Reclamation

The Golem created successfully, it is time to ascend the Spindle with Barathrum. But hark, something stirs in the trees. Live and drink, mevyn.

LevelAbilitiesStats
37Corrosive Gas Generation, 110 Quickness & 125 Move Speed, the Golem, Penetrating Strikes/Ceremonial Vibrokhopesh, High (60+) elemental resistances, Poison Tolerance, Freeze Grenades Mk III, EMP Grenades Mk III, Flashbang Grenades Mk III, Perfect Flight, Disarm capabilities18 AV

This quest interrupts the We Are Starfreight! quest as soon as you arrive at Ezra and needs to be completed in a single shot. If you leave without killing all 4 legendary Templar, the game will tell you that the Templar will regroup. The actual consequences are fairly minor; you just fail the quest and get a new one that's identical to it, including your progress through it. Barathrumites in any zones with an encounter in them are removed, but they don't help much anyway. There also doesn't seem to be a limit at how many "reattempts" you're allowed either, so don't worry too much about it.

Surveying the Scene

When you arrive at Ezra, you will find that it is under attack by an enormous military force of Templars. There will be 4 legendary Templar that must be killed for the quest to completed, and partway into the attack a Girsh Nephilim will arrive in a random zone around the Spindle. There are around 2-3 zones with Templar forces in them without a legendary accompanying them that don't need to be killed for the quest to be completed, but why not clean the board of Templar?

There are actually 16 zones around the Spindle, which itself is an entire parasang. Make sure you circle the entire Spindle in order to discover all the forces brought by the Templar.

Tackling the Templar

In total, there will be a mk II mecha, a grand newfather, and 2 knight commanders that all are legendary to deal with. Each one will have additional forces supporting them, including newfathers, phylactery squires and mk I mechas. The forces each one has are random, so be prepared for anything. The Golem is more than capable of destroying all of the Templar forces on its own, but be sure to let it recover between fights as it is powerful but not immortal.

I won't make a mention of it in the individual combat sections, but keep in mind that the entire Spindle grounds are outside, which means if you have perfect flight (as is recommended), then you can use a ranged weapon to kill all melee combatants in perfect safety.

The Knight Commanders

The two knight commanders are the same type of creature that led the raid in A Call To Arms, and are hopefully much less dangerous to you at this point. To recap on their abilities, they will use Menacing Stare to fear you and have you lose control of your positioning and will try and lock you down with Shield Slam. Disarm via Dueling Stance + Lunge or Disarming Shot are extremely effective here and they can remove both the primary weapon of the knight commander and the shield, removing the ability to Shield Slam.

Knight commanders are often accompanied by temple mechas mk I, of which the mk Ia is the more threatening. The mk Ia is the melee variant and is extremely mobile and will use that mobility. Utilize the Golem to quickly focus and destroy any mk Ia mechas that appear. By this point in the game, you're likely to have extremely high DV and if not, your AV will be plenty to withstand the weaponry of the mk Ib mecha.

The Grand Newfather

Grand newfathers are amongst the most dangerous of the Templar forces as they will have 2-4 creature slaves under their command of tier 7-8. These could be anything from soupy sludges to star kraken, so be prepared for virtually anything the game can throw at you. With command of the Golem, you should be more than capable of handling any of these creatures. Be careful for any creatures capable of instant death or stunlocks; you'll want to disable them with freeze grenades, flashbang grenades, or other similar methods.

The grand newfather itself is much less of a threat, but still dangerous. They are melee combatants, so disarming them or keeping them at range handles them well, and if you are at the recommended AV they will struggle to do any damage at all.

The Temple Mecha mk II

This is definitely the most serious combatant of them all. It is lethal in both melee and long range, so there is minimal opportunity to cheese its power. The best option is definitely to utilize the power of the Golem to fight it on more even ground, and a full-power Golem is certainly capable of taking on the mecha. Important to note that the mk II, like other mechas, is vulnerable to EMP so be sure to keep a few just in case of emergencies.

