Wow, did Firkraag just now, another epic battle that left Yoshimo, Aerie and Keldorn (in that order) as smoking corpses on the battleground.
Mazzy was the absolute killer (again) and the only character to consistently do good amounts of damage with acid arrows and improved haste. Lots of summons to soak up the damage and barrages of MM after two lower resistance when the defenses had been taken down.
Close call, I was out of summons, out of MMs and Jaheira's last iron skin had just been taken down. Level 13ish for most of the party. I think for this one 2 arcanes didn't help, another fighter with ranged specialization would have been better. And again all buffs and potions dispelled in no time -> I will not play a bard in SCS, at least not without spell immunity (don't have it with my sorcerer yet and next pick is going to be lower resistance in time for the underdark).
Wow, did Firkraag just now, another epic battle that left Yoshimo, Aerie and Keldorn (in that order) as smoking corpses on the battleground.
Mazzy was the absolute killer (again) and the only character to consistently do good amounts of damage with acid arrows and improved haste. Lots of summons to soak up the damage and barrages of MM after two lower resistance when the defenses had been taken down.
Close call, I was out of summons, out of MMs and Jaheira's last iron skin had just been taken down. Level 13ish for most of the party. I think for this one 2 arcanes didn't help, another fighter with ranged specialization would have been better. And again all buffs and potions dispelled in no time -> I will not play a bard in SCS, at least not without spell immunity (don't have it with my sorcerer yet and next pick is going to be lower resistance in time for the underdark).
With SCS I would take SI as my first pick actually for that level, nothing else is nearly as vital as SI Abjuration in my opinion. Lower resistance is pretty useless in the underdark in my recollection because its single target and there are way too many drow. Better to just use Firestorm from Viconia...
I think you could have traded off the tanking between Jaheira and your Arcane casters though, thats what I did, but fighter/mage is just so good for SCS because of being able to tank and do tons of damage... Especially with a few simulacrums
One caster (edwin) will suffice. You'll be able to steamroll everything same as if you had two casters once you get a bunch of those breaching wands. There's one that shoots ruby ray too.
There will be difficult moments however:
**slight spoiler** ... ... some of the new content contains battles against many mages at once and one additional tough high level arcane fight. having two arcane casters will make things ~50% easier there at a level when you first get the quests. for the whole game, having an additional mage would make things just ~15% easier imho.
One caster (edwin) will suffice. You'll be able to steamroll everything same as if you had two casters once you get a bunch of those breaching wands. There's one that shoots ruby ray too.
There will be difficult moments however:
**slight spoiler** ... ... some of the new content contains battles against many mages at once and one additional tough high level arcane fight. having two arcane casters will make things ~50% easier there at a level when you first get the quests. for the whole game, having an additional mage would make things just ~15% easier imho.
I would argue that you can use hexxat's HLA traps to deal with most of those encounters...
i don't think so, not most of them. also she won't have HLA's yet in most of SoA. for example, i'm talking about a certain gathering of wizards of certain color in a certain district in athkatla which you could attack at a fairly early level. having two arcane casters then would make it super easy and having one would make it moderately hard.
i don't think so, not most of them. also she won't have HLA's yet in most of SoA. for example, i'm talking about a certain gathering of wizards of certain color in a certain district in athkatla which you could attack at a fairly early level. having two arcane casters then would make it super easy and having one would make it moderately hard.
This is an evil party, though. The player would need to ditch his main spell caster to even undertake that quest due to party incompatibilities.
I took the girl along. The protagonist was also an arcane caster. It wasn't hard, but if the protagonist hadn't been able to cast confusion, dispel, sequencer, maa it would have been at least twice as hard.
By the way that quest you don't need to do any of the fighting yourself except for the one mage at the end if you use social engineering to beat it (you can get the mercs and slaves to rise up at the same time while you are in the next room by using hexxat to do all of the talking then going invisible), and even at the end you can just drop 5 snares and lure the mage into it...
I did that with my good party this week at around level 11-12, ditched Yoshi so I actually had 3 casters. Greater Malison +2 Chaos badically won the first fight, social engineering the second and a stack of webs and cloudkills the last one. In spite of SCS it was easier than the first time when I was doing this blind and had no idea what was coming, also at a lower level.
