Fighting the game's most notoriously overpowered enemies, before Spellhold and at a matching level, with a magic-reliant party and a mod installed that buffs up the enemy and allows them to outright steal the Shield of Balduran--our one trump card against Beholders at this stage of the game, and one of only two--without save, no magic resistance offered, bypassing all spell protections.
They can burn right through my defenses, no matter what they are, even past Spell Shield, eventually, and if I fail a save, there is no option to reload. I am dead.
I agonized over how to deal with this situation. I spent many minutes poring over my spellbooks, cleric and mage, and dug through my scroll cases and potion bag to see if I had anything worth using.
Before I could take on the Unseeing Eye, and get the massive XP rewards that I so desperately wanted before facing Irenicus in Spellhold, I had to deal with the Beholders and Blind Priests populating the area. I had already envisioned a deadly scenario: I sneak past all the enemies, kill the Unseeing Eye, and just as I'm about to leave, I see Beholders flooding into the room where you find the second half of the Rift Device, because the "better calls for help" option in SCS2 can draw an entire army to one spot. I cast Invisibility 10' Radius, hoping to slip past, only to find that the enemies completely fill the hallway out. I'm out of spells, the enemies are too close for me to sleep, and I have a 300-second countdown before my invisibility runs out, the Beholders pour their spells onto the party, and all the hours spent building up this run end in a massacre by BG2's most hated enemies.
Trapped in a corner by a crowd of eyes, with 5 minutes to wait for death.
I really didn't want that to happen. I had to take down the Beholders. Including that monstrous chunk of three Gauths and three full-sized Beholders crammed into the southwest portion of the hive. They all had to go down.
I entered the area under Invisibility, found a safe spot in the far western chamber, cast Farsight to spy on the chunk of six Beholders, and sent out a projected image from Nalia, fully buffed, to cast Sunfire on the group, and hopefully take down one of the Beholders.
She brought a couple of the Beholders to Injured status. Then they turned on her.
A long stream of white rays issued forth, pushing the image backward with their Telekinesis powers, and then the action bar at the bottom of the screen went grey. The image was disabled.
I recovered control of her a few seconds later and tried to cast a spell. It failed. The stream of Beholder rays continued, and she got petrified. It was a grim lesson.
That clone had all of Nalia's stats, levels, items, and even all of her spell buffs, including Spell Shield, Spell Immunity, and Globe of Invulnerability (most Beholder rays are spell level 3 or 4).
And they absolutely trashed her. She died in two rounds.
So I reconfigured my strategy. This is what I did.
I knew that Beholders dealt damage fast, and since they were apparently able to take down Spell Shield, I couldn't tank them out. Nor could I rely on Cernd, not completely, because even with the right items and Cernd's stupendous 80 base magic resistance, he was not invulnerable to Beholder rays. Nor was I willing to shell out thousands of gold for the Shield of Balduran, when that money could be used for so many other things, and the shield could only be used by two characters, one of whom was Sil, and after a few rounds of combat, the shield would be stolen anyway. I deemed the infamous SOB unnecessary for this fight.
I decided to use a blitzkrieg strategy. My characters would rush in, hasted, and then throw out a swarm of Fireballs. Sil would stay near the back, while Cernd would rush in and take the first few blasts, hopefully surviving. Once Cernd took down the Gauth in the northwest hallway (there was a terrifying moment when a Blind Priest on the way started to use a divination spell, and almost exposed us to the Beholders), the party headed south, to the group of six Beholders I knew were waiting, and we tested our anti-Beholder strategy for the first time.
The results were excellent, but they did little to ease my worry. Even at Near Death, Beholders can still throw out one last barrage of rays, and they only need seconds to kill a party member.
Fortunately, the battle turned in my favor. The Beholders could only take so many dice of fire damage before succumbing. I used the same tricks throughout the area, including on the Blind Priests.
We cleared out the whole area. Fireball saved us the pain of the Beholder's gaze. That spell does not get nearly enough attention.
Next, we moved to the chamber with the Rift Device.
See that little green text at the bottom? I quicksave by reflex. It helps me feel a little safer. And if the game crashed, I really wanted that save, because it took me a long time to reach that stage.
I have no idea how many times I rested and restarted, or how much time I spent, but that little gaggle of globes, and the naked, vulnerable, seemingly unprotected form of Cernd beside them, was the product of many revisions. I spent at least 10 minutes--maybe even 20; I don't know--just reorganizing my spell book, preparing different contingencies and sequencers, setting up new buffs, and replacing the traps I laid, only to decide I needed one more modification to be truly safe. Finally, I decided on a setup.
-I have Kitthix and four Fire Elementals summoned by the Staff of Fire, and they will distract the Unseeing Eye when it appears. Cernd will go with them. -Jan has 7 traps set in a line leading from the hallway up to the chamber, so we can lure the Unseeing Eye and its Death Tyrant buddy northward, and have the traps go off such that they wouldn't all hit one target, and waste their power on the first enemy that approached us. -Our contingencies and sequencers are strictly defensive. We could try a Fireball contingency, but we can only set it to cast on self, and the enemy might not be in range. We could try a Stinking Cloud sequencer, since our saves vs. death are excellent and Beholders are immune to Web, but Beholders, at least in the vanilla game, can attack even while unconscious. The sole exception was Nalia's Spell Sequencer: instead of having an escape option, with Invisibility 10' Radius, Haste, and Teleport Field, we would have a triple Flame Arrow sequencer, to quickly take down either the Unseeing Eye or the Death Tyrant. -Nobody is shapeshifting. Jan's flashers are too much of a gamble, even with 8 APR and 95% hit chance on the Flesh Golem. Plus, I've seen Beholders use their rays even when stunned. We need raw damage, and we need it fast. Jan must have Fireball and Flame Arrow prepared. Same goes for the others. Everyone besides Cernd is needed for spell damage. Our melee power is great, but it is dependent on buffs, and Beholders can wipe out our buffs very quickly. Cernd will use the Necklace of Missiles, if the enemy has weapon immunities. -No Improved Haste. We want Protection from Magical Energy instead, and Globe of Invulnerability for Nalia. -Sil carries the Rift Device, even though Cernd will be in range of the Unseeing Eye first. If the wielder of the Rift Device is disabled, the party is doomed, so it may as well be Sil. The run is over without her anyway. -When the Unseeing Eye is dead, we retreat northward and lure the enemy into the traps, dragging the Death Tyrant over inescapable poison damage.
Aside from that, we had precious few options. Everyone had their Potions of Invisibility, and we had some other minor tricks up our sleeve, but if things got complicated, we didn't have nearly as many backup plans as I wanted. For our other major encounters, I made sure we had multiple options at our disposal.
Once we had the Rift Device assembled, Cernd went south with our summons.
Despair, sighted, for death is thy familiar.
Aerie summons the Flesh Golem. Cernd braces for the assault. Far away from the enemy, and shrouded in protective magicks, Sil uses the Rift Device. A reassuring blue streak of lightning travels along the floor, letting me know that the Rift Device has been activated.
In SCS2, the Unseeing Eye gets monstrous immunities and resistances via a custom item (it's more durable than Kangaxx), but the Rift Device removes that item and all its protections, as well as dispelling all magic and reducing the target's HP to precisely 40.
The Rift Device meets its target. It travels as a Chain Lightning projectile, but when it hits, it resembles a Flame Strike spell. Either way, it renders the Unseeing Eye killable. And then I realized the situation was worse than I thought.
The Unseeing Eye is wrecked, but he had a Chain Contingency prepared. And he summons not one, but two Death Tyrants. TOB-level enemies, before Spellhold.
Cernd deals the final blow against the Unseeing Eye, and the Death Tyrants begin to appear.
The real battle has just begun.
Cernd and Aerie get hit by Anti-Magic Rays. The party nukes the area, and we retreat to draw the first Death Tyrant into our traps.
Notice that Aerie has transformed into a Mustard Jelly to achieve 100% magic resistance. The Anti-Magic Ray removed the jelly item, hence her wielding Gnasher. But she's terribly slow in jelly form. Thankfully, we can get far enough away to keep the Death Tyrant on the move, and it falls to the lingering damage of Jan's traps.
Nalia, still under the effects of Haste (cast before GOI), runs down to hit the second Death Tyrant with a Sunfire spell. Cernd rushes ahead so the Sunfire won't draw the Death Tyrant's attention to Nalia. We don't want her getting hit by an Anti-Magic Ray.
The Death Tyrant fails its save.
Nalia retreats, leaving Cernd to fend for himself. The Death Tyrant throws out a Paralyze ray.
The Unseeing Eye is dead. All that's left now in Athkatla are petty errands, though I nearly died along the way.
First off, Gaal and the Elite Guards. Gaal resisted getting stunned, but we took down his buffs quite readily. I had Jan switch to using backstabs. He's quite the damage dealer with Mislead.
He's actually more dangerous than Cernd, our main frontliner, but Jan is much more fragile, and hence is usually better suited to ranged combat.
After Gaal, I ended up with a Web spell hanging around, so I decided to leave the area and rest outside, since I couldn't rest with the Web still on the map.
I got that far before realizing my mistake.
I hadn't turned in the expended Rift Device yet. If I walked out into the sewers with that thing in my inventory, I would die instantly. I think even taking a fragment of the Rift Device out of the area causes instant death, which is why I left the Rift Device on the ground before leaving the area, when I first visited this place to grab some extra experience.
Apparently multiple no-reload runs have been lost to that script. It's easy to accidentally walk outside before turning in the Rift Device, and only realize your mistake after the GUI vanishes and you get the message saying you "die in agony."
Anyway, after turning in the Rift Device and reporting my success, I got the cleric stronghold from Dawnbringer Sain or whatever his name is, and now the game apparently considers Sil a Ranger/Cleric. Whatever. I wasn't about to say no to bonus XP, so I took the illithium quest and went to the Government District to find the artist at the Jysstev Estate, only to remember that I never rescued Viconia.
That priest of Beshaba is a talker, he is.
I deemed the encounter so low-level that I didn't even bother to cast any buffs. But look!
Buffs matter, even in tiny skirmishes. If an encounter has humans in it, there's probably a spellcaster, and they're probably going to use a disabler at some point.
I took Viconia into my party temporarily for reasons I don't remember. I considered taking Viconia into the party, though I already had plans for Imoen, and checked out her spellbook to see how her spells differed from Aerie's. I found an oddity in her level 2 cleric spell list.
Viconia has no Flame Blade spell, despite casting it during the previous battle. It's a shame, considering how awesome Flame Blade is at low levels (it gets a +4 THAC0 bonus, which the spell description omits). But either way, Viconia is not going to be as dangerous as Imoen, and I like Imoen more anyway. I let her go.
From there, I headed to the Graveyard to speak with Bodhi, because I completely forgot about the illithium quest that led me to Viconia in the first place.
On to Spellhold! We are first introduced to the Saemon Havarian. Note that the name should be pronounced with a slight flourish, and not much spittle.
This is one of my favorite lines.
We arrive in Brynnlaw, in good time we might add, and immediately see a brawl going on. It's like Shank and Carbos back in the Bridge District, but they're fighting over honor instead of Bubbles. I find some nice potions on the corpse of Dirbish the Black.
After dealing with the Galvena questline and helping Ginia, I decide to take on Perth the Adept. As always, I want the Book of Daily Spell, and Percy usually isn't too big of a problem.
Right about now, I started to regret that decision.
I haven't let an enemy mage get a Time Stop spell off the ground in quite some time. This could go very badly.
He uses Breach on Cernd and gates in a Pit Fiend, and a second one joins the battle shortly thereafter. Since Cernd has had his buffs dispelled, he has no Protection from Evil, and so both Pit Fiends focus on him.
Percy refuses to be stunned by Jan's flashers, so Jan switches to normal bolts to break through his Stoneskin instead. Aerie uses the Wand of Spell Striking's Pierce Magic ability on Percy. It doesn't work quite like I planned.
Not only does the Pierce Magic fail to bring down Percy's spell protections, it gets mirrored right back onto Aerie. Maybe because the Pierce Magic ability isn't classified as a Magic Attack, as the Pierce Magic spell is, it doesn't operate quite like it's supposed to. Funny thing is, the main reason you have a Pierce Magic ability in the Wand of Spell Striking in the first place is so that you can take down protections like Spell Turning. It looks like the Wand of Spell Striking is actually completely incapable of taking down spell protections, unless we're just overpowering the spells with spell levels (Spell Turning only blocks 12 spell levels before it goes down).
I vastly, vastly overestimated the importance of the Wand of Spell Striking. On the plus side, it doesn't really matter at the moment: as per my SCS2 install, Bodhi is going to take all of my equipment when we reach the maze, including the Wand of Spell Striking, and I won't be able to get it back until after I beat Irenicus, who is the only reason I got the wand so early to begin with.
Anyway, I broke through Percy's Stoneskins.
He really shouldn't have used Mantle. Only Improved Mantle and Absolute Immunity can block all of Jan's attacks, and once we get Firetooth upgraded, only Absolute Immunity will work. In SCS2, Improved Mantle only lets +5 or better weapons through (the only such weapon we have is the Sling of Everard), and Absolute Immunity blocks everything.
Nalia and Aerie didn't have much to do in the meantime, since Cernd was busy fighting the Pit Fiends and Sil and Jan were busy penetrating Percy's Mantle spell, so they just used Magic Missile on Percy's Mordenkainen's Sword. Eventually, only the Pit Fiends were left, so the rest of the group helped Cernd dispose of them. For some reason, Aerie and Sil got their spells disrupted, so Sil couldn't cast DUHM. I got around it by having Sil activate DUHM via her Minor Sequencer. We check Percy's body.
We got the Book of Daily Spell! It comes with Fireball at the beginning, as always. And it warns us that we can only turn the pages so many times, because once we reach the last page, we're stuck on it forever. And, just to be difficult, that final page is always Burning Hands, the worst spell in the book.
I want Spell Turning ideally, but True Sight, Invisibility, and Wyvern Call would also be useful. Fireball just isn't worth it, and the Book of Daily Spell can't be sold for anything, so I decide to have Aerie turn the page.
There's actually an exploit that lets you get extra copies of the Book of Daily Spell. You pick the "turn page" ability, cast Simulacrum or Project Image, have the caster clone activate the book, kill the clone (you might need Finger of Death for this to work), and then loot the clone's body for a new copy of the book, on a different page.
But clones can't use Quick Item slots in my SCS2 install, so I just have Aerie turn the page on her own. We have a 10% chance of getting Spell Turning. What do we get?
Wow! We only had a 10% chance of getting that one! I'll stick with this spell for the rest of the game!
After murdering Percy, we go to Desharik and convince him to let us into Spellhold without violence, which I believe gives us a little extra experience. Once we've gotten a teensy bit of loot from the top floor of the asylum, Jan attempts to pickpocket Lonk the Sane, which spawns Irenicus. He knocks us out.
Sil enters the Spellhold dream and gets some clunky midgame gear to fight the dead god Bhaal. Unfortunately, this is all we get. We won't be able to use the Book of Daily Spell in this fight. At the entrance to the library, she chooses to lose a point of Dexterity, since going from 8 to 7 incurs no penalty.
With Shield, Blur, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Holy Power, DUHM, Boon of Lathander, and a Vampiric Touch spell cast while luring Bhaal inside, Sil can easily take on the Sarevok clone.
She's almost a Fighter/Mage, actually, but with lower base APR, slightly worse THAC0, and better buffs.
We end up in the maze, with Bodhi looking out over us. Most of the time, your choices in dialogue don't affect anything in the main quest. Irenicus' responses don't even change. But Bodhi is different.
She doesn't just say her lines; she actually responds to what you say. That makes a big difference when you've already played the game many times, and seen which characters aren't really listening to you.
The party is unarmed, but thankfully Cernd can still use his Werewolf Tokens, and is almost as strong as ever. But before we do any fighting, first we need to do some riddles.
I like some of the Spellhold riddles. Others I don't.
The water riddle is kind of cute. The circle one is just dreadfully obvious.
I like this one, too.
I just wish it didn't have that missing period. Cernd also has a typo in one of his lines. He mispells "simplest" as "simplist."
Next up, the Spellhold fights. These might be a little tricky.
Excellent read as always. You could have used mislead against a group of beholders, they can't see you if your mislead clone is away in a safe position, and you can blast them with spells at your hearts content. Tough they start to wander away when they take area effect damage, so greater malison+emotion+slow is a winner too. Once they are down you can continue blasting.
Cngratulations on killing Unseeing eye, he has wrecked my party. I had only one reload up to that point and he forced me at least six reloads, disillusioning me with my run and ability as a bg2 player. I was so frustrated, that battle is just so damn hard. Kudos for sailing through it.
