Running Circle of Eight Modpack 8.0.0

I noticed cloudkill and chainlightning do away with his summons effectively, but I have a real hard time doing ANY damage to Zuggtmoy herself.

Do I have to craft weapons that manage to deal damage to her? I'm at lost at how that is done, the manual is of no help, I have the feat on my wizard though.

I may have destroyed the golden orb too early, I have only cleared levels 1-3 of the temple and I'm on level 10, but I found some nice weapons from the fire temple fight and thought I'd manage with them even though I had no proficiencies with them.

Also, strangely, when I edited the .cfg file to lower the particle effects since my video card wasn't handling them during the boss fight, Zuggie suddenly healed around 350hp. Hopefully the damage isn't somehow tied to the visual effect, that would suck. Well, it wasn't going so well anyways, 4/5 of my guys are down. The only one left is my fighter/rogue who cut down everybody except Zugg herself, but she might be too much of a challenge, although my dudette is on full hp.

Bit of a rant again, but I have played something like 9 hrs of ToEE and have trouble thinking clearly =)

Zuggtmoy has spell resistance, so dealing damage with spells is a very ineffective way to try to damage her. Your melee fighters should carry the fight. The best way to damage Zuggtmoy is with a holy weapon. However, only Clerics with the good domain can craft those and there are all too few found throughout the game. Ensure all your weapons are at least +3 enchantment level, and you should be able to damage Zuggtmoy. Don't use weapons you're not proficient with unless you completely lack alternatives. Either invest in weapon proficiency to use it, or sell it to buy something you can use without penalty. Yeah, I get that. I had to rant about Zuggtmoy too when I fought her, but my experience was quite different. That just may be a function of party makeup (in my party, the spellcasters weren't the primary damage dealers. Heck, my wizard chose evocation as one of her opposition schools)

Do you have more details on your party? What classes do you have? What kinds of weapons do you use?

So your weapons aren't even magical? Yeah, that's going to cause problems. That should be the first thing you do. Many monsters take significantly less damage from non-magical weapons so you should notice a big change in your combat power with that upgrade.

Ensure you've got the enlarge person spell and an enhancement bonus to strength on both your fighter and barbarian. The bigger their strength scores, the better. If your fighter/rogue isn't finessing, put enlarge person on him, too. Make sure you've got the haste spell active, and if possible put the heroism spell on everyone. Load yourself up with magical buffs.

Your Cleric should have the "magic circle against evil" spell active at all times during the fight. This is basically protection from evil in an area of effect with a longer duration. And if it gets dispelled, you only have to recast it once rather than once per character. That's not an issue, then. Weapon focus is nice to have, but not mandatory.

Just tried again, this time with more buffs and I got her down to "Near death", but then my remaining guys went unconscious for some reason. Is it so that if you trip them enough times they go unconscious? Didn't notice that they had so much nonlethal damage on them that they should fall unconscious. Ran out of haste spells too. I'd say if I'm super-prepared and the rolls go my way this fight is winnable even with the current weapons I have, but I'll probably hunt/craft me some magical weapons just for the fun of it.

Yes, if they take too much non-lethal damage then they fall unconscious. Healing spells will heal both lethal and non-lethal damage simultaneously (you effectively get healed twice with the same spell or potion) so you should be able to keep it under control.

How long is the fight taking that you're running out of haste spells? You have four 10th level melee characters; with haste, they should get 3 attacks per round each and the spell lasts 10 rounds. 4*3*10 = 120 attack rolls. Either you're not getting enough full-attacks in, or there's still some problem with armor or damage reduction that you're not getting through.

Make sure to ignore any minions that Zuggtmoy summons. She's a spellcaster; don't give her time to build up her forces! Focus all your attacks on the boss herself and at very most just summon some creatures to distract her minions.

Took me several tries to win her the first time I played through.
The difficulty is varies a lot, BTW, based on what she decides to summon.

A lot of time she just calls for the mushroom thingies that are annoying but don't do much,
or some minor demons, easily dispatched, but then sometimes she calls for big bad demons
that can be a real pain.

A big warrior that doesn't fail fear saves all the time (paladin is terrific) can do her in quickly
with a good enough weapon. Spellcasters are handicapped by her great spell resistance, with
greater spell penetration, the chances are still below 50% of attack going through.
(magic missile barrage can still do a lot of damage, especially when empowered or maximised)