Solo no-reload sorc run tale
mumumomo
Member Posts: 635
Since, everybody is doing it, Here is the story of my no reload attempt with Morgane, elf sorceror.
I don.t expect anyone to be reading, but keeping a diary is a fun addition to the game. I also want to record which spells i will be using over the course of the game.
Run rules :
Core rules, maximum hp at levelling, limited resting (no resting in dungeons like cloakwood or during some ppint of the story, like from coming back to baldur's gate until the end of the game).
Morgane is a gifted young lady with a natural talent for magic and very good stats (10/19/16/15/15/13). She knows shield and sleep for her starting spells. She is proficient with darts
Day1- after a few errands in candlekeep, she leaves her home with Gorion. Gorion is unfortunately killed in an ambush.
Day 2: being an independant lady, Morgane refuse imoen, xzar and montaron company, only accepting some potions and scrolls to help her in her quest. After recovering a magical belt from gorion's body, she is lucky enough to find two magical rings in the wilderness on the way to the friendly arm inn.
At the inn, she is attacked by a mage. Fortunatelý his magic missiles bounce off her shield spell while the guard kills him.
She takes afew potions from khalid and jaheira but refuses their help. She also accepts to help landrin with her spiders problem
Day 3 : after a night of sleep, she kills some hobgoblins to recover joia's ring.since hobgoblins were lucky enough to resist a lot of sleep spells, she has to rest again before leaving for beregost.
She encounters an ogre on the way, while running from him, a wolf joins the ogre to attack her. Luckily, she puts both to sleep with 1 spell and kills them using her darts. The belt of the ogre could come in handy.
In beregost she avoids a bar fight and helps an old gorion's friend. On the way to the south she kills 2 half ogre using imoen's wand of magic missile. That puts her on level 2!. She gives news of her husband to a beregosg woman (forgot the name) and gets a good night of sleep.
Day 4 : making good use of sleep and darts she clears landrin's cellar of the spiders. She gets back to landrin to give her the good news and gets to level 3. She picks magic missile and rest at the FAI.
Day 5 : she leaves for nashkel, where, as indicated by jaheira, some work can be done to solve the iron crisis. On the way, she sees an old tower on the horizon but does not go there yet.
Once in nashkel, she founds an odd armor plate (lucky girl!), speaks with noober and kills neera who ambushed her at the inn. Using magic missile with timely manner, Neera was not able to cast a single spell.
She meets wih minsc and promises him to save dynahyr but refuses his help.
Day 6
She leaves for the the gnoll fortress. On the way, she is attacked by a winter wolf, which pose no threat thanks to gorion's belt.
Still on the way, she escapes a bear and gives the body of her cat back to Drienne.
After a good night of sleep, she also kills krumm and his friend using sleep and darts to help the dryad of the cloud peaks.
Everything is going smoothly so far with no damage received, and well on her way to level 4 which she should reach after the gnoll fortress.
I don.t expect anyone to be reading, but keeping a diary is a fun addition to the game. I also want to record which spells i will be using over the course of the game.
Run rules :
Core rules, maximum hp at levelling, limited resting (no resting in dungeons like cloakwood or during some ppint of the story, like from coming back to baldur's gate until the end of the game).
Morgane is a gifted young lady with a natural talent for magic and very good stats (10/19/16/15/15/13). She knows shield and sleep for her starting spells. She is proficient with darts
Day1- after a few errands in candlekeep, she leaves her home with Gorion. Gorion is unfortunately killed in an ambush.
Day 2: being an independant lady, Morgane refuse imoen, xzar and montaron company, only accepting some potions and scrolls to help her in her quest. After recovering a magical belt from gorion's body, she is lucky enough to find two magical rings in the wilderness on the way to the friendly arm inn.
At the inn, she is attacked by a mage. Fortunatelý his magic missiles bounce off her shield spell while the guard kills him.
She takes afew potions from khalid and jaheira but refuses their help. She also accepts to help landrin with her spiders problem
Day 3 : after a night of sleep, she kills some hobgoblins to recover joia's ring.since hobgoblins were lucky enough to resist a lot of sleep spells, she has to rest again before leaving for beregost.
She encounters an ogre on the way, while running from him, a wolf joins the ogre to attack her. Luckily, she puts both to sleep with 1 spell and kills them using her darts. The belt of the ogre could come in handy.
