Commander Zhalk is a tough fight (because you’re not really supposed to do it) and his cambion reinforcements make it tougher – but they can be thwarted by a simple chest (and there is one in the room with the pod that turns a the lady into a mindflayer)
I made an extremely technical diagram to indicate what you need to do to stop them from getting into the room at all…
Prevent Reinforcements!
The cambions will be stuck in the lobby and you’re free to take as much time as you need to deal with Zhalk (within the 15 turn hard limit anyway but it should still be enough time to whoop him).
Why fight, when you can use ‘Command: Drop’ to take what you need and leave?
for that precious XP my guy!
I played on the medium difficulty (I don’t remember the ingame names for them). How I beat him was that you only really need 1 character to escape. So while 3 of you are hacking away at him, I had one (I think I used Shadowheart) running to the controls. Once he died, make sure one of you loot him and then press the controls. Not as safe as the chest thing, but it could be an alternative if people struggle with the chest stuff xP
i find that one chest isnt enough, they can sometimes use fly to clip through things.
There are three total big chests in the nautaloid, and one smaller one, and two green brain jars.
what you do is have the two big chests stacked on top of eachother on one side of the entrance, and a big chest on the smaller chest on the other side. Where there is a gap in the middle, you stack two green brain jars on eachother and on the big chest thats stacked on the smaller one, you place all the empty camp supply bags ontop.
This works 100% of the time.