@kryptix With regards to spell picks: My first pick was Chaos and the second one Animate Dead (I love summons) which I have not regretted so far.
With regards to lower resistance and Drow hordes, yes, probably right... Since I'm still on my first good run basically scouting for my evil party to come I won't have Firestorm yet (both Jaheira and Aerie are multiclass...).
At sixth level I have IH and TS and am quite happy with that, only miss Death Spell against trolls. Soon getting my first 7th level pick where I will probably go for the swords since it has utility in all fights and Ruby Ray at 15.
How come if i want to change something in SCS, even if i select "no change" for an option it still spends half an hour patching stuff? Somehow I missed the one component about removing the spellhold stuff and now i'm running it again..
Wow, did Firkraag just now, another epic battle that left Yoshimo, Aerie and Keldorn (in that order) as smoking corpses on the battleground.
Mazzy was the absolute killer (again) and the only character to consistently do good amounts of damage with acid arrows and improved haste. Lots of summons to soak up the damage and barrages of MM after two lower resistance when the defenses had been taken down.
Just had a crack at him with my good party (level 12/13), my third attempt was going well, Keldorn decked out in dragonslaying equipment with 100% fire resist and boots of speed, running interference while the rest of the party pepper Firky with range/magic.
All very well until the brave Sir Keldorn has a morale failure with like 35% of his health still left and stands there while Firkraag kills him. Seriously?? You're supposed to be a knight! You're the one who wanted to fight the dragon to begin with when we were way underlevelled! My PC has 19 charisma so I don't know what I'm meant to do to make Keldorn not be a huge pussy.
Edit: LOL just had another go. It's actually quite funny, this time Keldorn started running away after only a couple of rounds. Hasted with boots of speed and he just bolts up and down like an absolute idiot. I put Mazzy's invoke courage on him but it may have got dispelled? He spends the next 5 minutes running away like a wimp while the rest of my party bravely fights on (and dies eventually). I got control of him back for maybe 1 round in the middle, but he then soiled his knightly breeches and started running away again. I don't think a knight like him deserves Carsomyr
At long last, Firkraag is dead! Keldorn did his usual panic trick, which got him killed. Next to go was Anomen, bravely defending CHARNAME. Then Mazzy's haste wore off and she too panicked, which is instant death. Nalia and Aerie fought the good fight until they ran out of stoneskins. With Firkraag near death my PC was the only one left. I knew the bow of searing was gonna take way too long. I quickly grabbed the boots of speed off Keldorns smoking corpse, chugged a potion of heroism and switched to the staff of striking, then chugged a potion of cloud giant strength. I charged Firkraag. Critical hit! 54 damage! Then Firkraag got a couple of hits in and I ran away again. I chugged my potions, charged in again and WOW another crit! 48 damage! But he still wasn't dead! After absorbing a few more hits I ran away and foudn Kithix hiding at the entrance. Go KIthix! Kithix lasted one or two hits but it was enough time for me to run away and snatch up all the healing pots of dead party members. I charged again. A few swings and misses and hits for Firkraag. Ran away and healed up and came back one last time. WHACK! the beast is slain.
Unfortunately my rod of resurrection only has a couple of charges so we'll have to make camp in Firkraag's lair and eat dragon for a few days while Aerie and Anomen raise everyone. Keldorn will be rezed last due to his cowardice in battle.
What seems to work great is Mazzy with the arrows of biting (the poison ones), although I got unlucky on the game where I actually killed him, since he made all his saves against the poison.
@kryptix Unfotunately I'm still in the Age of Scarcity with cleric spells and need the 2 5th I have urgently for Chaotic Commands (Keldorn and Charname) so that I have two guys who can dispell Chaos, Charm etc.
Later on when you're swimming in cleric spells it's no problem but mid game is tough. Argle, Jaheira is on her looooong stretch to 14, such a pain even as a single class, as a multi it's ridiculous.
Spellhold Irenicus is kicking my ass. I try to focus everyone on him because otherwise he summons dark planetars/time stops/dragons breaths me to death. Hacking at him with Carsomyr doesn't seem to do much, and Aerie and Imoen are too low level to have any cool stuff like spellstrike or warding whip.