@lunar: I've heard a lot about Mislead, though I haven't used it much, except to let Jan backstab. I've heard you can use either SI: Abjuration or SI: Divination to prevent it from being dispelled (the SI: Abjuration may only be for projected images and simulacra), but I don't really know. Mostly I'm concerned about the duration. Not all of my party members have it, so if I wanted to make the most out of it, I'd send the misled characters out first. By the time the enemy got back, though, my buffs would be running out, and since not all of my party members would be under Mislead, the enemy would not be as weakened as if they had taken them on directly, which could reduce the overall effectiveness of the spell somewhat. I would also be concerned about how many 6th-level spells I have, since Protection from Magical Energy, Improved Haste, and PFMW use the same spell level. But I will keep Mislead in mind.
@FinneousPJ: That was just a dummy post. I typed the spoiler tags ( [ spoiler ] [ / spoiler ], but without the spaces) at the top of the post so that I could copy and paste them, but in this case I forgot to remove that first spoiler. You weren't missing any pictures; that was an empty spoiler. I have since removed it.
Well, with all of the riddles dealt with for the time being, all I had to do was fight some minor encounters and work my way to the Cloak of Reflection. There was only one thing I was really worried about.
As I mentioned earlier, Bodhi takes all of the party's items before depositing them in the maze. This is an SCS2 component. All you get, besides the normal Spellhold loot, is a couple of Potions of Extra Healing and base equipment, which Bodhi leaves for you in the Bag of Holding. The only magical weapons you've got are a stack of Bullets +1, Bullets +2, Arrows +1, and Arrows +2. And you only get one shortbow, one longbow (which I can't use), one crossbow, and one sling. So, the party isn't naked, but your options are drastically reduced, and you need to use spells if you're going to hurt enemies immune to nonmagical weapons.
Unfortunately, there's a Clay Golem guarding the Bag of Holding, and Cernd's +3 paws do slashing damage, not crushing. We get around it by having Aerie and Sil create new Minor Sequencers with Spiritual Hammer and DUHM. Aerie uses spider form; Sil relies on Boon of Lathander for her APR.
Cernd is still useful for soaking up damage, of course.
We don't bother with the portal in the northwest. Instead, we go down the hall and head to the room with the monster summoning altar. The Mind Flayer goes down pretty quick, despite having boosted resistances as per the Tactics mod, though the Beholder stays long enough to dispel some of our protections. I should have used some traps; that would have been safer.
We rest a few times to let Jan build up a healthy supply of flashers, but eventually I just cheat in a stack of 100. I use convenience cheats a lot: CTRL-J to get around, CTRL-R to dispel my contingencies and sequencers, CLUAConsole to add in flashers, and I also have a unique item with aura cleansing and a bonus of 9 to casting time, which I use to prepare sequencers and long duration buffs, and sometimes short duration buffs if it's a low-risk encounter where the extra buff duration won't matter. It cuts out a lot of waiting time.
Most of the encounters here are pretty mild. Cernd tries out my favorite level 7 druid spell, Earthquake.
It's a marvelous disabler and the crushing damage bypasses magic resistance. I'd say it's a viable alternative to Nature's Beauty, particularly since True Sight in SCS2 can remove blindness.
One thing I was worried about is the undead encounter just before Dace Sontan, which spawns a Lich at higher levels. To make absolutely sure I wasn't caught off-guard, I used Farsight to double-check and make sure the Lich wasn't there.
Still using Quick Save, for the feeling of safety.
Without any Lich to deal with, I was free to proceed without worry. But just in case there was any mistake, I had Cernd run in under Invisibility to make extra sure the coast was clear.
I considering allowing myself the option of reloading if the fight didn't go well. That Lich really should have appeared earlier, and I would have prepared a bit better (I had set no traps, for one thing) if I knew he was going to be there. But a reload seemed premature, so I decided to fight it.
Since I've seen a Lich use Dimension Door to chase my party before (I believe that was a Tactics run, though), I decide to have Jan lay a trap in the hallway, in case the Lich teleports to the party. Meanwhile, Aerie and Sil cast Animate Dead. Cernd is tough, but I don't trust him to tank out a Lich on his own. Plus, the Skeletons will make good targets for Jan's flashers, since I have no Flesh Golem, my preferred option. The party, including Cernd, retreats into the hall. We send out only a few Skeletons at first, since the Lich is naturally going to use a Death Spell on the first group. The other enemy undead, the two Skeleton Warriors and Greater Mummies, cannot see Cernd and therefore do not follow. Once the trap is set, we all cast SI: Abjuration, and Jan switches to spider form. We send out some more Skeletons to keep the Lich and his allies busy, while Cernd casts Earthquake in the hopes of harming the Lich. But the Lich is unaffected, and the Earthquake kills many of our own summons, forcing us to send out a third wave of Skeletons. Jan activates his Minor Sequencer, attacks Cernd to dispel the Shocking Grasp, and Sil casts Improved Haste on Jan.
By now, the Lich has had more than enough time to use Time Stop, and he has free reign for 18 seconds.
Notice that the Lich is attacking a Skeleton Warrior. It's actually one of my allies, not his: the altered summoning spells I have installed give me a chance of summoning a Skeleton Warrior with Animate Dead, even though Aerie and Sil aren't at cleric level 15. The Lich is stuck behind his buddies, and therefore cannot reach the party. His Time Stop was not nearly as useful as it could have been. In this, we were very lucky.
The Lich has PFMW active, so only Jan can harm him. We could try breaking down his defenses, but we would need to bring our mages into harm's way to do so, and we don't need to do that as long as we still have a layer of summons keeping the enemy at bay. I send a Skeleton close to the Lich so Jan can try and hit the Lich was some flashers, while the rest of the party focuses on taking out the Lich's allies. Sil summons some animals when our Skeleton wall gets thin.
Sil gets hit by Breach. She is defenseless now. I move her out of the way and have her cast Project Image, simply because she can't use any other spells without wading into the fray. Since clones can shapeshift if the original character casts Polymorph Self or Shapechange before creating the clone, I decide to have the projected image change to Mustard Jelly form, and hopefully draw some fire from the Lich. This didn't work so well.
The Lich casts Time Stop again, and Sil's projected image gets stuck in the doorway due to its wide circle as a Mustard Jelly. Jan won't be able to reach the Lich, or even attack its summons, until the Sil clone gets out of the way. We just gave the Lich another 6 seconds to hurt us, on top of its Time Stop spell.
Now we have to deal with a Glabrezu, and I can't decide whether to have Cernd fight the demon or the Lich. The Lich is more dangerous, but we can take out the Glabrezu quicker.
Eventually, the Sil clone returns to natural form and runs ahead to stand next to the Lich. Since Sil has terrible AC, the clone is a great target for Jan's flashers, which is especially necessary considering Jan doesn't have the Firetooth's ridiculous +6 THAC0 bonus. Jan stunlocks the Glabrezu indefinitely, but the Lich remains unharmed.
Meanwhile, the Lich uses a triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger on Cernd, reducing his magic resistance to 0 and completely negating Cernd's most important defense. Soon after, the Lich lands a nasty spell on Cernd (I don't know which) and cuts his HP down by half. Seconds later, the Lich's allies start dealing big damage to Cernd, who downs our only two potions and still has to run away a bit to avoid death. One Greater Mummy is already dead; Aerie takes down the other with Holy Smite. Cernd kills the melee Skeleton Warrior on his own and starts to get back his health.
The other Skeleton Warrior, the archer, is hassling Sil's projected image, but it fails to stop her from casting Blade Barrier. The Lich does not interrupt the Blade Barrier spell either, as I timed the spell so that the clone began casting it immediately after the Lich hit her with one of its own spells, ensuring she had a few seconds of safety from its spells. Out of desperation, I try to use the Blade Barrier trick on the Lich, but the Lich is unharmed. Its save vs. spell is too low.
Since Sil's clone is now at Near Death, I move her over to the Skeleton Warrior, only to realize I need her to serve as Jan's target. My other summons are dead; only the projected image has the high AC Jan needs to land a hit with his miserable 13 THAC0. I move her back to the Lich, and have her shapeshift into a Mustard Jelly instead, as the Mustard Jelly has resistance to missile damage along with its magic resistance, allowing it to hold out a little longer against the Lich and his archer companion.
Finally, I see the message I'm looking for.
I bring back Cernd to attack the helpless Lich, while Nalia attacks with +2 Arrows, since the +1 Arrows didn't work. I want to make sure we kill the Lich before the stun effect wears off.
The Lich falls, leaving the last remaining Skeleton Warrior. Cernd mauls it, and we emerge successful, at the cost of losing our only two potions. Thankfully, we've only got one nasty battle left before we recover our items.
Dace Sontan is fairly easy. He runs right past Sil, Aerie, and Cernd (who have pre-cast Negative Plane Protection), and attacks Jan. But before Dace can land a hit, Jan stuns him by targeting Imoen, who is standing nearby and has the worst unbuffed AC in the party (she has no Blur spell, or even Shield). All that's left are Dace's rats, and their saves are terrible.
They still have surprisingly high HP, so Cernd has to finish them off.
We have taken down our very first lich. We had no items, either, but we were aided by the wall of summons that kept the Lich from making the best use of his first Time Stop spell.
I am worried about Irenicus. He is immune to stun. I cannot set any traps. I don't have my items. And he has mage HLAs, including Fallen Planetar, who has a vorpal strike (though in SCS2, MR can block it) and Globe of Blades. I might be able to talk-block Lonk the Sane, run past him, and go fetch my items from their hiding place on the other side of the area, but if that fails, I'm not sure what I would do.
I know I'll have the other inmates working with me, but aside from Irenicus, I also have to deal with my clones, which are more than just unarmed fighters in SCS2. From what I remember, Irenicus isn't too aggressive in the Spellhold fight, even with SCS2 installed, but Irenicus has marvelous defenses that I will have great trouble breaking through. And since Planetars can see through Invisibility, I can't just wait out his defenses, either, unless I manage to stun the Planetar. But I've only got about a 50% chance of stunning it per round (or about 40% if Nalia casts Lower Resistance) if Jan is under Improved Haste and also lands every hit on the relevant target. Skeletons might distract the Planetar for a while, but not for its full duration, which should be about 23 rounds.
Other than that, my only reliable option is the Blade Barrier trick, and I don't want to win the battle with a glitch. The toughest fights so far have all been spellcasters, and Irenicus will be the strongest I've ever faced in this run, by far. I'm not sure how I'm going to beat him without relying on luck.
Oh boy, I find myself crossing my fingers for this run. I'm amazed how you triggered my interest with your detailed descriptions. You veterans are just crazy, you know? You use tactics I didn't even remotely think exist. Who could tell, that Jan can be such a killer Go beat the crap out of that son of a....
I just got through the maze and have been declared sane by the self-described "maddened dead" of Spellhold. Yay.
The details of the fights aren't very enlightening. Cernd's Earthquake and Jan's Chaos got us through a couple batches of Yuan-ti (the Earthquake is quite excellent at disabling those mages), Jan's traps brought an Ulitharid down to Badly Injured, and Jan managed to stun both the Ulitharid and the Noble Djinn. Cernd tanked the traps in the room with the monster portraits. Aerie and Sil used cleric buffs and Improved Haste to take on the Clay Golem and trolls, with a Fireball or Sunfire spell to finish off the trolls. Sil charged Bodhi with Negative Plane Protection and her normal buffs. The vampires drained her Constitution by 2, but thankfully they fled before doing any more. The Gauth survived inordinately long against the party--we kept missing, oddly enough--until we threw 5 Magic Missile spells at it, at which point it fell immediately.
So, right now, all that's left is Irenicus. I have some more ideas about how to deal with him, but they involve certain costs and risks.
In SCS2, a (Fallen) Planetar's weapon has a vorpal strike on 25% of hits, like in the vanilla game, but unlike the vanilla Planetar weapon, the SCS2 version's vorpal effect is blocked by magic resistance, and offers a save at -2. Considering Cernd's MR, saves, and AC, he has about an 83% chance of surviving each round if he goes toe to toe with the Planetar. Those aren't great odds, and Cernd is our toughest party member. We can boost his saves with buffs, but the Planetar weapon also has a dispel magic effect on 25% of all hits, and nothing can prevent that dispelling effect besides immunity to +5 weapons or great luck.
So, the best we can do (unless we take some steps I mention below) is run away from the Planetar, and maybe have Cernd pester it so it targets the least vulnerable party member. Summons will also work, but we can expect it to cut through one to three summons per round, assuming we can get it surrounded or distracted.
As for Irenicus himself, I have realized we have three extra options--the closest we have to a trump card--all from Limited Wish, the one-time wishes only.
First, the weakest option, the Chain Contingency option. This could be cast before battle and open up multiple new possibilities, but it won't let me cast 7th level spells because I only have one, and casting Limited Wish to select the Chain Contingency option will take up Sil's only 7th-level spell slot. It will let me target Irenicus with three spells instantly, assuming the clones aren't targeted first, and I might also be able to sneak a spell in before Irenicus' spell protections pop up. But that's rather dicey. The targeting and timing are both unpredictable, so I'm not sure this choice is worth much. It might even be possible to cast Limited Wish and have Cernd talk to the Genie, and maybe throw out Dolorous Decay, an Extra Earthquake, or Insect Plague.
Second, we could select the Time Stop option, which will give Sil 18 seconds of free reign to act. Time Stop is already notoriously overpowered, but I might not be able to take advantage of it. I can't take out much of Irenicus' spell protections in that time, nor could I break through his Stoneskins or weapon immunities, but it would have some benefit. It would be near-useless fighting the Planetar, but it could be very useful in dealing with the clones. But, like all of the one-time wishes, this might be more useful in another situation.
Third, I might use the Shapechange option. This option has by far the most potential, and is therefore the most costly option, as I will not be able to use it on another occasion, where I might well need it more.
Shapechange offers one highly critical benefit: the Iron Golem form. It boasts 100% resistance to magic and the elements, 20% physical damage resistance, an unfortunate 1 base APR, and 4d10 base damage with a +4 weapon, enough to break through Mantle, but not Improved Mantle, Absolute Immunity, or PFMW, which Irenicus is more likely to use. With Righteous Magic and the resulting 25 STR, Sil will strike for 54 damage per hit. Sil will arrive in battle with Improved Haste, and Boon of Lathander, at the right time, will give her a potential 180 damage per round... enough to take down the Planetar, if she pre-buffs with Holy Power, and maybe cast an extra Boon of Lathander, assuming the Planetar does not take down her buffs with its dispel magic effect. It will also make Sil immune to the vorpal strikes AND the Planetar's Globe of Blades by virtue of her magic resistance, although Irenicus may be able to lower it... down to zero, if he has a Spell Trigger to that effect, and targets Sil with it.
That Iron Golem form can stay in place for 5 turns, 300 seconds, before it wears off. It cannot be dispelled, and will therefore last longer than Irenicus' defenses or his Planetar. The only possible threat is raw melee damage, for which we still have six Potions of Extra Healing and perhaps a Minor Sequencer with two Armor of Faiths, or a Lower Resistance spell from Irenicus--and having checked his files, he does not appear to have a Lower Resistance spell, though he may have such a Spell Trigger.
In short, if I resort to the Shapechange option, which I can cast before battle, then I have an effective trump card against most everything Irenicus can pull, unless he uses a Lower Resistance Spell Trigger, in which case I might still be able to run around as a Greater Werewolf and survive on its regeneration, 48 HP healed per round, though a Breach spell could easily render Sil vulnerable to a disabler.
I still might be able to recover my items, but there's a problem. If I pre-cast Shapechange, then I would have to spend several rounds rushing to get the party's items back, and lose some duration on my buffs. I could rest and re-cast my buffs to get the maximum duration from my spells, but then Shapechange would wear off. So, recovering my items would cost me several rounds of spell duration if I pre-cast Shapechange, whereas if I don't, then I can keep the maximum duration, at the cost of having to cast Shapechange in the middle of battle, where it could be disrupted. So I'm not sure when exactly I should cast it.
