How to clear the lighthouse?

Question

When you reach Ondra's Gift area in Defiance Bay, you'll meet a woman who mistakenly purchased an old lighthouse to convert it into an Inn. As you can probably guess there is a problem, which you can solve.

One of these encounters has wiped my whole team three times, so I was wondering if anyone had any tips on dealing with Shadows.

The encounter entails trying to beat 5 Shadows, who, as soon as combat starts will all cast a spell which causes a copy of them, named Shade, to appear, essentially doubling the encounter to 10 enemies.

So what tactics, spells or damage types should I be using in order to try and beat this incredibly punishing battle? My team are mostly lv5, so I'm wondering if it's something I should just come back to later?

Here is the bestiary entry, if that's any help, which seems to suggest fire damage. I have no bestiary entry for Shade, so I assume this is my first encounter with them.

Answer 1

Send in your tank way ahead of your party, so he'll trigger the ambush on his own.

Then focus your attacks on the Shades. If they die, their summoned Shadows also disappear. Fire works great here. Fan of Flames (Aloth) does a lot of fire damage. Crowd control also helps. Ghosts can still be knocked down, etc. Just keep pausing and use all your abilities.

Still, this area has some of the hardest act 2 fights, so there's no shame in coming back later with bigger fireballs.

Answer 2

One way to do this is to conter with 3 of your own shades: Position your party in the only room with a choke point. Let your tank (prefer higher freeze dr) trigger the abmush and run back meanwhile summoning all your figurines (a shade figurine can be found in the villain embassy of first fires). Now you can buff your creatures and debuff the shades and finally wreck havock over them.

Gotta love priest for this.

A similar strategy can be used in the second level.

Answer 3

I did a combination of aloth casting fan of flames and durance casting heal and defensive spells. Party of level 5 companions, chanter main character.

In my case they almost always cast ranged attacks on aloth. try to keep him alive enough to cast fan of flames a couple of times. I made a small circle for my party members, made the fox trigger the encounter, aloth casting AoEs regardless of friendly fire, and durance casting AoE heals. Aloth managed to kill half of the shades before dying. Edér managed to keep the spectre aggro along with usually 3 other shades. Sagani's fox focused on getting as much aggro as well. My chanter's summoned Phantom and the rest of the living party cleaned up. Focus on the shades first.

Skip the next floor if you have enough mechanics.