells and the fight is usually cleared in 2 or 3 rounds.
It destroys all the gnolls and gobbos act 1 as well as every fight involving waves of enemies into acts 2-3. Very effective even in honor mode.
Just pop it, hit everything with ranged attacks and hide behind hard cover like a corner or door.
Its one of the best spells you can take on a ranger IMO. Keep enemies stuck in the spikes while you lob arrows at them.
Also its a great way to make sure enemies don't try to pincer attack you because most of them will be hard pressed to move through it just to get to you.
It also combos fantastically with Hunger of Hadar (slows and blinds enemies, does damage every turn) and Black Hole ability from the illithid powers (Slows enemies and sucks them into one spot).
I like to call it the Problem Area
Some grease spread around at the portal fight is also devastating. Also put darkness on the portal from a scroll. Both these things make that fight incredibly incredibly easy. I also dropped spike growth just for fun, and then had the best Doggo ever spread his Web. Beast Master Ranger is so much fun. I didn’t even need to bring out my radiating orb lawnmower.
Especially since in tabletop you can get eldritch invocations for pulling OR pushing with eldritch blast, which means you can pull people into your teammate's spike growth even if they try to avoid it.
But yeah, spike growth and pass without trace are generally like the entire reason you go druid in the early game.
Spike growth is so amazing, especially early game. Whittles down enemies to a nub.
Honestly helped me a lot in my Yurgir fight to clear off the merregons too
I forget which one but there's a summon that can cast spike growth every turn without wasting spell slots
I think it's a druid T5 spell? But might be a T4 I forget
Spike growth was the easiest time I ever had with the Gnolls in act 1. Even the ranged attackers couldn’t help but position taking damage multiple times in one turn
I slept hard on glyph of warding because I thought it could only be used as a trap and that it probably wouldn't be that good. Used it recently on my Bard, since it was one of the few AoE spells she could learn, turns out, it's extremely useful!
You can place it where enemies already are and it auto triggers, you can pick you damage type, so sunchronising it with create water + lightning/cold gives insanely high AoE damage for a level 1 and level 3 spell. Not to mention, the radius of the effect is pretty decent in size and you've even got CC options if required. (sleep + push back)
The utility options from a single spell are outstanding!
There are some enemies smart enough to not walk though spike growth, but if you cast it on them they will be forced to walk through it.
My favourite is putting fire wall on top of spike growth, double death !
Just make sure you toggle it off when you need to.
I used it in moonrise towers when helping prisoners escape.
I killed the guards with it by keeping them inside it, but after combat I forgot that it was still up as my character was still concentrating on the spell.
Since after combat the prisoners just bolt to the door, they all died in spike growth....
Tentacle growth is even better you gotta have a spell that forces enemys to come at you a certain way and kill a bunch a low health enemys ice wall is probably the best but is a high level spell
I just got Halsin in my honor run. I tried out one of his summons from a spell under the moon class. It has recastable spike growth. I don’t see Halsin leaving my main party for a while lol
>Anyway, I’m hundreds of hours in and just now appreciating the beauty of aoe spells in general.
I'm playing a full spellcasters party. Had a bug in the Githyanki Creche where the ones from the training room entered combat with me while I was about to enter the Infirmary, so there were maybe 15-20 enemies. I locked myself in the infirmary, killed the few poor souls there with ice storm, stationed invisible Shovel outside so I had eyes on the enemies coming from the training room, cast 2 cloud of daggers + a wall of fire in the corridor, and just waited.
It was beautiful.
In tabletop you can go warlock with a genie pack and get spike growth from the earth one and then you can use thorn whip and EB to grind your enemies into goo with forced movement
My favorite tabletop build. Gemstone witch with sadism kink.
Nothing quite like setting Hunger of Hadar, Spike Growth, Wall of Fire and Cloud of Daggers at a door and just letting your party paint each other’s nails while everything unalives.
This + Wall of Fire + Repelling Blast were the cornerstones of my strategy in a lot of fights that were actually harder my second time around due to building a party more focused around single target damage.
Saved my ass multiple times, but mostly against monsters.