Unless I can figure out something new, the basic strategy might look something like this: -Cernd starts battle without his claws equipped, in the hopes that his clone arrives unarmed. We'll do the same for the other party members, or maybe even give them weapons they're not proficient in, just to screw with the clones. He casts Earthquake at the beginning of combat, hopefully taking out the clones if not Irenicus. -Sil shapechanges at the start of combat, probably after the clones spawn, and deals with the clones until Irenicus becomes vulnerable or the Planetar appears. Her Minor Sequencer has two Armor of Faith spells, giving her 50% physical damage resist. She might arrive pre-buffed with other Armor of Faith spells. -Aerie has multiple options. Greater Command, Animate Dead, Animal Summoning I or II, or any number of mage spells would be useful. She will likely have a Minor Sequencer with Shocking Grasp and DUHM, so she can fling normal bullets at Irenicus and break through PFMW. I don't know what her Contingency should be; Teleport Field may be a good option, though I'm not sure what the ideal condition would be. She might try the Blade Barrier trick on Irenicus or the clones. -Nalia's role is highly variable. She likely won't have the spells to break through Irenicus' defenses until his inevitable Spell Immunity and Globe of Invulnerability wears off. Greater Malison, Emotion, and Chaos will be excellent options against the clones, and Teleport Field--perhaps two Teleport Fields, actually--would keep the Planetar at bay for half its duration, and screw around with the clones and Irenicus as well. I don't know what her Minor Sequencer, Spell Sequencer, or Contingency would be. -Imoen is mostly dead weight. She's at level 11 and has a very limited spell selection. Her most important duty will likely be casting Chaos on the clones, and maybe using Breach on the Planetar to get rid of its Globe of Blades. -Jan will shapeshift early in combat and stun the clones, who will arrive unbuffed and therefore with terribly high AC, and no stun immunities. He will dispel Irenicus' illusions, if any, and hurl flashers in the hopes of interrupting Irenicus' spells. But my memory tells me that Jan only does area effect damage with the flashers if he's using Firetooth, since the damage is always 2 damage, suggesting the Firetooth's fire damage is responsible. I will have to test to see if flashers with a normal Light Crossbow can deal area effect damage. If not, Jan's business will only be disabling the Planetar and clones, or attacking Irenicus directly if he is vulnerable to nonmagical or +4 weapons. We have some Bolts of Biting and Bolts of Lightning that could be very useful against Irenicus, but I've had no luck in the past with poisoning mages from a distance.
If I can find a good setup, I might use the Chain Contingency option as well as Shapechange. I may also have Aerie memorize a Limited Wish spell, in the off chance I might need Time Stop or one of the other options--even Wail of the Banshee might be useful, if the clones prove too durable. We might even have another character talk to the genie to get the Time Stop instead, though Nalia and Imoen don't have enough WIS to request it.
Hopefully, I will have some better ideas in the morning, because all of these are pretty dicey.
This is beautiful! This is superb! Another thread by @semiticgod and another joy!
Thanks for tagging, @lolien , I've really had much pleasure from reading about Sil's adventure.
I've played BG2EE with the SCS in a multiplayer no-reload game during the holidays for several days and more than vividly remember many of those fights. It's interesting to see how certain stratagies work and compare it with my own experience.
You know when you've played too much BG when .... Still use Quick Save in the no-reload games, for the feeling of safety. : )
I've done some testing and found that Nalia was unable to dispel any spell protections on Sil with Secret Word when Sil had Globe of Invulnerability active. Without GOI, Secret Word worked fine, and was not blocked by SI: Abjuration, but Secret Word also could not take down SI: Abjuration. Spell Thrust, however, could take down Spell Immunity.
I had considered using a triple Secret Word Spell Sequencer, but it seems that GOI blocks the spell entirely. We can take down GOI with Ruby Ray of Reversal, but Spell Shield will absorb it first, leaving the GOI intact. We would need two castings of Ruby Ray of Reversal to take down both GOI and Spell Shield. But I only have two 7th-level spell slots, and one of them is needed for Limited Wish. I was wrong when I said before that Aerie could cast Limited Wish: she's far away from reaching that point, and Nalia has no Limited Wish in her spellbook, though she has a single level 7 spell slot.
We could use Pierce Magic instead, but no one in my party could cast it. I never learned the spell because I thought it was redundant with Secret Word. But Pierce Magic can bypass GOI, where Secret Word cannot.
So, there are only three ways I could take down Irenicus' spell protections, and therefore use Breach, and only two of them would let me hit him with Breach.
First, I could sacrifice Limited Wish for Ruby Ray of Reversal. If I do this, I am far more vulnerable both to Irenicus and his Planetar, and I also lose out on a lot of offensive power. And if Sil or Nalia should get interrupted, I have no means of breaking through Irenicus' spell protections whatsoever.
Second, I could use a triple Secret Word Spell Sequencer and use it after Irenicus' GOI runs out, which will take 20 rounds. Even without Irenicus' Improved Alacrity, that's 20 free spells he can use against us before we can use Breach. His weapon immunities will likely run out before then.
Third, I could try to simply burn through his spell protections. Spell Turning only blocks 12 spell levels. I could cast Protection from Magical Energy on him twice (Improved Haste casts as a 3rd-level spell, bear in mind, and won't bypass Irenicus' GOI), and have both spells bounce back onto me. Aerie and Nalia could do this the first round, though he might bring up more spell protections via a contingency or trigger, and that will mean we can't pre-cast Protection from Magical Energy to protect us from an early Horrid Wilting. If he brings up Spell Deflection, that's only 10 spell levels, which I could take down with another couple of spells. Ruby Ray of Reversal could take down his Spell Shield, if necessary, and then we could Breach him freely, forcing him to cast defensive spells and divert attention from killing us. If all goes well and we don't have to divert our attention elsewhere (like to the clones), we could render him vulnerable in two to four rounds.
But I haven't had good experience with burning through spell protections. I have seen them persist unnaturally long, but I think part of that experience might have been with vanilla liches, whose Spell Traps might be bugged to be undispellable. If Irenicus' defenses aren't bugged and behave according to the spell descriptions, however, then I might simply be able to overwhelm him with spell levels.
In this case, the critical wild card would be the clones, which SCS2 is supposed to make into proper copies of the party. What I don't know is if they get all of our items, or if they will use party spells.
EDIT: I just did some tests and was able to break down Spell Turning and Spell Deflection on party members using normal spells. More importantly, Sil's Hold Undead innate ability also helps break down those spells, and can be cast while shapeshifted, meaning she can take 3 spell levels off of Irenicus each casting, and she has three of them. I'll still need Jan to dispel any illusions Irenicus has, since normal spells in SCS2, unlike Magic Attack spells, still can't be cast at invisible targets.
Unfortunately, without 4th-level spells or lower, I don't have much that can affect him. He should be vulnerable to Feeblemind, which he has a 75% chance of avoiding, and Dolorous Decay, which he has a 55% chance of avoiding, but that's about it. Worse yet, only Aerie and Sil have Feeblemind, and only Cernd gets Dolorous Decay, and we need Sil to be shapechanged. On the plus side, if we can get two Feeblemind spells out of Aerie, one out of Sil before she has to shapeshift, and a Dolorous Decay from Cernd, Irenicus has less than a 25% chance of saving against all three, and if he does fail a save, the battle is won, assuming Dolorous Decay can indeed disrupt his spells reliably, and assuming Irenicus doesn't have some special way out of Feeblemind.
@semiticgod If Dolorous Decay deals poison damage, Irenicus is immune. You can probably hide behind the inmates pretty well, and kill your clones off while Irenicus is busy.
Dolorous Decay uses the poison opcode, 25, and therefore does poison damage. I think the .cre file for the Spellhold fight is PPIREN2 (since Irenicus earlier poses as the Coordinator as PPIREN1), which doesn't appear to have any immunity to poison or poison damage in his passive effects or in his JONHP1 item. But it still wouldn't surprise me if he was immune anyway. I think I will memorize only one Dolorous Decay, since it will at least slow Irenicus for a couple rounds.
If he's immune to poison damage, I won't be able to hurt him with Cloudkill, either, but Death Fog might still work. With Cloudkill, I could pin Irenicus in place with Skeletons, who are immune to the poison damage. With Death Fog, I could pin Irenicus in place with Sil, as she is immune to magic and her wide circle as an Iron Golem will close off his only exit. Teleport Field or Dimension Door could let him escape, though.
Hiding behind the inmates is actually probably the safest strategy. They should come fully buffed as well, and if I keep Irenicus at bay with a wall of summons (he's trapped on his little pedestal, much like Lavok), I can move far enough away that he can't target me.
Perhaps I will have Aerie approach him as a Mustard Jelly early on. If Irenicus has a Lower Resistance Spell Trigger, hopefully he'll waste it on Aerie, allowing Sil and Cernd to hold onto their magic resistance.
I decided last night that I really did need the extra time to think things through, and figure out better solutions than the ones I had. Hence the posts without in-game progress.
John Cleese gave a lecture at my university a few years ago, talking about a book that echoed some of his own conclusions about creativity: that anyone can be creative, and not just innately creative geniuses, but it requires a relaxed, free environment in which the mind can mull things over, without fretting about deadlines and other little details. And this fight really requires that extra thought. I don't want this to turn into a low-reload run, not now, when we've already come so far. I don't think I can bring myself to give up--I really want this character to succeed. This is the first time I've played a Cleric of Lathander/Mage, and this is where I'm first testing what I believe is the most powerful version of my favorite character type--Cleric/Mages. I don't want to lose Sil.
Incidentally, my earlier forgetfulness has proven potentially fatal: Nalia is inches away from level 16, and there is no way for her to get the XP needed to reach that level before the fight with Irenicus. If I had remembered to complete the illithium quest, she would have reached level 16 by now, gaining a casting of Horrid Wilting as well as, more importantly, Ruby Ray of Reversal, which would have made it possible for me to break through Irenicus' spell protections and slaughter the bastard directly. That one little quest could have vastly simplified this battle. Same goes if I had ever bothered to buy a scroll of Pierce Magic.
And now I am at a significant disadvantage, simply because of those two isolated acts of absentmindedness. In a run like this, it doesn't take much to put the party in danger.
Oh boy, I'm feeling like waiting for World Cup final. Fingers crossed:) I really need to try SCS no reload one day. I fear I wouldn't leave Irenicus dungeaon alive, but still I'm more of a story-oriented type. But this is so cool to read:)
Since this was likely to be a very long battle, I removed the custom Aura Cleansing bracers that I use for pre-battle buffing. My buffs would only last as long as they were supposed to.
The plan was to let the inmates distract Irenicus while I dealt with the clones. Hopefully, once the clones went down, Irenicus would be weakened enough for me to beat.
Everyone but Cernd pre-buffed with multiple Blur spells, since I really want the extra durability. Everyone has Chaotic Commands, Remove Fear, and Death Ward active, most of the party has Protection from Lightning from Aerie and Sil, and Protection from Fire from Nalia and Cernd. Everyone has Stoneskins and Ironskins from the day before. Everyone but Cernd has Spell Immunity: Abjuration (the last buff they cast, to improve its duration). Jan and Aerie have Minor Spell Deflection; Jan also regular Spell Deflection. Nalia and Sil have Spell Shield. Aerie and Jan have Polymorph Self; Sil has Shapechange via Limited Wish. Jan casts Improved on himself, though I'm pretty sure the spider weapon's haste effect overwrites it. Sil also has Improved Haste.
Aerie's Minor Sequencer has DUHM+Shocking Grasp, for use in spider form. Jan has a standard Blur+Shocking Grasp sequencer for the same reason. Sil's Minor Sequencer has two Armor of Faith spells, to stack with the Iron Golem form's physical damage resistances. Since my SCS2 install improves Mind Flayer resistances, I can get to 80% physical damage resistance in Mind Flayer form, compared to 50% for Iron Golem form, though I will have only 90% MR instead of 100%.
Nalia's Minor Sequencer has Blur and Mirror Image, in case she gets mobbed. Her Spell Sequencer has Slow, Teleport Field, and Emotion, to deal with the clones. She, like Aerie, has an Animate Dead Contingency spell, to give us some quick summons at the beginning of the battle.
But before this, Jan lays 6 traps in the only place he can: just outside Irenicus' chamber.
I never tried to flee the area during this fight, so I'm not sure I can even open that door until the fight is over. But if I can, and I do need to run, then hopefully this will hit Irenicus.
Once we have our traps set and our buffs up, we leave the area and try to talk-block Lonk the Sane.
Jan manages to keep him distracted while the others hurry up the hallway. The repeated pauses are there to make sure Lonk stays occupied. Once we've shifted Cernd's and Sil's inventory over to Aerie and the others, we send them north to go grab our equipment. They run the fastest, so it's best if they go get our items while the others wait behind, ready to talk to Lonk when we need to go.
Then we hit an obstacle.
I consider bringing Jan over to unlock the door, but then I realize the door probably can't be opened, as it is there to prevent us from fleeing the area without attacking Irenicus. I decide to give up on the search for our items and talk to Lonk. We wasted several seconds of buff duration, but we could have lost more.
We bribe Lonk and marshall the inmates to take on their new warden. Wanev teleports us to the chamber.
Irenicus and the inmates yell at each other. People in asylums can be so grouchy. Finally the fight begins. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm not going to get any more prepared. I press enter and pause the game.
Irenicus' buffs don't come up immediately. For a second or two, he is vulnerable. Jan, still in natural form, equips the Bolts of Biting and attacks Irenicus. Nalia uses Arrows of Biting. Imoen uses Darts of Wounding. And just because she can, Aerie equips a stack of Bullets +2 and attacks Irenicus, too.
Wonders never cease.
Right at the beginning of the battle, Irenicus has been poisoned. He will get hit by 2 point of damage every second for 15 seconds, taking out a big chunk of his health and keeping him occupied for two and a half rounds.
Nalia's and Aerie's Contingencies fire, giving us a small wall of undead to hide behind. Irenicus' defenses appear. Immunity to the elements, plus Improved Mantle. It's an excellent choice, as it is impossible for a party of my level to get a +5 weapon with my install options at this point in the game (Minute Meteors are +2 weapons in SCS2, from +6 in vanilla BG2).
I can't hit him anymore. It is time to retreat. I head south, remembering to unequip Cernd's Greater Werewolf Tokens so his clone arrives unarmed.
It works. Right after the inmates' defenses rise up, the clones appear, and Cernd is wielding an unenchanted club.
Notice the Sil clone already casting an Enchantment spell, probably Chaotic Commands.
I begin the first round of spells, all directed at the clones. Cernd casts Earthquake. Sil casts Greater Malison. Jan casts Slow, as does Aerie. Nalia, however, activates her Spell Sequencer, throwing out Teleport Field, Slow, and Emotion in one round, casting time of 1.
The clones are all weakened, but only Aerie appears to be affected by Emotion. I do not see Jan's clone at all, which is a good thing, since I neglected to unequip his flashers. A Jan clone could hit our party on a critical hit, which could render one or more of our party members helpless for 12 seconds.
Wanev, as usual, fires the first Time Stop.
He doesn't do much with it, though, only some normal, vanilla-style spell choices.
I turn my attention to Irenicus, since he has been relatively inactive, using his time to cast Shadow Door and drink a Potion of Extra Healing while invisible. Then, the clone Sil dispels the normal Sil's Spell Shield--a warning that the clones are still a serious threat. I turn my attention to taking down the Sil clone, using poison weapons to ensure she can't use any more spells on us.
Sil's base 7 DEX and lack of armor makes her especially easy to hit. The clone is quite vulnerable.
Then I realize something.
Irenicus doesn't have a Globe of Invulnerability. He doesn't have the blue sphere around him.
I go back to the original text in the dialog box and find that his buffs at the start of combat did not include Globe of Invulnerability. He's not immune to 4th-level spells. I can hit him with Secret Word!
I start to break down his spell protections. The clones are dead, the inmates are still alive, we still have some of our summons left, and Irenicus has lost his defenses.
Then Irenicus begins to cast an alteration spell, a sure sign of an impending Time Stop. I have Sil shapeshift to Iron Golem form. Sil, and everyone else in the party besides Aerie, has already had her buffs dispelled, and therefore is perfectly vulnerable to all spells. I'm particularly concerned about being hit with Dragon's Breath, which could instantly kill anyone besides Cernd on a failed save, or even on a successful save.
No Time Stop happens, though. I assumed at the time that we had interrupted his spell, but I was wrong.
It wasn't Time Stop he cast. It was Improved Alacrity, hence the alteration-style incantation and casting animation and the long casting time. He spent his last few seconds of safety casting this spell so that he could refresh his buffs quickly and resist our attempts to disrupt his spells.
I'm not willing to take Sil out of Iron Golem form, since there would be a 6-second interval in which she was helpless, so I have her cast Breach via a scroll--the one reason I kept the scroll--while Imoen uses Melf's Acid Arrow, since Irenicus never cast Protection from Acid.
I was wrong. Imoen was not dead weight in this battle.
Soon, I realize he has Improved Alacrity active, but he's straining to get his spells off the ground. Our plentiful poison bolts, arrows, and darts only increase the pressure.
By now, Jan has switched to spider form. Even with all our buffs dispelled or worn off and Sil out of range due to her Iron Golem form, we have 14 attacks per round party-wide, and 9 of those have poison on hit. Our THAC0 is still pitiful, however.
Irenicus lives on, but he can't deal with the incessant melee pressure, and with our numerous casters, we have extra castings of Breach, enough to take down his many weapon immunity spells.
Near Death. What a wonderful phrase.
