ulgoth's beard - I give up

[Shine]

Well, I can't seem to beat the demon thing in the cult basement. I've even resorted to some pretty heavy-handed cheating (i.e. loading up more potions and scrolls and even removing the guards via cheatkeys). I found a thread here which suggests sneaking down there and casting some area spells but that doesn't work, either. The mage turns visible upon casting and gets fried.

The main problem seems to be that at one point the main character (me) gets turned into some creature, which of course ends the game. With so much battle going on, there doesn't seem to be any warning of this.
Preventative scrolls and potions to keep from getting gazed (i.e. mirror eyes) don't work well, either.

Frankly, after an hour of this nonsense I've lost interest. Is this creature important to the plot development or can I just skip it?

[DaemonJ]

Use the Wand of Monster Summoning to keep the demon busy. As soon as the summons' appear, have them attack the demon and then immediately use the wand again to summon more. Don't stop doing this.

After every 3rd summoning, have your priest cast Bless and Chant on the demon's area to "buff" up the summons' and let them last a bit longer.

Have the rest of your party attack the demon with ranged weapons.

Have a single fighter (or hidden thief) go around and kill all of the cultists that are found along the edges of the building. Then have this character begin attacking the demon with a ranged weapon as well.

[Shine]

Thanks
I finally managed by having Kivan ping his mates with the dispelling arrows. This works nicely since it doesn't dispell everyone else's useful spells. I should have done a better search here when looking for an answer - I used the creatures name in the search parameters. Since the name isn't that easy to remember, a better search was to just use "cult".

Incidentally, I snuffed a couple of bystanders when brawling outside the cult entrance. So my reputation went down to 10. While this has stopped Jaheira's whining about management, now Branwen keeps saying that she has nothing to say to any of us. Sigh....

[DaemonJ]

Glad to hear that you got it worked out.

Killing commoners will indeed destroy your rep so try to avoid that at all costs. You can go to a temple and pay a tithe to improve your rep up to 18. After that you will need to do quests that increase your rep to get up to 20.