In beregost she avoids a bar fight and helps an old gorion's friend. On the way to the south she kills 2 half ogre using imoen's wand of magic missile. That puts her on level 2!. She gives news of her husband to a beregosg woman (forgot the name) and gets a good night of sleep.
Day 4 : making good use of sleep and darts she clears landrin's cellar of the spiders. She gets back to landrin to give her the good news and gets to level 3. She picks magic missile and rest at the FAI.
Day 5 : she leaves for nashkel, where, as indicated by jaheira, some work can be done to solve the iron crisis. On the way, she sees an old tower on the horizon but does not go there yet.
Once in nashkel, she founds an odd armor plate (lucky girl!), speaks with noober and kills neera who ambushed her at the inn. Using magic missile with timely manner, Neera was not able to cast a single spell.
She meets wih minsc and promises him to save dynahyr but refuses his help.
Day 6
She leaves for the the gnoll fortress. On the way, she is attacked by a winter wolf, which pose no threat thanks to gorion's belt.
Still on the way, she escapes a bear and gives the body of her cat back to Drienne.
After a good night of sleep, she also kills krumm and his friend using sleep and darts to help the dryad of the cloud peaks.
Everything is going smoothly so far with no damage received, and well on her way to level 4 which she should reach after the gnoll fortress.
Post edited by mumumomo on
8
Comments
Good work so far. Keep it up!
PS Poor Neera, did you cast a true sight on her? Revealing her gem bag to you...
Are you planning on a full trilogy run or just BG1?
Early random encounters usually turn my sorc no-reloads into minimal reload runs, or I don't end up liking my spell selection so I restart. There are so many different ways to build a sorc, I look forward to seeing what your strategy will be as you go along.
Count me among your faithful followers
@blackraven I think he means Niera or whatever the bounty hunter's name is and not the EE character
She had to rest in the cave and then she killed the gnolls to ezcue dynahir, as promised to minsc. She add to use all her spell book (sleep x10...) and tons of darts to do that.
Day 8-9-10 :
After resting, she travelled back the wilderness west of nashkel and found a xvart village. She ran away before being overwhelmed but nearly died on a lucky critical strike (12 damage...) by a xvart.
North of the village, she was ambushed by a hobgoblin and his kobold commandos. To avoid certain deathp, she had to drink immediately the potion of invisibility that jaheira gave her.
She then met brage and brought him back to Nashkel. She leveled up to 4 and picked invisibility.
Note 1
The ambush by the kobold commandos and the hobgoblin is the first unexpected thing in that run. I've done that game dozens of time and yet i don't remember having met them before. Anyway i had to drink the potion of invis (kept for this kind of emergency) or i would have died immediately
Note 2 : the hard part is now over. Next step is the start of the equipment phase and the start of the critical path.
Note 3 : the hard part (= leveling from 1 to 4) is completely skippable if you do the basilisks and shoal but i find it more fun and more realistic this way
First to an old lighthouse, where she used her newly learned invisibility to avoid some sirines and to loot a cave.
The tome of constitution and wand of paralysis she found were wonderful treasures.
Then, going back to civilization (beregost) she found a man transformed i to a chicken.
She brought him back. To a powerful mage and helped him transform back to man. The spell was apparently dangerous but it worked. Using her nice sum of money (roughly 12000 at that time), she bought a few scrolls, potions, and a lot of elemental darts.
Day 16, back to nashkel to solve the mines mystery.
Close to te mines she finds a wand of frost in an old trunk. She has such a nose for hidden treasures!
She also helps prism the sculptor to finish his job. Greywolf, the bounty hunter that attacked him put up quite a fight, resisting the wand of paralysis twice and forcing her to use an oil of speed in order to kill him safely.
Still under the effect of the potion of speed and under invisibility, she ran to the bottom of the mines, paralyzed mulahey and killed him. So far, so good.
However, she had no invisibility left. During her escape she was critically hit TWICE in a few seconds.
Luckily, she took a healing potion in between the two hits. And survived.
Outside of the mines, she met a scared man that asked her to give a magical dagger to some monster.
She preferred to kill the monster using a few (a lot actually) magic missiles. She grabbed a few potions (including a life-saving potion if invisibility) from the monster cave.
The fight was made harder when an ankheg joined the fight but she managed to outrun it and to focus on the revenant.