Finally Irenicus gives up. We are too much trouble for him, despite the JONHP1 ring that makes him unkillable by everything except for INT drain.
All I wanted was to get back my friend and keep my soul. Why is he so indignant? People who have been cursed by the gods can be so grumpy sometimes.
We've still got some enemies left, though the inmates suddenly all die. We have a Glabrezu lingering around, along with the Murderers. Jan starts detecting invisibility to reveal the thieves, while Imoen and Nalia restore their Stoneskins to protect them from the Murderers' backstabs. We attack the Glabrezu, only for it to teleport away and get nailed by Jan's traps.
Poor thing.
Jan can't restore his Stoneskin due to being a spider, but I hope to use his flashers to disable the Murderers. It doesn't work out like I planned.
Jan's AC is terrible. Normally he comes buffed with Blur, but that all wore off long ago. Imoen casts Improved Invisibility to protect him, while Jan continues to search for the thieves and Sil uses her monstrous fists to bonk the thieves right out of their armor.
Once the thieves are gone, Jan leaves invisibility, Sil returns to natural form, and once she is buffed with Chaotic Commands, we go out to finish off the Glabrezu in the hall.
Finally, the last of the enemies are gone. An inmate-summoned Mordenkainen's Sword suddenly vanishes--I didn't even know it was there until the fight was over--and a small trove of potions lies before us.
Then the REAL last Murderer appears.
Thankfully, SCS2 makes it harder for party members to die irreversibly, so we get to keep Jan.
We mob the last remaining enemy. The fight is over. A single pair of boots marks the place where our most valuable party member once stood.
He'll be back, though. We won't leave him behind.
After all, he was the one who first poisoned Irenicus, and got us out of Spellhold alive.
Don't use feeblemind on Irenicus, if he is not outright immune to it, it will completely break his script:he is supposed to give the 'I will be back!' Talk when his hp reaches low, and he teleports away after killing the mad mages. Since he has min hp1 he can not be killed normally. If he is feebleminded he will stand there and just take thousands of damage forever, you will need to dispel his feeblemind, or use heal on him which will replenish his hp as well. And if you can not heal his feeblemind plot will get stucked.
The battle itself is a complete mess, I fought his scs form only once and it was ugly:did not reload but the whole battle was rather hectic and uncomfortable:the mad mages were able to pull of a time stop and one even summoned a demon that turned on all of us, though more than one of the magi had true sight going on which was nice. Irenicus decimated most of them with horrid wiltings though, my party stood back and fought off the evil clones while the mad magi threw themselves at Irenicus.
Equipping your party with bad weapons is a good idea, so clones will spawn with them, but Cernd is tricky, if he has no paws, he can cast quite a bit spells and the last thing you want in this battle is an insect plague on your party! If he has claws he will be a formidable meleer, highly magic resistant as well. You may equip Cernd the weakest claw at the start of the battle:it will hopefully disable his clone's spellcasting and the clone will be relatively weak. You can switch to the greater wolf claw instantly, I bet the clone can not.
I believe in SCS2, a Cernd clone would indeed switch between the wolf claws and a normal weapon to cast spells without leaving himself vulnerable. That's what Faldorn and the Shadow Druids do in the Druid Grove. But if you equipped Cernd with two Lesser Werewolf Tokens, the clone should be stuck, as it has no normal weapon to switch to.
The interesting thing about the tokens is that any druid can use any token. Jaheira can dual-wield Cernd's Greater Werewolf Tokens, and a dual-class druid to fighter can use an Avenger's Sword Spider Token. I once ran a party through the Tactics mod that had 3 fighter/druids (one multi-class, the others were druids dualed to fighter), a cleric/thief who could use the tokens with UAI, and a Wild Mage at the back. Basically the whole party was indestructible.
I memorize Raise Dead and rest once so we can get Jan back on the team, but first the plot beckons. I dream about Imoen, who is acting super creepy.
Notice that Aerie still has Chaotic Commands, which is why she doesn't have the Sleep icon on her portrait, unlike the other characters. She's still unconscious, of course, but the spell blocks the icon.
Anyway, Sil wakes up and brings Jan back from the dead. I talk-block Saemon Havarian to get through the hall, have Cernd deal with a Stone Golem, and spend several minutes gathering my items and organizing my inventory. Finally, we have our favorite treasures back: Cernd with his Helmet of Defense and Cloak of the High Forest, Aerie with the Shield of Harmony and Gnasher, Sil with the Flail of Ages and Shield of the Lost, Jan with the Firetooth and Jansen Spectroscopes, Nalia with the Crimson Dart and the Robe of Vecna, and more recently, Imoen with the Tuigan Bow and Ring of Free Action. Also, everyone has a Potion of Invisibility--our primary escape option is restored.
We return to Saemon because plot. Jan interrupts with another very long, very preposterous, and completely pointless tale.
Sammy pays Jan no mind. As far as I know, the only time somebody outside the party recognizes in dialogue that Jan told a long story is Renal Bloodscalp, who gets distracted, briefly. Renal's line ("So... where was I?") appears even if Jan isn't present, but it makes more sense if Jan interrupts him. I wish BG2 NPCs would react more to Jan. Aside from his flashers and general overpoweredness, Jan is only here to be disruptive and obnoxious. Who wouldn't at least give Jan a weird look after a story like that?
On the way out, we make a new friend out on the docks, an outgoing old sea dog who invites us to join his merry crew.
Unfortunately, we experience some creative differences.
They were so inflexible. All we wanted to do was borrow their shiny potions and pretty gold coins! People who enslave random passersby can be so stubborn.
Samwise Havarian tells us to break into some nice lady's home, so we do. Why not? It turns out the lady of the house likes to entertain friends in her bed, but we didn't get to join in. Cernd was about to make his move when a bunch of pirates ran in to cock-block him. We tore them to pieces, but by the time we were done, the lady had run off into the night. All we got out of the visit was a Rogue Stone and a shell. Poor Cernd. It's hard to meet people when you're a furry monstrosity. Jan has the same problem.
Once we get back to Saemon Bavarian, he sounds the horn and we hop onto the Pirate Lord's ship. Apparently, Sammy never got permission first, so Desharik is cranky. We see the lady from the house again, and Jan is about to make his move, but then Desharik cock-blocks him, too, and murders his wife on the spot. He delivers an awesome line, though.
The "Madam" is what really sells it. One of my favorite quotes of the game. It's so vivid.
We encounter some more creative differences with Desharik's men, though Desharik stays out of the fray. Soon, we are off.
On the way home, a Githyanki ship arrests our progress and they start shouting. Bavarian Sandwich tries to reason with them, but they just won't listen.
Silly Githyanki. They can't even pronounce Simon Blavatsky's name right. Their word choice is intense, though.
Nalia activates a Spell Sequencer with Slow, Teleport Field, and Invisibility 10' Radius, hoping to keep us safe, but the Githyanki Captain starts casting a divination spell, so we throw out some disablers and run around in circles. After all, that's how I survived the last time I had to fight Githyanki.
Fish people hop on board to join the party, but the ship is sinking. The last thing we see before slipping into the briny deep is Playin' a Theremin, escaping through some magical means, saving his own skin, as always. Belatedly we regret not memorizing Dimension Door.
Luckily, the fish people were cool enough to rescue us. We even get an audience with King Ixilthetocal, because Senityili and Sekolah said so, but Jan is offended by Ixilthetocal's comments about his teeth. The king appears to be some sort of kooky dentist.
Jan is very sensitive about his undersized munchers. Lissa always did go for the bucktoothed ones, hence her falling in love with Vaelag. We still need to kill that guy, don't we?
Apparently, the fish people aren't sure if we're meat crabs or holy saviors, so Ixilthetocal throws us in a pit with a portly Ettin suffering from loneliness and frustration. Jan, eager to prove he doesn't need big, manly teeth to impress the dentist OR his ex-girlfriend, heaves his mighty crossbow and nails the Ettin with a tiny pink-tinted skull. The Ettin fails its save!
Jan, truly, is the epitome of small-toothed manhood.
Ixilthetocal congratulates us on a savage killing and asks us to go kill Villynaty... who I believe is Ixilthetocal's son, currently going through something of a rebellious phase. But when we speak to the Royal High Priestess, Senityili, she tells us the dentist has gone bananas, and the only hope for the toothy denizens of the City of Caverns is for me to ignore his order, take a big yellow wiffle ball to the rebels, and work for Villynaty.
The backstory is pretty obvious: Villynaty is Senityili's boyfriend, and they got separated because the High Priestess Tlyysixxous got really jelly of the ROYAL High Priestess Senityili and her bitchin' boyfriend Villynaty, so she convinced Ixilthetocal that Villynaty was the one who broke off Ixil's Nail to use it as a toothpick of detonation, and the resulting explosion was responsible for the loss of Ixilthetocal's tooth collection. It's just the sort of infighting that's typical for Sahuagin society.
So... where was I? Oh, yes. The scrolls. Once I agreed to help Senityili recover her lost love, I went shopping for scrolls, to fill up Imoen's relatively empty spellbook.
So much XP from scribing scrolls. Pity that Imoen is still terribly underleveled.
Anyway, the rest of the City of Caverns will have to wait for next time.
On to Villynaty! But first we have to kill some fish people.
In SCS2, Sahuagin get some minor buffs, but overall the City of Caverns is actually in your favor in the long run. The Sahuagin aren't that much stronger--they were already quite weak in the vanilla game--but the loot is much better, due to SCS2's adding potions to many enemies.
I accidentally pushed a Sahuagin into an unreachable spot with the Horn of Blasting, but I managed to get him within reaching distance with a charge of the Ring of the Ram. The payoff was nice.
I already have about 8 Potions of Magic Protection and Magic Resistance. They'll probably play a major role in the final battle. We also picked up a lot of Paralytic Bolts, which, like his flashers, stun the target on a failed save. The advantage of the Paralytic Bolts is that the stunning effect bypasses magic resistance, though they can't break through weapon immunities like his flashers can, and the Paralytic Bolts weigh a pound each, so Jan can only carry a few at a time.
The Cloak of Mirroring goes on Jan. Because he spends so much time in spider form, his resistances aren't too great, and because of his low HP, a Horrid Wilting or Meteor Swarm spell could easily do him in. The Cloak of Mirroring should keep him safe.
After playing with some Imps and freeing a Beholder from a 40-year contract, we find a piece of the king's old tooth collection!
Now we can go talk to Villynaty.
No wonder Senityili was so sweet on him. Ambition in a man is sexy. But it looks like he's met somebody new. I guess he has a thing for priestesses. Sallinithyl is such a homewrecker.
It doesn't matter, though. Senityili and Captain Feerlattiys die the moment I make a deal with Villynaty.
We run back to Ixilthetocal and chop him up. Villynaty is quite pleased.
All this talk about gnawing on stuff. Apparently Villynaty shares his father's interest in dentistry.
We flee the City of Cavities into the Underdark, and after loading up on buffs, we kill a long stream of elementals coming from some portals of unknown purpose.
Spellcasters can make pretty awesome frontliners.
The drow party near the imprisonment capsule are a bigger challenge, but we throw out five disablers in one round plus Jan's flashers, overpowering their high MR.
Only one priestess and the two mages escape intact, but we're perfectly equipped to deal with them, too. We cast Spell Thrust and Secret Word on both mages in one round, and then they are vulnerable to Breach.
They still manage to cast a couple of Sphere of Chaos spells, but we have immunities to protect us. We come out of the encounter unharmed.
I free the first two people trapped in the imprisonment capsule. I could fight Alchra Diagott, but I see no point. He's worth a lot of XP, and carries a few scrolls, but he comes with HLAs, and with the standard lich save vs. spell of 1, he's extremely difficult to stun. I might come back to free the other critters, though.
The Svirfneblin ask me to kill something. What are adventurers for? I buff the party and teleport to the right place with CTRL-J. I have little confidence that Jan can stun the demon, but by now we have lots of tools at our disposal.
Luckily for me, I pre-buffed with Protection from Fire, anticipating a Meteor Swarm spell. No Meteor Swarm came, but the Balor did have Aura of Flaming Death active, which kept Sil safe while she attacked. The Flail of Ages was a big factor in our success.
The Balor lost a lot of spells to the FoA's elemental damage. He survived quite a long time--SCS2 demons get lots of extra HP--but he spent much of that time slowed and casting spells that we kept interrupting. The Balor was mostly harmless.
After reporting our success to Goldander Blackenrock and getting a pretty new gem for our efforts, we used CTRL-J to move to an open area and Sil summoned some hostile Golems with Limited Wish for the experience.
The first time I picked that option from Limited Wish, I fought the Golems right by Goldander Blackenrock's door. I had been meaning to summon the golems for a while, but meeting the Svirfneblin reminded me.
Finally, Aerie cast Friends and we bought some scrolls from Carlig, notably a Spell Sequencer for Sil. I chose to make it into another emergency option, but I picked different spells from Nalia's. Nalia's has Invisibility 10' Radius, Teleport Field, and Haste, allowing for a quick getaway. Sil's has Remove Paralysis, Dispel Magic (the mage version, since it casts at 15th level), and Teleport Field, which can remove enemy disablers that would otherwise prevent Nalia's spell from letting us get away. What good is Haste if Aerie is paralyzed? What good is invisibility if Imoen gets charmed?
The party is slowly approaching epic levels. Aside from Imoen, everyone is around 2 million XP, some a littler higher than others, so we might just be able to hit epic levels before the final battle.
We might not succeed, however, because there are some encounters I'm not willing to take on. Watcher's Keep is always an option, but some of the fights are really excessive.
As for the Underdark, I am not going to go into the Illithid City or the Beholder Hive, simply because they pose too high of a risk. SCS2 Mind Flayers teleport, have telekinesis, and use Ballistic Attack or Detonate, so Chaotic Commands alone will not keep us safe. Plus, you can't rest in the Illithid lair in SCS2, which means our buffs would be drawn perilously thin. And, like all encounters with Illithids, there is a chance they might get some lucky rolls and kill somebody, and because they can teleport, we can't just run away to recover from INT drain. And if we have to raise somebody with the Rod of Resurrection, they lose all their buffs.
The Beholder Hive is even worse. Elder Orbs in SCS2 come with defensive spells. They are very durable in SCS2, and our only reliable way to take down Beholders is to kill them FAST. Elder Orbs don't let us do that, especially since Anti-Magic Rays will keep us from taking down an Elder Orb's defenses. So the Beholder Hive isn't safe, either.
Instead, we'll go hunt down the Kuo-toa Prince. He has monstrous regeneration, but at least he doesn't have Beholder rays or SCS2's upgraded psionic powers.
I think this party could actually take on these challenges and come out safe. But the chance of something going wrong is too high. You can only make so many gambles in a no-reload run before one of them goes bad.
I freed Vithal with a spare Freedom scroll and bought back his book from the thieving Svirfneblin. He gives us a new quest: kill some stuff, and he'll give us presents.
It's just some elementals, unfortunately.
Now that Imoen has Shocking Grasp, Blur, Minor Sequencer, and Polymorph Self, she can become a decent fighter in her own right, although her THAC0 is abysmal. Thankfully, Mislead gives her a +4 THAC0 bonus, and combined with her x3 backstab multiplier and 4 base APR as a spider, she effectively has 12 APR at 9 THAC0, with Celestial Fury.
Once we're done with the elementals, Vithal offers us a reward. Thing is, you can ask for more rewards and he'll give them to you, but if you push him too far, a fight will break out. I've never fought Vithal in SCS2, but in vanilla BG2, he has a nasty habit of casting Imprisonment during Time Stop, and will often Dimension Door away, costing the party the precious Time Stop spell he drops if he should fall. I don't remember how much you have to prod him before you have to fight him, so I just ask once for a bigger reward. We get a Horrid Wilting scroll and a Rod of Absorption. I don't know who should learn Horrid Wilting, so I store it away until we need it. Currently, only Nalia knows Horrid Wilting.
We cast all our buffs again and head for the drow ambush we know is coming. We cast two Earthquakes and two Greater Malison spells in the first round, one for each cluster of drow, Cernd attacks the further group on the bridge to hold them at bay, and Jan busies himself with disabling the first group. The setup is a brilliant success--the Earthquakes' damage breaks through the drow's MR--but I run into a problem with Project Image. Nalia has yet to ever cast Horrid Wilting, so I want to use it on the far group of drow, since the nearest group of drow is already basically doomed. So, she casts Project Image and has her clone run out to cast Horrid Wilting on her behalf. A few seconds later, I notice there's still no Horrid Wilting spell. I click on Nalia's clone, but the clone in unresponsive. I go back through the dialog box to look for the problem.
It turns out the drow cast Chaos, and though the whole party was covered by Chaotic Commands, Imoen's and Nalia's clones were both unprotected and failed their save. Since the fight would likely be over by the time the Chaos spell ran out, I just had Jan shoot Nalia once, the fire damage broke the Project Image spell, and Nalia could cast Horrid Wilting on her own.
