I guess what it boils down to is, how can we operate within the difficulties of a restless run, without avoiding its difficulties entirely?
As far as modifying the challenge, without making it impossible... I suppose we would want to restrict regeneration to in-combat only, just to give it a concrete limit. This would make resource management a little more important. But if we use a melee-heavy party, resource management is little more than a numbers game: you get enough gold to buy HP, and that's it. A little boring, is all.
If we wanted something a little more interesting, we would require a party with, say, two or three minimum spellcasters. This would require more intelligent use of scrolls and wands, and prevent us from becoming reliant on melee force. Likewise, we would restrict regeneration to in-combat use only, which would make healing potions more meaningful. Unfortunately, healing potions and healing at temples are just so ridiculously expensive that they cut out a lot of the gold you would use for scrolls.
So, to get a less reductive version of a restless run, we might tack on a few rules: 1: Regeneration should only occur in combat, to make other forms of healing more meaningful. 2: The party should be balanced, with at least two spellcasters, to make scrolls worth buying instead of just healing potions. 3: No Wish-resting, since it removes all of a restless run's challenges. 4: Party members can be removed, but at least one quest should happen before they rejoin. This will permit some flexibility in party composition, without removing the problem of fatigue outright. We would have a tradeoff between erasing fatigue and keeping the party members we want.
Following all of these rules might be a little extreme, but these are the things that could help improve the complexity of a restless run.
I don't know how to balance the WoL trick. It's fairly balanced in a restless run when it comes to potions, and to a lesser extent certain scrolls, but it's ridiculously overpowered when used with other wands. Six charges from the Wand of Cloudkill will destroy just about everything. But six castings of Magic Missile, while strong, is not outright gamebreaking. Besides, the WoL trick can be fun. So where exactly would we draw the line?
Maybe it's too early to say which techniques should be acceptable in a restless run. To my knowledge, this is the first time it's been done, so we won't really know which tactics are truly game-breaking, and which are truly necessary, unless we try more of them out. We'll have to figure it out as we go along.
I appreciate the input! This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to do with this run.
One of the big problems of the group I have is that none of my frontliners can use the Amulet of Power, and for some reason I've never bothered to get the Improved Mace of Disruption more than once, so only Poppy has Negative Plane Protection. In the Graveyard District, when you come back from the Underdark, it is always night when you arrive, and you are greeted with a vampire ambush. I decided to use the talk block trick to occupy Bodhi's attention while the party fled to her lair, avoiding a confrontation. Had I done otherwise, my fighters would have been level drained, as I would not be able to position Poppy at the front.
After I got inside her lair, Bodhi spoke to me from outside. Thankfully, this did not spawn vampires where I was.
I have discovered that the Staff of the Magi does not make Poppy a flawless backstabber. The Staff of the Magi apparently cannot be used to backstab, and if I switch to Belm, she goes visible.
Since I don't have a decent anti-vampire tank, I just threw another Protection from Undead scroll on Keldorn and had him tear up the place. Note that Tanova is no longer able to see through Protection from Undead. Keldorn took down everybody, except for Bodhi. Drizzt got the final blow. I was angry at him.
To keep Korgan from complaining, I went to fetch the Book of Kaza. I found a couple new things. I have never spotted these Skeleton Warriors before. Apparently this version of Bodhi's lair is a completely different area than the first one. The pathway to Pai'Na's lair and the Book of Kaza work as normal, though. I found a nice treat in a chest in this new area, and got to disarm the traps again for extra experience. That scroll brought in 1500 gold.
By the time I got to Suldanessellar, everyone but Minsc and Korgan was fatigued. I don't know why, particularly since Keldorn got fatigued first, and he has higher Constitution than Poppy, Mazzy, or Valygar. I think the unusually delayed fatigue I saw earlier in the game was a Chapter 2 thing, and does not apply to later chapters.
