Team Cleric Trilogy (BG2) No-Reload.

SionIV

So i've had a cleric run on the side that i played a little bit on every day. They have completed their No-reload BGEE game with Imoen as their rogue and now they are starting BG2EE.

You'll be able to find their thread here - http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/30936/help-with-background-roleplaying-for-a-cleric-team#latest

I ended up changing Lyssa to a Thief/Cleric of Talos for this game so i would have a thief.

I'm going to follow up with updates on this one, i didn't do it on the BGEE run as i wasn't sure if i would complete it or not. The BGEE was pretty simple and i did Durlag's but not the werewolf Island as i couldn't remember what type of weapons i would need on my clerics to actually be able to kill the greater werewolf.

So i'm starting up in Irenicus Dungeon now and we'll see how well Divine magic will hold up in BG2EE.

SionIV

The first level of Irenicus Dungeon is down and i'm throwing in a quick update that pretty much shows what tactics i'm using and will be using for most of the game.

I've always liked holy smite but i'm starting to love it right now. It's my bread and butter spell and it takes one holy smite to clear a group of goblins. So four smites later and i'm done with the groups of goblins without taking any damage.

I'm using Sion to tank the monsters, i'm buffing him up with Armor of faith, DuHM, Defensive harmony, Protection from evil and then using Seeking sword. The backline is made out of Lyssa and Melandru who are are throwing out as many spells as possible. I'm also using skeletal warriors to help me out in the harder fights.

Everything was pretty easy and straight forward until i came to the dwarfs. I wasn't too worried about them but i've had some troubles with them before. Looking back at it i shouldn't have been worried at all, holy smite really is that good.

Dwarf fight.

I went into the fight carefully so that only the top three could see me, they ran back to the main group which was what i had hoped for. I followed them and quickly threw two holy smite spells into their group.



The holy smite spells killed of the mage, both archers and one fighter, blinded the last two and brought them to low health.





After this all i had to do was clean up the last of them with sling shots and a mace hit or two from Sion. This fight went very quickly and i didn't take any damage at all.

After this the Cambion was next.

Cambion fight.

The plan for the Cambion fight was to get some use out of my undead minions. I was prepared to send in Sion to tank afterwards, but that wasn't needed at all.

I summoned up 4 skeletons and buffed them with Bless and Defensive Harmony, put them around the Cambion and was ready to release him.



It was over so quickly that i didn't get to do anything other than auto attacking, he didn't bring down a single skeleton.

I moved onto the Otyugh with my skeletons and sent them forward, it was a very easy fight as well.

Otyugh fight.

I'm starting on level 2 right now, about to send in my 4 skeletons to take care of the portals. It's going very well so far and i'm getting out of this place very quickly. I'm hoping to be able to pick up something nice from the random shelf and once i get out of here hopefully get enough money to buy a full plate or two. The aim is to get the Plate of Balduran as quickly as possible for Sion, full plates for Lyssa and Melandru. With the plates and a good shield or two they should be able to reach -10 AC pretty quickly.

SionIV

Mencar and his band are dead, did it after the circus and it went incredible easy, probably the easiest i've ever had when it comes to this fight. Forgot to take pictures as i'm still new to this whole print screen thing when it comes to BG. I'll just give a short explanation of the tactics and the fight.

1.) Summoned up 5 skeletal warriors.

2.) Buffed up with Defensive Harmony, Armor of faith, Bless, DuHM, Protection from Light/Fire on Melandru and Sion, Storm shield on Lyssa.

3.) Parked the skeletal warriors in the doorway and threw in two silence 15' radius to shut down the casters.

4.) Threw two holy smite into the middle of the room, making sure not to hit the skeletons. The holy smite softened up the enemy party with some damage and blinded most of them.

5.) Threw True Seeing (Helm ability) with Sion to get Brennan out of his stealth (Invisibility potion).

6.) The enemy team move up to attack the skeletons, both pooky and amon are silenced so their also gathering up in the doorway.

7.) All 3 of my clerics threw a hold spell on the group gathered in the doorway who try to attack the skeletons while blinded. Everyone except Pooky got held and the skeletons killed all of them while Lyssa and Melandru used their sling to kill Pooky.

I didn't end up losing a single hit point, they didn't even get to attack my team, only the skeletons. Silence 15' radius along with the blind from holy smite really shut down their team. It wasn't the most graceful or adventurous fight, but i got my full plate.

The divine hold spell is really powerful, it's AoE and can hit several people. Throwing 3 hold spells into one pile of enemies, that's 3 chances for every single enemy to get held.