@vangoat Hmm... I had no real trouble with him on my good run, actually felt a bit too easy I had Keldorn with Carsomyr and Mazzi with shortbow, both improved-hasted pounding on him while Minsc was tackling the clones and had CHARNAME sorceress, Aerie and Imoen triple-casting taking down his defenses. I think he got off a horrid wilting on Keldorn but got stopped by the MR and Minsc had the HP to take it.
Re-installing SCS now with some more options enabled (I had not enabled short term spell pre-casting I think last time). What I am not enabling is the improved beholders though... Most of the rest should go in.
Started my evil run last night with the Dark Moon Nun as Charname trying for 2 characters with close to 100% MR by ToB as mage tanks instead of 2-3 arcanes, let's see how it goes.
Spellhold Irenicus is kicking my ass. I try to focus everyone on him because otherwise he summons dark planetars/time stops/dragons breaths me to death. Hacking at him with Carsomyr doesn't seem to do much, and Aerie and Imoen are too low level to have any cool stuff like spellstrike or warding whip.
I don't know how you're supposed to kill him.
I had a ton of trouble with that fight trying to do it controlled because my images were basically epic level archmages too, what ended up working was having someone pop an emotion hopelessness off the bat and sending an improve hasted fighter with elemental damage weapons after irenicus and having someone with tuigan and a stack of arrows of dispelling go at him. Along with a secret word and pierce magic I think he dropped defenses just enough for me to land an insect plague (but you don't have this I guess). You can also hit him with a poison weapon as soon as his defenses drop at all. (I stole all 80 arrows of dispelling in Waukeens).
Damnit, I had re-installed SCS to activate some more options and now it's not working any more, BG2 just crashes on startup
Another full install running now, taking forever of course. Thankfully I got it working quite quickly, first time it took me an hour just to get started on the mac but the console had the commands stored that worked in the end
@krytix Where did you get the arrows? I will be going on a "shopping" tour with my evil party later and would like to stock up on them but can't find them in any of the stores. Option in SCS to limit arrows of dispelling is not enabled (since I was never able to find a meaningful number of them anyway...).
@krytix Where did you get the arrows? I will be going on a "shopping" tour with my evil party later and would like to stock up on them but can't find them in any of the stores. Option in SCS to limit arrows of dispelling is not enabled (since I was never able to find a meaningful number of them anyway...).
The archery store in waukeens has nothing good except 80 of those arrows
Yeah in SCS that store has 5 arrows, lol. I've been holding on to them for an emergency.
Managed to get Spellhold Irenicus first turn with my good party today. I basically ignored the clones as much as possible and hammered on Irenicus. I'm not sure what dispelled him, might have been Carsomyr, or one of the crazies, or the pierce magic/breach I was throwing.
So far the Underdark is kinda tough! So many mages. So many fireshields. Qilue's house has like 5 drow mage servants I think?
My melee heavy evil party absolutely crunches through mind flayers though before they get a chance to do anything. They have trouble hitting Korgan with -13 AC too. Naturally they slaughtered the svirfneblin after their leader told them he had the light gem.
Beholders can enjoy Edwin's wand of cloudkill with about 48 charges left. One of the benefits of being evil is I don't feel bad about getting wands recharged and then stealing them back.
What's Adalon like in SCS? Harder than Firkraag? I can't remember what her breath weapon is, lightning?
Adalon is pretty hard to kill in SCS... I had hlas though so it pretty much went pfmw to tank, dispel with timestop and then two fighters went critical strikes with speed weapons and +3 main hands to take her down in like 2 rounds... Her breath didn't get to hit anyone yet.
I did her quest then went back to kill her after she ported me to the entrance.
Comments
Mazzy was the absolute killer (again) and the only character to consistently do good amounts of damage with acid arrows and improved haste. Lots of summons to soak up the damage and barrages of MM after two lower resistance when the defenses had been taken down.
Close call, I was out of summons, out of MMs and Jaheira's last iron skin had just been taken down. Level 13ish for most of the party. I think for this one 2 arcanes didn't help, another fighter with ranged specialization would have been better. And again all buffs and potions dispelled in no time -> I will not play a bard in SCS, at least not without spell immunity (don't have it with my sorcerer yet and next pick is going to be lower resistance in time for the underdark).