I hate Rakshasas. I knew they would throw out all kinds of nasty area effect spells, and I did not wish to take the damage. I decided to use the WoL trick, this time with a scroll of Incendiary Cloud. Just to be mean, I had Poppy re-equip the Staff of the Magi after every cast, so she stayed invisible the whole 5-round casting time.
While I was at it, I had Poppy hassle Raamilat, turning invisible with the Staff of the Magi and whittling him away with backstabs, although, again, the backstabs failed and dealt normal damage. His True Seeing spell didn't reveal me, oddly enough, and I thought the Cloak of Non-detection was not sufficient to block True Seeing.
More Rakshasas! What a treat. For some reason, that elf in the middle is hostile. I always see at least one hostile elf, and I've always assumed it was due to friendly fire somewhere. But this guy was hostile from the beginning.
What followed was very unexpected. Someone cast an awful big explosion, wiping out the friendly elves and at least one of the Rakshasas. My party didn't do too well, either. Four of my party members got hit by a Symbol: Fear, and spent the next several rounds running around like idiots. Notice that it turned to nighttime midway through the battle.
The Rakshasas each dropped a scroll of Mislead, Death Spell, and True Seeing. It was more than worth the lost HP.
Since I had gathered over 30,000 gold by selling off some of my scrolls and other loose items earlier, I decided to fight Nizidramanii'yt, rather than give him my gold and items. Note that if you drop all your items before talking to him and choose to give up all your stuff, he will only take your gold, and you can pick up your items right afterwards.
Korgan decided to brighten the mood with a friendly joke. I think every NPC in this game is worthy of a romance. Keldorn's would be especially complex, considering his family. I could see the appeal in roleplaying a Bhaalspawn seducing Keldorn away from his family.
Nizzy failed a save against a Feeblemind scroll, only for Keldorn to dispel it with Carsomyr. I died the same way against Thax in another run. Nizzy succeeded on the reload, but not on the re-reload. When 5/6 of my party is fatigued and the only buff I'm willing to use is Protection from Acid, I do not feel bad using Feeblemind. That yellow shine warms my heart. Oh, but Minsc died. Whatever. I have an extra Rod of Resurrection from Mekrath.
The fight at the Temple of Rillifane went poorly at first. I tried to interrupt the mage's Time Stop with the Wand of Cloudkill. It didn't work.
Instead, I just had Keldorn whack him with Carsomyr. Yay tactics!
I sold and bought back one of my Rods of Resurrection, which was down to 1 charge. I also bought 10 new Potions of Extra Healing and pawned off some excess loot. We are at just under 40,000 gold.
I decided to try fighting Irenicus without a Protection from Magic scroll. I figured I had enough defenses. Nope.
So I used a Protection from Magic scroll. I suppose I could have tanked out Irenicus with Polymorph Self, Spell Deflection, and Spell Immunity, but this is why I bought the Protection from Magic scroll in the first place. And I didn't think of an alternative until I started writing this.
Next up, the Hell trials and the showdown with Irenicus.
No Rings of Regeneration here, but then I used a lot of easy tactics anyway, what with the WoL trick, a Protection from Magic scroll, the Staff of the Magi, and Feeblemind.
Findings: 1: Sometimes it's best not to bother with elaborate setups and just have Keldorn swing around Carsomyr. 2: Sometimes just having Keldorn swing his sword ends with two characters dead, two characters near death, and two characters Mazed. 3: Seriously, the Protection from Magic scroll is kind of dull.
For the record, my understanding of the Cloak of Non-Detection is that it's supposed to make the wearer immune to all spells that dispel invisibility, but is bugged to only work with thief stealth and Staff of the Magi invisibility.
@semiticgod I'm not sure I'd want to limit party composition. You're right, it's different sort of management challenge with melee-heavy parties, but I'm not sure it's any less difficult.
I might be inclined to rule unlimited regen items illegal. Regeneration from high CON or spells/potions would be fine.
The WoL trick isn't familiar to me, so I don't have on opinion on that.
Please, keep reporting your experiences with this challenge.