The mecha mk II has several unique abilities. To begin the combat, it will fire a barrage of missiles around it. These have a rather large radius and are explosives, meaning they will bypass AV and DV and move terrain. A direct hit from one of these can easily rack up to over 100 damage, so be sure to avoid it. Even if you are outside of the alert markers from the missiles, you can still be damaged by the blast radius as it extends past the markers by a few tiles. It will continue to periodically fire missiles during the combat, so make sure you move enough to avoid them.

If you put too much distance between yourself and the mecha, not only will it just shoot at you the whole time, but it will also Jump at you and boy does it have hops. This Jump has a massive range on it (8 tiles or so) and will send out a stunning shockwave (mechanically similar to Stunning Force) from itself when it lands, which can give it a few turns to rip into your HP. Unless you're being forced to move due to a missile, it's best to stay close to avoid this leap. Staying close doesn't mean you're safe, however. The mechanical hull of the mecha will attempt to crush you, and can easily hit 20+ damage in a single penetration.

While it's possible that the supplementing forces around the mecha are weak, it is not guaranteed. You can easily get multiple mecha mk I supporting the mk II. Without a rather powerful build and good game knowledge, it is definitely recommended to utilize the power of the Golem in order to take down the mk II in particular. Even the Golem can quickly be shredded by the mk II with bad positioning, so it is also recommended that you pilot the Golem in order to make the most use out of its power and to keep yourself secure.

The Girsh Nephilim

Partway through the quest, the world will quake and you will receive a popup letting you know that a Girsh Nephilim has arrived to the Spindle in a direction. This can be a zone you've explored before or one you haven't, so it very well may arrive somewhere with a legendary Templar on it. The trigger is either when all Templar leaders are killed or a certain number of turns have passed (random), which also depends on which attempt it is (the higher the attempt number, the higher the turn delay). The Nephilim that arrives will be one that you haven't killed before, so if you've killed any of the Nephilim (or pacified them), then they won't arrive here and you can narrow your options. However, if you kill or pacify all 6 naturally existing Nephilim, you will instead have to face the true superboss of Qud: Starformed Ehalcodon.

The 6 naturally occurring Nephilim are the following:

Each one has 4,000 HP, 60 in all resistances, and a special mutation called the Irisdual Beam, which is the primary gimmick of the Nephilim as a group. The Irisdual Beam is a special attack with a long cooldown that fires in 3 directions above 50% HP and 6 directions below 50% HP. There is 1 turn of windup for the beam before it fires, and at least 1 beam will target you directly. The beam does incredible damage if it connects and ignores DV and, to an extent, AV. The way the damage of the beam works is it has 7 damage types: Acid, Cold, Electric, Heat, Poison, Umbral and Cosmic. Umbral is the same damage type as Haggabah's hands, and Cosmic is the same damage type as a Chrome Pyramid's distortion field (melee attack). Umbral and Cosmic cannot be reduced in any way, but the other damage types absolutely can.

Each damage type can do 30 - 40 points of damage, and if you are hit by the beam you are hit by all 7 damage types simultaneously. If you have resistance to those damage types, you will take lower amounts of damage from the beam overall. However, as Umbral and Cosmic damage cannot be negated or reduced in any way, you will take damage from a minimum of 2 of the damage types. Poison damage can be negated only if you have Slogs annunclus, which can be obtained by Butchering the corpse of Slog. It can be reduced greatly by simply having Shake It Off and Poison Tolerance. If this wasn't bad enough, the beam projectile itself has a PV of 15 and can do 1d5 + 7 points of extra damage per penetration, so AV is very important in this fight.

All of this is to say, do NOT get hit by the beam, it hurts.

