Dorn's ToB quest impressions (massive spoilers)

kaffekoppen

I just went through Lunia. I thought the overall design was quite nice, and the idea behind the quest itself was also good. The fights were overall very easy, and just as I was about to leave Lunia with a disappointing feeling of not having had a real bossfight, I bumped into the two silver dragons completely unprepared and with most of my spells and abilities spent. That was a fun fight indeed. The reward... crazy.

Overall, I enjoyed Lunia. However, I did run into some bugs (reported in the bugs section) and got the impression that it has not quite been tested well enough yet.

FinneousPJ

For the record the boss fight can be skipped if you want to.

Sounds like you did find some bugs. I don't why you're posting them here though.

kaffekoppen

This was meant to be a general impressions kind of post, but... you're right. Think I'll post the bugs part under bug reports.

As for the boss fight, I wouldn't want to skip it. It's the most fun part of it.

FinneousPJ

Some people have complained Dorn's quest rivals that of CHARNAME. You didn't find this to be a problem?

kaffekoppen

I don't think it's a problem that it rivals your own quest (and really I don't quite agree that it does), but rather I find it a bit strange that Dorn would attract so much attention. He derives his strength from Ur-Gothoz, and I never got the impression that Ur-Gothoz is particularly high-ranking or important.

It's also a big strange that you are able to alter the scroll and then somehow Dorn is forgotten again, with nobody having noticed that you basically went into Lunia and slaughtered everyone. I guess that's what it was like before cameras.

vangoat

I killed Ur-Gothuz in Dorn's SoA quest, will this be a problem in ToB? Dorn became a patron of Azothet..

kaffekoppen

I don't see any reason why it should. It's not central to the quest in ToB at all. That said, I can't make any promises as I've never tried it

wuthering20

vangoat said:

I killed Ur-Gothuz in Dorn's SoA quest, will this be a problem in ToB? Dorn became a patron of Azothet..

It won't be a problem. I made the same choice as you, and it's only reflected upon a few dialogues/choices (one of these is interesting though )

Overall I think this quest is cool, though kind of make charname overshadowed. It's not very acceptable that there's a NPC more sinful than my PC :-)

FrdNwsm

Hmm, I am doing that quest right now but I may be doing something wrong. I can't find any scroll or anything resembling dragons. Is there another level to the place?

Arunsun

@FrdNwsm the scroll is on the north east side of the map, you need an item called ink and sand to interact with it, and dragons will appear only once you did what you were told to do in Lunia. By the way, if you are out of gold, collect the gear, these are all +3 gear and can be sold for a big lot of money. Oh and prepare yourself for one of the toughest fights in Baldur's Gate 2.

FrdNwsm

I asked this in another thread, but it seems relevant here also. What happens if you don't go to Lunia and erase the scroll? OK, I know the P. of J. threatened to keep coming after us, but Edwin now has summon dark planetar as an HLA and Dorn has summon fallen deva. We have already had one battle where the two planetars faced off and we survived pretty handily. Can we keep doing this indefinitely, or will they eventually send a whole posse of planetars after us?

Oh, and how about summoning a dark planetar while in Lunia? I'm betting that's a no-go, but it would be a humorous turn of events if you could do it.

Yannir

FrdNwsm said:

Oh, and how about summoning a dark planetar while in Lunia? I'm betting that's a no-go, but it would be a humorous turn of events if you could do it.

I don't think there's a script preventing this. There's a whole bunch of hilarious inconsistencies in this game. For example, all the extraplanar areas in the game should treat summoned creatures as gated rather than summoned, since you are essentially bringing them in from a different plane. And in hell-areas, demons should be summoned instead of gated. Depending on their native plane, ofc.

FrdNwsm

Indeed, I tried summoning fallen planetars and it works. Also, since this is apparently their native plane, good planetars can actually be killed here. On the other hand, my planetars are totally pwned by the silver dragons, so they aren't much use in the final encounter.

I think there is something buggy about the dragons, btw. I have yet to be able to defeat them both; the best I have been able to manage to do is to kill one of them. I have Edwin with a spell trigger with 3 pierce magics, and he's packing 3 more, and he and Sarevok have several breaches and remove magics as well. We keep bringing their defenses down, I can hit them a few times, then they become immune to weapons again, yet there is no sign that they are casting any spells. Dragon fear doesn't work on us because Viconia has put remove fear on us prior to the fight, but they also keep putting people to sleep, including Edwin, despite his spell trap.

I have completed the quest simply by making an end run around them both, running like Hell for the portals, and ducking the fight altogether, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the entire encounter, IMO. Probably missing out on lots of experience and loot.

Yannir

FrdNwsm said:

they also keep putting people to sleep, including Edwin, despite his spell trap.

I think that's because metallic dragons actually have 2 different breath weapons, out of which 1 is usually straightforward (ice in the case of silvers?) and one is less obvious (a sleep cloud perhaps?). That would make it a breath weapon, in which case your only chance of avoiding it are saving throws and spells that directly grant sleep immunities. It's not treated as a spell so spell trap is useless against it. I'm not completely sure, since I haven't done this content yet. Also, I've never tried killing Adalon either back in SoA. There's always a compelling reason to return the eggs to her, even if I'm doing an evil run.

FrdNwsm

In case you didn't know ... oil of speed's movement effect stacks with items such as paws of the cheetah and the grandmaster armor. Movement rate seems tripled or quadrupled; positively meteoric in fact. We should leave little firey trails in the atmosphere of Lunia. Combining the two lets you blaze right past the dragons ... although you still have to stop and listen to their boring speech about how they are going to make the evil transgressors pay.

Arunsun

These dragons each drop scales that allow Cespenar to create the very best armors in the game, so you had best kill them no matter what it takes. By the way, movement speed is capped, like APR. It is capped at 20 (which is your movement speed with paws of the cheetah, natural is 10) and can be doubled once again with haste effect. You cannot stack haste effects though, and you may only double it once even with haste +IH+oil of speed

Jarrakul

@Arunson, are you sure? I've raced people with boots of speed vs. people with boots of speed + IH, and the boots of speed + IH wins every time. It's not double speed, I don't think, but I'm pretty sure it's faster.

Arunsun

yes you can stack boots of speed +haste effect, but stacking boots of speed + haste +IH +oil of speed will produce the same effect as simply haste +boots of speed

Jarrakul

Ahhh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry, I misread your earlier post.

FrdNwsm

I specifically mentioned oil of speed because the effects last longer than a simple haste spell. On the other hand, supplies of this are more limited than the infinitely renewable haste spell.