Regeneration from high CON would be unlimited, too. But it does have the notable handicap of only applying to one character, and is much slower than a Ring of Regeneration (10 times as slow, I think, with 20 CON).
I think it would make sense to rule out Rings of Regeneration, simply because they heal so much HP. And maybe the Ring of Gaxx as well, though it's more useful for it's other benefits. We could say it would be limited regeneration if you only wore them in combat, but it might be a better idea to rule them out altogether, simply because it would require extra micromanagement to do so.
20 CON would be hard to reach. I know you can get it from BG1's tomes, an Obsidian Ioun Stone from ToB, and a bonus from the Machine of Lum the Mad. But there are kits you can't get if you're in vanilla BG2, so getting a 20 CON Barbarian in vanilla BG2 couldn't happen until ToB. BGEE is a different story, I think (I don't have it).
I mentioned the WoL trick earlier in the thread. Basically, the Wand of Lightning fires off six bolts, which you select individually. So, you can hit 6 targets with a tiny bolt each (3d6, save for 1d6), or fire one big bolt at one target (18d6, save for 6d6). But, if you switch out the Wand of Lightning with another item before it fires, you will instead use that replacement item six times. So you can throw out 6 charges of a Wand of Magic Missile, or cast a scroll of Flame Arrow six times, or drink a potion six times, while only consuming one charge. A Potion of Healing heals 54 HP instead of 9. A Wand of Cloudkill does 6d10 damage per round instead of 1d10. Depending on the item, the WoL trick can be seriously overpowered, or relatively balanced. Note that spells are cast one after another, without pause (casting Flame Arrow six times will have a total casting time of 18, even with the Robe of Vecna), but wands and scrolls throw out all six charges simultaneously.
The Hell trials themselves were fairly simple. My only problem was the Fear trial. I wanted to take down the Elder Orbs, but Mazzy got Imprisoned and when Poppy got Mazed, I decided to reload. I had sent in Mazzy with the Shield of Balduran (and also the Cloak of Mirroring, which I forgot she was wearing somehow), and she was unable to take down all three Elder Orbs. I had a spare scroll of Freedom, but it would be easier to just reload. I gave the SOB back to Valygar, pressed 0 to select Keldorn, Mazzy, and Valygar, and sent them out (I assumed Keldorn had enough MR to survive). The Elder Orbs went down pretty quick. As for the fear effect, I used a Resist Fear scroll.
For Sarevok, I just pushed Poppy to the front and had her cast Protection from Normal Weapons via a scroll. I heard a while back that Sarevok uses an unenchanted weapon, and he doesn't have the AI to target a non-immune character.
For those of you who aren't aware, there's an exploit that lets you tweak the rewards from the Hell trials. When you click on the doorway to Irenicus, you get the reward before the Tear of Bhaal is removed from your inventory. So, you can save Tears of Bhaal by clicking on the door, removing them from your inventory right after the screen shakes, and then you can pick them up when you want to get the next bonus.
Plus, each Tear of Bhaal corresponds to a specific reward, so you can just use one Tear and get the same reward up to five times. You just click on the door when the right Tear is in your inventory (they look alike, so you have to keep track of which one is which), remove it, and do it again to get a duplicate of the bonus. You can therefore tweak the Hell rewards to get the ones you like. It's how I got a cleric/mage up to 25 Wisdom in an earlier run. Normally you can only get 24, even if you import a character from BG1 (18 plus three tomes plus Hell reward plus Silver Ioun Stone plus Machine of Lum the Mad). You don't need UAI to reach 100% magic resistance.
Anyway, I chose the Selfishness and Greed's good rewards, for a total bonus of -4 to all saves and +30% to magic resistance. It's not really necessary, but I like it.