Once the Nephilim has begun to fire its Irisdual Beam, the beam will fire a total of 3 times before going on cooldown. This cannot be stopped in any way other than by killing or pacifying the Nephilim, and it is not recommended to be too close to the Nephilim when it activates its beam as beams tend to overlap at such a close range. Juke, Charge and Jump are excellent tools to use here to cover extra ground if necessary, so don't forget to use them. This is also why improved quickness and move speed scores are recommended here to ensure you don't fall victim to initiative orders and have a beam charge and fire before you get the chance to avoid it. Additionally, if you are in stasis you take no damage from the Irisdual Beam.

In addition to the Irisdual Beam, each Nephilim will occasionally spawn a cresh underneath them, typically soon after firing its Irisdual Beam. Make sure to watch for this and to destroy it (they are extremely fragile), as failure to do so will spawn girshlings in accordance to which Nephilim dropped the cresh. All Nephilim have Regeneration rank 10, so you cannot Decapitate them and they will quickly restore any Dismembered limbs.

Qas

Qas is meant to be fought at the same time as her sister Qon, and by being brought to the Spindle she becomes an easier fight than normal. Still, Qas can be dangerous as any Nephilim can be dangerous, but she doesn't have any extra dangerous powers. She is only immune to confusion gas, so if you rely on Confusion or the confusing poison of Stinger to lower MA for psychic attacks, they will still work on Qas. Qas has 2 natural weapons, both being Cudgels. Care should be taken not to get stunned; padded gear is a great security. If you notice yourself being dazed, simply step away to shake off the daze and come back when it has worn off.

Qas is associated with polarized girshlings, which can create force fields around themselves.

Qon

As we discussed with Qas, Qon is meant to be fought alongside her sister but instead can be fought alone if summoned to the Spindle. Qon has a unique gimmick in that all creatures that can see Qon will be constantly inflicted with confusion. Combine this with the Irisdual Beam and it can be extremely lethal. It is highly recommended to have Iron Mind (or better yet, Two-Headed) to shake off the confusion. The confusion effect is a DC 25 Willpower save for every turn you have line of sight to Qon, and lasts from 10-15 turns.

It may go without saying, but without Two-Headed your best bet is to take the Iron Mind skill and boost your Willpower with items like the psychodyne helmet (just make sure it doesn't penalize your AV too much). If you happen to have sphinx salt injectors stocked up, you can use them for some temporary confusion immunity. Something of a more advanced strategy is that the icon of an item in your inventory is not scrambled during confusion; if you memorize which of your tonics is the sphinx salt you can inject it to cure confusion. If you're a true kin, Intravenous Port doubles this duration making them more effective and the Medassist Module can be loaded with spinx salt to automatically cure you of confusion. However, only use the Medassist Module if you are swimming in sphinx salt or you combo it with Intravenous Port as you will likely burn through those injectors since this will be a long fight.

If you find yourself confused with the Irisdual Beam firing, you must be extremely careful about your next steps. Ideally, you will have a source of flight that you can activate. If you can fly, you can retreat to the world map and wait out the duration of the confusion. This will result in Qon being in a new location when you return; potentially even a new zone but it is better than death. Don't forget that activating Sprint is also very helpful here, as it will give you the necessary speed to be able to dodge the beams. Look at your character and see if they are highlighted in red. If they are, you're in the killzone and need to move out of it. The beams go from Qon to you, so move perpendicular to the direction of Qon to get out of the way in as few turns as possible. If you aren't highlighted red but the beam hasn't fired yet, don't wait. Waiting will break your Sprint so unless this is the 3rd beam you want to make sure you still have Sprint going for the next beam. Instead, move parallel to the direction of Qon since it'll be less likely you walk back into the beam. Remember where you came from and move back and forth until the beam fires and you're highlighted again.

Just to make things even more difficult, Qon can also fly. Qas really got the short end of the stick huh? If you don't have flight, you will be in a serious pit as all Nephilim have a reflective shield to divert projectiles until disabled with an EMP. Like Qas, Qon is not immune to being confused outside of confusion gas, so you are able to utilize this to deal significant damage with mental attacks like with other Nephilim. Qon has one natural weapon which is an Axe. She does not have any Axe skills, so do not worry about dismemberment but critical hits can reduce your AV.