Completely battered (having not slept for the last 5 days) she headed back to nashkel with only 1 spell remaining.
In nahskel she sold the loot ey took from mulahey (her fortune is now close to 20k gold), bought a lot of healing potion at the temple and got the reward from the mayor. She leveled to 5 and picked spook and web for her new spells
On her way to the inn for a well deserved sleep, she was attacked by nimbul. Thankfully, protected by her last shield spell, she managed to paralyze him using the wand. Unfortunately, the kill was stolen by the guard which could not miss the opportunity to make an easy 650 xp. Now, with the girdle from the ogre and the boots from nimbul she is almost immune to ranged attacks.
She finally had a rest for the 9th time of her adventure (9 times if 17 days... I really am a slaver with her)
Day 17 :
She heads for Beregost to confront tranzig, who was pointed out in mulaheys letter.
On her way, she decides to have a look on the tower she saw from the road a few days ago.
However, at the entrance she meets 2 formidable fighters that she dispatches with the wand of frost.
Thinking initial fight announces more formidable challenge inside, she decides to postpone her visit to the tower and to head back to beregost.
However, having now a nice sum of gold, Morgane decides to do some shopping first : she goes back to thalanthyr and, using a scroll of friends (bought from the same talanthyr) she manages to buy the robe of the good archmagi at a good price (16000 thanks to her 18 rep).
Then she decides to go to ulgoth.s beard forst before paying a vist to the bandit,
Day 18-19 on her way, she meets brun, a farmer looking for his son.
She fins the son body in a cave, nest of several ankhegs. Thanks to her invisibility spell she avoids all trouble and she is able to bring the body to brun thanks to a stength potion bought previously at thalanthyrs.
Being of good will, she decides to help the farmer with some gold.
Apart from the body she also finds a marvelous treasure : a wand of fire!
Nearby she speaks with a group of fishermen and accept to teach a priestess of umberlee some manners. However, finding the priestess, it appears that the fishermen have stolen her mother artefact and she decides to help the girl instead.
But first she goes to ulgoth's beard where she has a good night of sleep and buys a greenstone amulet to protect her from bad magic.
Day 20
Time for the bandit camp. Using invisibility she scouts the area and, given the huge number of bandits, goes directly and stealthly to the main tent. There, protected by the greenstone amulet and a potion of freedom, she kills the bandits leaders using 2 webs, 1 charge of the fire wand and a lot of magical darts.
She has a bad feeling about the chest and decides to play it safe by drinking a potion of isolation. She is indeed very lucky since the chest is trapped with lightning bolt which leaves her unharmed.
From the discussion with the prisoner endars ai she decides to move on and to visit cloakwoods. Before leaving she picks the potion of magic blocking (her second one after the one bought from thalanthyr). Then, casting invisibility once more, she leaves the camp, the bandits still alive but their leaders dead.
Day 21 : back to the fishermen, she gets back bowl of the priestess of umberlee and she brings it back to her (i LOVE fedex quests...)
On her way back to the friendly arm inn she is attacked by a group of bandit, seeking revenge after the death of their leaders. Fortunately being protected by her magical robe, belt and boots (-7 ac vs missile), she can escape the fight without any damage.
She travels through the cloakwoods under the cover of invisibility.
Knowing she would have to strike quickly, without being to rest in the mines, she sleeps just before getting in.
Day 25
Under invisibiliy she scouts the group of bounty hunter in front of the entrance and prefersto strike first.
She starts to catch them in a web and uses a few charges of her wand of fire and throw a few darts.
On their body she loots the boots of speed and levels up to 6. She picks MMM as her new spell.
Then she casts invisibility again and go through the mines. Apart of speaking with two differents slave leaders (and having to recast invisibility each time) she avoids any contact and fighting before reaching the last level.
There she kills the guard with a spook and a wand of fire charge.
Then she takes a potion of magic blocking and face davaevorn.
The mage kills one of his two bodyguards with a lightning bolt and she finishes the second one with her wand of frost.
She has to take a second potion of magic blocking (bought at thalanthyrs) but the mage soon depletes all his spells and he falls easily to her magic missiles.
She then leaves to drown the mines, after having organized the escape of the slaves.
Note : i have decided to spend a little bit more time in baldur.s gate to build some more xp for bg2.
Furthermore the double magic blocking potion is for me the safest way to deal with him.
