Dispel magic and slow work wonders if both hit. He goes from being hasted to being slowed in one quick move, and then you can just kite him while you pick him off from range. This was easy for me to do since I had dynaheir and the main character as mages. Also you should buy a ton of magic arrows and potions in the thieves guild before you go to fight him.
If you don't mind being super cheesy about it use a fireball/necklace of missiles in front of his party, before your in visible range, and none of them will attack but the mage who appears right by the front, who's cake to kill if you have arrows of dispelling.

Woooh! I finally pulled it off =)

Here are some comments about how it went for me. Tough as nails, but a phyrric victory it was (as in the first and only time I've completed the game)

Buffed up something unreal, with every potion and spell we had that could help us, and got to work. Dynaheir sent off a Cloudkill at the alter, and my illusionist/theif fired off greater malison, while the others threw fireballs at them. Nothing of it really did anything of note (1-2 damage here and there). Branwen died almost before the battle begun, so I didn't get to use her awesome wand of the heavens once. Buhu.

Playing through Tutu so we couldn't have a wall of summons, but some wolves and ogres helped. Then a trap went off, or one of them sent cloudkill at us, so most of them died or fell down. My tank Minsc got held or some such thing, and Sarevok killed him in about 3 blows, although he had a massive 117 hitpoints from the 24 strength and 18 constitution potions (plus about 9 buffs). That was a big blow, but Minsc did manage to get in at least one solid hit on Sarevok.

We finally managed to take down Angelo, and at some point Tazok died as well. He may have been held up by the initial cloudkill as it took a long time before he got on the scene and the dialogue with Dynaheir (I think) started. Suddenly Sarevok got in a massive hit (yet normal for him) that took half my life away, and I ran. Thankfully his attention shifted to the nearby ogres.

Dynaheir and I attacked them with various poison and flame arrows and such, while Kivan and the others had acid arrows. Actually, Tazok must still have been alive at this point, because both my main character and Kivan had to run for their lives to get away from Sarevok and some other chap, while Semaj sent crap after us and was still uninjured. Thank goodness Dynaheir managed to get out some fresh ogres about half a second before she was slain. Those ogres saved Kivan's life.

I tried to hide in shadows, but to no effect, though the boots of speed probably kept me enough ahead of the chasing Tazok. To my big surprise Imoen was still alive (she tends to die easily), and she threw a bottle of fire after both of us. The fireball just missed me, thankfully, but Tazok got fried.

By now some dire wolves were attacking Semaj and got her down to injured, but lightning bolts were also flying about at this stage, which probably came from her. I think one of them killed Imoen, though it was so chaotic I'm actually not sure if she died or not. My PC ran zig-zag between them and remained at half health as there wasn't even time to chug a health potion. They very nearly killed Kivan, but crucially, either he or one of the remaining ogres managed to get in the killing blow on Sarevok. Should have been able to kill Semaj too if we were allowed to continue.

It's a wickedly difficult fight, even topped off with buffs, but in the end we did make it :) Although 3 or 4 of us died. Wish there was a final autosave as well just so I could see what the situation was like and what stuff these hard asses have on them.

I've heard that the Helm of Balduran can be taken into BG2, so the idea was to transfer it towards the end from Minsc to the PC. Didn't happen as Minsc died very early on :( Still, just happy the fight is finally over. Now I can take this character into BG2. Never played that game (more than a few minutes in the start) so this shall be very interesting.

It has been a while but from what I remember all you do is pick off his henchman as many as possible before engaging Saveok and have as many buffs as posssible and use summomning monster to aggro Saveok while the group finishs off the rest of the henchman, that includeds dispelling shields and countering their spells and then heal as much as possible to finish off Saveok because he has a shit load of HP.

Congrats, though it seems to have taken an awfully long time. :p

Thanks :)

Did beat him once before to be frank, but counting this playthrough it has taken a wildly long time because I started it on my laptop, then stopped playing for some reason. Picked it up again a week or two ago, transferred it to the desktop, and finally completed it.

Was a fighter the first time through because I read that it was easier than the others. But wanted something different when I finally were to begin on BG2, so took this illusionist/thief through BG1. Now I have finally started on BG2, and it's quite interesting and difficult, although I'm in the mere beginning so far.

That fight with Sarevok though.... bloody hell!!!

Actually got a bit overconfident towards the end because it looked like we had him as he was down to "Near Death". So started to pile on Semaj. Then somebody whacked out 3-4 lightning bolts, which very nearly killed the rest of us. Only one thing to do then, and thankfully Kivan/the 2-3 surviving ogres took down the last of Sarevok's health.

It's a worthy finale, that's for sure. Oddly enough, the fight with Aec Letec went much better, and I beat that on the first try.

Just beat him, too.

He got caught in my sorcerer's web spell; I cast free movement on my melee characters, and they all beat the crap out of him while his companions were distracted by summoned creatures, After dying so many times trying various tactics that didn't include "bad guys get caught in their own stupid spell," it wasn't exactly the most satisfying victory I've ever won, but I'm not doing it again.