I teleported down to the south to fight the Kuo-toa so I wouldn't have to recast all my buffs before fighting them. Jan stunned them quickly, the Kuo-toa fell, and we picked up several stacks of Kuo-toa Bolts, which are slightly stronger than Paralytic Bolts and weigh nothing.
Finally, with the map cleared, we headed into Adalon's cave and she gave us her quest, which is a lot more complex than the quests we've been getting lately. The drow have nicked her eggs, and I have to infiltrate the Realms' most deeply feared society to prevent them from making omelettes. Adalon turns us into drow and bids us farewell. Then this happens.
I've encountered this problem before, and I'm pretty sure it's an SCS2 bug. In the past, I've just killed Adalon to get around it, using an area-effect spell to turn her hostile (you can't refuse her quest; she'll turn you into drow anyway and trigger this bug), but I really want to get the XP from this very long and involved quest, and being a drow also lets us buy some new potions in Ust Natha and some new scrolls from Carlig (he offers different items to a drow party).
I don't know how to fix this bug, nor do I know where it really comes from, but if I'm going to get the XP I want from this quest, I'll have to find a solution. Uninstalling SCS2 could solve the problem (I'm pretty sure that's the source of the bug), but the installation process takes a long time and I'd rather find another solution for this and my future runs.
I'm not certain it will work but the Baldur's Gate 2 tweak pack has a "No Drow Avatars on Party In Underdark" component that disables only the cosmetic change to the party without effecting anything else that is supposed to help with a number of bugs, so it might be worth trying to see if it fixes this for you.
About the "BAM is corrupt" message, I've seen it in the original game with no mods installed—right at the beginning of the game, in fact. I just left the game running for a while (as I do when I'm testing for comparisons) and when I came back to it, it had that message. On some occasions, where the issue is animation related (e.g. the player helmet or weapon on a non-standard sprite) pressing OK allows you to continue one frame per pop-up (so holding the Esc key on the keyboard will eventually clear the way and allow you to continue), enabling you to work out some sort of quick fix.
I don't know specifically what causes it (obviously a BAM, but I don't know which BAM). I've seen numerous ChVidImage.cpp errors in the original game, but they seem to be random—entering ARxyz123 causes it on one occasion, but reloading and entering ARxyz123 again doesn't cause it. That sort of thing.
If you are getting the issue in Adalon's lair, then there's probably only a few things it will be—I'd start with something animation related. What @Linthar said might well be relevant.
Comments
I was very anxious about this part.
Fighting the game's most notoriously overpowered enemies, before Spellhold and at a matching level, with a magic-reliant party and a mod installed that buffs up the enemy and allows them to outright steal the Shield of Balduran--our one trump card against Beholders at this stage of the game, and one of only two--without save, no magic resistance offered, bypassing all spell protections.
They can burn right through my defenses, no matter what they are, even past Spell Shield, eventually, and if I fail a save, there is no option to reload. I am dead.
I agonized over how to deal with this situation. I spent many minutes poring over my spellbooks, cleric and mage, and dug through my scroll cases and potion bag to see if I had anything worth using.
Before I could take on the Unseeing Eye, and get the massive XP rewards that I so desperately wanted before facing Irenicus in Spellhold, I had to deal with the Beholders and Blind Priests populating the area. I had already envisioned a deadly scenario: I sneak past all the enemies, kill the Unseeing Eye, and just as I'm about to leave, I see Beholders flooding into the room where you find the second half of the Rift Device, because the "better calls for help" option in SCS2 can draw an entire army to one spot. I cast Invisibility 10' Radius, hoping to slip past, only to find that the enemies completely fill the hallway out. I'm out of spells, the enemies are too close for me to sleep, and I have a 300-second countdown before my invisibility runs out, the Beholders pour their spells onto the party, and all the hours spent building up this run end in a massacre by BG2's most hated enemies.
Trapped in a corner by a crowd of eyes, with 5 minutes to wait for death.
I really didn't want that to happen. I had to take down the Beholders. Including that monstrous chunk of three Gauths and three full-sized Beholders crammed into the southwest portion of the hive. They all had to go down.
I entered the area under Invisibility, found a safe spot in the far western chamber, cast Farsight to spy on the chunk of six Beholders, and sent out a projected image from Nalia, fully buffed, to cast Sunfire on the group, and hopefully take down one of the Beholders.
She brought a couple of the Beholders to Injured status. Then they turned on her.
A long stream of white rays issued forth, pushing the image backward with their Telekinesis powers, and then the action bar at the bottom of the screen went grey. The image was disabled.
I recovered control of her a few seconds later and tried to cast a spell. It failed. The stream of Beholder rays continued, and she got petrified. It was a grim lesson.
That clone had all of Nalia's stats, levels, items, and even all of her spell buffs, including Spell Shield, Spell Immunity, and Globe of Invulnerability (most Beholder rays are spell level 3 or 4).
And they absolutely trashed her. She died in two rounds.
So I reconfigured my strategy. This is what I did.
I decided to use a blitzkrieg strategy. My characters would rush in, hasted, and then throw out a swarm of Fireballs. Sil would stay near the back, while Cernd would rush in and take the first few blasts, hopefully surviving. Once Cernd took down the Gauth in the northwest hallway (there was a terrifying moment when a Blind Priest on the way started to use a divination spell, and almost exposed us to the Beholders), the party headed south, to the group of six Beholders I knew were waiting, and we tested our anti-Beholder strategy for the first time.
The results were excellent, but they did little to ease my worry. Even at Near Death, Beholders can still throw out one last barrage of rays, and they only need seconds to kill a party member.
Fortunately, the battle turned in my favor. The Beholders could only take so many dice of fire damage before succumbing. I used the same tricks throughout the area, including on the Blind Priests.
We cleared out the whole area. Fireball saved us the pain of the Beholder's gaze. That spell does not get nearly enough attention.
Next, we moved to the chamber with the Rift Device.
See that little green text at the bottom? I quicksave by reflex. It helps me feel a little safer. And if the game crashed, I really wanted that save, because it took me a long time to reach that stage.
I have no idea how many times I rested and restarted, or how much time I spent, but that little gaggle of globes, and the naked, vulnerable, seemingly unprotected form of Cernd beside them, was the product of many revisions. I spent at least 10 minutes--maybe even 20; I don't know--just reorganizing my spell book, preparing different contingencies and sequencers, setting up new buffs, and replacing the traps I laid, only to decide I needed one more modification to be truly safe. Finally, I decided on a setup.
-I have Kitthix and four Fire Elementals summoned by the Staff of Fire, and they will distract the Unseeing Eye when it appears. Cernd will go with them.
-Jan has 7 traps set in a line leading from the hallway up to the chamber, so we can lure the Unseeing Eye and its Death Tyrant buddy northward, and have the traps go off such that they wouldn't all hit one target, and waste their power on the first enemy that approached us.
-Our contingencies and sequencers are strictly defensive. We could try a Fireball contingency, but we can only set it to cast on self, and the enemy might not be in range. We could try a Stinking Cloud sequencer, since our saves vs. death are excellent and Beholders are immune to Web, but Beholders, at least in the vanilla game, can attack even while unconscious. The sole exception was Nalia's Spell Sequencer: instead of having an escape option, with Invisibility 10' Radius, Haste, and Teleport Field, we would have a triple Flame Arrow sequencer, to quickly take down either the Unseeing Eye or the Death Tyrant.
-Nobody is shapeshifting. Jan's flashers are too much of a gamble, even with 8 APR and 95% hit chance on the Flesh Golem. Plus, I've seen Beholders use their rays even when stunned. We need raw damage, and we need it fast. Jan must have Fireball and Flame Arrow prepared. Same goes for the others. Everyone besides Cernd is needed for spell damage. Our melee power is great, but it is dependent on buffs, and Beholders can wipe out our buffs very quickly. Cernd will use the Necklace of Missiles, if the enemy has weapon immunities.
-No Improved Haste. We want Protection from Magical Energy instead, and Globe of Invulnerability for Nalia.
-Sil carries the Rift Device, even though Cernd will be in range of the Unseeing Eye first. If the wielder of the Rift Device is disabled, the party is doomed, so it may as well be Sil. The run is over without her anyway.
-When the Unseeing Eye is dead, we retreat northward and lure the enemy into the traps, dragging the Death Tyrant over inescapable poison damage.
Aside from that, we had precious few options. Everyone had their Potions of Invisibility, and we had some other minor tricks up our sleeve, but if things got complicated, we didn't have nearly as many backup plans as I wanted. For our other major encounters, I made sure we had multiple options at our disposal.
Once we had the Rift Device assembled, Cernd went south with our summons.
Despair, sighted, for death is thy familiar.
Aerie summons the Flesh Golem. Cernd braces for the assault. Far away from the enemy, and shrouded in protective magicks, Sil uses the Rift Device. A reassuring blue streak of lightning travels along the floor, letting me know that the Rift Device has been activated.
In SCS2, the Unseeing Eye gets monstrous immunities and resistances via a custom item (it's more durable than Kangaxx), but the Rift Device removes that item and all its protections, as well as dispelling all magic and reducing the target's HP to precisely 40.
The Rift Device meets its target. It travels as a Chain Lightning projectile, but when it hits, it resembles a Flame Strike spell. Either way, it renders the Unseeing Eye killable. And then I realized the situation was worse than I thought.
The Unseeing Eye is wrecked, but he had a Chain Contingency prepared. And he summons not one, but two Death Tyrants. TOB-level enemies, before Spellhold.
Cernd deals the final blow against the Unseeing Eye, and the Death Tyrants begin to appear.
The real battle has just begun.
Cernd and Aerie get hit by Anti-Magic Rays. The party nukes the area, and we retreat to draw the first Death Tyrant into our traps.
Notice that Aerie has transformed into a Mustard Jelly to achieve 100% magic resistance. The Anti-Magic Ray removed the jelly item, hence her wielding Gnasher. But she's terribly slow in jelly form. Thankfully, we can get far enough away to keep the Death Tyrant on the move, and it falls to the lingering damage of Jan's traps.
Nalia, still under the effects of Haste (cast before GOI), runs down to hit the second Death Tyrant with a Sunfire spell. Cernd rushes ahead so the Sunfire won't draw the Death Tyrant's attention to Nalia. We don't want her getting hit by an Anti-Magic Ray.
The Death Tyrant fails its save.
Nalia retreats, leaving Cernd to fend for himself. The Death Tyrant throws out a Paralyze ray.
It's over.
First off, Gaal and the Elite Guards. Gaal resisted getting stunned, but we took down his buffs quite readily. I had Jan switch to using backstabs. He's quite the damage dealer with Mislead.
He's actually more dangerous than Cernd, our main frontliner, but Jan is much more fragile, and hence is usually better suited to ranged combat.
After Gaal, I ended up with a Web spell hanging around, so I decided to leave the area and rest outside, since I couldn't rest with the Web still on the map.
I got that far before realizing my mistake.
I hadn't turned in the expended Rift Device yet. If I walked out into the sewers with that thing in my inventory, I would die instantly. I think even taking a fragment of the Rift Device out of the area causes instant death, which is why I left the Rift Device on the ground before leaving the area, when I first visited this place to grab some extra experience.
Apparently multiple no-reload runs have been lost to that script. It's easy to accidentally walk outside before turning in the Rift Device, and only realize your mistake after the GUI vanishes and you get the message saying you "die in agony."
Anyway, after turning in the Rift Device and reporting my success, I got the cleric stronghold from Dawnbringer Sain or whatever his name is, and now the game apparently considers Sil a Ranger/Cleric. Whatever. I wasn't about to say no to bonus XP, so I took the illithium quest and went to the Government District to find the artist at the Jysstev Estate, only to remember that I never rescued Viconia.
That priest of Beshaba is a talker, he is.
I deemed the encounter so low-level that I didn't even bother to cast any buffs. But look!
Buffs matter, even in tiny skirmishes. If an encounter has humans in it, there's probably a spellcaster, and they're probably going to use a disabler at some point.
I took Viconia into my party temporarily for reasons I don't remember. I considered taking Viconia into the party, though I already had plans for Imoen, and checked out her spellbook to see how her spells differed from Aerie's. I found an oddity in her level 2 cleric spell list.
Viconia has no Flame Blade spell, despite casting it during the previous battle. It's a shame, considering how awesome Flame Blade is at low levels (it gets a +4 THAC0 bonus, which the spell description omits). But either way, Viconia is not going to be as dangerous as Imoen, and I like Imoen more anyway. I let her go.
From there, I headed to the Graveyard to speak with Bodhi, because I completely forgot about the illithium quest that led me to Viconia in the first place.
This is one of my favorite lines.
We arrive in Brynnlaw, in good time we might add, and immediately see a brawl going on. It's like Shank and Carbos back in the Bridge District, but they're fighting over honor instead of Bubbles. I find some nice potions on the corpse of Dirbish the Black.
After dealing with the Galvena questline and helping Ginia, I decide to take on Perth the Adept. As always, I want the Book of Daily Spell, and Percy usually isn't too big of a problem.
Right about now, I started to regret that decision.
I haven't let an enemy mage get a Time Stop spell off the ground in quite some time. This could go very badly.
He uses Breach on Cernd and gates in a Pit Fiend, and a second one joins the battle shortly thereafter. Since Cernd has had his buffs dispelled, he has no Protection from Evil, and so both Pit Fiends focus on him.
Percy refuses to be stunned by Jan's flashers, so Jan switches to normal bolts to break through his Stoneskin instead. Aerie uses the Wand of Spell Striking's Pierce Magic ability on Percy. It doesn't work quite like I planned.
Not only does the Pierce Magic fail to bring down Percy's spell protections, it gets mirrored right back onto Aerie. Maybe because the Pierce Magic ability isn't classified as a Magic Attack, as the Pierce Magic spell is, it doesn't operate quite like it's supposed to. Funny thing is, the main reason you have a Pierce Magic ability in the Wand of Spell Striking in the first place is so that you can take down protections like Spell Turning. It looks like the Wand of Spell Striking is actually completely incapable of taking down spell protections, unless we're just overpowering the spells with spell levels (Spell Turning only blocks 12 spell levels before it goes down).
I vastly, vastly overestimated the importance of the Wand of Spell Striking. On the plus side, it doesn't really matter at the moment: as per my SCS2 install, Bodhi is going to take all of my equipment when we reach the maze, including the Wand of Spell Striking, and I won't be able to get it back until after I beat Irenicus, who is the only reason I got the wand so early to begin with.
Anyway, I broke through Percy's Stoneskins.
He really shouldn't have used Mantle. Only Improved Mantle and Absolute Immunity can block all of Jan's attacks, and once we get Firetooth upgraded, only Absolute Immunity will work. In SCS2, Improved Mantle only lets +5 or better weapons through (the only such weapon we have is the Sling of Everard), and Absolute Immunity blocks everything.
Nalia and Aerie didn't have much to do in the meantime, since Cernd was busy fighting the Pit Fiends and Sil and Jan were busy penetrating Percy's Mantle spell, so they just used Magic Missile on Percy's Mordenkainen's Sword. Eventually, only the Pit Fiends were left, so the rest of the group helped Cernd dispose of them. For some reason, Aerie and Sil got their spells disrupted, so Sil couldn't cast DUHM. I got around it by having Sil activate DUHM via her Minor Sequencer. We check Percy's body.
We got the Book of Daily Spell! It comes with Fireball at the beginning, as always. And it warns us that we can only turn the pages so many times, because once we reach the last page, we're stuck on it forever. And, just to be difficult, that final page is always Burning Hands, the worst spell in the book.
I want Spell Turning ideally, but True Sight, Invisibility, and Wyvern Call would also be useful. Fireball just isn't worth it, and the Book of Daily Spell can't be sold for anything, so I decide to have Aerie turn the page.
There's actually an exploit that lets you get extra copies of the Book of Daily Spell. You pick the "turn page" ability, cast Simulacrum or Project Image, have the caster clone activate the book, kill the clone (you might need Finger of Death for this to work), and then loot the clone's body for a new copy of the book, on a different page.
But clones can't use Quick Item slots in my SCS2 install, so I just have Aerie turn the page on her own. We have a 10% chance of getting Spell Turning. What do we get?
Wow! We only had a 10% chance of getting that one! I'll stick with this spell for the rest of the game!
After murdering Percy, we go to Desharik and convince him to let us into Spellhold without violence, which I believe gives us a little extra experience. Once we've gotten a teensy bit of loot from the top floor of the asylum, Jan attempts to pickpocket Lonk the Sane, which spawns Irenicus. He knocks us out.