Davaevorn is a dangerous fellow since he casts lightning bolt (deadly) fireball (can hit hard), charm(deadly) and paralysis(deadly). But after that he is out of spells.
Therefore the potions (one is sometimes enough, but i prefer to have two, just in case)allow to pass his traps AND his spells wih no risk at all.
@Mr. Web, ehm I mean, @MacHurto: why I am not surprised by your comment?
In town she goes to the sorcerous sundries. Upstairs she has to kill a few agressive mages using a charge of her greenstone amulet and a few charges of he fire wand. Not a big deal since she finds another wand on their corpse.
She levels up to 7 and picks chromatic orb, mirror image and haste.
She also buys a few scrolls (knock, strength) and potions (magic resistance, oil of speed, fire resistance, isolation)
Invited in the thief guild, she finds a tome of dexterity in a barrel. Good thing : her luck is still there!
She then has a sleep for the 12th time of her journey.
Day 29 : the town is very big and she wants to see everything quickly so she drinks an oil of speed. Between that and her magical boots, she goes at supernatural speed.
She meets with 2 iron thrones assassin. One of them contacts her later and explains that she has been poisonned!
She agrees to help him to release from his geas in exchange if the antidote.
To do that she speaks with the high priestess of umberlee which request her to get back a tome of wisdom from a rival temple.
Goind to the temple district she meets a young boy who tells her that the priestess of umberlee have killed his friend.
Very unhappy about that she decides to help the boy but to punish the priestess for her evil acts
Therefore she keeps the tome of wisdom fir herself, gets back to the temple, kills the priestess and picks the scroll to release the assassin from his geas. Using the scroll of strength, she carries the body of the yound boy back to his father for resurrection.
She has already done so much in the city but the day is still young and she is moving very very fast...
It's so OP, i use it all the time.
Combined wih MMM and spiderspawn it makes very easy most bgee and early soa fights.
*looks if he still has his elven swashmage char.file, then remembers he forgot to take his anti-restartitis pill this morning.*
After witnessing the resurrection of the boy, Morgane decides to test herself as the thief and to take the challenge of a gnome thief that she met at the inn the previous night : she gets in the hall of wonder, steal the telescope and escape with no difficulty thanks to her speed. Ah it's so good to be a powerful magic user!!!
After that amusement, she meets lathander and give him the scroll to release him from marek geas. Unfortunately lathander is unable to give her the antidote to the poison put give her the directions to Marek.
She goes to that inn, fools easily an ogre looking for her at the entrance and meets Marek upstairs.
Using a charge of her greenstone amulet (just to be safe) she kills him with no difficulty : between MMM and magic missiles, he is unable to cast a single spell. She takes the antidote and is finally cured of the poison.
She gets to level 8 and picks spider spawn.
Her oil of speed wears off and she decides to have a look in the sewers. There she finds a lot of carrion crawler. Her knowledge of all faerun species being immense, she takes a potion of freedom to prevent their paralysis.
Then they are easily dispatched using MMM, magic missiles and wand of fire. She also kills the ogre mage who was leading them. On him she finds a nice ring, that she keeps.
Morgane accepts ramazith task to recover a dryad for him.
She kills the rival mage with 2 MMM but decides to free the dryad.
Ramazith is not happy about that! Morgane kills him with 3 MMM.
These mages have no hp...
She takes the book of int.
Then she goes at the seven suns and discovers that the place is overrun by dopplegangers. She slays them all using a few charges of her wand of fire.
She gives the information to scar who rewards her and proposes a new mission. But actually she has already killed the carrion crawler/ogre mage menace! So scar brings her to meet duke eltan which ask her to spy on the iron throne.
She has a good night of sleep first and then enter the tower
Day30 :
Using invisibility she goes to the top of the tower. The group at the top does not look very friendly so she prefers to go to a room out of their sight and prepares : she summons 3 spiders, then comes to see the group and opens with 2 webs. The spiders slaughter everyone and she takes a few nice pieces of loot.
Interrogzting a survivor she learns than rieltar, the leader of the iron throne is in candlekeep.
Back to eltan he teleports her back to her chlidhood home...
Day 31 : having confronted rieltar in candlekeep, she is falsely accused of murdering him. Fortunately, one of the scholar helps her to escape throughh the catacomb.