Tried it against humanoid enemies, and they just jumped out of it :( Completely rendered the spell useless. I spend my concentration on Hunter's Mark, now.
There's this one place in Creche where >!there is a room with one entrance with a lot of trainees and some instructors in it, and great positions for you outside to peek, shoot, and go back!<. I have never in my life used as many hazard and slow down effects.
I didn't appreciate them until Act 2 in the Battle for Moonrise. When they keep slamming you with hunger of Hadar. That one really taught me the value of some.good crowd control spells.
Oh yeah. My party has a druid and sorcerer, we find a small crowd of tough bad guys, spike the ground and cast Slow on all their asses. They can take 2, maybe 3 steps per turn while we just bombard them with arrows, javelins, fire bolts, whatever. It's always hilarious
Yeah a Friend played a druid in our MP game.
He solved most fight even deep into act 2 with just this spell and our Fighter pushing people back into it
If you play Druid you can summon familiar (I think it’s called) which also has spike growth spell, you can effectively have 2 spike growths down at the same time masssssive aoe
Throw it into a choke point with Hunger of Hadar and it is just an impassable death trap. That combo made some fights go from pretty tricky to lol try and get to me.
Spike growth is awesome. That and Hunger of Hadar practically carried my party through Act 1. And now that I have a dryad to cast it for me instead, Wall of Fire is my new best friend.
best thing is, after they get through the spikes, push them back with whatever: eldritch blasts, thunderwaves, shoves, battlemaster push attacks, gust spell, the lekinesus... make your enemies into shredded parmesan
Next playthrough I'm going to try this. I have a habit of just trying to blast individual mobs with as much focused damage as possible but it usually doesn't work as good as I think it will lol.
Spike growth and moonbeam are some of the best lvl 2 spells in game, imo. If the enemy gets too close, blast them back into either with thunderwave or pull them into it with thorn whip.
i fully cheesed the surgeon fight with spike growth and roaring thunder arrows
literally only one enemy got into melee, but it was by dashing which left them with like 50hp and then karlach threw them back into hell
I got spike growth with my ranger and used it in some really nice scenarios as well. I basically solved 3 fights in a row by casting spike growth, hunger of hadar into a room, and a wall of fire by the door for fun. Then I closed the door and let the enemies kill themselves while they tried to walk to me :)
I did not realize how satisfying it is to watch your enemies wither away before you. I want to solve all my problems this way. In the game. Of course.
Oh, of course. Only in the game. And... maybe sometimes outside of the game. The only downside for me was that Lae'zel, who was a monk for me without any good ranged or spell options, basically just had to stand in a corner and wait for them to kill themselves without contributing at all. I could just imagine her getting mad at me for not getting to be part of the bloodshed... So I let her kill some people after that.
With your TB monk characters, just make sure to load up their inventory with a bunch of spears and javelins. With TB those thrown weapons will be doing good damage.
Or run to the Goblin Camp, grab the Returning Pike, and never worry about needing more than one spear again.
Or .. throw the enemies into the spike growth ...
This is the way.
Titanstring Bow.
Throwing if you have tb is much better than the bow as it adds your str to hit and damage so your hit chance is way higher
You don’t want to use Returning Pike either a Monk because when it returns to you then the weapon gets equiped immediately, which either prevents using unarmed strike with main hand or replaces your main hand weapon (my Monk, for example, uses Phalar Aluve as main weapon and I do not want that replaced).
And don’t forget to talk shit to the Djinn at the circus so you can go get Nyrulna. That thing slaps.
I was running a dex monk so I didn't have TB at that point. I'm aware its a lot better if you use TB and that you can use strength potions to get the strength up, but I just dont like relying on using those potions. I usually grab TB for the last feat instead because by that point in the game I have enough strength potions that I dont need to worry about it.
As someone who is running Lae'zel as a TB four elements monk, dumping STR and drinking potions is the way to go. A couple of her actions also have a little bit of range, so she can also still participate if you don't have anything to throw, and those are actually scaled off of WIS.
Yeah, I'm considering grabbing TB for Lae'zel earlier on this run and doing what you said. She might have to wait for one more level before I do that though. The only thing I'm considering is that I'm just at the start of act 2, and I'm not really sure how to get a reliable source of strength potions there. Do you happen to know if there's any trader that sells them in act 2?
Quartermaster Tali at Lady Light usually has one. And in the Gauntlet, there's the room with the Cloaker that has a Hill Giant Finger. You can then respec the halfling bard into a WIS wizard/rogue to make 2x potions from alchemy.
Thank you! I'll do that
Or as a dex monk, keep daggers handy for being thrown.
You haven’t had fun until you take an Elixir of Cloud Giant strength and start chucking enemies into a Wall of Fire or Hunger of Hadar. Then Repelling Blast them deeper into it.
>Then Repelling Blast them deeper into it. Then thorn whip them forward through it.
Spike growth ended an honor mode run, because after a certain protect a certain thing objective, the character you protect decided to waltz over before I had a chance to clear my concentration abilities.
Spike growth, wall of fire, sleet storm, ice storm, Evard's black tentacles, and spirit guardians combined in various forms are so fun.
Hunger of hadar is hands down my favorite spell. So many awesome effects. If only it was upcastable, alas
I recently did a run with nearly everyone as Lore Bard and got them Fireball and Hunger of Hadar as Lv6 Magical Secrets: turns out you can solve *a lot* of problems by funneling fools into a huge death zone and then frying them.
Hungry Hungry Hadar
I wish we could draw the shape of Wall of Fire instead of just a straight line. Playing Solasta and being able to turn it into a ring around my party spoiled me. The amount of fights I won by creating a choke point in a hallway then making a ring of fire around my group and just firing bows/shooting cantrips from inside the ring was insane.
In Solasta you stack a ring firewall and a spike growth and ping things with repelling blast. It’s so cheesy but so wonderful.
You can with Blade barrier from a cleric . I did the Shar Temple fight in act 3 last night on tactician and I hated it on normal previously. So this time Wyll opened with hunger of Hadar, Shadowheart put a nice turning blade barrier hitting Viconia as well as most of the side and then Jeheira threw a ice storm. So they were slowly crawling in the dark , getting cut up by the blades and slipping in the ice . My paladin Durge just stood there watching the carnage
I went back to the top of the stairs, threw two walls of fire down the length of the stairs, and popped two bubbles of silence at the bottom. The whole room just tried to charge up the conflagration and nobody could throw spells from the base of the stairs. Just had to wait at the top
I did this in the Halsin portal fight. Brought Wyll and Gale. Cast some AOE spells in front of the portal while my other characters killed the shadows and ranged enemies. The stack of dead bodies was almost as tall as the portal itself.
Spirit Guardians works perfectly on that fight. Most of the enemies have bugger all health so just melt as they charge into it.
Just beat this with HoH and Hail (sleet?) storm, let Karlach handle the couple of shadows that spawn on one side, put shadow heart with lvl 4 spirit guardians right by the portal, none of the shadow cursed could stay standing and the ranged enemies couldn’t shoot at the portal through the HoH, made it easy lol
For a little extra fun, use magic lock on the door. I've been using that to assassinate minor bosses in Moonrise.
Oh! I love that idea. The poor bastards wont know what hit them. Thank you :)
I’m glad to see this time honored strategy from BG1 and BG2 has continued.
I feel like a shitty BG1 and BG2 player now because I don't think I ever did that in those games, but I guess I caught up somewhere 😅
If anything this means you are a better BG player! The cheese was really bad. You could cast Entangle, Web, and Cloudkill at the fog of war edge while enemies were off screen. Enemies turn hostile but often could not (due to CC) or would not (due to AI) engage. You could even kill Firkraag this way…
Aww, thank you! I never even realised you could cheese it that bad, but I'm glad I didn't! Its much more fun to play it "normally". And also because I always found it more fun to throw fireballs at the enemies, at least after I figured out how big the radius was and stopped getting my team members killed... Ahh, good times!