(I beat the demon boss at the end of the expansion in the cheapest possible way. Go down the stairs, have my magic users decimate the cultists with spells, run back up the stairs. Do it fast enough, and the demon won't follow you. Once the cultists were all dead, I had my wizard run down the stairs, use a rod of paralysis on the demon, and then run back up until it finally failed its saving throw; then we beat the crap out of it. I have no idea how I'd have beaten both demon, demon summoner, and cultists in a fair fight; and the difficulty slider was at its default position, less than half the way up! I think it's time to admit that I'm really bad at this type of game.)

I had a somewhat cheese approach that I didn't plan on. I had decided to try and do a little recon as far as exact locations with a potion of invisibility. I got close and it triggered the dialog, but unless you attack, you stay invisible and don't pull aggro on Sarevok or Tavok. What did happen is that his mage buddy whips out the ol' dimension door and teleports right next to the main party. Given that my main character was a paladin and I had Minsc as my main melee striker backed up by Branwen, with Imoen shooting arrows, taking down the mage was simple. Then you just have to get close enough to pull Sarevok. Hit him with a dispel magic and his hit rate slows down fantastically. If one of your melee characters gets low on health, pull them away and he'll focus on the other. Then have your mages pepper him with magic missiles. There's an amulet I believe that lets one of your mages memorize 2x as many first level spells. Fill up on magic missile and then it's all pretty easy.

Its a ring called the Ring of Wizardry.

A tip when meleeing Sarevok: if you have beaten Durlag Tower you should have the Kiel Helm and the Goblet that restores full health and causes panic. Equip Kiel helm on the character tanking Sarevok and when he is nearly killed drink from the Goblet to restore all health at once (the helm will prevent panic). This way you don't waste time with the healing potions that can't restore faster than you take damage.

Nice one!

The way that I finally beat Sarevok was with a web spell (which I didn't cast; it was Semaj's). It was probably really lucky, and everybody just ended up frozen in the right positions, and I was able to kill Angelo before anybody got trapped, and my mages were able to beat Semaj off to the side (I think he might have died to a cloudkill).

The thing is, even though Sarevok canonically has a two-handed sword, he must have only had one-handed reach in BG1 -- because I was sitting there beating on him with three characters who had two-handed weapon range (Jaheira with quarterstaff, Minsc with two-handed sword, PC monk with longer-ranged fists), and he couldn't land a hit because we were all just out of his reach, and everybody was stuck to the ground.

I'm not sure how melee ranges and holding spells work in vanilla; this may only work in the BG2 engine. It was pretty cool though -- one of those crazy chance advantages that you pull a victory from, like in a movie or something.

I was lucky too in my last no-reload run (BG:EE + a lite installment of SCS). For some reason Angelo, Semaj and Tazok remained invisible and didn't want to join the fight. Probably they were scared of all the traps I have accidentally set off while scouting :) I threw some explosive flasks in their general direction to trigger the fight and only Sarevok came forward. Obviously, alone he was easy as pie.

The toughest fight was with Kahrk. His SCS version is insane. I made the mistake of challenging him at around level 5 and it nearly put an end to my run. When I finally managed to kill him, all five of my companions were dead and the main character was near death.

Go for the Eyes!!!!

If you know the game and how it works he is a joke.

I fought him with 2 thieves. 1 imoen Lv4 thf L7 mag

My char was a swashbuckler who had the weapon gauntlets that give boost to 1 to hit and 2 damage. He also had 19 strength and -8 AC

I found another set of those gauntlets weapon specialization that i gave to imoen.

Everytime this fight starts I ghost with a rogue up so he triggers dialog, but not enough so he sees me. I then run back to beginning without triggering traps. His mage shows up which I dice up with my rogue and imoen help.

Sarevok is still up there with erika or whatever he name is and the grunt playing checkers. I then save the game and let sarevok attack/target just me. I use imoen as a flanker/decoy. She attacks him and he will target her. If you pause the game right at the right time you can get in extra heals and attacks while he just swings at nothing.

I think he is manageable. I have never been able to defeat the main boss in Icewind dale 1 as my whole party cannot hit him. Baldurs gate is a better game anyway :)

The mage is easy to take down if you wait for him to launch his buffs then launch a dispell on him (which means you can’t pre-buff as he usually will teleport in the middle of your party).
Spells lowering Sarevok’s magic resistance while a bunch of invocations keep everyone at bay (not for long), then an awful spam of disabling spells have been the key for me (Wand of Paralysis is a must).

Once the mage is down. I focus everything on Sarevok but for one or two melee char trying to keep his lackeys from reaching my spellcasters.
Frost Arrows are a good weapon too for this fight, as there is no saving throw allowed against the frost damage.

Oh, and don’t bother trying to engage Sarevok in melee with anything but the ultimate tank with maxed out dexterity/AC. (constitution doesn’t matter as much, as it just means he will need three hits instead of two to kill your tank)

technically you modify heavily the game for getting the BG2 classes, just saying...

Anyway, another tactic similar to the web spell is the otiluke spherE (cant remember well if is the spell)
In the vanilla version, is hard to avoid it and the ally or foe is totally blocked. So, you can select which enemies to attack first blocking at least one.