Best Of

@ithildurnew In EE, Death Ward blocks vorpal strikes even without mods. It was only in the unmodded pre-EE game that vorpal strikes blocked Death Ward. Back then, only an upgraded Hindo's Doom or weapon immunities could block a vorpal strike.

Corearcher VI the gnomish fighter
***** Long bow
** Two-hand sword
* Crossbow
Traveling with: Korgan, Minsc, Jaheira, Yoshimo, Anomen, (Viconia)
CHUNKED: Viconia

The party has made tremendous progress since the last update. And yes, we still are getting plenty of deaths, mostly inflicted by the Harpers. So when we rest, we get a note from "Terminsel" that Jaheira turned herself in to the Harper's Hold. We go and rescue her. However, only Jaheira and Corarcher VI survive!



We also had to battle Dermin's party. For once, the party actually got the upper hand on this one and no one died.



We get another visit from "Terminsel" and we think the fighting with Harpers is over. So finally we do other things.

* D'Arnise Keep was cleared of Trolls and Yuan-Tis. By now the party equipment is pretty decent (a lot of Harper equipment!), and the party does quite well here.

* Trademeet - for once, we decided to "help" the genies rather than kill them directly, though this was partly as we have no immunity to petrification in that we have no arcane party members. Fighting the enemies in the grove was pretty straight-forward. We used buffs when appropriate, as well as things like silence and/or insect plague as appropriate. Jaheira bested Faldhorn in a duel. Trademeet was happy for our service.

* Umar Hills - the quests in Immesvale, as well as clearing out the undead in the old Temple all went pretty well. Considering mere mortals were easily killing us, we decided we surely are not strong enough to take on a dragon (yet), so passed on messing with Thaxxy for now.

* Lilacor quest completed. Minsc likes the new sword very much

* Slavers cleared out of moored ship - the party does good melee/ranged damage, and combined with the party summons, silences, holds and plague of insects, and Yoshimo's trap removal, the battles here went well.

* Lich at Gate District defeated with protection from undead. On our exit from the Inn, a vampire ambush CHUNKS Viconia! Her equipment also vanishes. Most of her equipment was so-so, but her shield of harmony will be sorely missed. But the quest must go on! What's insane is I told the vampires I worked for the shadow thieves, but realized after the fight I actually didn't!!! So I lost Viconia for nothing! Doh!





* Anomen replaces Viconia. We then finish up dock quests. Maevar was exposed and defeated. Traps and summons made short work of Maevar and his goons. We finally report to Linvail and "help" Mook.

* To get Anomen some armor, we battled Tarnor's Gang. Summons, silences, plague of insects, entangle and powerful ranged fire destroyed these enemies. Anomen welcomed the armor upgrade.




* I realized that Korgan would love the DEX gauntlets. So we duly bought the shield of balduran and worked our way in exposing/defeating the Unseeing Eye. This went well and no deaths. Even defeating Gaal went well, as a Nymph got a nice hold in, making the battle with Gaal decisive.

We will work on Sir Sarles quest next session.

Michio finds a short-term stopgap, via Clericedin (part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)

The list is quite long but filtering by alignment, conflict, availability and meh narrows it down to two candidates. Namely Jaheira and Anomen. Only one of them turns up for the interview though so after an exhaustive interview (see screencaps) "You've got the job" said Michio "for the time being".

Michio can't quite shake off a nagging feeling though. His new joiner seems to think the iMoD should play music or something. Perhaps he should try pulling the other one.

'Long-life challenge' - wizard slayer {31} (hour 16)
Previous updates:
This morning's session caught me out early on when I was attempting to reduce the level of dwarven competition in Athkatla. After killing one of his cronies I pulled Tarnor outside for a missile contest, only to find some of the locals were not amused. The prophet had apparently failed to review his own immediate future there when following me back into the sewers ... I was still thinking about that when taking a bag full of goodies to sell - and ended up getting 1 gold piece each for them after clicking on the sale screen thinking I was identifying them - luckily money is not an issue for me this run. Once Gaius' immunity to weapons expired, he was of course toast and the others were quickly picked off as well.
With one dwarven gang removed, I went after another. Several of them were dealt with individually before Brennan managed to land a backstab, but a GWW with the FoA sorted him out before he could even consider the wisdom of trying to run for it - and a follow-up WW saw the end of the contest. Another level there gained me a second GWW for dealing with slightly longer fights.

Moving on to Umar I did a few tasks around the village. I tend to hang on to Ilbratha in most runs, though I almost never use that in practice - this time, with fewer options and poorer physical defenses I might do so rather more than usual. I also kept the Shield of the Lost, in case I want to top up with 5% MR at some point.

