Pretty simple. I've gotten this far, so I might as well finish the game. However, as far as I can tell, this fight is significantly harder than anything else in the game. If he doesn't get you, his mages will, and if his mages don't get you, he will. Am I just going to have to resort to cheap tactics?

This one I remember from the original. Nasty fight. The easiest solution is threefold:

1. You are at 161k xp, with all the buffs you can throw on, right?

2. Bring friends. Everyone who can summon, does summon. Prepare to BURY them under an army of monsters.

3. Depending on how badass you feel, either send your Legion of Doom into the fight and then keep summoning more monsters every round, or reveal one enemy at a time. As they're revealed, pull back, let them come to you, and finish them off before creeping ahead to go after the next one.

Monster summoning works well for a quick breather but his henchmen have a nasty tendency to pop up right next to you.

I tried arrows of detonation for 4 of my party at once and it did sod all except slow the game to 1fps whilst it tried to calculate all the damage rolls at once.

Probably the best tactic I found was to use entangle/web spells (but that screwed up my summoned monsters as much as it did the enemy) and on rare occasion a hold person worked on him

Actually tell a lie, the best tactic I dound was turning the difficulty down to minimum, then the fight is just bloody hard rather than almost impossible

And then you said "Screw this, I'm getting a Pentium II," right?

Actually I said "I paid $2500 for this core i7 rig with stupidly poweful video card you can cook a steak on and I STILL get lag??"

Aren't old games wonderful? :D

To topic: Yeah, i almost ate my laptop because of this last fight. It's damn f***ing ibelieavethereisnoappropriatewordforit HARD as hell! I finally managed to pull off his henchmen first by slowly advancing with one character until he gets aggro. Then i pulled him back and awaited the single enemy with the rest of my battle-ready group. If you manage to do this without Sarevok getting "activated" (when he talks to you), you can even save after you brought his ally down and then approach from the other side to get his second bodyguard. If done correctly you can save again and then spam Sarevok with wands of summoning while your party throws everything ranged at him that they got...

Even with that cheesy tactic i had to reload a bazillion times. But in the end i managed to win the game on normal difficulty. I felt REALLY GOOD! :P

I soloed him as a fighter once, if I recall correctly. Best equipment and a downing a shitload of potions beforehand, but it worked surprisingly well. Just remember that the only one who has to die is Sarevok.

EDIT: The potion that makes you succeed all saves is especially helpful (magic shielding?), combined with the usual heroism, strength, haste, that sort of stuff.

I triggered just Sarevok, then lead him down to the entrance of the temple. Then I used summons to hold him off while I beat him down with ranged weapons, and finally had my paladin tank him, with Minsc and Branwen as extra melee and the others with ranged, complemented by a few MMs from Dynaheir. I managed to kill him right when my main had like 3 HP left. It was intense!

This was like the 7th thing I tried, too.

How to beat him depends on if you want to use cheese tactics or not. I will post three tactics that I have done, depending on how you want to play.

Cheese: Two tactics for this one. One of the most popular (if your not playing tutu or BGT) is to summon a CRAPLOAD of monsters. He will not even be able to reach your party. Another one that works very well is to move one person (your archer) around the center circle. once you get close to where he is standing, move inch by inch towards him until you can see him but he can't see you. Then fire arrows of detonation at him until all of his party members are dead. (they are invisible next to him)
Roleplaying: the toughest one by far. Move towards him like your character normally would. And let his team members come into sight as normal. Summon monsters to attack Sarevok and the half ogre(forget his name), but don't engage him with your tanks. If he kills your monsters, summon more. (this is not a cheese tactic as you are only summoning 4-5 at a time) attack angelo with your tanks, as he is the most dangerous helper because he is a good fighter/mage. Fire arrows of dispelling until all of Senji's barriers are down, then mass magic missile him. He casts alot of annoying spells at your party. Once those two are down, attack the half ogre before going for sarevok. Magic missile is your best friend in this fight.
Middle Ground: summon your monsters (4-5) and do all your pre-buffs before you go into his line of sight. Then, send your best tank into his line of sight, and as soon as dialog is done run back to the party. For some reason (at least in my games) his followers won't follow you, and your party can fight only sarevok.

PS. make a save before you fight him. sometimes I reload that save just to face him for fun, as he is one epic battle :).

Thanks for the tips. I figure that the solution here is to trek back up, buy a bunch of Summon Monster II scrolls and then cheese each member of sarevok's entourage seperately. For the record, my character is a sorcerer (Level 7 or something, which is about where the rest of my party is at) and, if that didn't give it away already, I'm playing on Tutu.

It's been a long time, but as I recall I managed to lure him away from his henchmen. We mashed on him for a while, and then my bard character killed him with magic missiles. As I recall, he had pretty high resistance to most forms of damage, but he was defenseless vs the good old MM spell.
Good luck and enjoy.

I remember asking my dad how he beat him, all those years ago. I remembered him having some difficulty, so I was curious how he did it. He monster spammed too. Gave everybody who could use them summoning wands, and cast as many summoning spells as he could, then sent Imoen up to draw him out. Worked like a charm, apparently.

That is what I usually do. Makes it far easier to keep on top of the damage being dealt to your party (Sarevok hits like a freight train, and those mages can be quite annoying if ignored for too long).

In fact, if you really want to be cheesy, you can aggro one or two, then actually leave the temple entirely. After that, you can finish them off outside as they follow you out, rest up, save (if needed), then go back inside. The doors don't actually lock until Sarevok aggroes. (At least the enemies follow you out in BG TuTu. If enemies don't follow you through doors in vanilla BG1, then I apologize for the misinformation. I honestly can't remember if it was a BG2 additition or if BG1 had the feature initially).

If you are playing on Tutu, then summoning might not be a great idea, as BG2 weakens the power of summoning spells. Surely it still helps, but you won't be able to control a CRAPLOAD of monsters.

Other cheesy ways:
1. PFM scrolls
2. Lure Tazok and take him out first
3. Cloudkill, and Cloudkill again.