Sil enters the Spellhold dream and gets some clunky midgame gear to fight the dead god Bhaal. Unfortunately, this is all we get. We won't be able to use the Book of Daily Spell in this fight. At the entrance to the library, she chooses to lose a point of Dexterity, since going from 8 to 7 incurs no penalty.
With Shield, Blur, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Holy Power, DUHM, Boon of Lathander, and a Vampiric Touch spell cast while luring Bhaal inside, Sil can easily take on the Sarevok clone.
She's almost a Fighter/Mage, actually, but with lower base APR, slightly worse THAC0, and better buffs.
We end up in the maze, with Bodhi looking out over us. Most of the time, your choices in dialogue don't affect anything in the main quest. Irenicus' responses don't even change. But Bodhi is different.
She doesn't just say her lines; she actually responds to what you say. That makes a big difference when you've already played the game many times, and seen which characters aren't really listening to you.
The party is unarmed, but thankfully Cernd can still use his Werewolf Tokens, and is almost as strong as ever. But before we do any fighting, first we need to do some riddles.
I like some of the Spellhold riddles. Others I don't.
The water riddle is kind of cute. The circle one is just dreadfully obvious.
I like this one, too.
I just wish it didn't have that missing period. Cernd also has a typo in one of his lines. He mispells "simplest" as "simplist."
Next up, the Spellhold fights. These might be a little tricky.
Cngratulations on killing Unseeing eye, he has wrecked my party. I had only one reload up to that point and he forced me at least six reloads, disillusioning me with my run and ability as a bg2 player. I was so frustrated, that battle is just so damn hard. Kudos for sailing through it.
@FinneousPJ: That was just a dummy post. I typed the spoiler tags ( [ spoiler ] [ / spoiler ], but without the spaces) at the top of the post so that I could copy and paste them, but in this case I forgot to remove that first spoiler. You weren't missing any pictures; that was an empty spoiler. I have since removed it.
As I mentioned earlier, Bodhi takes all of the party's items before depositing them in the maze. This is an SCS2 component. All you get, besides the normal Spellhold loot, is a couple of Potions of Extra Healing and base equipment, which Bodhi leaves for you in the Bag of Holding. The only magical weapons you've got are a stack of Bullets +1, Bullets +2, Arrows +1, and Arrows +2. And you only get one shortbow, one longbow (which I can't use), one crossbow, and one sling. So, the party isn't naked, but your options are drastically reduced, and you need to use spells if you're going to hurt enemies immune to nonmagical weapons.
Unfortunately, there's a Clay Golem guarding the Bag of Holding, and Cernd's +3 paws do slashing damage, not crushing. We get around it by having Aerie and Sil create new Minor Sequencers with Spiritual Hammer and DUHM. Aerie uses spider form; Sil relies on Boon of Lathander for her APR.
Cernd is still useful for soaking up damage, of course.
We don't bother with the portal in the northwest. Instead, we go down the hall and head to the room with the monster summoning altar. The Mind Flayer goes down pretty quick, despite having boosted resistances as per the Tactics mod, though the Beholder stays long enough to dispel some of our protections. I should have used some traps; that would have been safer.
We rest a few times to let Jan build up a healthy supply of flashers, but eventually I just cheat in a stack of 100. I use convenience cheats a lot: CTRL-J to get around, CTRL-R to dispel my contingencies and sequencers, CLUAConsole to add in flashers, and I also have a unique item with aura cleansing and a bonus of 9 to casting time, which I use to prepare sequencers and long duration buffs, and sometimes short duration buffs if it's a low-risk encounter where the extra buff duration won't matter. It cuts out a lot of waiting time.
Most of the encounters here are pretty mild. Cernd tries out my favorite level 7 druid spell, Earthquake.
It's a marvelous disabler and the crushing damage bypasses magic resistance. I'd say it's a viable alternative to Nature's Beauty, particularly since True Sight in SCS2 can remove blindness.
One thing I was worried about is the undead encounter just before Dace Sontan, which spawns a Lich at higher levels. To make absolutely sure I wasn't caught off-guard, I used Farsight to double-check and make sure the Lich wasn't there.
Still using Quick Save, for the feeling of safety.
Without any Lich to deal with, I was free to proceed without worry. But just in case there was any mistake, I had Cernd run in under Invisibility to make extra sure the coast was clear.
I considering allowing myself the option of reloading if the fight didn't go well. That Lich really should have appeared earlier, and I would have prepared a bit better (I had set no traps, for one thing) if I knew he was going to be there. But a reload seemed premature, so I decided to fight it.
Since I've seen a Lich use Dimension Door to chase my party before (I believe that was a Tactics run, though), I decide to have Jan lay a trap in the hallway, in case the Lich teleports to the party.
Meanwhile, Aerie and Sil cast Animate Dead. Cernd is tough, but I don't trust him to tank out a Lich on his own. Plus, the Skeletons will make good targets for Jan's flashers, since I have no Flesh Golem, my preferred option. The party, including Cernd, retreats into the hall. We send out only a few Skeletons at first, since the Lich is naturally going to use a Death Spell on the first group. The other enemy undead, the two Skeleton Warriors and Greater Mummies, cannot see Cernd and therefore do not follow. Once the trap is set, we all cast SI: Abjuration, and Jan switches to spider form. We send out some more Skeletons to keep the Lich and his allies busy, while Cernd casts Earthquake in the hopes of harming the Lich. But the Lich is unaffected, and the Earthquake kills many of our own summons, forcing us to send out a third wave of Skeletons. Jan activates his Minor Sequencer, attacks Cernd to dispel the Shocking Grasp, and Sil casts Improved Haste on Jan.
By now, the Lich has had more than enough time to use Time Stop, and he has free reign for 18 seconds.
Notice that the Lich is attacking a Skeleton Warrior. It's actually one of my allies, not his: the altered summoning spells I have installed give me a chance of summoning a Skeleton Warrior with Animate Dead, even though Aerie and Sil aren't at cleric level 15.
The Lich is stuck behind his buddies, and therefore cannot reach the party. His Time Stop was not nearly as useful as it could have been. In this, we were very lucky.
The Lich has PFMW active, so only Jan can harm him. We could try breaking down his defenses, but we would need to bring our mages into harm's way to do so, and we don't need to do that as long as we still have a layer of summons keeping the enemy at bay. I send a Skeleton close to the Lich so Jan can try and hit the Lich was some flashers, while the rest of the party focuses on taking out the Lich's allies. Sil summons some animals when our Skeleton wall gets thin.
Sil gets hit by Breach. She is defenseless now. I move her out of the way and have her cast Project Image, simply because she can't use any other spells without wading into the fray. Since clones can shapeshift if the original character casts Polymorph Self or Shapechange before creating the clone, I decide to have the projected image change to Mustard Jelly form, and hopefully draw some fire from the Lich. This didn't work so well.
The Lich casts Time Stop again, and Sil's projected image gets stuck in the doorway due to its wide circle as a Mustard Jelly. Jan won't be able to reach the Lich, or even attack its summons, until the Sil clone gets out of the way. We just gave the Lich another 6 seconds to hurt us, on top of its Time Stop spell.
Now we have to deal with a Glabrezu, and I can't decide whether to have Cernd fight the demon or the Lich. The Lich is more dangerous, but we can take out the Glabrezu quicker.
Eventually, the Sil clone returns to natural form and runs ahead to stand next to the Lich. Since Sil has terrible AC, the clone is a great target for Jan's flashers, which is especially necessary considering Jan doesn't have the Firetooth's ridiculous +6 THAC0 bonus. Jan stunlocks the Glabrezu indefinitely, but the Lich remains unharmed.
Meanwhile, the Lich uses a triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger on Cernd, reducing his magic resistance to 0 and completely negating Cernd's most important defense. Soon after, the Lich lands a nasty spell on Cernd (I don't know which) and cuts his HP down by half. Seconds later, the Lich's allies start dealing big damage to Cernd, who downs our only two potions and still has to run away a bit to avoid death. One Greater Mummy is already dead; Aerie takes down the other with Holy Smite. Cernd kills the melee Skeleton Warrior on his own and starts to get back his health.
The other Skeleton Warrior, the archer, is hassling Sil's projected image, but it fails to stop her from casting Blade Barrier. The Lich does not interrupt the Blade Barrier spell either, as I timed the spell so that the clone began casting it immediately after the Lich hit her with one of its own spells, ensuring she had a few seconds of safety from its spells. Out of desperation, I try to use the Blade Barrier trick on the Lich, but the Lich is unharmed. Its save vs. spell is too low.
Since Sil's clone is now at Near Death, I move her over to the Skeleton Warrior, only to realize I need her to serve as Jan's target. My other summons are dead; only the projected image has the high AC Jan needs to land a hit with his miserable 13 THAC0. I move her back to the Lich, and have her shapeshift into a Mustard Jelly instead, as the Mustard Jelly has resistance to missile damage along with its magic resistance, allowing it to hold out a little longer against the Lich and his archer companion.
Finally, I see the message I'm looking for.
I bring back Cernd to attack the helpless Lich, while Nalia attacks with +2 Arrows, since the +1 Arrows didn't work. I want to make sure we kill the Lich before the stun effect wears off.
The Lich falls, leaving the last remaining Skeleton Warrior. Cernd mauls it, and we emerge successful, at the cost of losing our only two potions. Thankfully, we've only got one nasty battle left before we recover our items.
Dace Sontan is fairly easy. He runs right past Sil, Aerie, and Cernd (who have pre-cast Negative Plane Protection), and attacks Jan. But before Dace can land a hit, Jan stuns him by targeting Imoen, who is standing nearby and has the worst unbuffed AC in the party (she has no Blur spell, or even Shield). All that's left are Dace's rats, and their saves are terrible.
They still have surprisingly high HP, so Cernd has to finish them off.
We have taken down our very first lich. We had no items, either, but we were aided by the wall of summons that kept the Lich from making the best use of his first Time Stop spell.
I am worried about Irenicus. He is immune to stun. I cannot set any traps. I don't have my items. And he has mage HLAs, including Fallen Planetar, who has a vorpal strike (though in SCS2, MR can block it) and Globe of Blades. I might be able to talk-block Lonk the Sane, run past him, and go fetch my items from their hiding place on the other side of the area, but if that fails, I'm not sure what I would do.
I know I'll have the other inmates working with me, but aside from Irenicus, I also have to deal with my clones, which are more than just unarmed fighters in SCS2. From what I remember, Irenicus isn't too aggressive in the Spellhold fight, even with SCS2 installed, but Irenicus has marvelous defenses that I will have great trouble breaking through. And since Planetars can see through Invisibility, I can't just wait out his defenses, either, unless I manage to stun the Planetar. But I've only got about a 50% chance of stunning it per round (or about 40% if Nalia casts Lower Resistance) if Jan is under Improved Haste and also lands every hit on the relevant target. Skeletons might distract the Planetar for a while, but not for its full duration, which should be about 23 rounds.
Other than that, my only reliable option is the Blade Barrier trick, and I don't want to win the battle with a glitch. The toughest fights so far have all been spellcasters, and Irenicus will be the strongest I've ever faced in this run, by far. I'm not sure how I'm going to beat him without relying on luck.
Go beat the crap out of that son of a....
The details of the fights aren't very enlightening. Cernd's Earthquake and Jan's Chaos got us through a couple batches of Yuan-ti (the Earthquake is quite excellent at disabling those mages), Jan's traps brought an Ulitharid down to Badly Injured, and Jan managed to stun both the Ulitharid and the Noble Djinn. Cernd tanked the traps in the room with the monster portraits. Aerie and Sil used cleric buffs and Improved Haste to take on the Clay Golem and trolls, with a Fireball or Sunfire spell to finish off the trolls. Sil charged Bodhi with Negative Plane Protection and her normal buffs. The vampires drained her Constitution by 2, but thankfully they fled before doing any more. The Gauth survived inordinately long against the party--we kept missing, oddly enough--until we threw 5 Magic Missile spells at it, at which point it fell immediately.
So, right now, all that's left is Irenicus. I have some more ideas about how to deal with him, but they involve certain costs and risks.
In SCS2, a (Fallen) Planetar's weapon has a vorpal strike on 25% of hits, like in the vanilla game, but unlike the vanilla Planetar weapon, the SCS2 version's vorpal effect is blocked by magic resistance, and offers a save at -2. Considering Cernd's MR, saves, and AC, he has about an 83% chance of surviving each round if he goes toe to toe with the Planetar. Those aren't great odds, and Cernd is our toughest party member. We can boost his saves with buffs, but the Planetar weapon also has a dispel magic effect on 25% of all hits, and nothing can prevent that dispelling effect besides immunity to +5 weapons or great luck.
So, the best we can do (unless we take some steps I mention below) is run away from the Planetar, and maybe have Cernd pester it so it targets the least vulnerable party member. Summons will also work, but we can expect it to cut through one to three summons per round, assuming we can get it surrounded or distracted.
As for Irenicus himself, I have realized we have three extra options--the closest we have to a trump card--all from Limited Wish, the one-time wishes only.
First, the weakest option, the Chain Contingency option. This could be cast before battle and open up multiple new possibilities, but it won't let me cast 7th level spells because I only have one, and casting Limited Wish to select the Chain Contingency option will take up Sil's only 7th-level spell slot. It will let me target Irenicus with three spells instantly, assuming the clones aren't targeted first, and I might also be able to sneak a spell in before Irenicus' spell protections pop up. But that's rather dicey. The targeting and timing are both unpredictable, so I'm not sure this choice is worth much. It might even be possible to cast Limited Wish and have Cernd talk to the Genie, and maybe throw out Dolorous Decay, an Extra Earthquake, or Insect Plague.
Second, we could select the Time Stop option, which will give Sil 18 seconds of free reign to act. Time Stop is already notoriously overpowered, but I might not be able to take advantage of it. I can't take out much of Irenicus' spell protections in that time, nor could I break through his Stoneskins or weapon immunities, but it would have some benefit. It would be near-useless fighting the Planetar, but it could be very useful in dealing with the clones. But, like all of the one-time wishes, this might be more useful in another situation.
Third, I might use the Shapechange option. This option has by far the most potential, and is therefore the most costly option, as I will not be able to use it on another occasion, where I might well need it more.
Shapechange offers one highly critical benefit: the Iron Golem form. It boasts 100% resistance to magic and the elements, 20% physical damage resistance, an unfortunate 1 base APR, and 4d10 base damage with a +4 weapon, enough to break through Mantle, but not Improved Mantle, Absolute Immunity, or PFMW, which Irenicus is more likely to use. With Righteous Magic and the resulting 25 STR, Sil will strike for 54 damage per hit. Sil will arrive in battle with Improved Haste, and Boon of Lathander, at the right time, will give her a potential 180 damage per round... enough to take down the Planetar, if she pre-buffs with Holy Power, and maybe cast an extra Boon of Lathander, assuming the Planetar does not take down her buffs with its dispel magic effect. It will also make Sil immune to the vorpal strikes AND the Planetar's Globe of Blades by virtue of her magic resistance, although Irenicus may be able to lower it... down to zero, if he has a Spell Trigger to that effect, and targets Sil with it.
That Iron Golem form can stay in place for 5 turns, 300 seconds, before it wears off. It cannot be dispelled, and will therefore last longer than Irenicus' defenses or his Planetar. The only possible threat is raw melee damage, for which we still have six Potions of Extra Healing and perhaps a Minor Sequencer with two Armor of Faiths, or a Lower Resistance spell from Irenicus--and having checked his files, he does not appear to have a Lower Resistance spell, though he may have such a Spell Trigger.
In short, if I resort to the Shapechange option, which I can cast before battle, then I have an effective trump card against most everything Irenicus can pull, unless he uses a Lower Resistance Spell Trigger, in which case I might still be able to run around as a Greater Werewolf and survive on its regeneration, 48 HP healed per round, though a Breach spell could easily render Sil vulnerable to a disabler.
I still might be able to recover my items, but there's a problem. If I pre-cast Shapechange, then I would have to spend several rounds rushing to get the party's items back, and lose some duration on my buffs. I could rest and re-cast my buffs to get the maximum duration from my spells, but then Shapechange would wear off. So, recovering my items would cost me several rounds of spell duration if I pre-cast Shapechange, whereas if I don't, then I can keep the maximum duration, at the cost of having to cast Shapechange in the middle of battle, where it could be disrupted. So I'm not sure when exactly I should cast it.
Unless I can figure out something new, the basic strategy might look something like this:
-Cernd starts battle without his claws equipped, in the hopes that his clone arrives unarmed. We'll do the same for the other party members, or maybe even give them weapons they're not proficient in, just to screw with the clones. He casts Earthquake at the beginning of combat, hopefully taking out the clones if not Irenicus.
-Sil shapechanges at the start of combat, probably after the clones spawn, and deals with the clones until Irenicus becomes vulnerable or the Planetar appears. Her Minor Sequencer has two Armor of Faith spells, giving her 50% physical damage resist. She might arrive pre-buffed with other Armor of Faith spells.