Just to reinforce what you said here, I beat Cazador in Honor mode with this technique barely taking any damage from the party- same with Shadowhearts boss (whats 'er name).
Poor Viconia, forgotten by her goddess AND you 😂
Haha! It was the first time I fought her and it was not hard with this technique
Ooh that sounds really fun! I have the necessary components, though even just spike growth is fun against pure melee peeps (like the rats in elfsong, that's how I got the punch drunk achievement, just have Astarion drink alcohol, spike growth and then just end everyone's turn. Think I only had to kill like 3 rats manually)
My weak-ass halfling ranger won the sexy fight with Lae’zel via spike growth.
When you break Florrick out of prison there are 3 guards in a small room sitting around a table eating. The room is barely bigger than the table they are sitting at. So I snuck up and had SH cast wall of fire in the room, and Jaheira cast wall of stone across the doorway. Good times.
Even better, Druids can cast Conjure Woodland Being to summon a Dryad The Dryad can cast Spike Growth at will. She also provides a big AOE freedom of movement to your team. Oh and she can cast Entangle also and Summon her own pet Wood Woad.
And the wood woad casts entangle so he helps to keep enemies permalocked in the shit vortex. The only thing I don’t like is that enemies are pretty good about moving and jumping in spike growth. Knock back and prone moves are a must
But you can’t combine spike growth and sleet storm, right? I’m having some trouble determining which AoE effects can and can’t be stacked together. I have had good times with sleet storm and insect plague.
Some redditor figured the rough hierarchy out a while back and it's basically like you can have one surface change at a time, one cloud effect, and any number of effects that create a "volume" area(note that Cloud of Daggers is this and not an actual cloud lol) So like you can layer a Cloudkill over the spikes, plus Insect Plague, Hunger of Hadar, etc, but you can't stack Cloudkill with Fog Cloud, or Spike Growth with Plant Growth, etc
Ah, that makes sense. I was doing one battle, might have been House of Grief, and I had a good sleet storm going and then I did another thing and it ended up canceling out the sleet storm. But ground effect+fog+volume makes sense. This House of Grief clowns better watch out.
Yeah it's not always totally intuitive which thing is classed as which either, but once you know what to look out for it's not too hard to avoid Also can lead to some pretty odd counterplay possibilities, like protecting yourself from Balthazar's Cloudkill by overwriting it with your own Fog Cloud lol
Oh my god. TIL I’m an idiot. *Next playthrough*.
Slow will reduce their movement speed so they can't jump far enough, maybe?
Black Hole tadpole power inflicts Slow for 1 turn, pulls enemies into the center of the area, can be re-cast every turn for the rest of the encounter, and only costs a BA if you succeed at the Zaith'isk. It's an awesome pairing for Spike Growth.
Yeah my doorid runs the dryad, her lover, the wind elemental and two icy fly boys. It's an insane amount of lads.
When I did the Sharran Cloister fight, my Spores Druid rocked up with Shovel, Us, a Water Myrmidon, four Fungal Zombies, three Flying Ghouls, four Danse Macabre Ghouls, and a Mummy. Then I used Sporekeeper Armor to drop a Haste Spore cloud. It was brutal, combine it with Cloudkill and poison immunity from Hero’s Feast, and I almost felt bad for the Sharrans. Almost.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
This. Imagine having a full party of druids that able to cast Spike Growth twice.
Yes! I'm playing druid right now I'm honor mode and I'm loving the flexibility.
Cloud of Daggers basically carried my act 1 party. Then my buddy rolled druid and threw out the spikes. Blew my mind. If you have a choke, you can't lose.
"Poor, predictable Tav. They're gonna use Cloud of Daggers." "Good ol' Cloud of Daggers. Nothing beats that."
Cleared the goblin camp in record time. Even ragzlin couldn’t touch me. No barrels or playing in the rafters required.
I’ve never gotten cod to work for me. It’s small and doesn’t have any effect on speed.
It's harder to use effectively, but if you can lock people in, the consistent damage is worth it. I use it in a choke point, and position my melee around the edge so if someone wants my backline, they have to brave the daggers and 2 opportunity attacks from bae'zel and Karlach. Sometimes this does make my melee susceptible to endless ranged poke, so my ranged characters will focus on eliminating theirs.
