Balthazar is a tough bastard. The second your conversation ends at the Nightsong, he uses an unstoppable Raise Dead spell to summon an army of minions while spamming overpowered magic to rub salt into the wound. The best way around this is to shove Balthazar into the abyss, but then you don’t get any of his goodies. Since his corpse is, y’know, in the abyss.
Luckily, Kill-bray has found a solution that makes the Balthazar boss a piece of cake – sussur bloom flowers.
You find sussur bloom flowers in the Underdark by the bottom of the mage’s tower. They’re the annoying petals that block your spells. Typically, they wither if you leave the Underdark, but if you put them inside a pouch or container, they’ll survive the trip. Then, when you reach Balthazar in his personal chamber in the Temple of Shar, reverse pickpocket him to plant the sussur flower on his person. He now has an anti-magic field around him, nullifying all of his spells.
What this means in practice is that when you later fight Balthazar at the Nightsong, he won’t have the ability to cast a single spell. “He practically just ran around aimlessly with nothing to do,” Kill-bray said. “It seems his AI isn’t really programmed to use melee attacks.”
Balthazar can’t even punch you. He’s essentially a headless chicken darting around, desperately trying to avoid Karlach’s barbarian frenzy or Lae’zel’s action surge wombo combo. Granted, his skeletons will still be there to defend him, but they’re much easier to dispatch when you don’t have to worry about an all-powerful mage getting in the way.
If the skeletons prove too much, however, there’s a way to make the Balthazar boss fight even easier. Make sure one of your party members has Counterspell and, if you attack Balthazar instead of talking to him, there’s a chance you’ll deflect Raise Dead and stop him from summoning a skeleton army. That leaves you with a helpless Balthazar who has no support and no way of fighting back.
It’s worth noting that Counterspell has a slim chance of working as Raise Dead is a level five spell, but if you save scum, it’ll eventually do the job. You cannot speak to Balthazar to cast it as, if you enter dialogue, he’ll use Raise Dead before combat even begins.
Alternatively, you can just Thunder Wave all the skeletons into the abyss while he frantically runs around, unable to help. Either way, sussur bloom flowers turn this notorious fight into a complete joke.