-Aerie has multiple options. Greater Command, Animate Dead, Animal Summoning I or II, or any number of mage spells would be useful. She will likely have a Minor Sequencer with Shocking Grasp and DUHM, so she can fling normal bullets at Irenicus and break through PFMW. I don't know what her Contingency should be; Teleport Field may be a good option, though I'm not sure what the ideal condition would be. She might try the Blade Barrier trick on Irenicus or the clones.
-Nalia's role is highly variable. She likely won't have the spells to break through Irenicus' defenses until his inevitable Spell Immunity and Globe of Invulnerability wears off. Greater Malison, Emotion, and Chaos will be excellent options against the clones, and Teleport Field--perhaps two Teleport Fields, actually--would keep the Planetar at bay for half its duration, and screw around with the clones and Irenicus as well. I don't know what her Minor Sequencer, Spell Sequencer, or Contingency would be.
-Imoen is mostly dead weight. She's at level 11 and has a very limited spell selection. Her most important duty will likely be casting Chaos on the clones, and maybe using Breach on the Planetar to get rid of its Globe of Blades.
-Jan will shapeshift early in combat and stun the clones, who will arrive unbuffed and therefore with terribly high AC, and no stun immunities. He will dispel Irenicus' illusions, if any, and hurl flashers in the hopes of interrupting Irenicus' spells. But my memory tells me that Jan only does area effect damage with the flashers if he's using Firetooth, since the damage is always 2 damage, suggesting the Firetooth's fire damage is responsible. I will have to test to see if flashers with a normal Light Crossbow can deal area effect damage. If not, Jan's business will only be disabling the Planetar and clones, or attacking Irenicus directly if he is vulnerable to nonmagical or +4 weapons. We have some Bolts of Biting and Bolts of Lightning that could be very useful against Irenicus, but I've had no luck in the past with poisoning mages from a distance.
If I can find a good setup, I might use the Chain Contingency option as well as Shapechange. I may also have Aerie memorize a Limited Wish spell, in the off chance I might need Time Stop or one of the other options--even Wail of the Banshee might be useful, if the clones prove too durable. We might even have another character talk to the genie to get the Time Stop instead, though Nalia and Imoen don't have enough WIS to request it.
Hopefully, I will have some better ideas in the morning, because all of these are pretty dicey.
Thanks for tagging, @lolien , I've really had much pleasure from reading about Sil's adventure.
I've played BG2EE with the SCS in a multiplayer no-reload game during the holidays for several days and more than vividly remember many of those fights. It's interesting to see how certain stratagies work and compare it with my own experience.
You know when you've played too much BG when .... Still use Quick Save in the no-reload games, for the feeling of safety. : )
@Cahir If you like to find out new strategies and learn how about spells, check this excellent http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/36604/bg2-solo-scs-spell-guide#latest
I had considered using a triple Secret Word Spell Sequencer, but it seems that GOI blocks the spell entirely. We can take down GOI with Ruby Ray of Reversal, but Spell Shield will absorb it first, leaving the GOI intact. We would need two castings of Ruby Ray of Reversal to take down both GOI and Spell Shield. But I only have two 7th-level spell slots, and one of them is needed for Limited Wish. I was wrong when I said before that Aerie could cast Limited Wish: she's far away from reaching that point, and Nalia has no Limited Wish in her spellbook, though she has a single level 7 spell slot.
We could use Pierce Magic instead, but no one in my party could cast it. I never learned the spell because I thought it was redundant with Secret Word. But Pierce Magic can bypass GOI, where Secret Word cannot.
So, there are only three ways I could take down Irenicus' spell protections, and therefore use Breach, and only two of them would let me hit him with Breach.
First, I could sacrifice Limited Wish for Ruby Ray of Reversal. If I do this, I am far more vulnerable both to Irenicus and his Planetar, and I also lose out on a lot of offensive power. And if Sil or Nalia should get interrupted, I have no means of breaking through Irenicus' spell protections whatsoever.
Second, I could use a triple Secret Word Spell Sequencer and use it after Irenicus' GOI runs out, which will take 20 rounds. Even without Irenicus' Improved Alacrity, that's 20 free spells he can use against us before we can use Breach. His weapon immunities will likely run out before then.
Third, I could try to simply burn through his spell protections. Spell Turning only blocks 12 spell levels. I could cast Protection from Magical Energy on him twice (Improved Haste casts as a 3rd-level spell, bear in mind, and won't bypass Irenicus' GOI), and have both spells bounce back onto me. Aerie and Nalia could do this the first round, though he might bring up more spell protections via a contingency or trigger, and that will mean we can't pre-cast Protection from Magical Energy to protect us from an early Horrid Wilting. If he brings up Spell Deflection, that's only 10 spell levels, which I could take down with another couple of spells. Ruby Ray of Reversal could take down his Spell Shield, if necessary, and then we could Breach him freely, forcing him to cast defensive spells and divert attention from killing us. If all goes well and we don't have to divert our attention elsewhere (like to the clones), we could render him vulnerable in two to four rounds.
But I haven't had good experience with burning through spell protections. I have seen them persist unnaturally long, but I think part of that experience might have been with vanilla liches, whose Spell Traps might be bugged to be undispellable. If Irenicus' defenses aren't bugged and behave according to the spell descriptions, however, then I might simply be able to overwhelm him with spell levels.
In this case, the critical wild card would be the clones, which SCS2 is supposed to make into proper copies of the party. What I don't know is if they get all of our items, or if they will use party spells.
EDIT: I just did some tests and was able to break down Spell Turning and Spell Deflection on party members using normal spells. More importantly, Sil's Hold Undead innate ability also helps break down those spells, and can be cast while shapeshifted, meaning she can take 3 spell levels off of Irenicus each casting, and she has three of them. I'll still need Jan to dispel any illusions Irenicus has, since normal spells in SCS2, unlike Magic Attack spells, still can't be cast at invisible targets.
Unfortunately, without 4th-level spells or lower, I don't have much that can affect him. He should be vulnerable to Feeblemind, which he has a 75% chance of avoiding, and Dolorous Decay, which he has a 55% chance of avoiding, but that's about it. Worse yet, only Aerie and Sil have Feeblemind, and only Cernd gets Dolorous Decay, and we need Sil to be shapechanged. On the plus side, if we can get two Feeblemind spells out of Aerie, one out of Sil before she has to shapeshift, and a Dolorous Decay from Cernd, Irenicus has less than a 25% chance of saving against all three, and if he does fail a save, the battle is won, assuming Dolorous Decay can indeed disrupt his spells reliably, and assuming Irenicus doesn't have some special way out of Feeblemind.
If he's immune to poison damage, I won't be able to hurt him with Cloudkill, either, but Death Fog might still work. With Cloudkill, I could pin Irenicus in place with Skeletons, who are immune to the poison damage. With Death Fog, I could pin Irenicus in place with Sil, as she is immune to magic and her wide circle as an Iron Golem will close off his only exit. Teleport Field or Dimension Door could let him escape, though.
Hiding behind the inmates is actually probably the safest strategy. They should come fully buffed as well, and if I keep Irenicus at bay with a wall of summons (he's trapped on his little pedestal, much like Lavok), I can move far enough away that he can't target me.
Perhaps I will have Aerie approach him as a Mustard Jelly early on. If Irenicus has a Lower Resistance Spell Trigger, hopefully he'll waste it on Aerie, allowing Sil and Cernd to hold onto their magic resistance.
John Cleese gave a lecture at my university a few years ago, talking about a book that echoed some of his own conclusions about creativity: that anyone can be creative, and not just innately creative geniuses, but it requires a relaxed, free environment in which the mind can mull things over, without fretting about deadlines and other little details. And this fight really requires that extra thought. I don't want this to turn into a low-reload run, not now, when we've already come so far. I don't think I can bring myself to give up--I really want this character to succeed. This is the first time I've played a Cleric of Lathander/Mage, and this is where I'm first testing what I believe is the most powerful version of my favorite character type--Cleric/Mages. I don't want to lose Sil.
Incidentally, my earlier forgetfulness has proven potentially fatal: Nalia is inches away from level 16, and there is no way for her to get the XP needed to reach that level before the fight with Irenicus. If I had remembered to complete the illithium quest, she would have reached level 16 by now, gaining a casting of Horrid Wilting as well as, more importantly, Ruby Ray of Reversal, which would have made it possible for me to break through Irenicus' spell protections and slaughter the bastard directly. That one little quest could have vastly simplified this battle. Same goes if I had ever bothered to buy a scroll of Pierce Magic.
And now I am at a significant disadvantage, simply because of those two isolated acts of absentmindedness. In a run like this, it doesn't take much to put the party in danger.
I really need to try SCS no reload one day. I fear I wouldn't leave Irenicus dungeaon alive, but still
Since this was likely to be a very long battle, I removed the custom Aura Cleansing bracers that I use for pre-battle buffing. My buffs would only last as long as they were supposed to.
The plan was to let the inmates distract Irenicus while I dealt with the clones. Hopefully, once the clones went down, Irenicus would be weakened enough for me to beat.
Everyone but Cernd pre-buffed with multiple Blur spells, since I really want the extra durability. Everyone has Chaotic Commands, Remove Fear, and Death Ward active, most of the party has Protection from Lightning from Aerie and Sil, and Protection from Fire from Nalia and Cernd. Everyone has Stoneskins and Ironskins from the day before. Everyone but Cernd has Spell Immunity: Abjuration (the last buff they cast, to improve its duration). Jan and Aerie have Minor Spell Deflection; Jan also regular Spell Deflection. Nalia and Sil have Spell Shield. Aerie and Jan have Polymorph Self; Sil has Shapechange via Limited Wish. Jan casts Improved on himself, though I'm pretty sure the spider weapon's haste effect overwrites it. Sil also has Improved Haste.
Aerie's Minor Sequencer has DUHM+Shocking Grasp, for use in spider form. Jan has a standard Blur+Shocking Grasp sequencer for the same reason. Sil's Minor Sequencer has two Armor of Faith spells, to stack with the Iron Golem form's physical damage resistances. Since my SCS2 install improves Mind Flayer resistances, I can get to 80% physical damage resistance in Mind Flayer form, compared to 50% for Iron Golem form, though I will have only 90% MR instead of 100%.
Nalia's Minor Sequencer has Blur and Mirror Image, in case she gets mobbed. Her Spell Sequencer has Slow, Teleport Field, and Emotion, to deal with the clones. She, like Aerie, has an Animate Dead Contingency spell, to give us some quick summons at the beginning of the battle.
But before this, Jan lays 6 traps in the only place he can: just outside Irenicus' chamber.
I never tried to flee the area during this fight, so I'm not sure I can even open that door until the fight is over. But if I can, and I do need to run, then hopefully this will hit Irenicus.
Once we have our traps set and our buffs up, we leave the area and try to talk-block Lonk the Sane.
Jan manages to keep him distracted while the others hurry up the hallway. The repeated pauses are there to make sure Lonk stays occupied. Once we've shifted Cernd's and Sil's inventory over to Aerie and the others, we send them north to go grab our equipment. They run the fastest, so it's best if they go get our items while the others wait behind, ready to talk to Lonk when we need to go.
Then we hit an obstacle.
I consider bringing Jan over to unlock the door, but then I realize the door probably can't be opened, as it is there to prevent us from fleeing the area without attacking Irenicus. I decide to give up on the search for our items and talk to Lonk. We wasted several seconds of buff duration, but we could have lost more.
We bribe Lonk and marshall the inmates to take on their new warden. Wanev teleports us to the chamber.
Irenicus' buffs don't come up immediately. For a second or two, he is vulnerable. Jan, still in natural form, equips the Bolts of Biting and attacks Irenicus. Nalia uses Arrows of Biting. Imoen uses Darts of Wounding. And just because she can, Aerie equips a stack of Bullets +2 and attacks Irenicus, too.
Wonders never cease.
Right at the beginning of the battle, Irenicus has been poisoned. He will get hit by 2 point of damage every second for 15 seconds, taking out a big chunk of his health and keeping him occupied for two and a half rounds.
Nalia's and Aerie's Contingencies fire, giving us a small wall of undead to hide behind. Irenicus' defenses appear. Immunity to the elements, plus Improved Mantle. It's an excellent choice, as it is impossible for a party of my level to get a +5 weapon with my install options at this point in the game (Minute Meteors are +2 weapons in SCS2, from +6 in vanilla BG2).
I can't hit him anymore. It is time to retreat. I head south, remembering to unequip Cernd's Greater Werewolf Tokens so his clone arrives unarmed.
It works. Right after the inmates' defenses rise up, the clones appear, and Cernd is wielding an unenchanted club.
Notice the Sil clone already casting an Enchantment spell, probably Chaotic Commands.
I begin the first round of spells, all directed at the clones. Cernd casts Earthquake. Sil casts Greater Malison. Jan casts Slow, as does Aerie. Nalia, however, activates her Spell Sequencer, throwing out Teleport Field, Slow, and Emotion in one round, casting time of 1.
The clones are all weakened, but only Aerie appears to be affected by Emotion. I do not see Jan's clone at all, which is a good thing, since I neglected to unequip his flashers. A Jan clone could hit our party on a critical hit, which could render one or more of our party members helpless for 12 seconds.
Wanev, as usual, fires the first Time Stop.
He doesn't do much with it, though, only some normal, vanilla-style spell choices.
I turn my attention to Irenicus, since he has been relatively inactive, using his time to cast Shadow Door and drink a Potion of Extra Healing while invisible. Then, the clone Sil dispels the normal Sil's Spell Shield--a warning that the clones are still a serious threat. I turn my attention to taking down the Sil clone, using poison weapons to ensure she can't use any more spells on us.
Sil's base 7 DEX and lack of armor makes her especially easy to hit. The clone is quite vulnerable.
Then I realize something.
Irenicus doesn't have a Globe of Invulnerability. He doesn't have the blue sphere around him.
I go back to the original text in the dialog box and find that his buffs at the start of combat did not include Globe of Invulnerability. He's not immune to 4th-level spells. I can hit him with Secret Word!
I start to break down his spell protections. The clones are dead, the inmates are still alive, we still have some of our summons left, and Irenicus has lost his defenses.
Then Irenicus begins to cast an alteration spell, a sure sign of an impending Time Stop. I have Sil shapeshift to Iron Golem form. Sil, and everyone else in the party besides Aerie, has already had her buffs dispelled, and therefore is perfectly vulnerable to all spells. I'm particularly concerned about being hit with Dragon's Breath, which could instantly kill anyone besides Cernd on a failed save, or even on a successful save.
No Time Stop happens, though. I assumed at the time that we had interrupted his spell, but I was wrong.
It wasn't Time Stop he cast. It was Improved Alacrity, hence the alteration-style incantation and casting animation and the long casting time. He spent his last few seconds of safety casting this spell so that he could refresh his buffs quickly and resist our attempts to disrupt his spells.
I'm not willing to take Sil out of Iron Golem form, since there would be a 6-second interval in which she was helpless, so I have her cast Breach via a scroll--the one reason I kept the scroll--while Imoen uses Melf's Acid Arrow, since Irenicus never cast Protection from Acid.
I was wrong. Imoen was not dead weight in this battle.
Soon, I realize he has Improved Alacrity active, but he's straining to get his spells off the ground. Our plentiful poison bolts, arrows, and darts only increase the pressure.
By now, Jan has switched to spider form. Even with all our buffs dispelled or worn off and Sil out of range due to her Iron Golem form, we have 14 attacks per round party-wide, and 9 of those have poison on hit. Our THAC0 is still pitiful, however.
Irenicus lives on, but he can't deal with the incessant melee pressure, and with our numerous casters, we have extra castings of Breach, enough to take down his many weapon immunity spells.
Near Death. What a wonderful phrase.
Finally Irenicus gives up. We are too much trouble for him, despite the JONHP1 ring that makes him unkillable by everything except for INT drain.
All I wanted was to get back my friend and keep my soul. Why is he so indignant? People who have been cursed by the gods can be so grumpy sometimes.
We've still got some enemies left, though the inmates suddenly all die. We have a Glabrezu lingering around, along with the Murderers. Jan starts detecting invisibility to reveal the thieves, while Imoen and Nalia restore their Stoneskins to protect them from the Murderers' backstabs. We attack the Glabrezu, only for it to teleport away and get nailed by Jan's traps.
Poor thing.
Jan can't restore his Stoneskin due to being a spider, but I hope to use his flashers to disable the Murderers. It doesn't work out like I planned.
Jan's AC is terrible. Normally he comes buffed with Blur, but that all wore off long ago. Imoen casts Improved Invisibility to protect him, while Jan continues to search for the thieves and Sil uses her monstrous fists to bonk the thieves right out of their armor.
