Black Pits 1: no-redo challenge with all-thieves party ***SPOILERS***
SirBaldur
Member Posts: 80
Black Pits is great for trying lots of classes you wouldn't otherwise, as well as weird combos. This time, i'm going to try to take 6 thieves through. No-redo means no repeating levels to gain more money. Deciding what [not] to buy is one of the exquisite challenges of the pits. (Note that this isn't a no-reload challenge; at this point, there's no surprises, and part of my interest is to see if i can even do it. There will surely be a fair share of TPKs.)
The obvious downside with thieves is that they don't pack the firepower and hp of the fighter kits. But worse, they lack the magic and healing of the mages and clerics.
* No summoned creatures!
* No haste!
* No glitterdust! (No area effects other than fireball potions!!!)
* No blind!
* No Melf's!
* No insect plague!
These are the bedrock of my previous playthroughs!!!
Compounding the issue, the thieves' main benefits - thief skills - are devalued in the pits. Pickpockets, open locks, find traps, and detect invisibility have very few uses. More to the point, you'd be taking those in place of traps and hide in shadows, which can be more useful, though they are limited and difficult to execute in such a confined space.
On the plus side:
* Assassin's poison ability! Hugely effective, possibly better than Melf's, and something I actively missed in my parties without assassins.
* Untriggered traps do not disappear, but stick around to help out in the next battle. Some might consider placing traps for future battles as cheese; but from a role-play view, it makes perfect sense - you'd definitely do it real life if you found that you could. (What they going to do if they catch you doing it - kill you?) Also, it's a bit of a trick to divert party members to lay traps while the fighting continues. It's easy to wait too long, and risky to attempt it too soon.
The obvious downside with thieves is that they don't pack the firepower and hp of the fighter kits. But worse, they lack the magic and healing of the mages and clerics.
* No summoned creatures!
* No haste!
* No glitterdust! (No area effects other than fireball potions!!!)
* No blind!
* No Melf's!
* No insect plague!
These are the bedrock of my previous playthroughs!!!
Compounding the issue, the thieves' main benefits - thief skills - are devalued in the pits. Pickpockets, open locks, find traps, and detect invisibility have very few uses. More to the point, you'd be taking those in place of traps and hide in shadows, which can be more useful, though they are limited and difficult to execute in such a confined space.
On the plus side:
* Assassin's poison ability! Hugely effective, possibly better than Melf's, and something I actively missed in my parties without assassins.
* Untriggered traps do not disappear, but stick around to help out in the next battle. Some might consider placing traps for future battles as cheese; but from a role-play view, it makes perfect sense - you'd definitely do it real life if you found that you could. (What they going to do if they catch you doing it - kill you?) Also, it's a bit of a trick to divert party members to lay traps while the fighting continues. It's easy to wait too long, and risky to attempt it too soon.
Post edited by SirBaldur on
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Comments
While creating the team, I realized another pretty big obstacle. I initially intended to carry 2 swashbucklers, 2 assassins, 1 bounty hunter, and 1 shadowdancer. (Swashbucklers and shadowdancers are new to me.)
But swashbucklers should go two-weapon style, it seems to me. Guess how many blunt weapons thieves can 2-weapon? One. And that's clubs, which do not come in a magical form in BP! (Yes, i'm looking forward to the clay golems fight. That sticks out in my mind as the one battle that requires the team to be equipped in a very specific way.) Alas, morningstars are unattainable in bp1.
In fact, there is only 1 blunt magical melee weapon available to thieves in this game: quarterstaves.
This is also a conundrum for elves - sword and bow bonus won't cut it in the golems battle. Thieves will achieve only 4 pips, so an elf thief will not be at their best in the golem battle, as they will either be using a range or melee weapon without proficiency, or without the appropriate pip in 2-handed or single-handed style.
It might be a minor thing, but as a result, i'm going 1 swash and 2 bounty hunters instead. Everyone except the swash will have quarterstaff proficiency for melee. I never noticed how many magical quarterstaves there are in the game, so we'll soon be finding out if there's a shortage! And, 1d6 instead of 1d10 for damage - sucks!