Knwoing that the place is crawling with traps she takes a potion of isolation. Since she wants to go fast the also takes a potion of speed.
After looting the tome of wisdom from a trapped tomb, she kills 2 spiders with her wand of fire. Going forward to kill the last two, she fails to realize she is tripping a web trap. Evidentlý she fails her saving throw and the spiders make a nice meal of her. Her supernatural luck could not last forever.
I was completely stupid on that one, forgetting an obvious trap.
The problem is that the run with a solo sorc is very easy once you master it. Therefore you get overconfident and make stupid mistakes...
Just for the record here is how the run was made :
- level 1-4 :
Using only sleep (maybe 30 casts) and darts (hundreds of them) on the SW of the maps. The most risky part. Skippable if you want to kill basilisks
- level 4-8 : avoid most fights using invisibility. Fights are won using mostly wands (wand of fire flamethrower is ridiculously OP) and webs
Total spell used (roughly)
Sleep 30
Magic missile 5
Shield 3
Spook 1
Chromatic orb 0
Web 10
Invisibility 20
Mirror image 0
MMM 5
Haste 1
Spider spawn 2
Couple of questions:
1) where did you get the wand of fire? Any of the other wands is worth/not worth keeping? I am gonna get to the bandit camp now but with all the different objects I want to keep and a lack of bag of holding, I have had to take Kivan as a mule (dismissing him before the XP begins). He wanted to get to the bandits anyway. He has the right to watch the fireworks :-)
2) Great accountability of spells and all. Wouldnt it be worth it going to Ulgorth beard and get the ring from the halfling? Or is it a RP thing?
Either way, a good effort, and it was good for me to learn of the Web/Spider Spawn combo's effectiveness. I never knew it was so potent.
re: (1) I don't know where you can find the Wand of Fire, but as to your question which other Wands you might want to keep I'd recommend the Wand of Monster summoning. That one can come in handy if you're under attack and spellcasting would be interrupted (possibly useful in Duchal Palace although you could summon your spiders or whatever memorized summons in the anteroom and send them in before entering main room yourself - pretty hilarious actually because the crowd will remain unmoved by the spiders'/summons' presence).
Strategic use of the Wand of Cloudkill does wonders in the final battle against Sarevok & co. You won't have many level 5 spells (if any) depending on whether or not you're playing with the XP cap in place.
Overconfidence is your worth and only real ennemy when you have a detailed plan for the game (i've done bgee no reload countless time with crappy chars such as monks...)
As for your questions :
1- there is 1 wand of fire (12 charges) in the ankheg nest, north of fai. A second one (18 charges) can be looted from the mages on the second floor of sorcerous sundries (be careful they can be dangerous,qince they all cast horror and then melf acid arrow). You can also buy some from sorcerous sundries.
All wands and rechargeables items can be sold and bought back with 50 charges. However i find that cheesy and unnecessary. At the time of my death and despite using it extensively, i still had 5 charges of fireball and 6 charges of the flamethrower from the first wand.
The wand of paralysis (from the golem cave near on the light house map) is also quite useful. You can,if you wish, abuse it on neutral ennemies since it does not make them hostile.
The wand of frost (tree trunk NW of nashkel mine map 10 charges), is nowhere as powerful as the wand of fire but i use it against battle horrors.
I strongly dislike the wand of lightning (beregost manor) but some players make a very good use of it
Wand of missile is useful only to interrupt neira, the nashkel bounty hunter, making it very easy to kill with any character. Don't keep them afterwards.
Wand of sleep is a VERY useful tool for the early game and is my first purchase in the game (from thalanthyr) unless i do the basilisks for some easy xp.
Overall any character (mages and bard) able to use wands will have a very easy time in bgee.
2- to do it i would have to pickpocket it -> to hire a thief which i prefer not to do.
Or to kill the gnome which i don't do for RP reason. Even if i am not a by RPer, i prefer to avoid complete contradictions.
That ring is anyway not really needed (even if it helps a lot)There is a good amount of potions of freedom, far enough if you avoid the ghoul fights.
Furthermore, at the time of my death, i had the ring of freedom but not equipped to be able to run faster with the boots and oil of speed. This is what being overconfident means...
That was the first saving throw she had to make in the game...
I was a little surprised you took sleep as a pick, considering the aformentioned wand at high hedge. Did you feel the costs of recharging was prohibitive in the early game or was there another reason?