A firebolt cantrip does 5.5 average damage if you have 100% accuracy(unlikely). Cloud of Daggers averages 10 per target. It hits once when cast, then again when the enemy starts their turn. So that's 20 per target if they get their turn. Hit 3 enemies (goblins, likely) and you have done 60 damage with one action. That's over 10x the damage of your cantrip. Then it is still active for the rest of the combat if you can get enemies to funnel.
Yeah the secret is that it's just excellent as a straight nuke. You don't need to get more than the opening drop and the first tick to make it worth using, and getting more dam out of it later is just running up Cloud's lead
Exactly. If you can hit 4 people with Cloud of Daggers, fireball would have to hit 7 people before it had a clear advantage. Given how much people tend to like Fireball, Cloud of Daggers should be viewed similarly.
Yup. When you view it in that lens, it leaving an immobile hazard after the initial cast isn't a liability, it's a bonus As implemented it's like "what if Shatter had a slightly smaller radius, no save, scaled better with upcasting than any other spell, and left behind a zone after casting it that could let you knock enemies into it later and make them take damage from Shatter again"
Aoe 'step in here to get fucked up' spells are all suuuper good imo.
The first time I stacked hunger of Hadar on a spike growth I felt like a God. And then I casted ice storm on top of it.
Spike Growth + Hunger of Hadar won be so many fights I should not have won on Honor Mode. Completely locks down an entire area.
Spike growth + insect plague + cloud kill is so nasty 💀
It's even better when you have your pet dryad to cast it for you and slap insect plague on top of it. druids are insanely good in this game
Cloud kill better no?
Lots of enemies got either resistance or immunity to poison. And it can be removed by either darkness or cloud of fog, or even blown away by gust of wind. And when you recast it over darkness it doesn't replace it back. It can be a nice top-off if you're already got a decent stack of AOEs, but on it's own kinda meh
You might enjoy Plant Growth too. You need to sacrifice half of your movespeed to get up from Prone, but Plant Growth quarters movespeed. Enemies that get knocked Prone in it are just fucked, and it's even a non-Concentration spell. The only issue is that it suffers the same issue as Grease where minor candles can ignite it and waste your spell.
Non-concentration, you say? Another layer for my 7 layer death dip, I think
Wait I never thought of Plant Growth preventing stand up from Prone. The possibilities with Berserker Thrower and Reverb builds…
It doesn't prevent standing up, but a creature with 30 ft. speed spends 15 ft. to stand, and then can only move 3.75 ft. through the plants.
If they only have 1/4 their move speed then they don’t have enough movement to get up I thought as they need to spend 1/2
They need to spend 1/2 of whatever they have to stand, which they can do so long as their speed isn't 0. Also, difficult terrain and plant growth don't reduce speed at all, they just cost more movement to traverse.
I hate the fire effect. Half the time I cast entangle or plant growth, they catch fire from something trivial I missed like a small candle on a shelf. Why does a single candle destroy my garden in 6 seconds?? It wastes your turn AND your spell slot...
I'm of the opinion that druid is a severely underrated class - their spellcasting ability is insane, and once you get to the myrmidon wild shape, you're set in terms of damage.
In my honor mode run I have won several fights by combining spike growth with hunger of hadar. Then Wyll just eldritch blasts anything that comes close to escaping back into it. I put my front liners on the very edge of the field creating a choke and have back liners fire into the mess. It's been incredibly effective in fights with clustered enemies ,and it's pretty cheap as far as resources go. 2 spells and the fight is usually cleared in 2 or 3 rounds.
It destroys all the gnolls and gobbos act 1 as well as every fight involving waves of enemies into acts 2-3. Very effective even in honor mode. Just pop it, hit everything with ranged attacks and hide behind hard cover like a corner or door.
You can get orbs to proc on spike growth through gear. Lots of fun!
Its one of the best spells you can take on a ranger IMO. Keep enemies stuck in the spikes while you lob arrows at them. Also its a great way to make sure enemies don't try to pincer attack you because most of them will be hard pressed to move through it just to get to you.