I'm also going with 2 slingers instead of just one, but the assassins will still have arrows or darts, as that will be vastly superior to slings in every other battle. They'll have to go toe to two using quarterstaves against the golems!
Alas, all my custom pictures show katanas and swords... oh well.
Selfies, please :P
I have mixed feeling about min-maxing - these stats were obtained in less than 30 sec for each char, simply bec single class thief has 3 dump stats - wis, int, cha. (One person needs high cha for cheaper prices.) So it's easy to get the 16 in con and the max in strength and dex. But the challenge of no magic had me going with the min-max.
Ended up with a 3rd slinger, which will pay off as long as I can outfit her with a giant belt. Slingers with 18 strength are worse than both arrows and darts. But with 19 strength, they are basically equal with arrows and a bit better than darts in terms of damage - and incomparably better against clay golems of course.
Diseased Gibberlings ever give you any troubles? The very first thing I did in the very first battle vs Diseased Gibberlings - sent Elle Driver to set a trap. Result:
So not really a problem with the gibberlings. And after that, no more problems with either the diseased or healthy ones.
Why didn't you also give Gogo girl a proficiency in sling? ^^ Together with Sophie and other slingers they would wreck a target with strenght damage bullets. She could also be a cool fighter/thief with a mean flail, but ofcourse that does not suit your concept.
You should be able to use wands of sleep, fear and less usefully, magic missiles. I don't remember if they are sold by the vendors though.
And I have lost a whole party of competent characters to the first diseased gibberling batte:my wild mage had surged a sleep spell into a fireball. And fireball and lvl 1 characters don't mix well.
Swashbuckler's permanent AC and Thac0 reduction is great for a long game, but not as valuable in a 2 minute battle. It might prove more beneficial in Pits 2, where pre-buffing is not allowed. Assuming i can get that far (and it is ever released for android
The early battles are pretty easy, providing easy opportunities to lay traps for future rounds. Against the B-team, Go Go parked her katanas and used other skills while the rest of the team roughed up lonely Fargas.
The battle with Lyrk, the necro who spawns skeletons, was instructive. Having 2 assassins reinforced how vulnerable the early mages are to poison. It literally shuts them down. The only time I have troubles with Lyrk is when i don't have a poison shooter. He has the spell shield and a couple other magic defenses. Melf's is useless against him, at least at first, so he has time to knock out half the party with a big stinking cloud. With a poison shooter, that never happens, and he goes down soooooo fast that no one else has to raise a finger.
The next battles are when it starts getting tough. The ogres hit hard as do the hasted fighters in the last tier 1 battle, and thieves don't have AC or HP to hold up. Even bards would seem to have better odds. We'll see.
Ogres went down, but not without a few healing potions. Three ogres ran into special traps that kept them immobilized in a sphere. After taking out the rest of their buddies, the thieves just waited around for each one to pop out. 6 v 1, wait, 6 v 1, wait, 6 v 1. Nice!
Margarine of Evil team always scares me. I once had Krancor the Old, who was blind (not due to age), wander into my full-health bard. The bard tried to move but got temporarily stuck, and bam bam, two hits and the bard was dead. With the mage and cleric on top of that, it is a tough mix.
Fortunately, poison is still the mage killer. Beatrix hit William before he could cast any spells other than all his protections, which are worthless against poison arrows. (Bad planning, William!) He wandered off screen and was never seen again.
That is the super cool thing about poisoning someone. They get taken care of on their own, which also happened with the cleric later. Just makes you feel good, like a winning lottery ticket, when that happens!
It was pretty well under control by this point, though Go Go ended up dying - first death since Elle killer herself. O-ren survived. Sophie shadowed her way to her first successful backstab now that she has a multiplier. Yay! (Shadowdancer + Dagger of Venom would be crazy.)
After shopping with the bonus money:
Go Go (swashbuckler) - +1 katana dualing with a regular one, and armor upgrade to +1 studded leather. She also got boots of speed.