I think you could have traded off the tanking between Jaheira and your Arcane casters though, thats what I did, but fighter/mage is just so good for SCS because of being able to tank and do tons of damage... Especially with a few simulacrums
There will be difficult moments however:
**slight spoiler**
...
...
some of the new content contains battles against many mages at once and one additional tough high level arcane fight. having two arcane casters will make things ~50% easier there at a level when you first get the quests.
for the whole game, having an additional mage would make things just ~15% easier imho.
for example, i'm talking about a certain gathering of wizards of certain color in a certain district in athkatla which you could attack at a fairly early level.
having two arcane casters then would make it super easy and having one would make it moderately hard.
With regards to lower resistance and Drow hordes, yes, probably right... Since I'm still on my first good run basically scouting for my evil party to come I won't have Firestorm yet (both Jaheira and Aerie are multiclass...).
At sixth level I have IH and TS and am quite happy with that, only miss Death Spell against trolls. Soon getting my first 7th level pick where I will probably go for the swords since it has utility in all fights and Ruby Ray at 15.
All very well until the brave Sir Keldorn has a morale failure with like 35% of his health still left and stands there while Firkraag kills him. Seriously?? You're supposed to be a knight! You're the one who wanted to fight the dragon to begin with when we were way underlevelled! My PC has 19 charisma so I don't know what I'm meant to do to make Keldorn not be a huge pussy.
Edit: LOL just had another go. It's actually quite funny, this time Keldorn started running away after only a couple of rounds. Hasted with boots of speed and he just bolts up and down like an absolute idiot. I put Mazzy's invoke courage on him but it may have got dispelled? He spends the next 5 minutes running away like a wimp while the rest of my party bravely fights on (and dies eventually). I got control of him back for maybe 1 round in the middle, but he then soiled his knightly breeches and started running away again. I don't think a knight like him deserves Carsomyr
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/29510/scs-crash-to-desktop-asylum-perimeter?new=1
Unfortunately my rod of resurrection only has a couple of charges so we'll have to make camp in Firkraag's lair and eat dragon for a few days while Aerie and Anomen raise everyone. Keldorn will be rezed last due to his cowardice in battle.
What seems to work great is Mazzy with the arrows of biting (the poison ones), although I got unlucky on the game where I actually killed him, since he made all his saves against the poison.
Of course a Geater Malison is always helpful for the arrows and later on vorpal weapons
Unfortunately there are not that many arrows of biting in the game, at least compared to crossbow bolts where you're drowning in the stuff.
Mazzy used up all my Acid Arrows, at least 2 stacks full vs. Firkraag. Didn't use the biting yet since I have only 44 so far.
Later on when you're swimming in cleric spells it's no problem but mid game is tough. Argle, Jaheira is on her looooong stretch to 14, such a pain even as a single class, as a multi it's ridiculous.
I don't know how you're supposed to kill him.
Re-installing SCS now with some more options enabled (I had not enabled short term spell pre-casting I think last time). What I am not enabling is the improved beholders though...
Started my evil run last night with the Dark Moon Nun as Charname trying for 2 characters with close to 100% MR by ToB as mage tanks instead of 2-3 arcanes, let's see how it goes.
Another full install running now, taking forever of course. Thankfully I got it working quite quickly, first time it took me an hour just to get started on the mac but the console had the commands stored that worked in the end
Managed to get Spellhold Irenicus first turn with my good party today. I basically ignored the clones as much as possible and hammered on Irenicus. I'm not sure what dispelled him, might have been Carsomyr, or one of the crazies, or the pierce magic/breach I was throwing.
So far the Underdark is kinda tough! So many mages. So many fireshields. Qilue's house has like 5 drow mage servants I think?
My melee heavy evil party absolutely crunches through mind flayers though before they get a chance to do anything. They have trouble hitting Korgan with -13 AC too. Naturally they slaughtered the svirfneblin after their leader told them he had the light gem.
Beholders can enjoy Edwin's wand of cloudkill with about 48 charges left. One of the benefits of being evil is I don't feel bad about getting wands recharged and then stealing them back.
What's Adalon like in SCS? Harder than Firkraag? I can't remember what her breath weapon is, lightning?
I did her quest then went back to kill her after she ported me to the entrance.