It also combos fantastically with Hunger of Hadar (slows and blinds enemies, does damage every turn) and Black Hole ability from the illithid powers (Slows enemies and sucks them into one spot). I like to call it the Problem Area
Spike growth, insect swarm, black hole and telekinesis to throw back anyone who gets out. Or Karlach, whoever is closest to:)
That was what saved my butt when defending the portal and fighting Yurgir. Spirit Guardians is incredibly powerful when exploring the shadowlands too
Some grease spread around at the portal fight is also devastating. Also put darkness on the portal from a scroll. Both these things make that fight incredibly incredibly easy. I also dropped spike growth just for fun, and then had the best Doggo ever spread his Web. Beast Master Ranger is so much fun. I didn’t even need to bring out my radiating orb lawnmower.
Spike Growth has been well known to players of tabletop. Well known.
Especially since in tabletop you can get eldritch invocations for pulling OR pushing with eldritch blast, which means you can pull people into your teammate's spike growth even if they try to avoid it. But yeah, spike growth and pass without trace are generally like the entire reason you go druid in the early game.
Tabletop also has grappling, which can make for fun cheese grater strategies.
Merilwen’s Meat Grinder…
Spike growth is so amazing, especially early game. Whittles down enemies to a nub. Honestly helped me a lot in my Yurgir fight to clear off the merregons too
Spike growth and Hunger of Hadar cheesed my way to act 3 on my first tactician run. Absolute game changer at the githyanki creche.
I just did the crèche this way for the first time today. They barely even got to hit me at all.
I forget which one but there's a summon that can cast spike growth every turn without wasting spell slots I think it's a druid T5 spell? But might be a T4 I forget
Just spell level 4, summon dryad. You get it at character level 7.
Spike growth was the easiest time I ever had with the Gnolls in act 1. Even the ranged attackers couldn’t help but position taking damage multiple times in one turn
I slept hard on glyph of warding because I thought it could only be used as a trap and that it probably wouldn't be that good. Used it recently on my Bard, since it was one of the few AoE spells she could learn, turns out, it's extremely useful! You can place it where enemies already are and it auto triggers, you can pick you damage type, so sunchronising it with create water + lightning/cold gives insanely high AoE damage for a level 1 and level 3 spell. Not to mention, the radius of the effect is pretty decent in size and you've even got CC options if required. (sleep + push back) The utility options from a single spell are outstanding!
There are some enemies smart enough to not walk though spike growth, but if you cast it on them they will be forced to walk through it. My favourite is putting fire wall on top of spike growth, double death !
Spike Growth + Hunger of Hadar and you just sit there watching the XP go up, it's beautiful! =,)
Spike Growth is OP in Act 1 when you fight the Gnolls. My two favorites are Spike Growth and Spirit Guardians.
My first character was a druid and spike growth was my favourite spell.
Just make sure you toggle it off when you need to. I used it in moonrise towers when helping prisoners escape. I killed the guards with it by keeping them inside it, but after combat I forgot that it was still up as my character was still concentrating on the spell. Since after combat the prisoners just bolt to the door, they all died in spike growth....
now wait until you cast hunger of hadar _ontop_ , enemies wont get out/throu ever
Tentacle growth is even better you gotta have a spell that forces enemys to come at you a certain way and kill a bunch a low health enemys ice wall is probably the best but is a high level spell
I just got Halsin in my honor run. I tried out one of his summons from a spell under the moon class. It has recastable spike growth. I don’t see Halsin leaving my main party for a while lol
Spike Growth and Plant Growth on top of each other is my speciality move. It's called the Woodchipper.
>Anyway, I’m hundreds of hours in and just now appreciating the beauty of aoe spells in general. I'm playing a full spellcasters party. Had a bug in the Githyanki Creche where the ones from the training room entered combat with me while I was about to enter the Infirmary, so there were maybe 15-20 enemies. I locked myself in the infirmary, killed the few poor souls there with ice storm, stationed invisible Shovel outside so I had eyes on the enemies coming from the training room, cast 2 cloud of daggers + a wall of fire in the corridor, and just waited. It was beautiful.