Beatrix (assassin) - Dale's Protector (-2 missile thac0). Otherwise all non-magical gear.
O-ren (assassin) - Dale's Protector. Otherwise, all non-magical gear.
Vernita (bounty) - all non-magical gear.
Elle (bounty) - +1 sling. Otherwise, all non-magical gear.
Sophie (shadow) - +1 quarterstaff, Second Sword Arm (-1 thac0) to increase her backstab probability, +1 sling. She also got boots of speed.
I'm really pushing it on the armor issue. Only Go Go is getting magic armor; everyone else has AC3, yikes. Well, Vernita and Elle didn't even get any armor until before the last battle. Investing heavily into thac0 reduction and damage increase. Though not springing for a second +1 katana, as much as I would love love love to get it.
Funny thing with pack of thieves (and also happened with pack of bards, since they have the same XP requirements): they end up just a couple hundred XP short of level 5. All of them (of course). This also happens before level 4. Would be nice to get those extra HP earlier!
Ankheg battle wasn't exactly easy for the team. Several potions and most of the party was pretty beat up, had to rotate them around. Eventually was saved by unsprung traps, and no deaths. Pure power combat is not this group's forte.
Spiders were really easy. Beatrix disrupted Parker's (the druid) first cast, and Sophie ran over and backstabbed to finish her off just as she was starting the second. Literally, the battle was basically over in 1 round! The dialogue of O-ren's dart attack is her 3rd; darts are of course 3 attacks per round. The two spiders attacking Go Go are the only enemies left.
One note is that I did use one potion of explosions. Without a blast or a fireball, the pack of little spiders is really a pain; with it, it is a breeze.
Is it unfair to get a potion knowing this? I couldn't decide. It is hard not to metagame, once you know what's coming. I might have everyone with sword proficiencies but for the knowledge of the clay golems coming up.
Plus, most teams will have at least one magic user with a fireball wand or spell. With no area effects, a party of thieves would likely carry some exploding potions.
Still, I decided to try it with a saved file from before the battle. Surprisingly, the big difference wasn't the lack of fireball though. This time, Parker got off the web spell, despite the arrow hit from Beatrix. Having half the team held, and then Sophie held just as she was sneaking in to backstab (Parker is pretty clever to be just inside the web range - hadn't noticed that before), definitely creates some challenges! In the end, the thieves still prevailed, but with 2 deaths.
With that, i felt justified to go forward. Actually the second result was better, since i hadn't wasted my fireball potion, but i am keeping the original play.
My mentioned the bounty hunter special traps are creating spheres around enemies. I happened to notice today that this effect seems to be a level 16 ability! I've never cast the sphere as a mage, so not really sure what it looks like, but that must be it. The first level special should be in effect - slow.
If this is a bug, i'll have to either pause my all-thieves playthrough (joining my all-bards playthrough on hold due to bug), or have to think about how to scale back my special trap use in a fair way.
Here's a shot where the sphere has let the party prep to attack the last enemy. Yeah, that makes it easy.
Edit: Yup, confirmed the bug even in regular bg. Another char breaker for me. I'm realizing this sphere / hold ability has really made some of the battles easier. Three ogres got caught in spheres, and tackling 3 ogres 1 at a time is a piece of cake; 3 ogres at once would definitely have been some deaths.
First, i may have to go back and run through the battles again from a save file.
Second, not sure what i should do about special traps going forward.
Filed a bug. http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/35421/bounty-hunter-special-trap-casts-otilukes-sphere-and-hold-at-first-level#latest
Thanks to @bengoshi for pointing out this thread in http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/558257/#Comment_558257
I decided to move forward but with restrictions of only allowing 1 special trap placed per battle. I have 4 special traps per battle, so that seems like a fair balance.
Thieves were pretty easy. They don't have poison, but are very susceptible to it. Plus our traps were better than theirs. No deaths.
