Improved finale battle + possibility of a new mod? (spoilers)

[teardropmina]

ok, encourged by my first success against improved Bodhi, I decided to face imp. Irenicus again this time.
It took a day, and an extremely cheesy tactic for me to finally make it.
My party for the final showdown was this,

PC F/M 15/15 (1 WW+ 3 GWW/ one 7th lvl spell capable)
Mazzy 21 (1 WW + 1 GWW)
Jaheira F/Druid 15/14 (1 WW + 1 GWW / one 7th lvl spell capable)
Minsc 19 (1 WW + 1 GWW)
Imone 16 (1 8th lvl spell capable)
Aerie C/M 15/14 (1 7th lvl priest spells / 2 7th lvl mage spells capable)

I don't have any of the mods besides selected Tactics components installed (no ease of use, no item upgraded and etc.); that is, I don't really have some fancy weapons or items (the only mod items I have are Sanchuudoku, which isn't really useful in this fight anyway, and Cloak of Balduran).

That those Irenicus fragments took away cheesy items didn't matter that much since we didn't really need those, except for the Amulet, to get us this far. However, there's still cheese on our side to outcheese them -- traps + mislead + time stop.

1. Not thief traps, but skull traps...which, however, is very tricky and dangerous to use in this battle, since they would easily kill half or even all party memembers as well. But, tons (almost literarlly) of them + Lower Resistance took care of Pride, Fear, and Selfish...and also the Irenicus-slayer at the second stage.

2. Mislead gave my F/M, Imone, and Aerie chance to do their magic without being targeted directly by any of the fragments.

3. Since my highest lvl mage Imone can only memorize one 8th lvl spell, I saved all three time stop scrolls I found in the course of the game for this battle. The 1st time stop + spell sequencer: magical missles + more magical missles (some during the time stop, some after) took care of the Greed. 2nd time stop + 1 WW + 1 GWW (my F/M with Soul Reaver) took care of the Wrath. The 3rd time stop + 2 GWW (this time with SotM) took care of the Shattered One.

So, basically I had my F/M, Imone, and Aerie handled the real fight, Jaheira manged to summon her nature friends and a Fallen Deva, Mazzy and Minsc simply ran around to lead those fragments to desired places, or just tried to keep themselves alive. My first few tries (in the past as well) while I used them engage in melee fight with the fragments, they never managed to survive.

Ok, with my current party roster, I've tried without skull traps, but failed miserably. I've read quite a few "success stories" concerning this final battle, but almost all the stories involve either very high lvl mages or sorcerers (multiple high lvl spells, and ToB wizard HLAs), tons of GWWs, or fancy moded weapons. Did anyone go in to this battle with a "characteristically original SoA" party = 6 people, balanced party, which can go through the whole game "normally" (no soloing, I imagine a high lvl solo kensai->mage can handle the battle easily) with none of the members are in extremely high levels. I consider my current party is already out of the "characteristic of original SoA," but I wasn't good enough to beat them without resorting to skull trap cheese.

What all these lead me to think that it'd be great for less experienced/skillful gamers like myself if there's a "improved SoA battle Mod" which is different from the tactics Mods now we have. It's so evident that the standard Bodhi finale and Final Battle in hell are way too easy, but imo, the improved versions are simply too difficult which are out of the character of SoA. It's very possible that we can go in to the final battle without any of the party memember hit the SoA XP cap. The kind of Mod I think of is the one that can make Bodhi and Irencuis more difficult, but still managbale without ToB HLAs, very high lvl characters or fancy items from various mods.

Lastly, I know there are people here who don't have ToB, and so I would like to know how did you guys manage to take care of the imp. Irenicus, especially if you keep in character with the original SoA (not removing the XP cap, balanced 6 people party [PC + 5 original SoA NPCs], no moded weapons and items).

TIA

[ 09-13-2003, 05:53 PM: Message edited by: teardropmina ]