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Not sure if this is a bug or feature, but control foe makes monsters behave in weird ways. If you charm a spellcaster, her summons will attack her. If you charm a previously hostile monster, it can't get charmed back by the other side - very helpful, e.g., when fighting the Aranea Queen.

When I did the fight, I positioned myself so that the demon was in a doorway, and I was on the hallway side. This way, more than half of the bats spawned on the wrong side and weren't any threat at all. I think the demon never stepped back because after a couple of bats, he couldn't.

I've been playing a singleton (on Normal, so it shouldn't be too hard) and it's been tough but doable so far. The arena in Formello is destroying me though, and I can't figure out how to beat it.

My character is a level 39 nephil DT NM with some misapplied skill points but generally not too bad (I think) - I have battle frenzy, mage spells up to fireblast, priest spells up to control foe, and am generally doing pretty decent damage with melee (I'm dual-wielding) and with spells, thanks to trait bonuses. (edit: my character: http://grab.by/Y4C)

On this arena fight, even if I summon and buff everyone (including that nephil from the prison cells), I find that the arena warriors take forever to die and do good damage and are practically uncharmable, and that General Zhavress is practically unkillable (at least before he kills me with some AoE acid spell or a poison attack or one of his 100 summons), since he keeps popping battle crystals and seems fairly resistant to most other attacks (except cold, but it's hard to do high dps with cold attacks). (I managed to kill him once, by retreating backwards so that only one guy could face me, and being out of Zhavress's LoS, then killing him w/ icy rain - unfortunately, this takes forever, and what seems like an endless stream of horde warriors starts streaming in from the city, plus the arena warriors replenish themselves, I think, so that I couldn't get back into the arena to see what happened next)

Suggestions on how to tackle this fight would be great, especially if there's some trick that I'm missing. It may also be possible that I'm just too weak to do this fight - I have a save from just before I get trapped in Formello - I suppose I could go back to the mainland and gain a few levels and some better gear.