Portals + Ogre Mage didn't go down easily; the team got bloody, but escaped without deaths. Funny thing I learned: the portals have backsides and are susceptible to backstab!
I found this one on accident; later, i tried on the other portals, but without any luck.
Redshirt Wizards got interrupted by poison. They have all those defenses, but +1 arrows / darts worked fine, and that let the poison in. After that, they spent the rest of their time either dying or trying to cast more defense spells. I never saw a cone of cold from either of them. 2 assassins FTW!
The cleric kept casting heal spells on himself to combat the poison. Shadowdancer got in a couple backstabs on the melee guys, and along with a couple extra-strength healing potions and poison, the half-orcs on our team took them out.
Baeloth lost his cool.
Go Go - Upgraded to +2 studded leather armor. Upgraded 1 katana to +2, moved +1 katana to the off hand. Picked out the Girdle of Stone Giant Strength (20) and Second Sword Arm (-1 thac0) as fashion accessories. Also got the necklace of missiles.
Beatrix (assassin) - +2 short bow plus some fire arrows.
O-ren (assassin) - Got Sophie's used +1 quarterstaff.
Vernita (bounty) - Got Elle's used +1 quarterstaff. At some point in tier 2, she got the girdle of Hill Giant Strength (19) and boots of speed.
Elle (bounty) - Upgraded to +2 quarterstaff, plus some sun stone bullets (2 fire damage).
Sophie (shadow) - Upgraded to +2 quarterstaff, plus some sun stone bullets (2 fire damage). Proud to wear Go Go's used +1 studded leather armor.
I lavished Go Go with all the best stuff since she's the only real front-liner. Still REALLY SKIMPING on the armor, actually may have spent more on extra-strength healing potions. I don't know, 1 or 2 AC doesn't seem worth it for the couple thousand. I think i'd rather get the +2 ring for the saving throws - but that's too expensive.
Beamdog continues to calibrate the level ups just to frustrate those who got all-thieves or all-bards. Seriously, the XP seems specifically designed to hold them back! :P The whole team is like this!
The fission slime and trolls were a killer - total party kill.
The problem was that, i first accidentally let Go Go or Elle kill one of the slimes, which two slimes. Then, one of the sunstones - which I bought just for its fire damage to finish off slimes and trolls - actually split another one when it delivered the final blow. I guess the regular damage killed the slime, which is why it split, before the fire damage kicked in, which makes sense bec the slingers all do about 15 regular damage. Ooops, that never occurred to me before.
Then Go Go died, wearing the fireball necklace. Sadly, in the pits, there's no looting.
The poison from all the new slimes overwhelmed the party and the paltry 2 poison elixirs they carried. (Lots of corner cutting for cost savings going on.) When Beatrix went down, it was truly over. The sunstones - even if they didn't cause more splits - don't fire fast enough and with enough fire damage to be effective. Especially when everyone is poisoned. (Maybe I need more AC?)
So yeah, down they went.
So, my first re-load.
Instead of buying the sunstones, which I now realized are worthless for their fire damage, and one of the speed boots, I bought the Ring of Fire Control. Flame strike will obviously be very useful, and fire elemental charm could help in the fire battle. Also, i discovered (how did i miss this before?) the mushroom has squirted out a cache of potions of fire breath. I actually didn't know how these worked, but 6d10 fire damage at half the price of the exploding fire potions sounded great. A few of those went in the pocket.
Re-loaded - in all senses of the word - the party went back into the arena, with a vague memory from a former life of having been here before.
The fire breath potions surprised me at first. Upon activation, Elle ran right for the target, instead of launching it. Once it started shooting, I realized this was agannazzar's scorcher in a bottle, and that proved to be even more useful than a messy, uncontrolled explosion (not to mention d10 v d6):
The only damage taken was Beatrix. Due to Slow, she almost died before she could get the elixir down. She's working on it the whole time Elle and Vernita are taking care of all the enemies.
Next up, the dreaded clay golems fight. This sticks in my mind as the toughest, though now that i think about it, the fire battle was very tough also.