The final battle in vanilla is kind of easy if you drink Potions of Absorption. They give a stackable -10 to AC vs. crushing weapons, and Irenicus as the Slayer and all his demon buddies use blunt weapons. I only had three such potions, but it's still enough to make half the party nearly immune to their attacks. Aside from Potions of Absorption, I used few buffs. Mazzy drank a Potion of Fire Giant Strength, Minsc a Potion of Invulnerability, and Poppy cast Stoneskin via a spell, Blur via a scroll, and Improved Haste on Mazzy, also with a scroll.
Before the battle, I tweaked Irenicus for fun. I like his reaction.
Then I got this. That's the Improved Irenicus part of the Tactics mod. Specifically, it's the SCSII version with the improved scripting, where you fight a magic-immune Sarevok, weapon-immune Mordenkainen's Sword, a black dragon, a CON-draining Beholder, and a Slayer with Improved Alacrity and infinite spells, AND it's all supported with enhanced AI. It's basically the toughest encounter you can get in BG2, besides perhaps Melissan with Ascension. Apparently, when I uninstalled all my mods, this one thing remained. Well, that and a removal on the summoning cap, but all that did is give a few rare enemies some extra Skeletons after casting Animate Dead (I used CTRL-Y on them, but with Aerie it made little difference).
My party can't take on Improved Irenicus, even if I rested. Even if I used all my most powerful scrolls, I still doubt it would be possible. This mod wasn't designed for parties with only 7 mage levels and no cleric or druid levels (Valygar and Minsc don't even have 4th-level spell slots). I had to quit the game, install SCSII, and then uninstall the Improved Irenicus section, which somehow survived my earlier uninstallation of SCSII. I then uninstalled SCSII itself one more time, and returned to the game. That's actually a reassuring sight. Demons I can handle, particularly since these guys don't use Death Gaze or any of that junk. They just paw at you.
The demons died quickly. I never really appreciated just how fast enemies died with a fighter-based party. I only played one other game with 5 fighters (Aerie was our spellcaster), and that was a long time ago. And I don't think I finished it.
Irenicus, as usual, teleported away, giving us lots of breathing room, though he apparently stunned Minsc before he went. We gave chase, and while we were hacking away, he got a Wail of the Banshee off the ground. Thanks to amazing saves from our many fighter levels, and the stacked Hell rewards for Poppy, everyone made their save... except for Mazzy, who was not affected by it at all. It turns out WotB is classified as an Offensive Damage spell, meaning the Cloak of Mirroring blocks it.
Irenicus in vanilla BG2 really underuses PFMW. He only cast it once. And once that was gone, even his stupendous regeneration (6 HP per second) wasn't enough to save him. He fell in seconds, even though Minsc was stunned and Mazzy was Mazed.
The party got moved ahead to ToB, though I don't think I'll continue at the moment. Valygar and Korgan got level ups, and for some reason Korgan got two proficiency points on reaching level 15. I decided to invest both in spears, so he could use Impaler. I'm not sure anybody's ever given Korgan pips in spears, but really, the Impaler is just plain better than Stonefire, and though I could have Korgan dual-wield something, I don't have much of any good hammers or axes besides Stonefire.
Findings: None. At this point in the game, the party is just too over-leveled for Irenicus to pose a credible threat. ToB would be different, but that's a whole other adventure.
I don't think I will continue into Throne of Bhaal. I am tired of this party. I miss free spellcasting. And I've always played caster-heavy parties. Fighters don't have as many tricks of their sleeves. They've just got their weapons and a narrow set of spell-like abilities. I have the same problem with a restless run. I miss Improved Haste. I miss the spider shapeshift. I miss Chaotic Commands. I miss Stoneskin. I am considering playing an SCSII run without any fighters, and see how well I can get spellcasters to fight. I'm especially looking forward to using Jan to throw flashers in spider form, and using a Cleric of Lathander/Mage in Iron Golem form.
The restless run is doable, even with limited exploits. No potion-swap glitch, no Reform Party trick, few uses of the WoL trick, no Rift Device, and only one Protection from Magic scroll, not to mention all the gold I wasted on scrolls I never used.