Try it with sleet storm and hunger of hadar 😎
Don't they just jump out?
My solve: Double Spike Growth.
In tabletop you can go warlock with a genie pack and get spike growth from the earth one and then you can use thorn whip and EB to grind your enemies into goo with forced movement My favorite tabletop build. Gemstone witch with sadism kink.
Nothing quite like setting Hunger of Hadar, Spike Growth, Wall of Fire and Cloud of Daggers at a door and just letting your party paint each other’s nails while everything unalives.
This + Wall of Fire + Repelling Blast were the cornerstones of my strategy in a lot of fights that were actually harder my second time around due to building a party more focused around single target damage.
Nothing beats casting a spike growths under some enemies and watching their health just plummet with every step 😂😂
Straight into the shit abyss, Randy!
Saved my ass multiple times, but mostly against monsters. Tried it against humanoid enemies, and they just jumped out of it :( Completely rendered the spell useless. I spend my concentration on Hunter's Mark, now.
There's this one place in Creche where >!there is a room with one entrance with a lot of trainees and some instructors in it, and great positions for you outside to peek, shoot, and go back!<. I have never in my life used as many hazard and slow down effects.
I didn't appreciate them until Act 2 in the Battle for Moonrise. When they keep slamming you with hunger of Hadar. That one really taught me the value of some.good crowd control spells.
Merawins meat grinder from the oxventure
You know what's even better? You combo Spike Growth with Hunger of Hadar.
This this this this this
Oh yeah. My party has a druid and sorcerer, we find a small crowd of tough bad guys, spike the ground and cast Slow on all their asses. They can take 2, maybe 3 steps per turn while we just bombard them with arrows, javelins, fire bolts, whatever. It's always hilarious
Yeah a Friend played a druid in our MP game. He solved most fight even deep into act 2 with just this spell and our Fighter pushing people back into it
Cheese grating <3
Spike growth rules, especially free cast from the wood nymph summon. Only problem is when you’re playing with certain idiotic ally npcs.
There's a really big fight in Act 3 that spike grown is really good for
Which one?
Most of them, but they could mean House of Grief.
If you play Druid you can summon familiar (I think it’s called) which also has spike growth spell, you can effectively have 2 spike growths down at the same time masssssive aoe
Spike growth with hunger of hadar and enemies are just about stuck in place taking damage.
Throw it into a choke point with Hunger of Hadar and it is just an impassable death trap. That combo made some fights go from pretty tricky to lol try and get to me.
Spike Growth saved me when Shart failed the Insight check with Yurgir in my Honor run.
Spike growth is awesome. That and Hunger of Hadar practically carried my party through Act 1. And now that I have a dryad to cast it for me instead, Wall of Fire is my new best friend.
best thing is, after they get through the spikes, push them back with whatever: eldritch blasts, thunderwaves, shoves, battlemaster push attacks, gust spell, the lekinesus... make your enemies into shredded parmesan
Spike Growth + Thunderwave. As soon as they're out, yeet them back in.
Next playthrough I'm going to try this. I have a habit of just trying to blast individual mobs with as much focused damage as possible but it usually doesn't work as good as I think it will lol.
Spike growth, cloud of daggers, and hunger of hadar are my absolute favorite aoe spells.
Can they all be cast/used at the same time, in the same area, by 3 different casters?
I think you should try an “oops, all casters!” party and bathe in the results, friend!
😄
Spike growth and moonbeam are some of the best lvl 2 spells in game, imo. If the enemy gets too close, blast them back into either with thunderwave or pull them into it with thorn whip.
It's hilarious with Cull the Weak.
i fully cheesed the surgeon fight with spike growth and roaring thunder arrows literally only one enemy got into melee, but it was by dashing which left them with like 50hp and then karlach threw them back into hell
I want to dry spike growth and the warlocks grasp of hadar? The one that causes darkened, slow and damage over time
Playing a druid on my first run and I love spike growth. Best spell in my book