Shandalar

[Locke Da'averan]

Everyone who has played TOSC knows who shandalar is, he's the tough a$$ mage in ulgoth's beard.

it's not that hard to kill him and you get decent loot from him including robe of the neutral archmage, and lots of spell scrolls, what i wondered was that your reputation takes a hit if you kill him... he can't be all good if he's neutral, so is he some famous-kind of character in the books like Drizzt, or did they just implement a penalty for a simple murder? There's no ulgoth's beard in the walkthrough section, so that's why i'm asking...

i didn't really find killing him (26000xp, robe, scrolls, +3 staff) to be worth losing 10 rep, maybe after i only have durlag to go through since you hardly need rep in there...

[Mirk]

for me, 26K xp are definitly worth the 10 reputatation points! i think that this is the highest xp for killing a creature in BG, correct me if i'm wrong. it's just the attitude of the guy that makes me want to do it... plus, you can always upgrade the rep in a temple - the trick is to kill him when your rep is above 18 (i think), so you don't lose classes for rangers and palladins.

[Sojourner]

At this point in the game, I don't care about the robe and staff, but I always have my thief drink a couple of potions of Master Thievery and pickpocket the scrolls off Shandalar . I don't think the XP for killing him is worth the reputation loss, especially since my party is never hurting for XP after finishing Durlag's Tower.