The party has an average XP of 2.47 million. It has 39,603 gold. It has 93 potions in total, and 128 scrolls. Across 12 rods and wands, it has 131 charges, not including Aganazzar's Scorcher charges from the Wands of Fire. On top of that, it has basically all endgame SoA equipment, the sole exceptions being Cromwell items and the Wand of Wonder. And three Control Circlets. And 382 Kuo-toa Bolts.
One restless run of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, completed.
Comments
As far as modifying the challenge, without making it impossible... I suppose we would want to restrict regeneration to in-combat only, just to give it a concrete limit. This would make resource management a little more important. But if we use a melee-heavy party, resource management is little more than a numbers game: you get enough gold to buy HP, and that's it. A little boring, is all.
If we wanted something a little more interesting, we would require a party with, say, two or three minimum spellcasters. This would require more intelligent use of scrolls and wands, and prevent us from becoming reliant on melee force. Likewise, we would restrict regeneration to in-combat use only, which would make healing potions more meaningful. Unfortunately, healing potions and healing at temples are just so ridiculously expensive that they cut out a lot of the gold you would use for scrolls.
So, to get a less reductive version of a restless run, we might tack on a few rules:
1: Regeneration should only occur in combat, to make other forms of healing more meaningful.
2: The party should be balanced, with at least two spellcasters, to make scrolls worth buying instead of just healing potions.
3: No Wish-resting, since it removes all of a restless run's challenges.
4: Party members can be removed, but at least one quest should happen before they rejoin. This will permit some flexibility in party composition, without removing the problem of fatigue outright. We would have a tradeoff between erasing fatigue and keeping the party members we want.
Following all of these rules might be a little extreme, but these are the things that could help improve the complexity of a restless run.
I don't know how to balance the WoL trick. It's fairly balanced in a restless run when it comes to potions, and to a lesser extent certain scrolls, but it's ridiculously overpowered when used with other wands. Six charges from the Wand of Cloudkill will destroy just about everything. But six castings of Magic Missile, while strong, is not outright gamebreaking. Besides, the WoL trick can be fun. So where exactly would we draw the line?
Maybe it's too early to say which techniques should be acceptable in a restless run. To my knowledge, this is the first time it's been done, so we won't really know which tactics are truly game-breaking, and which are truly necessary, unless we try more of them out. We'll have to figure it out as we go along.
I appreciate the input! This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to do with this run.
One of the big problems of the group I have is that none of my frontliners can use the Amulet of Power, and for some reason I've never bothered to get the Improved Mace of Disruption more than once, so only Poppy has Negative Plane Protection. In the Graveyard District, when you come back from the Underdark, it is always night when you arrive, and you are greeted with a vampire ambush. I decided to use the talk block trick to occupy Bodhi's attention while the party fled to her lair, avoiding a confrontation.
Had I done otherwise, my fighters would have been level drained, as I would not be able to position Poppy at the front.
After I got inside her lair, Bodhi spoke to me from outside.
Thankfully, this did not spawn vampires where I was.
I have discovered that the Staff of the Magi does not make Poppy a flawless backstabber.
The Staff of the Magi apparently cannot be used to backstab, and if I switch to Belm, she goes visible.
Since I don't have a decent anti-vampire tank, I just threw another Protection from Undead scroll on Keldorn and had him tear up the place.
Note that Tanova is no longer able to see through Protection from Undead. Keldorn took down everybody, except for Bodhi. Drizzt got the final blow. I was angry at him.
To keep Korgan from complaining, I went to fetch the Book of Kaza. I found a couple new things.
I have never spotted these Skeleton Warriors before. Apparently this version of Bodhi's lair is a completely different area than the first one. The pathway to Pai'Na's lair and the Book of Kaza work as normal, though.
I found a nice treat in a chest in this new area, and got to disarm the traps again for extra experience.
That scroll brought in 1500 gold.
Next post on Suldanessalar.