At the old temple area I pulled together some shadows to form a good target before diving inside. The iMod claimed most of the victims there. However, the liches were dealt with by briefly showing myself to trigger their buffs before retreating. Coming back in a few rounds once the liches were vulnerable, Azuredge at 10 APR gave them no chance. I got a 23rd level there for returning some gnawed bones.
Downstairs, a larger foe lurked. Thaxy was tempted into using his death spell on Ras before I rested. An opening GWW then badly wounded him before he buffed with PfMW - but I stuck to my guns and continued the attack on the principle that something that big must have a glass chin. Unfortunately, Thaxy cheated as his wing buffet continued to fire while he was unconscious - taking me dangerously low on HPs and forcing me to retreat out of sight before I could finish him off. That allowed Thaxy to blind me and heal himself before I ran upstairs. After resting up, I tried again. This time I produced Ras early on and a bit of fancy footwork got Thaxy fixated on it for about a couple of rounds. That was long enough for the FoA to wear through his stoneskins and most of his dragon hide before Thaxy started attacking me - and this time he had no little tricks remaining when at near death. The Shade Lord would have had to be exceptionally lucky not to be destroyed by a GWW - and in fact failed to survive the first blow.
The thanks of a grateful town got me to the threshold of another level and that was achieved when some rangers decided to pick a fight. I stuffed Valygar's body into my backpack. However, rather than go straight to the Planar Sphere, I thought I should do the Planar Prison next to boost my walking speed. Normally I enter there invisible to be able to attack the mage bounty hunter while it's trying to cast true sight. With no way to do that though, I buffed up with mirror image for the first time and launched a frontal assault. The mage was too slow to react and the others were totally foiled by mirrors in the short time they had left. Time was just about up there though and I saved the game before tackling the yuan-ti mages found to the east.

Wizard Slayer L24, 163 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 776 kills (+677 in BG1)

@Neverused Congratulations. Well done.

Blackraven wrote: »

@monico, thank you for your informative reply. I'm not too interested in a summons-oriented run, though I'm not going as far as to outright ban them, as you saw in my first BG2 post. The other two approaches do appeal. I think I'll want at least four physical damage dealers and no more than two utility characters (CC, thieving etc). Now I think I'm going to sleep on the exact names.

I agree, summons is boring. I just put it there because it is effective, after all.

I might be wrong but to me, the best damage dealers would be Haer’Dalis, Valygar, Mazzy, and Korgan (not especially in that order off course). And the first three can be used both in melee or ranged, depending on the encounter and preferences (Haer’Dalis with MMM’s and Offensive Spin = win)

EDIT: I forgot Anomen. With righteous magic, he is quite the damage dealer. But I hate his personality and tend to forget he exists

Thanks for the welcome, Enuhal and Wise! It's good to be home again :-)

@Neverused Congratulations, and well done! Awesome to finally see a successful shaman run I imagine that I would share your conclusions about the class if I were to play it a bit more - sounds very much like I would've expected a successful full party Shaman run to play out.

The party starts to crumble for Michio, situation vacant (part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16)

Korgan uses the shield of Balduran as we enter a beholder lair. A fireball singes us, and with the initial two beholders badly wounded the rest of us weigh in. Our opening volley is conclusive. Korgan does a solo run of the lair, the only disappointment being when a second Elder Orb is spotted in a group of beholders but it vanishes for good as it moves around to engage with him.

A nearby illithid lair is too inviting to pass up. Before long we have done enough to allow Simyaz and his gith party their escape. We're a little worse for wear, or at least Haer'Dalis is feeling brain-nibbled. A bit further on both Korgan and Haer'Dalis have chewy-brain moments and have to retreat. We bump together down a corridor and a moment of stupidity follows when Jan tries to use Invisibility 10' as Viconia is held. The ulitharid chasing us kills Viconia and we stop to gather our thoughts after killing it. Korgan has rejoined us while Haer-Dalis ran the other way, and only as Haer'Dalis dies do we realise the combat was not over. Michio uses the rod of resurrection for the first time to raise Viconia, and she then raises Haer'Dalis. We're more careful for the rest of this lair, and Edwin discovers the Master Brain is as susceptible to Death spell as humdrum umber hulks. Simyaz has made the mistake of waiting outside to face us. He doesn't appear to have much of interest, nor do the bodies of his companions. A group of drow could be problematic but with Korgan and Haer'Dalis at the front they are unable to do anything more than die. An imprisonment device is thoroughly investigated - anything threatening us is killed and anything that wants to leave is allowed to do so. As we leave the device we spot a couple of drow from the earlier encounter. A western area contains kuo-toa, beholders and other assorted enemies. We find new ways to kill them, or as Edwin insists - Death spells. Back in the entry area of the underdark Michio hears of a balor. It sounds dangerous so he tells Korgan and Haer'Dalis to sort it out. It might be safer in Ust Natha so we obtain a disguise from Adalon the silver dragon. There are a few quests we have to complete to fool the drow and retrieve the dragon eggs. Once we have retrieved the eggs we leave, and as Michio can now cast level 9 spells he tries a Freedom spell. This releases a mage called Vithal who we help, and although we extract a larger reward than he anticipated we don't push our luck so depart on reasonable terms with him. Our exit from the Underdark is nigh, and as we are invisible we can sneak past Drizzt without him bothering us. We go back to the Promenade only to find a gith wild mage called Kruin is waiting for us.

We'd like to see him do his worst. We really would.

He doesn't seem to have anything that bad, however two of his supporting cast hit us with lightning bolts and Haer'Dalis is badly wounded. With the first one he remains in combat but as the second hits he turns to distance himself from combat.

Kruin may not be able to do much but his Anti-Paladin takes the opportunity to strike at Haer'Dalis as he runs and land a critical blow. Michio closes his eyes as our party Blade is chunked - his equipment flying everywhere. Now Michio has to think about how to refill slot 6.