Qon is associated with cryptic girshlings, which release confusion gas upon death.

Rermadon

Rermadon is luckily much less complex than Qon. They are immune to plasma so you won't be able to lower their resistances, but you can still damage them with other elemental damage types. In that sense, they are fairly similar to Qas, the main difference being in the girshlings associated and the weapon type of their natural weapon. Rermadon uses an Axe, but like other Nephilim does not have any skills to "properly" use it.

Rermadon is associated with plasmatic girshlings, which release plasma gas on death.

Agolgot

Agolgot is another fairly simple Nephilim. He has 2 natural weapons which are Long Blades meaning they have extra PV on critical hits. Other than that, he spawns girshlings that have the capability to cause an ooze effect on hit: rusting an object, poison, or inflicting stiff legs/sore throat. Note that they do not need to penetrate for this to take place. Since Agolgot will be fought on the surface in this instance, these girshlings are only capable of inflicting stiff legs. However, if you fight Agolgot in his lair (not during this quest), do note that they can inflict sore throat depending on the strata.

Agolgot is associated with rank girshlings, which can cause an ooze effect upon melee hit and drop a pool of ooze upon death.

Bethsaida

I hope you weren't getting comfortable with the simpler Nephilim, because we've arrived at another tricky one. Bethsaida wields two Short Blade natural weapons, which cause bleeding upon critical hits. They have a simple yet effective gimmick: Bethsaida will clone themselves at 50% HP. This clone has all the power of the original, other than the fact that their Irisdual Beam will only fire 3 rays instead of 6. The clone will also spawn creshes of their own as well. The clone will be at 50% of its max HP, and Nephilim are not immune to the Irisdual Beam. Since they have hefty resistances, it won't do full damage but if you get Bethsaida or their clone to stand in the path of the other's Irisdual Beam, you can do upwards of 130 damage per beam.

Bethsaida is associated with conjoined girshlings, which split into 2 girshlings when killed.

Shug'ruith

Finally, we come to Shug'ruith. Shug'ruith wields a single Cudgel as its weapon of choice, so deal with its melee similarly to Qas. It will always be inside of a wall and won't move around, so make sure you notice it. Since it will be inside of a wall, it won't actually be able to spawn its creshes as long as the wall remains intact. Shug'ruith is therefore extremely vulnerable to gas grenades like plasma and corrosive gas as it will not move out of them.

Shug'ruith is associated with burrowing girshlings, which spawn wall tiles as they move underground.

Utilizing the Golem

Since Barathrum will be inside the Golem with you, it is very important that the Golem stays alive, especially during this fight. If you are not piloting the Golem, it will very likely be destroyed. The damage of the Irisdual Beam is so great that it will easily tear through the Golem. If you plan on using the Golem against the Nephilim, pilot it for the best chance of both your survival and the Golem's. Otherwise, command it to stay behind so Barathrum survives. If Barathrum dies, you are not locked out of completing the game, you will only lose out on a lore dump from Barathrum as you ascend the Spindle.

Starformed Ehalcodon

In order to fight Ehalcodon in this quest, you must first kill or pacify all 6 naturally occuring Girsh Nephilim. Before we go down this path, know that doing so is difficult in itself, but this difficulty pales in comparison to Ehalcodon. First, let us talk about how best to find the Nephilim.

The cradles of all 6 can be uncovered through sharing secrets with legendary gyre wights. These are not easy to find; but one of the best places to search are flower fields as they are easy to traverse and have the best chance of having legendary gyre wights spawn. You can also make use of Trash Divining and spending large amounts of time underground (as it seems underground strata have the best chance of generating trash) to find secrets and hope you get lucky in finding a Nephilim cradle secret. Finally, while you search using any of the above or below methods, you can cover your body in mumble mouth to learn secrets as you explore zones in order to reduce your total time spent searching.