I hate Rakshasas. I knew they would throw out all kinds of nasty area effect spells, and I did not wish to take the damage. I decided to use the WoL trick, this time with a scroll of Incendiary Cloud.
Just to be mean, I had Poppy re-equip the Staff of the Magi after every cast, so she stayed invisible the whole 5-round casting time.
While I was at it, I had Poppy hassle Raamilat, turning invisible with the Staff of the Magi and whittling him away with backstabs, although, again, the backstabs failed and dealt normal damage.
His True Seeing spell didn't reveal me, oddly enough, and I thought the Cloak of Non-detection was not sufficient to block True Seeing.
More Rakshasas! What a treat.
For some reason, that elf in the middle is hostile. I always see at least one hostile elf, and I've always assumed it was due to friendly fire somewhere. But this guy was hostile from the beginning.
What followed was very unexpected. Someone cast an awful big explosion, wiping out the friendly elves and at least one of the Rakshasas. My party didn't do too well, either. Four of my party members got hit by a Symbol: Fear, and spent the next several rounds running around like idiots.
Notice that it turned to nighttime midway through the battle.
The Rakshasas each dropped a scroll of Mislead, Death Spell, and True Seeing. It was more than worth the lost HP.
Since I had gathered over 30,000 gold by selling off some of my scrolls and other loose items earlier, I decided to fight Nizidramanii'yt, rather than give him my gold and items. Note that if you drop all your items before talking to him and choose to give up all your stuff, he will only take your gold, and you can pick up your items right afterwards.
Korgan decided to brighten the mood with a friendly joke.
I think every NPC in this game is worthy of a romance. Keldorn's would be especially complex, considering his family. I could see the appeal in roleplaying a Bhaalspawn seducing Keldorn away from his family.
Nizzy failed a save against a Feeblemind scroll, only for Keldorn to dispel it with Carsomyr. I died the same way against Thax in another run. Nizzy succeeded on the reload, but not on the re-reload.
When 5/6 of my party is fatigued and the only buff I'm willing to use is Protection from Acid, I do not feel bad using Feeblemind. That yellow shine warms my heart.
Oh, but Minsc died. Whatever. I have an extra Rod of Resurrection from Mekrath.
The fight at the Temple of Rillifane went poorly at first. I tried to interrupt the mage's Time Stop with the Wand of Cloudkill. It didn't work.
Instead, I just had Keldorn whack him with Carsomyr.
Yay tactics!
I sold and bought back one of my Rods of Resurrection, which was down to 1 charge. I also bought 10 new Potions of Extra Healing and pawned off some excess loot. We are at just under 40,000 gold.
I decided to try fighting Irenicus without a Protection from Magic scroll. I figured I had enough defenses.
Nope.
So I used a Protection from Magic scroll. I suppose I could have tanked out Irenicus with Polymorph Self, Spell Deflection, and Spell Immunity, but this is why I bought the Protection from Magic scroll in the first place. And I didn't think of an alternative until I started writing this.
Next up, the Hell trials and the showdown with Irenicus.
No Rings of Regeneration here, but then I used a lot of easy tactics anyway, what with the WoL trick, a Protection from Magic scroll, the Staff of the Magi, and Feeblemind.
Findings:
1: Sometimes it's best not to bother with elaborate setups and just have Keldorn swing around Carsomyr.
2: Sometimes just having Keldorn swing his sword ends with two characters dead, two characters near death, and two characters Mazed.
3: Seriously, the Protection from Magic scroll is kind of dull.
I might be inclined to rule unlimited regen items illegal. Regeneration from high CON or spells/potions would be fine.
The WoL trick isn't familiar to me, so I don't have on opinion on that.
Please, keep reporting your experiences with this challenge.
I think it would make sense to rule out Rings of Regeneration, simply because they heal so much HP. And maybe the Ring of Gaxx as well, though it's more useful for it's other benefits. We could say it would be limited regeneration if you only wore them in combat, but it might be a better idea to rule them out altogether, simply because it would require extra micromanagement to do so.
20 CON would be hard to reach. I know you can get it from BG1's tomes, an Obsidian Ioun Stone from ToB, and a bonus from the Machine of Lum the Mad. But there are kits you can't get if you're in vanilla BG2, so getting a 20 CON Barbarian in vanilla BG2 couldn't happen until ToB. BGEE is a different story, I think (I don't have it).
I mentioned the WoL trick earlier in the thread. Basically, the Wand of Lightning fires off six bolts, which you select individually. So, you can hit 6 targets with a tiny bolt each (3d6, save for 1d6), or fire one big bolt at one target (18d6, save for 6d6). But, if you switch out the Wand of Lightning with another item before it fires, you will instead use that replacement item six times. So you can throw out 6 charges of a Wand of Magic Missile, or cast a scroll of Flame Arrow six times, or drink a potion six times, while only consuming one charge. A Potion of Healing heals 54 HP instead of 9. A Wand of Cloudkill does 6d10 damage per round instead of 1d10. Depending on the item, the WoL trick can be seriously overpowered, or relatively balanced. Note that spells are cast one after another, without pause (casting Flame Arrow six times will have a total casting time of 18, even with the Robe of Vecna), but wands and scrolls throw out all six charges simultaneously.
On to the Hell trials today, I think.
The Hell trials themselves were fairly simple. My only problem was the Fear trial. I wanted to take down the Elder Orbs, but Mazzy got Imprisoned and when Poppy got Mazed, I decided to reload. I had sent in Mazzy with the Shield of Balduran (and also the Cloak of Mirroring, which I forgot she was wearing somehow), and she was unable to take down all three Elder Orbs. I had a spare scroll of Freedom, but it would be easier to just reload. I gave the SOB back to Valygar, pressed 0 to select Keldorn, Mazzy, and Valygar, and sent them out (I assumed Keldorn had enough MR to survive). The Elder Orbs went down pretty quick. As for the fear effect, I used a Resist Fear scroll.
For Sarevok, I just pushed Poppy to the front and had her cast Protection from Normal Weapons via a scroll. I heard a while back that Sarevok uses an unenchanted weapon, and he doesn't have the AI to target a non-immune character.
For those of you who aren't aware, there's an exploit that lets you tweak the rewards from the Hell trials. When you click on the doorway to Irenicus, you get the reward before the Tear of Bhaal is removed from your inventory. So, you can save Tears of Bhaal by clicking on the door, removing them from your inventory right after the screen shakes, and then you can pick them up when you want to get the next bonus.
Plus, each Tear of Bhaal corresponds to a specific reward, so you can just use one Tear and get the same reward up to five times. You just click on the door when the right Tear is in your inventory (they look alike, so you have to keep track of which one is which), remove it, and do it again to get a duplicate of the bonus. You can therefore tweak the Hell rewards to get the ones you like. It's how I got a cleric/mage up to 25 Wisdom in an earlier run. Normally you can only get 24, even if you import a character from BG1 (18 plus three tomes plus Hell reward plus Silver Ioun Stone plus Machine of Lum the Mad). You don't need UAI to reach 100% magic resistance.
Anyway, I chose the Selfishness and Greed's good rewards, for a total bonus of -4 to all saves and +30% to magic resistance. It's not really necessary, but I like it.
The final battle in vanilla is kind of easy if you drink Potions of Absorption. They give a stackable -10 to AC vs. crushing weapons, and Irenicus as the Slayer and all his demon buddies use blunt weapons. I only had three such potions, but it's still enough to make half the party nearly immune to their attacks. Aside from Potions of Absorption, I used few buffs. Mazzy drank a Potion of Fire Giant Strength, Minsc a Potion of Invulnerability, and Poppy cast Stoneskin via a spell, Blur via a scroll, and Improved Haste on Mazzy, also with a scroll.
Before the battle, I tweaked Irenicus for fun. I like his reaction.
Then I got this.