Once the thieves are gone, Jan leaves invisibility, Sil returns to natural form, and once she is buffed with Chaotic Commands, we go out to finish off the Glabrezu in the hall.
Finally, the last of the enemies are gone. An inmate-summoned Mordenkainen's Sword suddenly vanishes--I didn't even know it was there until the fight was over--and a small trove of potions lies before us.
Then the REAL last Murderer appears.
Thankfully, SCS2 makes it harder for party members to die irreversibly, so we get to keep Jan.
We mob the last remaining enemy. The fight is over. A single pair of boots marks the place where our most valuable party member once stood.
He'll be back, though. We won't leave him behind.
After all, he was the one who first poisoned Irenicus, and got us out of Spellhold alive.
Nicely done, amazing read.
The battle itself is a complete mess, I fought his scs form only once and it was ugly:did not reload but the whole battle was rather hectic and uncomfortable:the mad mages were able to pull of a time stop and one even summoned a demon that turned on all of us, though more than one of the magi had true sight going on which was nice. Irenicus decimated most of them with horrid wiltings though, my party stood back and fought off the evil clones while the mad magi threw themselves at Irenicus.
Equipping your party with bad weapons is a good idea, so clones will spawn with them, but Cernd is tricky, if he has no paws, he can cast quite a bit spells and the last thing you want in this battle is an insect plague on your party! If he has claws he will be a formidable meleer, highly magic resistant as well. You may equip Cernd the weakest claw at the start of the battle:it will hopefully disable his clone's spellcasting and the clone will be relatively weak. You can switch to the greater wolf claw instantly, I bet the clone can not.
The interesting thing about the tokens is that any druid can use any token. Jaheira can dual-wield Cernd's Greater Werewolf Tokens, and a dual-class druid to fighter can use an Avenger's Sword Spider Token. I once ran a party through the Tactics mod that had 3 fighter/druids (one multi-class, the others were druids dualed to fighter), a cleric/thief who could use the tokens with UAI, and a Wild Mage at the back. Basically the whole party was indestructible.
Notice that Aerie still has Chaotic Commands, which is why she doesn't have the Sleep icon on her portrait, unlike the other characters. She's still unconscious, of course, but the spell blocks the icon.
Anyway, Sil wakes up and brings Jan back from the dead. I talk-block Saemon Havarian to get through the hall, have Cernd deal with a Stone Golem, and spend several minutes gathering my items and organizing my inventory. Finally, we have our favorite treasures back: Cernd with his Helmet of Defense and Cloak of the High Forest, Aerie with the Shield of Harmony and Gnasher, Sil with the Flail of Ages and Shield of the Lost, Jan with the Firetooth and Jansen Spectroscopes, Nalia with the Crimson Dart and the Robe of Vecna, and more recently, Imoen with the Tuigan Bow and Ring of Free Action. Also, everyone has a Potion of Invisibility--our primary escape option is restored.
We return to Saemon because plot. Jan interrupts with another very long, very preposterous, and completely pointless tale.
Sammy pays Jan no mind. As far as I know, the only time somebody outside the party recognizes in dialogue that Jan told a long story is Renal Bloodscalp, who gets distracted, briefly. Renal's line ("So... where was I?") appears even if Jan isn't present, but it makes more sense if Jan interrupts him. I wish BG2 NPCs would react more to Jan. Aside from his flashers and general overpoweredness, Jan is only here to be disruptive and obnoxious. Who wouldn't at least give Jan a weird look after a story like that?
On the way out, we make a new friend out on the docks, an outgoing old sea dog who invites us to join his merry crew.
Unfortunately, we experience some creative differences.
They were so inflexible. All we wanted to do was borrow their shiny potions and pretty gold coins! People who enslave random passersby can be so stubborn.
Samwise Havarian tells us to break into some nice lady's home, so we do. Why not? It turns out the lady of the house likes to entertain friends in her bed, but we didn't get to join in. Cernd was about to make his move when a bunch of pirates ran in to cock-block him. We tore them to pieces, but by the time we were done, the lady had run off into the night. All we got out of the visit was a Rogue Stone and a shell. Poor Cernd. It's hard to meet people when you're a furry monstrosity. Jan has the same problem.
Once we get back to Saemon Bavarian, he sounds the horn and we hop onto the Pirate Lord's ship. Apparently, Sammy never got permission first, so Desharik is cranky. We see the lady from the house again, and Jan is about to make his move, but then Desharik cock-blocks him, too, and murders his wife on the spot. He delivers an awesome line, though.
The "Madam" is what really sells it. One of my favorite quotes of the game. It's so vivid.
We encounter some more creative differences with Desharik's men, though Desharik stays out of the fray. Soon, we are off.
On the way home, a Githyanki ship arrests our progress and they start shouting. Bavarian Sandwich tries to reason with them, but they just won't listen.
Silly Githyanki. They can't even pronounce Simon Blavatsky's name right. Their word choice is intense, though.
Nalia activates a Spell Sequencer with Slow, Teleport Field, and Invisibility 10' Radius, hoping to keep us safe, but the Githyanki Captain starts casting a divination spell, so we throw out some disablers and run around in circles. After all, that's how I survived the last time I had to fight Githyanki.
Fish people hop on board to join the party, but the ship is sinking. The last thing we see before slipping into the briny deep is Playin' a Theremin, escaping through some magical means, saving his own skin, as always. Belatedly we regret not memorizing Dimension Door.
Luckily, the fish people were cool enough to rescue us. We even get an audience with King Ixilthetocal, because Senityili and Sekolah said so, but Jan is offended by Ixilthetocal's comments about his teeth. The king appears to be some sort of kooky dentist.
Jan is very sensitive about his undersized munchers. Lissa always did go for the bucktoothed ones, hence her falling in love with Vaelag. We still need to kill that guy, don't we?
Apparently, the fish people aren't sure if we're meat crabs or holy saviors, so Ixilthetocal throws us in a pit with a portly Ettin suffering from loneliness and frustration. Jan, eager to prove he doesn't need big, manly teeth to impress the dentist OR his ex-girlfriend, heaves his mighty crossbow and nails the Ettin with a tiny pink-tinted skull. The Ettin fails its save!
Jan, truly, is the epitome of small-toothed manhood.
Ixilthetocal congratulates us on a savage killing and asks us to go kill Villynaty... who I believe is Ixilthetocal's son, currently going through something of a rebellious phase. But when we speak to the Royal High Priestess, Senityili, she tells us the dentist has gone bananas, and the only hope for the toothy denizens of the City of Caverns is for me to ignore his order, take a big yellow wiffle ball to the rebels, and work for Villynaty.
The backstory is pretty obvious: Villynaty is Senityili's boyfriend, and they got separated because the High Priestess Tlyysixxous got really jelly of the ROYAL High Priestess Senityili and her bitchin' boyfriend Villynaty, so she convinced Ixilthetocal that Villynaty was the one who broke off Ixil's Nail to use it as a toothpick of detonation, and the resulting explosion was responsible for the loss of Ixilthetocal's tooth collection. It's just the sort of infighting that's typical for Sahuagin society.
So... where was I? Oh, yes. The scrolls. Once I agreed to help Senityili recover her lost love, I went shopping for scrolls, to fill up Imoen's relatively empty spellbook.
So much XP from scribing scrolls. Pity that Imoen is still terribly underleveled.
Anyway, the rest of the City of Caverns will have to wait for next time.
In SCS2, Sahuagin get some minor buffs, but overall the City of Caverns is actually in your favor in the long run. The Sahuagin aren't that much stronger--they were already quite weak in the vanilla game--but the loot is much better, due to SCS2's adding potions to many enemies.
I accidentally pushed a Sahuagin into an unreachable spot with the Horn of Blasting, but I managed to get him within reaching distance with a charge of the Ring of the Ram. The payoff was nice.
I already have about 8 Potions of Magic Protection and Magic Resistance. They'll probably play a major role in the final battle. We also picked up a lot of Paralytic Bolts, which, like his flashers, stun the target on a failed save. The advantage of the Paralytic Bolts is that the stunning effect bypasses magic resistance, though they can't break through weapon immunities like his flashers can, and the Paralytic Bolts weigh a pound each, so Jan can only carry a few at a time.
The Cloak of Mirroring goes on Jan. Because he spends so much time in spider form, his resistances aren't too great, and because of his low HP, a Horrid Wilting or Meteor Swarm spell could easily do him in. The Cloak of Mirroring should keep him safe.
After playing with some Imps and freeing a Beholder from a 40-year contract, we find a piece of the king's old tooth collection!
Now we can go talk to Villynaty.
No wonder Senityili was so sweet on him. Ambition in a man is sexy. But it looks like he's met somebody new. I guess he has a thing for priestesses. Sallinithyl is such a homewrecker.
It doesn't matter, though. Senityili and Captain Feerlattiys die the moment I make a deal with Villynaty.
We run back to Ixilthetocal and chop him up. Villynaty is quite pleased.
All this talk about gnawing on stuff. Apparently Villynaty shares his father's interest in dentistry.
We flee the City of Cavities into the Underdark, and after loading up on buffs, we kill a long stream of elementals coming from some portals of unknown purpose.
Spellcasters can make pretty awesome frontliners.
The drow party near the imprisonment capsule are a bigger challenge, but we throw out five disablers in one round plus Jan's flashers, overpowering their high MR.
Only one priestess and the two mages escape intact, but we're perfectly equipped to deal with them, too. We cast Spell Thrust and Secret Word on both mages in one round, and then they are vulnerable to Breach.
They still manage to cast a couple of Sphere of Chaos spells, but we have immunities to protect us. We come out of the encounter unharmed.
I free the first two people trapped in the imprisonment capsule. I could fight Alchra Diagott, but I see no point. He's worth a lot of XP, and carries a few scrolls, but he comes with HLAs, and with the standard lich save vs. spell of 1, he's extremely difficult to stun. I might come back to free the other critters, though.
The Svirfneblin ask me to kill something. What are adventurers for? I buff the party and teleport to the right place with CTRL-J. I have little confidence that Jan can stun the demon, but by now we have lots of tools at our disposal.
Luckily for me, I pre-buffed with Protection from Fire, anticipating a Meteor Swarm spell. No Meteor Swarm came, but the Balor did have Aura of Flaming Death active, which kept Sil safe while she attacked. The Flail of Ages was a big factor in our success.
The Balor lost a lot of spells to the FoA's elemental damage. He survived quite a long time--SCS2 demons get lots of extra HP--but he spent much of that time slowed and casting spells that we kept interrupting. The Balor was mostly harmless.
After reporting our success to Goldander Blackenrock and getting a pretty new gem for our efforts, we used CTRL-J to move to an open area and Sil summoned some hostile Golems with Limited Wish for the experience.
The first time I picked that option from Limited Wish, I fought the Golems right by Goldander Blackenrock's door. I had been meaning to summon the golems for a while, but meeting the Svirfneblin reminded me.
Finally, Aerie cast Friends and we bought some scrolls from Carlig, notably a Spell Sequencer for Sil. I chose to make it into another emergency option, but I picked different spells from Nalia's. Nalia's has Invisibility 10' Radius, Teleport Field, and Haste, allowing for a quick getaway. Sil's has Remove Paralysis, Dispel Magic (the mage version, since it casts at 15th level), and Teleport Field, which can remove enemy disablers that would otherwise prevent Nalia's spell from letting us get away. What good is Haste if Aerie is paralyzed? What good is invisibility if Imoen gets charmed?
The party is slowly approaching epic levels. Aside from Imoen, everyone is around 2 million XP, some a littler higher than others, so we might just be able to hit epic levels before the final battle.
We might not succeed, however, because there are some encounters I'm not willing to take on. Watcher's Keep is always an option, but some of the fights are really excessive.
As for the Underdark, I am not going to go into the Illithid City or the Beholder Hive, simply because they pose too high of a risk. SCS2 Mind Flayers teleport, have telekinesis, and use Ballistic Attack or Detonate, so Chaotic Commands alone will not keep us safe. Plus, you can't rest in the Illithid lair in SCS2, which means our buffs would be drawn perilously thin. And, like all encounters with Illithids, there is a chance they might get some lucky rolls and kill somebody, and because they can teleport, we can't just run away to recover from INT drain. And if we have to raise somebody with the Rod of Resurrection, they lose all their buffs.
The Beholder Hive is even worse. Elder Orbs in SCS2 come with defensive spells. They are very durable in SCS2, and our only reliable way to take down Beholders is to kill them FAST. Elder Orbs don't let us do that, especially since Anti-Magic Rays will keep us from taking down an Elder Orb's defenses. So the Beholder Hive isn't safe, either.
Instead, we'll go hunt down the Kuo-toa Prince. He has monstrous regeneration, but at least he doesn't have Beholder rays or SCS2's upgraded psionic powers.
I think this party could actually take on these challenges and come out safe. But the chance of something going wrong is too high. You can only make so many gambles in a no-reload run before one of them goes bad.
I freed Vithal with a spare Freedom scroll and bought back his book from the thieving Svirfneblin. He gives us a new quest: kill some stuff, and he'll give us presents.
It's just some elementals, unfortunately.
Now that Imoen has Shocking Grasp, Blur, Minor Sequencer, and Polymorph Self, she can become a decent fighter in her own right, although her THAC0 is abysmal. Thankfully, Mislead gives her a +4 THAC0 bonus, and combined with her x3 backstab multiplier and 4 base APR as a spider, she effectively has 12 APR at 9 THAC0, with Celestial Fury.
Once we're done with the elementals, Vithal offers us a reward. Thing is, you can ask for more rewards and he'll give them to you, but if you push him too far, a fight will break out. I've never fought Vithal in SCS2, but in vanilla BG2, he has a nasty habit of casting Imprisonment during Time Stop, and will often Dimension Door away, costing the party the precious Time Stop spell he drops if he should fall. I don't remember how much you have to prod him before you have to fight him, so I just ask once for a bigger reward. We get a Horrid Wilting scroll and a Rod of Absorption. I don't know who should learn Horrid Wilting, so I store it away until we need it. Currently, only Nalia knows Horrid Wilting.
We cast all our buffs again and head for the drow ambush we know is coming. We cast two Earthquakes and two Greater Malison spells in the first round, one for each cluster of drow, Cernd attacks the further group on the bridge to hold them at bay, and Jan busies himself with disabling the first group. The setup is a brilliant success--the Earthquakes' damage breaks through the drow's MR--but I run into a problem with Project Image.
Nalia has yet to ever cast Horrid Wilting, so I want to use it on the far group of drow, since the nearest group of drow is already basically doomed. So, she casts Project Image and has her clone run out to cast Horrid Wilting on her behalf. A few seconds later, I notice there's still no Horrid Wilting spell. I click on Nalia's clone, but the clone in unresponsive. I go back through the dialog box to look for the problem.
It turns out the drow cast Chaos, and though the whole party was covered by Chaotic Commands, Imoen's and Nalia's clones were both unprotected and failed their save. Since the fight would likely be over by the time the Chaos spell ran out, I just had Jan shoot Nalia once, the fire damage broke the Project Image spell, and Nalia could cast Horrid Wilting on her own.
I teleported down to the south to fight the Kuo-toa so I wouldn't have to recast all my buffs before fighting them. Jan stunned them quickly, the Kuo-toa fell, and we picked up several stacks of Kuo-toa Bolts, which are slightly stronger than Paralytic Bolts and weigh nothing.
Finally, with the map cleared, we headed into Adalon's cave and she gave us her quest, which is a lot more complex than the quests we've been getting lately. The drow have nicked her eggs, and I have to infiltrate the Realms' most deeply feared society to prevent them from making omelettes. Adalon turns us into drow and bids us farewell. Then this happens.
I've encountered this problem before, and I'm pretty sure it's an SCS2 bug. In the past, I've just killed Adalon to get around it, using an area-effect spell to turn her hostile (you can't refuse her quest; she'll turn you into drow anyway and trigger this bug), but I really want to get the XP from this very long and involved quest, and being a drow also lets us buy some new potions in Ust Natha and some new scrolls from Carlig (he offers different items to a drow party).
I don't know how to fix this bug, nor do I know where it really comes from, but if I'm going to get the XP I want from this quest, I'll have to find a solution. Uninstalling SCS2 could solve the problem (I'm pretty sure that's the source of the bug), but the installation process takes a long time and I'd rather find another solution for this and my future runs.
I don't know specifically what causes it (obviously a BAM, but I don't know which BAM). I've seen numerous ChVidImage.cpp errors in the original game, but they seem to be random—entering ARxyz123 causes it on one occasion, but reloading and entering ARxyz123 again doesn't cause it. That sort of thing.
If you are getting the issue in Adalon's lair, then there's probably only a few things it will be—I'd start with something animation related. What @Linthar said might well be relevant.