Bethsaida and Agolgot

Both Bethsaida and Agolgot are found in the same places every time; Bethsaida is found by following the hole in the Mechanimist compound at the bottom of Bethesda Susa straight down and Agolgot is found in the same way, but via the hole at the bottom of Golgotha.

Rermadon, Qas and Qon

Rermadon's cradle is found on the Palladium Reef, while the chuppah of Qas and Qon is found in the Moon Stair. The actual locations are randomized each run, so while you know where to look you won't be able to go right to it. To make things more inconvenient they can be found in any zone, not just the center one. This means if you are going to be manually searching you need a methodical approach.

My suggested way of combing these places for the Nephilim is as follows:

As you do this, if you find the cradle of Rermadon or chuppah of Qas and Qon, you will receive a notification that you have done so and your search is complete. As you repeat this pattern, you will explore every single zone of every parasang in a north-to-south strip. Once you complete one strip, you move on to the next strip until you eventually find what you're looking for. In case this explanation was too confusing to follow, here's a video of the process (with god mode turned on for ease of demonstration):

Shug'ruith the Burrower

Shug'ruith is by far and away the most difficult to stumble upon. Their cradle has 2 secrets devoted to it: the mouth and the cradle itself. The cradle is in a random zone underground, so the chances you stumble upon the cradle itself are practically zero. The mouth is in a random zone on the surface; again basically a zero chance you stumble upon it randomly but more likely. Since you can find all other Nephilim cradles manually, it's suggested that you find those first and hope you stumble upon a secret telling you where the mouth or cradle for Shug'ruith is in the process.

If you don't happen upon either secret, then you're best off searching for legendary gyre wights to tell you where it is as searching manually is tedious and not worth your time to be frank. If you find the mouth first, you're all set. Finding the cradle from the mouth only requires you to follow any holes in the ground and following the trail of resin left behind by Shug'ruith.

If you find the cradle without finding the mouth, it will actually be deep underground. If you have access to spiral borers, again you're all set: just use them to dig down to the cradle. If not, then you'll need to either look for the borers (you'll need 2) or keep searching for the mouth. The mouth is often quite a distance from the cradle itself, but it will at least narrow your search if you want to search manually.

Nephilim Order

Once you kill a Nephilim, they give a buff to all the remaining Nephilim. Notably, if you pacify them instead they do not give this buff (pacification requires 1 dram of cloning draught to perform the water ritual and 200 reputation with the Girsh faction). Here are the buffs each Nephilim gives:

Therefore, the order in which you defeat the Nephilim will change how difficult the remainder of the Nephilim are. There are many orders to suggest, but each one will be more or less effective depending on your build. We also must consider the possibility of pacifying Nephilim as well, but for my own sanity I'll be considering pacifying only 1 Nephilim due to how much reputation is necessary. It should go without saying, but if you are able to pacify more that's going to make things easier the more you can pacify rather than kill.

Order 1: Elemental Damage Focused

Pacify: Rermadon

  1. Bethsaida
  2. Shug'ruith
  3. Agolgot
  4. Qas and Qon
  5. Rermadon

If your build relies on elemental damage as a major focus (such as a Corrosive Gas Generation build), then killing Rermadon is a big problem for you as doing so will eliminate your strength. Killing Rermadon last allows your build to work on everything else, but ideally you can pacify them so you don't have to worry about losing damage at all.

Order 2: Low PV

Pacify: Shug'ruith

  1. Rermadon
  2. Qas and Qon
  3. Bethsaida
  4. Agolgot
  5. Shug'ruith

If your build is lower on the PV side (such as a Multiweapon Fighting build), then you're going to run into massive problems when each Nephilim has over 20 AV post-Shug'ruith. Ideally, you can pacify Shug'ruith so the rest of the Nephilim will keep their far more manageable 12 AV, but if not then leaving it for last does the same thing until you face Ehalcodon.