Blackraven

Wow, your party was quite low level at the start. You must have gone really fast through BG1. And you must have been pretty low level still in the Mencar battle (even though a party of three levels up twice as quick as one of six). Well done!

Are you playing with any mods?

CrevsDaak

Blackraven said:

You must have gone really fast through BG1. And you must have been pretty low level still in the Mencar battle.

I think that the hardest part of that battle is taking Mencar and the thief down, then they are all dead meat already. I've done this fight today with my Priest of Lathander->Mage, really, it wasn't very difficult, I just made up a good strategy
As I was Mage level 9 and Priest level 12 I could only use Mage spells, so it was a bit complicated.
First I cast 2x Web to the middle of all the group (between the bed and the chest bedsides the mage), then I cast Cloudkill at the same point (to turn them hostile + to kill the mage and his familiar) and then a Greater Malisson, Slow at the same spot, a Hold Person over the thief, Sunfire to damage Mencar and the kill Fighter with the Cursed THS+3 of Berkzerking, and DUHW and a Potion of Speed to finish off Mencar and they thief. I have only lost 3 hitpoints when I walked inside the Cloudkill to cast Sunfire and kill the fighter, and I did this before the Circus.

BUT I reloaded 5 times to get this perfect strategy :P

I am not sure at which penalty you need to save vs spell against Divine Hold Person, but the Hold Person wizard spell requires a save at -1 vs spell.

Blackraven

@CrevsDaak, I might have underestimated the usefulness of Hold Person in early SoA... I thought there wasn't a save penalty to both versions of the spell. You managed to cast quite a lot of spells without getting interrupted.

CrevsDaak

@Blackraven the Web and Cloudkill spells were cast when they were still neutral :P
If you select the dialog options 2 and then 1 you can exit the dialog without them turning hostile
IIRC Divine Hold Person needs a save vs spell at 0. But I am not sure.

SionIV

Blackraven said:

Wow, your party was quite low level at the start. You must have gone really fast through BG1. And you must have been pretty low level still in the Mencar battle (even though a party of three levels up twice as quick as one of six). Well done!

Are you playing with any mods?

I ended up at the XP limit of 161 000 experience on each of them, but i reduced it down to 110 000 so i wouldn't be so far ahead in BG2. I actually took my time in BGEE and reached the cap of 161 000 a little bit after hitting Baldur's Gate.

Clerics just have quite slow level progression.

Level 7 - 55 000
Level 8 - 110 000
Level 9 - 225 000

I was still level 8 while doing the Mencar battle, but with the correct use of spells it wouldn't have made much of a difference if i had been level 8, 9 or even 11. I normally wait a bit because i don't want Brennan to run away (sucks in a no-reload game, only one chance) but i have got him with hold spells in some of my other games, so figured that with 3 hold spells one would have to go through.

And with the skeletons blocking the doorway i had the option to retreat if things were going bad. It was a pretty safe fight and not that much of a risk when you're positioned close to the stairs.

You also have to remember that they start out neutral, which makes this fight much easier. I got to cast the silence 15' radius while they were still neutral, and open up after with a holy smite. By the time they could attack me they were both blind and silenced. I normally don't use this approach as i find it a bit meta gaming, but i'll do it for that full plate, it's that important.

With this party i'm pretty much running a clean BG2 with just BG2 tweaks.

SionIV

The group of clerics have reached level 9 (225 000 experience) and they are inside of the Copper Coronet. They haven't bought anything for their money yet or sold their stuff, the plan is to gather up enough money so that when i do sell my stuff, i'll hopefully have 40 000 for the plate of Balduran.

Have had two fights since Mencar. Oh and i remembered to take pictures!

Thug Fight.

Team divine power decided to try out their hold tactic again and started with summoning two skeletons. The skeletons were there to group up the enemy team and keep their attention until the hold spells are on their way.



As with the last fight it went pretty much the same, both of them got held and the skeletons took their time and finished them.



Reached level 9 after this fight.

Lyssa went up to the house on top of Copper Coronet and stole the war hammer +1 for Sion. After this we went inside and Sion got to fight in the arena.


Copper Coronet Arena.

Prebuffed with Armor of faith, Bless, DuHM, Defensive Harmony and Seeking Sword.



Ready - Set - Go!



I keep getting impressed by the Seeking Sword, it is amazingly powerful.

Going to start clearing the Copper Coronet and take care of the slaves now. I might try my luck with Watcher's Keep level 1 after that.

SionIV

Another update here, and it's going really well. I've completed Copper Coronet, the sewers, the slaving ring and even had the time to get ambushed once or twice. I'm still not level 9 and it's first hit me now how SLOW clerics are to gain levels.

I've got my plate of Balduran so Sion is sitting on -9 AC at the moment.

Copper Coronet fights.

Fighting the slavers inside Copper Coronet went pretty good, with the exception of Lyssa getting smited and not being very happy about it. I really do have to remember that she is Evil, or she'll end up dying sooner or later. Melandru was sitting in a corner snickering while Sion was trying to convince Lyssa that we did indeed need the halfling, so she wasn't allowed to kill her.



The mage did manage to get of a haste spell, but Lyssa threw a dispel so we got the threat neutralized.



We summoned up two skeletons to take most of the damage from the animals.



A glyph of Warding killed Tabitha and did some nice damage to the beast master and one of his bears. The skeleton must have some killer saving throws, which prevented any friendly fire.



Lyssa finally got to use her spells given by Talos, which do deal quite a bit of damage.

After this we cleaned up the last slavers and went to get our reward. Once we got our reward we rested once and went on to have fun in the sewers.

Sewer fights.

We started out with the hobgoblin groups and the plan was to use holy smite, Lyssa threw a nasty glare at Melandru and decided to stay behind the party this time.



The result was lovely as we can see here.



We killed the last of them with sling bullets and some hits with a hammer, then we went on to the Otyugh who got a few spells thrown at it.



We summoned two skeletons and let them take care of the Slimes, Lyssa wasn't getting close to those, gross!



We took our time to buff up before going up to the slavers. Bless, Defensive Harmony and DuHM.

I was a bit worried about how it would go with all the slavers, but just as before it went so well that i might rate this team as one of the strongest i have played with, at least early on in the game.

Slavers compound fights.

Well we went up the stairs and then i paused the game to figure out a tactic. I had used Seeking Sword on Sion so he wouldn't be casting any spells. I put him next to the enemy cleric and tried to group up the major part of the enemies forces around him. Melandru threw two holy smite into the big group that ended up killing of two enemies and blinding the rest. Lyssa threw a hold spell onto the leader.



The hold spell was effective on the boss and he was held while Sion went through the blinded enemies that survived the Holy smite spells.



As you can see Sion has very nice stats with DuHM and Seeking Sword. 7 Thac0 with 3 APR and 12-18 damage.



The enemy team were all dead by now and Sion couldn't help but to stand there with a smile on his lips. Melandru was so happy that no one took any damage so she didn't have to heal anyone while Lyssa was trying to gauge if Melandru had one more holy smite spell left or if that was her last one.

Part two of the Slavers Compound coming up.

SionIV

Slavers Compound fights part 2.

After killing the enemies and their leader we went on to do some troll hunting, knew those flaming swords would come in handy!



We saved the children and killed the Yuanti by applying hammer to their face. After this we summoned up 4 skeletons and got ready for the fight with the mage, we also buffed with Protection from Evil.



We sent in the skeletons and threw a hold spell which wasn't very efficient this time but we did get the gnome mage with it. The skeletons did the rest after this while we threw a couple of bullets and a Flame strike spell.



The undead didn't hear the enemies cries of help, poor guy got chunked a second later.



The enemy group was cleared and yet again we made it without taking a single point of damage. That's the entire slavers compound without getting hit even once.

We went back to Copper Coronet and got our reward, after this we went to Ribalds store in Waukeens promenade and sold enough items to get 44780 gold coins and bought the plate of Balduran for 41650. Sion is now the happy owner of a Full plate of Balduran and with that an AC of -9.

After this we got ambushed, twice.

Ambushed fights.

Two hold spells took care of the Shadow Thieves.



Two holy smite spells killed most of the enemy group that ambushed us on our way to the gate, it blinded the rest of them.



Three hold spells later and a good critical from Sion with his hammer and this fight was over.

The plan is to try my luck at Watcher's keep level 1 now. It's a bit daring with no melee power houses, but the game has been so simple this far that i can't help but to get a bit daring, this is sadly what normally ends my no-reload games.

SionIV

Well my trip to watcher's keep was short. I went through the first three rooms and then got chased out of the keep by two vampiric horrors. Not going to be fighting with those when i don't have immune to level drain, and the level 4 spell won't be helpful because i don't have enough damage to kill them before it runs out.

I did kill the golem though.

Stone golem Vs Priest of Helm.



Ready - Set - Go!

I did get some loot and around 5 000 in gold so the small trip wasn't for nothing. I'm not sure where to go yet, i might try to do something over at the docks.