That's the Improved Irenicus part of the Tactics mod. Specifically, it's the SCSII version with the improved scripting, where you fight a magic-immune Sarevok, weapon-immune Mordenkainen's Sword, a black dragon, a CON-draining Beholder, and a Slayer with Improved Alacrity and infinite spells, AND it's all supported with enhanced AI. It's basically the toughest encounter you can get in BG2, besides perhaps Melissan with Ascension. Apparently, when I uninstalled all my mods, this one thing remained. Well, that and a removal on the summoning cap, but all that did is give a few rare enemies some extra Skeletons after casting Animate Dead (I used CTRL-Y on them, but with Aerie it made little difference).
My party can't take on Improved Irenicus, even if I rested. Even if I used all my most powerful scrolls, I still doubt it would be possible. This mod wasn't designed for parties with only 7 mage levels and no cleric or druid levels (Valygar and Minsc don't even have 4th-level spell slots). I had to quit the game, install SCSII, and then uninstall the Improved Irenicus section, which somehow survived my earlier uninstallation of SCSII. I then uninstalled SCSII itself one more time, and returned to the game.
That's actually a reassuring sight. Demons I can handle, particularly since these guys don't use Death Gaze or any of that junk. They just paw at you.
The demons died quickly. I never really appreciated just how fast enemies died with a fighter-based party. I only played one other game with 5 fighters (Aerie was our spellcaster), and that was a long time ago. And I don't think I finished it.
Irenicus, as usual, teleported away, giving us lots of breathing room, though he apparently stunned Minsc before he went. We gave chase, and while we were hacking away, he got a Wail of the Banshee off the ground.
Thanks to amazing saves from our many fighter levels, and the stacked Hell rewards for Poppy, everyone made their save... except for Mazzy, who was not affected by it at all. It turns out WotB is classified as an Offensive Damage spell, meaning the Cloak of Mirroring blocks it.
Irenicus in vanilla BG2 really underuses PFMW. He only cast it once. And once that was gone, even his stupendous regeneration (6 HP per second) wasn't enough to save him.
He fell in seconds, even though Minsc was stunned and Mazzy was Mazed.
The party got moved ahead to ToB, though I don't think I'll continue at the moment. Valygar and Korgan got level ups, and for some reason Korgan got two proficiency points on reaching level 15. I decided to invest both in spears, so he could use Impaler. I'm not sure anybody's ever given Korgan pips in spears, but really, the Impaler is just plain better than Stonefire, and though I could have Korgan dual-wield something, I don't have much of any good hammers or axes besides Stonefire.
Findings:
None. At this point in the game, the party is just too over-leveled for Irenicus to pose a credible threat. ToB would be different, but that's a whole other adventure.
I don't think I will continue into Throne of Bhaal. I am tired of this party. I miss free spellcasting. And I've always played caster-heavy parties. Fighters don't have as many tricks of their sleeves. They've just got their weapons and a narrow set of spell-like abilities. I have the same problem with a restless run. I miss Improved Haste. I miss the spider shapeshift. I miss Chaotic Commands. I miss Stoneskin. I am considering playing an SCSII run without any fighters, and see how well I can get spellcasters to fight. I'm especially looking forward to using Jan to throw flashers in spider form, and using a Cleric of Lathander/Mage in Iron Golem form.
The restless run is doable, even with limited exploits. No potion-swap glitch, no Reform Party trick, few uses of the WoL trick, no Rift Device, and only one Protection from Magic scroll, not to mention all the gold I wasted on scrolls I never used.
The party has an average XP of 2.47 million. It has 39,603 gold. It has 93 potions in total, and 128 scrolls. Across 12 rods and wands, it has 131 charges, not including Aganazzar's Scorcher charges from the Wands of Fire. On top of that, it has basically all endgame SoA equipment, the sole exceptions being Cromwell items and the Wand of Wonder. And three Control Circlets. And 382 Kuo-toa Bolts.
One restless run of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, completed.