Order 3: Grenades

Pacify: Rermadon, Bethsaida or Qas/Qon

  1. Shug'ruith
  2. Rermadon
  3. Qas and Qon
  4. Bethsaida
  5. Agolgot

This strategy is a unique one, and it is my recommendation if you don't have some other extremely reliable high-damage build (or even if you do, as a supplementation). The strategy here revolves around abusing the omniphase that Shug'ruith gives the other Nephilim by modding grenades with the phase conjugate mod. If you're not familiar, this will cause the grenade to switch phases just before it explodes and since the Nephilim will be in omniphase post-Shug'ruith, this means that it will affect the Nephilim but not us.

Since each Nephilim posses a reflective shield, this shield will make them immune to the effect of a grenade they reflect. The solution is to either EMP the shield first or just don't hit them with the grenade; walk up to the Nephilm and detonate the phase conjugate grenade on yourself. The AOE will catch the Nephilim and since it's phase conjugate it won't affect you.

Which Nephilim you choose to pacify depends on what grenade strategy you wish to employ. If you want to try and keep the Nephilim frozen or try and disintegrate them with fire, you're going to want to pacify Rermadon so that the rest of the Nephilim remain susceptible. If you are using a hand-e-nuke, then it doesn't matter they'll all die with 1 nuke. If you are using explosives or the trusty plasma + gravity grenade wombo combo, then Bethsaida is a good option in order to make the Nephilim take less grenades to kill. Finally, if you are using flashbang grenades then Qas and/or Qon are good options since lowering their quickness will allow the confusion from the flashbangs last more effective rounds.

That last option begs a bit of explanation, as you may not see the line of reasoning to cause one to use flashbang grenades on the Nephilim. First off, something to keep in mind is that even a phase conjugate flashbang grenade will still affect you, just with a reduced duration. It's therefore recommended to have some polarized gear in order to reduce the duration further. High duration rolls can still cause you to be confused with a single set of polarized gear, so keep that in mind.

Confusion does 2 very helpful things: it will lower DV and lower MA significantly, even into the negatives. A mk III flashbang reduces MA by a whopping 23-24 points (depending on their specific Willpower stat) and DV by 20 points, making the Nephilim trivial to hit. You may see where I'm headed with this: attacks that target MA.

If you have a high Ego score, consider gathering some psionic weapons from arch dervishes. Not only will the Nephilim be confused and unable to retaliate properly, but you will also be doing incredible damage as you will easily be able to penetrate 11+ times per hit. The primary weakness to this build is that the Nephilim also have the Iron Mind skill, which allows them to somewhat reliably remove the confused effect on them so you'll have to come with a healthy amount of flashbang grenades for this strategy. If you don't have a high Ego score, not to worry because the Nephilim do.

In the If, Then, Else quest, if you kill Tau after she gifts you the crystalline halo, it will turn into the crystalline jile. The jile is a unique Short Blade that targets MA using the target's Ego to determine PV. This means you can have 1 Ego and still gain great benefit from this weapon against creatures that have high Ego scores themselves and our Nephilim fall within this category. The flashbang will reduce their Ego by a bit, so it will always be better to use psionic weapons instead and have high (34+) Ego but this method will still easily net 100+ damage per hit of the jile. Combine this with Multiweapon Fighting and Jab after duplicating the jile with metamorphic polygel and you will be ripping through the Nephilim.

As mentioned, a lot of the trouble with flashbang grenades is that the confusion is often removed by the Nephilim with their Iron Mind skill. If you use zigzag fangs, they have a 15% chance of applying confused albiet at a lower power than a mk III flashbang. It still is a powerful enough effect to do incredible amounts of damage, but the added benefit is that it is applied on hit and is a Short Blade. This means it benefits from Jab and you can improve your chance of applying confused by wearing precison nanon fingers. With this strategy, you are able to do tons of damage and keep the Nephilim locked down in confusion, resulting in you taking basically zero damage.

You can also utilize this strategy at a distance with the psychal fleshgun. You will need high Ego for this, but the benefit is that you'll be at a distance from your flashbang grenades and won't get caught up in the detonation. The potential for damage is less than a Multiweapon Fighting build unfortunately, but with Pistol skills you can fire these extremely fast and make the most of the limited duration of your confusion. You will need to also make sure that you come equipped with EMP grenades to remove the reflective shield and mod your fleshguns to be electromagnetically shielded as they are susceptible to EMP.

Fighting Ehalcodon

You will have many problems fighting Ehalcodon, so let's first understand what our opponent is capable of. The first and most significant problem is Ehalcodon's signature mutation, Quantum Fugue. Quantum Fugue has a fixed 100 turn cooldown, is unaffected by normality and most importantly will swap the original creature to the copy with the most HP at the end of the duration. This means unless you are able to target all copies equally, you will be doing less damage while Quantum Fugue is in effect.

The second problem is Ehalcodon's girshling cresh. Normally, the girshlings aren't an extreme threat but in the case of Ehalcodon they are the #1 most important creature. You must kill every cresh and every girshling it spawns as soon as you possibly can, or you will die.

Ehalcodon and qyr girshlings have a unique property where they will refract the Irisdual Beam if they are hit by it and take far less damage than normal from it. This refraction can refract the beam into other girshlings which will refract it further and quickly cover the entire map with the Irisdual Beam. This problem is heavily amplified while Ehalcodon's Quantum Fugue clones are alive, as each one can drop their own cresh. To make this worse, the Irisdual Beam has a low enough cooldown where Ehalcodon's clones can always use it at least once within the duration of Quantum Fugue.

You don't need to be able to predict how the Irisdual Beam will refract as the game will display this information, but this refraction will take up a significantly larger space than prior Nephilim. High movement speed and Teleportation becomes important in ensuring you can avoid this. A helpful tip is to drag Ehalcodon near a zone edge and change zones when qe activates Irisdual Beam. This way, you can wait out the beams in safety and return when Ehalcodon has stopped firing.

This is of course the obvious route to take. Instead, you can utilize a mk III stasis grenade when Ehalcodon starts spinning up the Irisdual Beam. When the screen becomes full of red and you won't be able to move to safety in time, pop that stasis grenade on yourself. While in stasis, you are immune to all damage and this includes damage from Irisdual Beam. A mk III grenade lasts a minimum of 6 turns, which is also how long Irisdual Beam takes to get through all beams.

The creshes are very weak so coming stocked with resonance or high explosive grenades is advised in order to mass-cull the creshes when the Quantum Fugue clones inevitably spawn several at once or to kill the girshlings if they happen to spawn. High explosive grenades will have a larger AOE, but this draws more risk in blowing yourself up so do be careful with your choice.

Ehalcodon additionally has higher DV, MA, stats and HP (12,000 or 8,000 if Bethsaida was pacified) than all other Nephilim, which means this will be a long fight (unless you hand-e-nuke of course). Ehalcodon's primary weapon is a Cudgel that deals umbral damage, similar to a chrome pyramid so you won't be able to negate normal attacks with just AV. It will still help of course as Ehalcodon has 4 limbs with spotted claws from Agolgot (unless pacified) and these are PV based attacks. If you are using gases, you'll really want to utilize gravity grenades since Ehalcodon will blow away any nearby gases. Oh and by the way, Ehalcodon flies so make sure you have some anti-gravity boots.

Your general strategy should be the following:

During this fight, you should make heavy use of grenades to supplement your damage. Plasma is especially helpful in allowing freeze grenades to work; carrying a spaser rifle can be quite handy in order to reapply the coated in plasma debuff. Flashbang grenades combined with MA targeting attacks can be absolutely devastating, but due to Ehalcodon's even better Willpower than other Nephilim it becomes a challenge to keep qem confused. Keep a healthy stockpile of urberries and salve injectors in order to sustain the damage that Ehalcodon will inevitably do, and keep in mind that you can always retreat to the world map to heal up in safety.

Some additional things to consider: