Good news and bad news. Really, really good news, and really, really, REALLY bad news.
First, the good. I installed the tweakpack component that removes the drow avatars, and it worked. So I can do the quests now.
Before going to Ust Natha, I decided to grab the Kuo-toa Prince's blood so I wouldn't have to do it later. The Kuo-toa proved quite vulnerable to Jan's flashers. But then, almost everything is.
My party's ability to throw out five disablers at once makes it even more unfair.
The Kuo-toa Prince surprised us after the battle, but luckily he too failed a save against Jan's flashers, and with automatic hits we could overwhelm his regeneration.
I decided to avoid the Demon Knights, as I was not willing to deal with the level drain. But I did want to kill the drow at the Underdark exit, so I went out to attack them.
Turns out they're not hostile, which I should have expected, since we're drow. We have the option to bribe the door guard, but I accidentally offend him.
The enemy is pretty tough, actually forcing Cernd to use a potion.
But with a constant stream of flashers, the enemy usually cannot act. We still can't open the door, though.
At Ust Natha, we spent about 60,000 gold, half our supply, on potions, scrolls, and Kaligun's Amulet of Magic Resistance.
Lots of XP, very quickly. What else would we spend our gold on?
We meet Solaufein and Imrae, who ask us to kill some Mind Flayers. Jan sets a bunch of traps before the Mind Flayers spawn, and switches to Paralytic Bolts to bypass the Mind Flayers' MR. He was able to stun them successfully.
See that recurring "Mind Flayer- Magic Resistance" sign? It indicates that the Mind Flayer is resisting Jan's bolts with its MR. But it's still paralyzed, which is why there are no attack rolls in this text. The reason is because the stunning effect bypasses MR, while the text string that says "Stunned" is blocked by MR. So, if we stun something with Paralytic Bolts or Kuo-toa Bolts, we might not get a message telling us that.
We tell the Aboleth to buzz off. I don't know what stats you need to get that dialog option, but Sil has 18 INT and WIS, and with the Ring of Human Influence she has 18 CHA as well.
The Aboleth's response is perfect.
Mostly I just didn't want to have to bother with Qilue. Talking the Aboleth out of its quest isn't worth as much XP, but it doesn't pose any risks.
In our free time, Cernd fought some of the critters in the Tavern's arena, though we stopped short of fighting the Beholder. The Nabassu was very tough, but Cernd was able to wear it down.
Even though the Nabassu managed to paralyze Cernd, his Ironskin and regeneration kept him alive. The rest of the battle was very long, though. Cernd could only hit the Nabassu on a critical hit. I left the game running for a little while on its own, since I knew it would take a long time and end in victory anyway. The Sahuagin was actually much more deadly, since it could hit Cernd more often. I lost a potion or two in that fight.
Since I know we're going to have to fight a Beholder in the southeast corner of Ust Natha, I decide to make a few preparations before it arrives.
I also notice that our resting times are restricted by the Ust Natha quest, which means that I can't legitimately use CLUAConsole to add in Jan's flashers. I will have to ration them until I escape.
Phaere asks us to kill some svirfneblin. Aerie breaks our cover. She's not very good at this.
Speaking of Aerie, all this quest experience bumped her up to mage level 14. She is now at epic levels (I don't know how she got so much more XP than the rest of the party) and has chosen Summon Deva as her first pick. In SCS2, with my install options, mage and cleric HLAs can only be taken once, so they don't occupy the same slots as level 7 or level 9 spells. This means Aerie can cast both Earthquake and Summon Deva in one day, but as she gains cleric levels, she will not be able to summon a Deva more than once per day.
Matron Mother Ardulace is quite astute.
Thankfully, Phaere interrupts her probing.
Normally, you get interrupted on the way to Phaere's house by a drow named Taso Kala, who demands that you fight off some priests in the southeast corner of Ust Natha. I already laid 7 traps there, replacing the ones that the Beholder triggered earlier, but to circumvent Taso Kala's request entirely, I cast Invisibility 10' Radius and walk right past her.
Sil lost her invisibility on speaking to Phaere, so she drank a Potion of Invisibility before leaving Phaere's home, preventing Taso Kala from interrupting us on the way out.
Phaere has asked us to betray the Matron Mother, and Solaufein shortly arrives to help us betray Phaere. We have two sets of dragon eggs. Since I've confused them in the past, I make sure I've got them straight: I take the real dragon eggs from the treasury, plant Phaere's dragon eggs there, then return to give Solaufein's dragon eggs to Phaere.
And since I've turned the whole city hostile before in the process of retrieving those eggs, I check an online walkthrough to make sure I can avoid that. I use sorcerors.net and find some advice on how to avoid turning the other drow hostile: "When you open the door, the two Egg Guards attack you. Make sure to kill them out of sight of the Matron's Guards, or there will be trouble." So, I have to kill the Egg Guards where the other guards can't see them. As long as the other guards don't see them, I should be fine.
So, I cast all my buffs, approach the Egg Guards while invisible, unlock the door, and attack the Egg Guards, making sure the whole party is out of sight of the Matron Mother's guards. I even retreat a little bit into the treasury, exposing my party to the Golems, to make sure I "kill [the Egg Guards] out of sight of the Matron's Guards." Curiously, Jan seems unable to stun them with Paralytic Bolts.
One of the Egg Guards shouts about protecting the eggs. I've never seen that message before.
On the way out, I see the bad news.
The Matron Guards are hostile now. I decide to escape the city, but first I check to see if Phaere is hostile, in case I haven't actually broken the quest yet.
No such luck.
Everybody drinks a Potion of Invisibility and we run down to the city entrance. It is not a pleasant walk.
SCS2 improves the defenses of Ust Natha, adding lots of tough enemies to swarm the party if things go south. It's actually supposed to be impossible to fight your way through Ust Natha; the modders figured it didn't make sense for a party of adventurers to be able to take on an entire city.
Right before we get out, I hear a divination spell being cast. It's coming from a drow priestess at the city exit. Cernd interrupts the spell with a single attack, and then drinks a potion to regain his Invisibility.
I try to exit the city, but I can't get out. The city is still sealed.
I rush back to the treasury to save my place. I don't know how to get out of this.
In the past, when I've fought my way out of Ust Natha, I just killed everybody. That's not supposed to be possible in SCS2. According to the readme, you're supposed to have to "get out as soon as you can" instead. So, what do I have to do to open the city gates, if not kill everybody in the city?
I am considering reloading an earlier save, mostly because I am too attached to this run, but also because I was basing my actions on a misleading statement. Killing the Egg Guards out of sight of the Matron Mother's guards does not, apparently, prevent the city from turning on you. The walkthrough said, "When you open the door, the two Egg Guards attack you. Make sure to kill them out of sight of the Matron's Guards, or there will be trouble." That implies that killing them OUT of sight of the Matron Mother's guards would prevent the latter from going hostile. It does not. The Egg Guards died well out of the sight range of the other guards, but the city still went hostile, I assume because the Egg Guards will shout out if you let them live too long, and that dialogue turns the rest of the city hostile.
I'm upset that things have gone so wrong, but I'm especially upset that the walkthrough's advice didn't work. I was counting on the walkthrough to give me a solution to the problem. Now the quest is broken, the city is hostile, and the city entrance is blocked, and I do not know how to unblock it.
I just did a couple of tests and found that killing Matron Mother Ardulace unlocks the city exit, but the inside of the Temple of Lolth, like the streets of Ust Natha, also spawn drow enemies every few rounds. Plus, Nalia is somehow missing her Spell Sequencer, which had a critical Teleport Field in it. I'm going to try and assassinate Ardulace and then hurry outside while invisible. If anybody in the party gets stuck on the way out due to drow spawn points clogging up the streets, I'll pass on their equipment to Cernd or Sil and let the drow kill them.
I think I will use Limited Wish for the Time Stop option and use it to get some automatic hits in on Matron Mother Ardulace. Limited Wish does not break invisibility, and Cernd can talk to the djinni instead of Sil. He has 4 base APR for 16 damage per hit, so he should easily be able to take down the Matron Mother in that time. Before the Time Stop is over, he will be able to drink a Potion of Invisibility and follow the rest of the party outside. We have one Teleport Field from Sil at casting speed 3, and another from Nalia at casting speed 0.
Our Haste spell from Imoen has run out, but we have Oil of Speed.
Cernd cast a summoning spell to become visible (everyone was under the effects of a Potion of Invisibility) so Nalia could cast Improved Haste on him. Everyone else used an Oil of Speed. We would need the speed to get past all the enemies without getting stuck. Nalia and Cernd returned to invisbility with potions and we ran out to the exit out of the Temple of Lolth. Nalia, Aerie, Jan, and Imoen hurried to the front to make sure we wouldn't get blocked off. Even if the enemy spawns formed a wall to the exit, we could still escape as long as one party member could reach the exit.
Meanwhile, Sil and Cernd hung out in the round chamber. The Matron Mother is standing alone in a room to the west. She's a high-level cleric and very sturdy (96 base magic resistance, plus 100 HP and lots of spell), so we need a special trick to deal with her.
Sil casts Limited Wish, which does not break her Invisibility. As soon as the djinni appears, she runs south to join the others. Cernd talks to the djinni and picks the Time Stop option.
Cernd now has 18 seconds of freedom, and every attack he makes will hit automatically. With Improved Haste and dual-wielding, that amounts to 96 damage every round on average. The Matron Mother, however, pre-casts Regeneration, so she heals 18 HP per round, or 54 over the course of the Time Stop, and Cernd has to run over to her, which costs us a second or two. Cernd just barely makes it.
Cernd picks up her equipment and drinks a Potion of Invisibility. The Time Stop ends almost immediately. Unlucky damage rolls could have allowed her to survive.
Cernd rushes back to the party and we escape the Temple of Lolth. We dash through the city, trying not to get stuck behind the gradually spawning enemies. We manage to slip through a couple of tight spots, just outside the temple, and run down the street, towards the city entrance.
Thankfully, the entrance itself stands clear, and the cleric waiting to dispel our invisibility no longer has her divination spell.
Sil and Nalia had a couple of Teleport Field spells in case the drow got too bunched up together, and we always had the option of leaving any stragglers in the party behind to die (they could have passed their equipment on to the next party member, and we could have raised them later), but that was never necessary.
We're outside the gate. We made it.
Then we get a surprise on the way to Adalon's lair.
Thankfully, the drow do not enter Adalon's lair. I suppose it makes sense, since you need the Light Gem to enter. I don't know how they got in the first time, to steal her eggs, though. They must have had another method. Adalon is pleased with our success, though I'm still upset we didn't get all the XP for that quest.
Adalon leads us to the Underdark exit, which we have already cleared of drow. The way is open.
I am still disappointed in the whole affair. It seems like such a cheap resolution. I'm pleased with the escape itself, but none of the steps that preceded it.
As far as I'm aware, turning the city hostile when stealing the eggs is a completely random event. Sometimes you kill the Egg Guards and nobody notices, and sometimes they do notice, and the quest is automatically broken--you have to flee the city instead of completing the questline. This is one of the few times I've ever had that happen. I don't know how I was supposed to prevent that. I attacked the Egg Guards fully buffed, which should have killed anybody right away, and I did so when the Matron Mother's guards were out of sight. I even used Paralytic Bolts, which should have easily stunned the Egg Guards, since Paralytic Bolts stun through magic resistance.
The advice I followed did not pan out, and I got what seemed to be a random event. Even if that one line of dialogue interrupting the fight is what causes the city to go hostile--the Egg Guards suddenly yelled to protect the eggs, in the middle of the battle--it shouldn't have happened. I don't even remember seeing that line in my previous runs, for one thing, and if anything, I killed them faster than usual in this run... which ostensibly would have prevented them from shouting out. How do you prevent the city from turning hostile? Killing them quickly and out of sight was not sufficient.
Even more irritating was my own mistake, forgetting that the city was sealed. On top of that, I had to reload once--my plan to kill the Matron Mother during Time Stop failed because I forgot to cast Improved Haste on Cernd. Apparently either Cernd rolled some really terrible damage rolls the first time around, or the Matron Mother comes buffed with Armor of Faith. I had performed some tests beforehand, but in my head, I had decided to make that attempt a real run--not a test, but the real fight, and it failed due to a stupid mistake. Improved Haste would have won the battle.
None of this would have happened in the first place if those Egg Guards hadn't broken the whole quest. I don't even know why that happened, or why it doesn't happen in the vast majority of my runs of BG2.
Does anybody know why the city sometimes goes hostile when you kill the Egg Guards and replace the real eggs with Phaere's eggs?
CrevsDaak: Good idea. But a word to the wise: don't play no-reload.
Kidding, but... yeah.
I play no-reload since some time ago so I don't think that would be much trouble... But I think I'll need to rebalance my whole current install if I wanted to play with a party (I'd get wipe'd in seconds).
@CrevsDaak: What's wrong with the current install? Why wouldn't it work with a party?
Does anybody know why the Egg Guards sometimes turn the city hostile? Either way, I'm going to continue the run, but if the Egg Guard problem is just a fluke or a random event, I'm going to consider this still a no-reload run, given all the trouble they called. I just want to know if there was any way of avoiding that, besides just not completing the quest.
It's too late now but the easy way to avoid all this is to ignore the egg guards and leave the building. Usually only one will be able to follow if you're hasted but it doesn't matter. Kill them outside and you should be able to resume the quest.
It is way too hard (impossible?) to do it inside in SCS because of the "better calls for help" modification. That's what misled you.
CrevsDaak: What's wrong with the current install? Why wouldn't it work with a party?
It gives too little XP rewards and enemies have around 4 levels more each. Besides I want to make a new install since some time ago, because I forgot some mods (SpellPack, Item/Spell Revisions) and discovered others (Polytweak).
CrevsDaak: What's wrong with the current install? Why wouldn't it work with a party?
It gives too little XP rewards and enemies have around 4 levels more each. Besides I want to make a new install since some time ago, because I forgot some mods (SpellPack, Item/Spell Revisions) and discovered others (Polytweak).
I you're using EE (I understand if you don't since many mods aren't updated yet or will never be), just click the repair install button in the first window and it will be as good as new.
CrevsDaak: What's wrong with the current install? Why wouldn't it work with a party?
It gives too little XP rewards and enemies have around 4 levels more each. Besides I want to make a new install since some time ago, because I forgot some mods (SpellPack, Item/Spell Revisions) and discovered others (Polytweak).
I you're using EE (I understand if you don't since many mods aren't updated yet or will never be), just click the repair install button in the first window and it will be as good as new.
Unluckily it's a whole BGT install and through Wine since I'm on OSX... Luckily, I have both games from GoG so it isn't such a pain after all (I yet have to mod BG2:EE to my likings, I've done so on BG:EE on my iPad already).
It's too late now but the easy way to avoid all this is to ignore the egg guards and leave the building. Usually only one will be able to follow if you're hasted but it doesn't matter. Kill them outside and you should be able to resume the quest.
It is way too hard (impossible?) to do it inside in SCS because of the "better calls for help" modification. That's what misled you.
So it's nearly impossible to complete the Ust Natha quest with SCS2 installed? Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I've ever actually done this quest with SCS2 installed. I often just attack or kill Adalon, to speed things up.
I suppose one way to do it would have been to use the Time Stop on the Egg Guards instead of the Matron Mother. We could have dealt enough damage within those 18 seconds to kill both Egg Guards, preventing them from calling for help entirely.
Screw everything. No reload run or not, I'm going to keep going.
Been a long while since I've done it myself, but I believe you can have a cleric use Sanctuary to do the egg swap while the rest of your party remains out of sight and avoid any ensuing hostility.
So it's nearly impossible to complete the Ust Natha quest with SCS2 installed?
I just ran into this the other night with only Tweak pack installed, no other mods. The trick seems to be you cannot do any damage to the guards until they follow you into the room. This happened to me with party invisible and backstabbed one to death outside the room. I guess the hallway has too good acoustics.
With party visible, AI off, I open door and run all the way in, then flense the guards at leisure with no worries, even with them yelling about it. It might be a BG2EE feature, don't recall having this precise trouble in the old days.
It's funny. The littlest details can determine the fate of a game.
Anyway, I decided to take on the Demon Knights before I left the Underdark. I did some calculations in Excel and found that, if the party was fully buffed, we could do enough damage to kill one Demon Knight per round on average.
Since Aerie is level 15 and we can reliably summon Skeleton Warriors now, Aerie casts Animate Dead twice, and with Kitthix and a Fire Elemental from Cernd, we have a small army with which to distract the Demon Knights.
Oddly enough, despite the removal of the summoning cap, we get a message saying we can't summon more than five critters. Aerie can still add a few undead to our group, but she apparently cannot summon her Deva. I decide to proceed without.
With Improved Haste and Boon of Lathander, Sil, is our strongest fighter surrogate. The Demon Knights have excellent AC, but we can handle them.
They also use Remove Magic and some other spells, but we have SI: Abjuration to maintain our immunities. The main problem is the Demon Knights' level drain on hit effect. It has a 50% chance of draining 2 levels every hit, and considering the Demon Knights' 0 THAC0 and 3 APR, they can drain your levels almost as fast as a vampire.
The early battle went slowly, and both Imoen and Nalia ended up level drained, but Jan managed to stun them later on.
The Demon Knights could clear up our Skeletons with Fireball, but we have multiple castings of Animate Dead to keep up the wall.
We used CTRL-J to reach the imprisonment sphere in the hopes of netting a little more XP, but then the drow appeared, still chasing us. We all drank Potions of Invisibility and fled the Underdark.
We didn't tell Elhan so much, though.
To be fair, I did murder their Matron Mother. Not sure what kind of tricks Phaere is going to try and pull now.
Jan sums up our predicament perfectly.
On the way home, we enlist Drizzt's help. We'll need all the help we can get against Bodhi. Jan reminds us not to let his life fade in the shadow of greater beings.
Honestly, Drizzt can't hold a candle to Jan. I'd trade half of Drizzt's entire party for Jan and his ludicrous flashers.
We head to the Adventurer's Mart, pawn off a few remaining trinkets, and buy three 9th-level scrolls: Blade Blade of Disaster, Shapechange, and Time Stop. We go from 60,000 gold to 30,000, but it was worth it. Nalia will want Time Stop to go with her first HLA, which will probably be Improved Alacrity, and Sil will need Shapechange to tank. As for Black Blade of Disaster, I'm not sure if I'll actually use it. I've done the math and it's a decent alternative to the Iron Golem form. If I use Shapechange and right setup, Sil will have 6 APR at 5 THAC0 for 336 damage per round (not counting offhand attacks with the Defender of Easthaven), assuming all attacks hit, plus immunity to magic, the elements, and 40-70% resistance to physical damage. If I use Black Blade of Disaster and the right setup, Sil will have 6 APR at -1 THAC0 for 270 damage per round, and she will also be able to cast spells. The exact choice will likely depend on the encounter, but it's hard to weigh which one would be more useful overall.
Anyway, we're still inches away from epic levels for Jan and Nalia, so I decide to take care of some unfinished business.
First is the Sir Sarles quest. I haven't done this one in ages.
I feel bad for Unger Hilldark.
He sends us off to the Derelict House (when I first played the game, I assumed Derelict was somebody's surname) and we meet Neb, who has apparently enslaved the children he murdered. Aerie's Deva is absolutely ruthless.
Apparently the souls of children scream like Xvarts. Not a pleasant detail.
Neb is also improved by SCS2, turning invisible and looking for an opportunity to backstab us, but Jan dispels his invisibility and nails him with a flasher.
Meanwhile, the children move in to level drain Nalia and Imoen. But once Neb is dead, they vanish. Even though we entered the battle unbuffed, it turned out okay. It is, after all, a minor encounter.
I decide to use the illithium to complete the quest rather than improving the Mace of Disruption, even though I really could use the immunity to level drain. I've never actually gotten the improved Mace of Disruption before. It's a pity Sir Sarles can't spare a few pounds of the material. Surely we could have used less than 200 pounds to upgrade the Mace of Disruption.
I return to the Temple of Lathander to report my success, and I get another visit from a troubled soul.
I decide that telling him to kill all the witnesses wouldn't sit well with the other clerics of Lathander.
Finally, I turn Neb's head in to Chief Inspector Brega for a small reward. Every little bit counts. Right now, Nalia and Jan are both at 2.9 million XP, and Cernd isn't far behind.
From here, I will probably head to the Planar Prison before Bodhi. By now, the Warden and his buddies will be terribly underleveled compared to the party, and it should be a fairly easy quest. Also, I'll be able to get the Gauntlets of Weapon Skill and an extra pair of Boots of Speed.
As for Bodhi herself, that's going to be difficult. I don't think I'll be able to get either Nalia or Jan to epic levels, so there will be no Time Stop or Improved Alacrity. We will, however, have 3 last scrolls of Protection from Undead, though distributing them will be a hard choice, plus a Deva and Elemental Summoning, on top of our normal spells.
I think I will need to resort to some spell-based tactics to deal with Bodhi. With SCS2 scripting, she's not going to go for Sil, who has the Amulet of Power, and with her THAC0 at -5, she will be able to drain our levels quickly. Now, if we can get her to focus on one character, then that character could drink a Potion of Absorption and potentially tank her out, since the AC bonus vs. blunt weapons would be sufficient to force Bodhi to roll a natural 20 to hit them. But even that's just a temporary measure, since she drains 5 levels per hit and the battle may go on for quite some time.
Instead, I think I will use Lower Resistance to take her MR down to 0, then flood the area with fire damage spells. Bodhi has no immunity to fire damage, at least without buffs, and we have the perfect combination of spells: Protection from Fire (the mage version, enough to cover everybody in the party), Fireball, Sunfire, and most importantly, Incendiary Cloud. Greater Malison will also work wonders. We may need a triple Secret Word Spell Sequencer to break through any spell protections Bodhi might have, but once that's gone, we should be able to take down her MR quite readily.
In fact, if Aerie and Sil both put three Fireballs in their own Spell Sequencers, we might be able to take down Bodhi within three rounds: one round to remove her spell protections, another round to lower her resistance, and a third round to cast one Flame Arrow (Nalia) and eight Fireballs (Imoen, Aerie, Sil, and Jan). And if that's not enough, both Aerie and Cernd have Fire Storm, for a combined 42 damage per round for four rounds. Even if Bodhi heals herself completely, we should be able to bring her back down.
Bodhi still comes with some very dangerous offensive spells with massive save penalties, however, so we'll need to be careful if we want to get any spells off the ground.
We have just incurred by far the greatest loss of this entire run, eclipsing all other setbacks combined. I can only think of two things that could possibly be worse, and neither of them were possible to begin with. The worst possible thing has happened, and the rest of this run will be shaped by this event.
We need to get Nalia up to level 18 and therefore gain her first HLA, Improved Alacrity. This will open up all kinds of possibilities, but first we need to get her up to 3 million XP. We have one unfinished major quest--the Planar Prison--which should be sufficient to get her to that level. We have already dealt with Mekrath and freed Haer'dalis, so all that is left is to bring the Portal Gem to Raelis Shai (awesome name, really) and rescue the troupe from the Bounty Hunters and the Warden.
Raelis asks us to kill some critters while they tear apart reality. The first one appears.
Miraculously, we manage to kill it.
After several more critters fall, some Bounty Hunters appear and cut Raelis' ritual short. They haul the whole troupe through the portal, and we follow them through. Aawill (I love these names), one of the Planar Prison's petty toughs, chuckles at our misfortune. We play it cool.
We have nothing to fear from these guys. We have come pre-buffed with immunity to fire, and we have lots of Fireballs and Sunfire spells already memorized. The Bounty Hunters are not so fortunate.
The whole group goes down in flames. We nick an extra pair of Boots of Speed from the fallen. Cernd dons the boots, just for a little extra boost.
We're still in good shape, so I decide to take on the enemies to the east without resting first. After doing away with some of the Warden's Thralls, I pick up the loot, pretty minor stuff, and am about to rest and prepare for the next battle. Then I realize the current one isn't quite over.
The Warden's Yuan-ti goons have heard the battle from afar and slithered over to help their mates.
Right about now, I realize that neither Imoen nor Nalia have cast their buffs. They've still got Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Remove Fear, Protection from Evil, and Protection from Lightning active, but they have no Blur, Shield, or Protection from Petrification. I only very recently started using that last one on every party member--except for Cernd, who can resist Flesh to Stone with his amazing MR--but it's not something I'd like to go without. Unfortunately, the battle has already begun, and I have no time to cast all of our normal buffs.
Oh, and nobody has Stoneskin active. I forgot about that one entirely.
Cernd runs out to hassle the mages, while Nalia uses the Wand of Cloudkill, which I have been neglecting lately. Some of the Yuan-ti choose to escape to the east, though one stays behind. Since he has PFMW active, Cernd can't hurt him, but Jan can. Jan summons a Flesh Golem and fires at it, but soon the Flesh Golem is slain by the Yuan-ti mages, so Jan switches to Bolts of Biting to finish off the nearest mage.
Then, Sil gets hit by Breach.
We have planned ahead for this, however, so Sil gets back both her Death Ward and Chaotic Commands in the same round. She is protected once more.
Out in the cloud, an Efreeti has just appeared. Cernd can't hit the Yuan-ti (still having trouble with PFMW), so he attacks the Efreeti instead, though I'm sure it will vanish into the mist before we can kill it. With his incredible regeneration and magic resistance, he should be able to handle the mages and the poison damage from the cloud.
Then the action bar goes blank.
Cernd has just been petrified.
I take a moment to register the situation. To my relief, Cernd has NOT SHATTERED. We can still turn him back to normal form and bring him back into the party. We still have the Ring of Earth Control, which can cast Stone to Flesh once per day. But first, we need to deal with the Yuan-ti. We summon some undead and brace for the attack. Now that Cernd is gone, the rest of the enemy will move forward.
We take down the Efreeti quickly--Jan could stun him, preventing the Efreeti from turning to mist and regenerating--but before we can get any farther, the Yuan-ti and the Wyvern both charge at us. With our wall of undead, we're still quite capable of resisting the attack, and since Jan is in spider form, we still have our best offensive asset.
The Wyvern falls. I look past the Yuan-ti to check on Cernd.
The cloud didn't affect him! He's still not shattered!
Only one Yuan-ti Mage is left, so the battle is more or less won. Aerie casts Sanctuary, in case there are any left we do not see, and runs out to check on Cernd.
I can't click on him. Aerie prepares to cast Stone to Flesh, just to see if anything changes.
Gray.
A gray icon. We can't click on him.
We finish off the Yuan-ti and hurry over to Cernd. We take down a couple more enemies as they approach, and then the scene is calm. We look over Cernd--perfectly intact, but frozen in place.
He never shattered. Aside from the fact that his sprite remains there, there are none of the stone fragments that appear when a petrified character is hit and shattered.
But we can't click on him. We rest once, to see if that changes anything.
He's not responsive. We rest again.
The pointer goes right through him. Only his shadow remains imprinted on the scene.
Cernd is dead.
He was our frontliner ever since we got him. The one character we knew would not get taken down by enemy spell damage, by enemy weapons. The one character who could charge ahead and take on the deadliest enemies, and keep the party safe. In all my years, the best tank I have ever seen in Baldur's Gate 2.
Undispellabled 80% magic resistance. Immunity to all elements. AC at -10. Permanent regeneration, 12 HP per round, enough to survive almost anything, without even using potions. A character so resilient we could use him as our target for Vampiric Touch every day, and he would absorb over 100 HP's worth of damage every day just to help keep our fragile mages alive--more health than he had himself.
And he was less than 300,000 XP from level 15. His first HLA, and 6 spells per spell level, even up to level 7. Inches away from having the strongest divine spells in the game, with virtual invulnerability to support it. But that's the thing about 80% magic resistance.
It isn't 100%.
Cernd has fallen to a Flesh to Stone spell cast by a Yuan-ti Mage, everyone's least favorite low-level spellcaster.
We have also lost our new pair of Boots of Speed. Plus the Ring of the Ram. And the Greater Werewolf Tokens, the only ones we could ever get in BG2 in single-player mode, which Jan could have used as soon as he got UAI... less than 100,000 XP away. Jan could have become our new tank, in a pinch.
Thankfully, the Bag of Holding was transported to Sil's inventory. I assume this is done to prevent the party from losing any quest items stored in the container, but it also preserved a small trove of magical items, including Vhailor's Helm, which I fortunately had stored in the Bag of Holding instead of Cernd's inventory.
To fill in the gap Cernd left, we reorganize our spells. Aerie replaces Mass Cure with Chaotic Commands, and fills her level 4 cleric spell slots with Death Ward. Neutralize Poison, on both Sil and Aerie, gets shunted aside to make room for Protection from Lightning. We no longer have a regenerating tank, so we must take greater care to protect our mages, who now compose the entirety of our party. Instead of casting Vampiric Touch on Cernd, we will use Skeletons. A reminder of the one who led us forward in every battle since the day we met.
We rest up, cast our buffs, and move on to the next fight. We bring up a wall of undead, plus a couple of Air Elementals from Aerie's Elemental Summoning, and the enemy fails miserably to stand up to the assault. The party is still strong.
We pilfer the Master of Thrall's little green orb, stated to be red in the unidentified description, and bring it over to the little pot of white light near the first room.
Once we destroy the orb, the Warden's personal Thralls will turn on him, and we will have to rush in to attack.
We re-cast our buffs, summon some undead, and destroy the orb. The Warden's hold on his prison has been broken.
We hurry over to the Warden's room. Before the fight begins, he delivers a truly chilling line.
The total master of this little pocket plane, the immortal being who controls the mind of every creature in his realm, has just promised to torture us for the rest of eternity.
Sil resists his Horrid Wilting spell, having come prepared with Protection from Magical Energy, and attacks with the Sling of Everard, the only weapon in our arsenal which can break through Improved Mantle. Aerie summons the Flesh Golem so Jan can damage the Warden despite his weapon immunities. Nalia casts Project Image.
Under pressure from Sil and Jan, the Warden cannot get any spells off the ground. And with Sil's 24 STR from the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength and Draw Upon Holy Might, she can massacre the Warden despite his Improved Mantle.
Nalia's clone casts Horrid Wilting.
Shortly thereafter, the Warden crumples. I check several times to make sure I have his key--if I don't have it when I come to rescue the troupe, I die instantly.
We return to the Prime Material Plane, leaving Cernd's shadow resting on the floor of an empty prison, drifting through the Astral Plane.
Haer'dalis offers to join us. We agree.
We don't have many other options, anyway.
Jan finally hits epic levels and chooses Use Any Item as his first HLA. Every little trinket in the game is at his fingertips, though he might need a stat boost to equip some of them at first. Once he gets Time Trap, he can get an instant kill on everyone not immune to magic or +2 weapons. Time Trap gives a 20-second Time Stop effect (the description says only 10 seconds), giving Jan three rounds of automatic hits. In spider form, with Improved Haste, he has 8 APR with Haer'Dalis Chaos Blade, which drains 2 DEX per hit, not bypassing magic resistance, so Jan can drain up to 48 Dexterity with a single trap. But we'll need a bit more XP before we can do that.
Also, we get automatic hits on helpless enemies, so Jan can stun a target with his flashers and then rush in to drain its Dexterity. Or, if we need him to keep using his flashers, Haer'dalis can dual-wield Chaos Blade and Kundane, and drain 4 DEX per round, unhasted.
Otherwise, however, Haer'dalis is mostly dead weight. I'm not even sure I should keep him at the moment.
He doesn't even have 1 million XP. The average party member has triple his experience, and we have rather little in the way of equipment to give him. He's a miserably weak fighter, a miserably weak spellcaster, and he will be extremely easy for enemies to kill. If he was a higher level, he might be able to hold his own, but right now, he's by far the single least useful character on the team. It might be better to leave him behind, so the rest of the group can get a little more XP and reach the levels that are becoming increasingly more useful to us. Nalia at level 17 isn't much stronger than Nalia at level 16, but when we're going from 18 to 19, that's a huge jump in power.
We spent a modest amount of money filling in Haer'dalis' spellbook, allowing Nalia to just barely reach 3 million XP.
After a lot of thought, she chooses Improved Alacrity as her first HLA, as planned.
The party is in very poor shape at the moment. We just lost a lot of druid spells, which means we have precious few spell slots for Negative Plane Protection. We also lost our best tank, so we will need to rely more on our summons, though thankfully we still have Aerie's Animate Dead and Elemental Summoning spells, which can give us some very tough summons, and her Deva, which is immune to level drain outright.
We've also gained some new powers in the process. Jan can use DEX drain on stunned enemies, though he does not yet have Time Trap, and Nalia has just gotten access to Chain Contingency, allowing her to cast Project Image four times at once. If we have everyone in the party, plus those four clones, cast Feeblemind simultaenously, we have a 70% chance of taking down Thaxll'ssilliyia in the first round, or 90% by the second round. And if that doesn't work, and Nalia's Project Image spells get taken down, she can re-cast Chain Contingency and throw out another three clones, and cast another three Feeblemind spells, within seconds.
If we do so, we might also choose to take on the Illithids under the Temple Sewers, which could net us the Hammer of Thunderbolts and therefore Crom Faeyr, which will obviate the need for Sil to cast DUHM and also let her attack with a stronger +5 weapon. Black Blade of Disaster would still be an improvement if we were using Righteous magic, but it would free up a 9th level spell slot.
The party has come out significantly weaker because of Cernd's loss, and Haer'dalis will nowhere near be able to compensate for it. Right now, his Chaos Blade will be a minor compensation, and in Throne of Bhaal, he'll be able to use the Improved Bard Song, a huge game changer even if I don't use Mislead.
Right now, though, a lot of my plans will need to be rethought. Dragons have suddenly become a viable target, while other encounters will be substantially more difficult. We are in dire need of XP, as the only remaining enemies of BG2 are absolutely monstrous. Sil is still over half a million XP away from getting level 9 spells, a result of the 675,000 XP investment she needed for those 11 cleric levels.
I really admire your patience and perseverence. If the petrification incident had happened to me, since Cernd hasn't shattered, my computer would have.
I haven't had Internet access for a while, so I have a lot of news all at once. A lot has happened since Cernd's death.
With Nalia bumped up to level 18, and with Time Stop now in her spellbook, the party’s spellpower has taken a massive leap. We can now take on Firkraag and Thaxll’ssillyia.
On the way out, we get interrupted by a gang of Rakshasas in disguise. Since I know how nasty they can be, I talk-block them to run away. Haer’dalis decides this is the perfect time to hit on Aerie.
He’s pretty confident considering he’s the least useful person in the party. We slip past the Rakshasas and run off to the Temple Ruins to face Thaxll’ssillyia.
I plan on using Feeblemind to take down Thaxll’ssillyia (second-favorite dragon name, right behind Nizidramanii’yt), but Feeblemind’s success is entirely reliant on chance. If Feeblemind doesn’t work, I have no chance of defeating him, and will therefore have to flee.
So, if I want to get the 45,000 XP from beating him, I need to figure out how to maximize my chances. The setup is difficult to arrange, but it’s fairly simple conceptually.
Basically, Nalia prepares a Chain Contingency with three copies of Project Image, set to activate on “Helpless.” Experienced players will recognize this Chain Contingency. When Nalia casts Project Image, she becomes helpless, triggering the contingency and creating three additional clones. These clones are all at level 18 and therefore have all of Nalia’s spells, aside from those she uses for buffs and her HLAs.
The whole party fills their spellbooks with Feeblemind and Polymorph Other. We also make sure to have Greater Malison and Doom. Nalia memorizes one casting of Pierce Magic to deal with Thaxll’ssillyia’s magic resistance. Normally, if you’re trying to Feeblemind a dragon, it’s actually best not to cast Lower Resistance first, unless you’re going up against Abazigal and it’s a high-level caster (which, by then, it should be). But since we’ve got lots of castings of Feeblemind, and Thaxll’ssillyia’s magic resistance will also block Polymorph Other, Greater Malison, and Doom, it’s best if we lower his resistance first. Pierce Magic allows us to cut down his MR without taking up a 5th level spell slot. And, in case our target comes with spell protections, we also have Secret Word.
Aerie and Sil stock up on Negative Plane Protection in case Thaxll’ssillyia survives for long. Even if you make your save vs. breath, his breath weapon will drain lots of levels and cannot be blocked by anything except for NPP.
We enter Thaxll’ssillyia’s chamber, Nalia casts Project Image, and we distribute everyone evenly around the dragon, so a Wing Buffet won’t be able to hit all of Nalia’s clones.
Nalia’s clones start to cast Time Stop, one after another. Sil summons some undead in the hopes of drawing Thaxll’ssillyia’s attention. Meanwhile, the rest of the party casts Doom, Greater Malison, and Feeblemind. Note that we need Thaxll’ssillyia to be hostile if we want Greater Malison to affect him. Thankfully, he’s hostile by the time he comes into our sight, probably because of the Skeletons we summoned.
Each Nalia clone casts Pierce Magic and then Feeblemind. Thaxll’ssillyia fails his save early on.
The battle is won! All we have to do now is take down the 480 maximum HP that SCS2 gives him. That monstrous number is the reason why Nalia can’t just nuke him into oblivion. Even without their MR, SCS2 dragons are really hard to kill with spell damage.
Sil gets the final blow. Even when we had Cernd, Sil has been our strongest melee fighter. Only Jan has more kills than she, and not by much.
I almost never go to the North Forest, Small Teeth Pass, or Forest of Tethyr to grab the minor XP gains at those locations. But since I’m trying to get as much as I possibly can, I decide to go scrounging. Hey, it’s Coran!
Coran is doomed. An old flame has sought him out, but his slender frame can’t stand up to the forces of wolfwere lovemaking. One of the benefits of having played BG2 before BG1 is that the arbitrary killing off of BG1 NPCs doesn’t bother you as much.
Right now, Haer’dalis is so weak that it’s not even worth it to cast Chaotic Commands on him. Here he is, paralyzed by a Kuo-toa’s stray bolt.
I don’t know what Kuo-toa are doing in a cave in the middle of the forest, but there they are.
We move on to the next area. I recall this area has a particularly nasty encounter.
Nasty than I remember, and far more nasty than I’m willing to tolerate. I leave the place immediately.
Since we’ve taken out a lich before at lower levels, I decide to go fight the Shade Lich. Jan cast Project Image to bypass the trap limit, but I’m pretty sure the traps do poison damage (not sure if that’s the vanilla damage type), which the lich should be immune to.
I have Nalia prepare her triple Project Image Chain Contingency, so we can power through the lich’s defenses in case Jan’s traps fail. With Ruby Ray of Reversal, Pierce Magic, and Breach, our three Nalia clones should be able to remove all of the lich’s defenses by the second round, and he will be forced to renew his defenses in lieu of attacking us. I also make sure to summon Aerie’s Deva, since I haven’t used it very much.
The battle proves disappointing. Particularly since I got no experience from the kill.
Apparently enemies don’t give any XP if they’re killed by traps set by clones.
Traps are at once the most overpowered and most underpowered ability in BG2. Overpowered because of how dangerous they are, but underpowered because most people only use them for the biggest encounters. How many people bother to set even one trap to deal with a minor encounter?
For the next lich, the Elemental Lich, I decide to use only 4 traps, the most Jan can set in one day, so at least I’ll have a chance to kill him with something else, and to make sure I actually get some XP for the trouble. Nalia’s clones attack the lich’s defenses during Time Stop and hurl Horrid Wilting spells.
That really shouldn’t do anything. Horrid Wilting is supposed to do damage by sucking water out of the victim’s body, but liches and other undead shouldn’t need any body fluids to survive. So liches are vulnerable to both poison and dehydration.
Jan, of course, still gets the final blow. And luckily for us, we get the XP this time.
We do not continue to Kangaxx. Even with three party members at epic levels, Kangaxx poses too big of a risk to make his ring worth it.
We head to the Windspear Hills to go kill Firkraag. Firkraag is much tougher, though his breath weapon isn’t quite so deadly, but for our purposes, he’s just Thaxll’ssillyia with an awful red rash.
We tweak our sequencers and contingencies a bit before entering Firkraag’s lair. I had prepared multiple Minor Sequencers with Blindness, and a couple of triple Polymorph Other Spell Sequencers, but since we’re only going to have so many rounds to try and disable Firkraag before he starts to kill us, we need defensive options instead. We switch to Blur+Mirror Image Minor Sequencers, or a double Armor of Faith sequencer for Sil, who also switches to a Cure Serious Wounds+Cure Serious Wounds+Haste Spell Sequencer, since Firkraag can do lots of damage very quickly and it would do more to help Sil get out alive than a potion.
We send out a Wizard Eye so Nalia’s clones can operate without us present.
Firkraag is not hostile, despite the clones. He does not view us as a threat.
We proceed the same as before. Pierce Magic to soften him up for later spells.
Firkraag resists our magic much longer than Thaxll’sillyia. But this was not to be a long fight.
The odds of Firkraag holding onto his wits by the end of our last clone-based Time Stop were about 3%. That’s not a guarantee of success, but in this case, it worked. Our attempts to cut out the luck factor appear to have succeeded.
Firkraag doesn’t have much more HP than Thaxll’ssillyia. The rest of the battle, as always, is uneventful.
We go to Trademeet to see if there’s any scrolls we might have missed, and run into Neeber.
Thankfully, Neeber passes on some of his experience to us, 1000 XP per head, and a teensy bit of treasure, to boot.
We take a gander at the statues in the center of Trademeet.
The artists got awful creative with the color scheme. Cernd didn’t get a makeover, though. There’s just no way to improve on his rugged good looks.
We pawn off our excess equipment at the Adventurer’s Mart, where Haer’dalis discusses his play with Aerie. She feels a bit too meek to handle the role he’s given her.
If I didn’t know Haer’dalis was a decent fellow, I’d be awful suspicious of his prodding. Fortunately, with Know Alignment, we can rest assured he is simply a whimsical Chaotic Neutral sprite, just like Jan. Pity Jan’s heart still belongs to another. I’m sure he could have devised any number of lovely inventions for Aerie.
I finally get fed up with Sil’s sluggish progress to level 18. I’m really itching for that Iron Golem form, and I’m not sure the party is strong enough to deal with Bodhi at its current level. I’m even less confident that we can deal with the demons of Watcher’s Keep without the Iron Golem form.
In Chapter 6, the Adventurer’s Mart has a special selection of items you can pay 50 gold to see. One of the items for sale is a scroll of Freedom, and Ribald sells an infinite number of them. Plus, they’re only about 670 gold apiece. I do some calculations and find that we can get Sil up to 3 million XP if we remove all other party members and spend ALL of our gold, over 30,000 pieces, on Freedom scrolls. I avoided doing this in the past, but I am impatient and there’s not much else for us to buy.
I buy 40 scrolls in total and scribe every single one. I don’t like the method, but it works.
I picked Improved Alacrity as Sil’s first HLA. There is a cute trick that I know is possible, but have never tried, involving Shapechange and Improved Alacrity. Normally, you’d need to be level 19 to cast both, but in SCS2, HLAs are innate abilities, and can only be cast once per day. Mage and cleric HLAs, however, appear next to your normal spells, not in the special abilities section of the toolbar (Improved Alacrity is right next to Shapechange, not Boon of Lathander), and cannot be cast by clones.
The nice thing about Improved Alacrity is that it allows automatic shapeshifting as well, and every time you shapechange into a Mind Flayer, you get one casting of Psionic Blast, which has a casting time of zero if Sil equips the Amulet of Power. This means that Sil can cast Improved Alacrity, shapechange into a Mind Flayer 10 times, and then cast Psionic Blast 10 times, in less than one round. It’s basically an infinite supply of Psionic Blasts for 2 rounds. It doesn’t hurt that, in SCS2, Mind Flayers get 50% resistance to physical damage along with their vanilla 90% magic resistance. If Sil equips the Defender of Easthaven in her off hand and activates her Minor Sequencer, she can achieve immunity to physical damage and near immunity to magic, so she’s quite safe while she does this.
Psionic Blast stuns for 10 rounds on a failed save vs. spell. It bypasses magic resistance, cannot be dispelled, is an area effect, and has a spell level of zero. It’s basically a trump card against everything not immune to stun.
I gather the party back together and decide to go back to Watcher’s Keep.
The last time I went to Watcher’s keep, I failed a no-reload solo run with a Cleric/Mage, due to being charmed by the Succubus and her Erinyes friends. But now the party is much stronger, and I think we can take on the demons of Watcher’s Keep. Although I’m deeply unfamiliar with Watcher’s Keep and much of TOB’s content, and there’s a lot I don’t know about how to deal with them.
The Succubus battle comes right after a dead magic zone, so I won’t be able to rely on Chaotic Commands to keep me safe from Domination. Nalia, however, has gobs of spellpower, and dead magic zones don’t affect her contingencies or spell sequencers.
Nalia wipes out most of the Erinyes with Horrid Wilting. We break through the Succubus’ defenses, but she teleports away before we can mob her. After summoning a bunch of undead to occupy the Erinyes’ attention, we take down the enemy one by one, finally swarming on the Succubus.
Jan and Haer’dalis, both charmed, cause us trouble by poisoning Nalia. But with her allies gone, the Succubus is defenseless, and quickly falls.
Our summons target Haer’dalis instead, as does our Deva. We can’t dispel it, so we just wait until it wears off. I just have to select all of our undead and give them constant orders to distract them from the raving bard in their midst.
We rest, memorize a couple of Restoration spells for Aerie and Haer’dalis, and once they’re back to their normal levels, Haer’dalis resumes charming Aerie.
He is indeed a silly man.
On the way out of the area, a couple of Glabrezus appear. Oddly enough, they’re not hostile, though I’m sure they soon will be. I talk-block them and retreat to prepare for a fight.
When I return to them, fully buffed and bolstered with summons, they have nothing to say.
Before they can turn hostile, we attack, and the twin Glabrezus fall quickly.
I assume this is an SCS2 innovation, adding little demon ambushes to spice up the already very chaotic third level of Watcher’s Keep.
On to Ka’rashur, a baatezu lord currently trapped in the maze and locked in combat with Tahazzar, a tanar’ri holed up in a separate room. Ka’rashur would normally ask us to do in his tanar’ri foe on his behalf, but since Sil is Lawful Good and Ka’rashur can detect it, he decides to attack us instead.
I send out Aerie and the Flesh Golem to distract the enemy. I need to buy Nalia and Sil a few seconds to cast their spells uninterrupted, so they hurry to the back of the room. Nalia casts Project Image, triggering her Chain Contingency as usual, and her clones begin to cast Time Stop. Sil will shortly be casting Improved Alacrity so she can flood the area with Psionic Blasts, but first, Nalia’s clones start softening up the enemy.
We use Maze to remove a couple of troublesome enemies (one an Erinyes; I forget what the other one was) and use Horrid Wilting to weaken the various Cornugons and Velithuus littered around the room. To keep Nalia and Sil safe, we also throw out Teleport Field, which will make it significantly more difficult for the demons to touch us.
The Time Stops end, and Sil’s Improve Alacrity begins. She switches to Mind Flayer form and begins firing off Psionic Blasts. With Auto-Pause on spell cast, I can cram in many such spells, and I will need a lot for this battle. The demons are not immune to stun, and Psionic Blast bypasses their ample magic resistance, but they are very numerous and very strong. I need to disable as many as I can if I am to survive.
Note the extra Teleport Fields. Since we haven’t stunned everybody yet, we don’t need to resort to melee combat, and Teleport Field does not interfere with our plans. In between Sil’s incessant spamming of Psionic Blast, I try to keep everyone else in the party proactive, adding their little spells and attacks to the battle.
Finally we stun Ka’rashur, currently standing in the northeast corner of the map. Notice that the residue of our Horrid Wilting spells is still linger on the map. Barely any in-game time has passed in between the last two screenshots. We can’t actually see very well which enemies are being disabled, as Psionic Blast does not display a “Stunned” string on a successful hit, unlike Jan’s flashers, and since it has a slow-moving projectile, Sil can end up wasting several Psionic Blasts, since we don’t know if her target has been stunned yet.
Now that Ka’rashur is disabled, we can quickly whittle him down. I assign everyone but Sil and Aerie to attack him, since she is still needed for Psionic Blasts and I’m pretty sure Ka’rashur is immune to +2 weapons and below, which includes the Mind Flayer weapon and Aerie’ Gnasher.
Ka’rashur falls. With so many ways to disable enemies, the party’s terrible THAC0 often doesn’t matter. Sil’s Improved Alacrity has run out, so she changes to Iron Golem form and helps finish off Ka’rashur. Aerie has been working on the Velithuu, who are also rapidly dying.
One of the Cornugons has managed to escape being stunned, and the Bone Fiends are immune, so they are our last potential threats. Against non-disabled enemies, our poor THAC0 makes things slow.
Due to some error, our projected images appear to be able to attack. I use our last Time Stop to get in some automatic hits with the Crimson Dart.
It’s not quite enough. The Bone Fiends are quite sturdy.
Finally, we manage to bring them down. Nalia’s clones played a critical role in managing the environment, removing some enemies early on and weakening the others enough to cut the encounter a bit shorter. Sil was, for once, the critical variable, where past encounters tended to revolve around Jan, or (more recently) Cernd, or (more recently still) Nalia. Her Psionic Blasts immobilized the vast majority of the enemy group, including Ka’rashur himself, who would have been exceptionally difficult to defeat if he were not disabled, given his -9 AC, 25% resistance to physical damage, and regeneration of 2 HP per round.
Like in the Succubus room, we get ambushed after resting. We talk-block an Erinyes and an Imp, then summon some critters to do the work for us.
Sil prepares Improved Alacrity and begins using Psionic Blast again. It only takes her one round to start throwing out psionic attacks, and she requires no Chain Contingency, making her the most rapidly effective member of our party. She no longer needs tons of buffs to be useful.
Once her Improved Alacrity runs out, she switches to Iron Golem form to finish off the Erinyes. Finally, Aerie is free to cast Remove Fear, as she has already cast her HLAs and can divert her attention to regaining our control over the Flesh Golem.
I find that the Bone Fiends are surprisingly vulnerable to Magic Missile once Jan dispels their invisibility. The last enemy falls to magical damage. Once the carnage is over, Haer’dalis starts messing with Aerie, as is his wont.
The party hasn’t been very chatty since Cernd died, but Haer’dalis never met him and is in good spirits.
The party seems to have reached a point where enemy casters are no longer our primary concern. Now that Nalia has reached 18th level, she can take down basically any level of spell protections, and do so very quickly. Even if we don’t use Project Image, Improved Alacrity can support a complete debuff against any mage: Ruby Ray of Reversal, Pierce Magic, and Breach, with an extra Ruby Ray from Aerie or Sil, will take down basically anything. Even with a full set of spell protections--Spell Turning/Deflection/Trap, Spell Shield, GOI, and PFMW/Absolute Immunity--we can remove the whole set in one round. Pierce Magic removes Spell Shield, Ruby Ray remove Spell Turning/Deflection/Trap, a second Ruby Ray from Aerie or Sil removes GOI, and Breach takes down PFMW. And once a mage is defenseless, he or she has to concentrate on renewing his or her defenses, and since every member of our party has a Breach spell memorized, an enemy mage will basically be forced to concentrate on their defenses, with no opportunity to fight back. On top of that, since we still have a spare Ruby Ray on Sil or Aerie, even a Spell Trigger with Spell Deflection+GOI+PFMW can be taken down in one round, and most enemy Chain Contingencies are wasted on the first round, usually throwing out Horrid Wilting and bringing up Improved Mantle. We might have to tweak our strategy for Irenicus, however, who likely has an extra set of defenses ready. We have two scrolls of Protection from Magic, but we’ll probably want both of them to be used in the final battle. The Tactics/SCS2 hybrid I have installed has 3 phases, two of which feature Irenicus as the enemy’s primary mage, and neither should be immune to Protection from Magic scrolls. Nor should any of his friends be able to use a Spellstrike to take it down, though you can use CLUAConsole to add liches to the final battle, and they might just have the AI to use Spellstrike on Irenicus.
Some investigation suggests that Mind Flayers have no immunity to stun or even to Psionic Blast alone, meaning Jan and Sil can both easily disable them, if Jan uses Kuo-toa Bolts in lieu of his normal flashers. With a Mind Flayer’s base save vs. spell of 5, we have about a 90% chance of stunning them with 10 separate Psionic Blasts. If we use Psionic Blast 20 times (I don’t know exactly how many times Sil can cast it in two rounds with Improved Alacrity), that chance is about 99%. For the Ulitharid in the Watcher’s Keep Illithid encampment, the chances are about 65% and 88%.
The Ulitharid is problematic because it carries a Wand of Spell Striking, which it will use on us. From our experience using it on Lavok, we believe the only way of blocking that wand is Spell Turning/Deflection/Trap, and Sil has no such spell, meaning the Ulitharid can easily take down Sil’s Chaotic Commands, rendering her vulnerable to Psionic Blast. If Sil gets stunned, we’re pretty much doomed. However, after some testing, I have found that Sil can achieve immunity to Psionic Blast. With the Ring of Protection +2, the Ring of Earth Control, the Helm of Balduran, and the Robe of the Good Archmagi, her save vs. spell is 1, which made her immune to the stun effect of Celestial Fury. Celestial Fury and Psionic Blast both have no save penalty and bypass MR.
There is a version of Psionic Blast that has a -4 save penalty, and Psionic Domination has a -2 save penalty, so Sil cannot achieve undispellable immunity to all Mind Flayer attacks. But the Breach effect of the Wand of Spell Striking does not dispel Blur or the effects of a Potion of Stone Form, so she should still be able to resist the Mind Flayers' attacks, if we buff her properly. Also, the Mind Flayers can always land a critical hit and drain Sil's Intelligence, and she can only take 4 hits before dying. Multiple Teleport Field spells, however, should keep the Mind Flayers at bay.
First, I had to pawn off a lot of gear to Garlena. The Githyanki dropped more potions than I could carry, even with the Potion Bag. Turns out that battle was quite profitable.
Unenchanted plate mail doesn't seem like much at this point in the game, but the Githyanki dropped a lot of them.
I buffed the party and headed into the Mind Flayer lair. Generally not a good idea, considering Mind Flayers have amazing powers and their average Intelligence is 18.
Anyway, Aerie started out with Summon Deva and Sil started out with Simulacrum, just for a little extra melee power. We also brought out the Flesh Golem.
The golem got stunned before it even appeared. But Jan doesn't need a target for his flashers here--the Mind Flayers's 90% MR makes flashers almost completely useless.
Nalia's clones used Emotion and Greater Malison, followed by Horrid Wilting, mostly just to get the Umber Hulks out of the way.
Luckily for us, Mind Flayers appear to have some pretty bad AC. Even with 50% physical damage resistance, they don't stand up well in melee.
Sil's clone got mazed shortly before this, but she reappeared during Nalia's clone's Time Stop. Usually Maze lasts a whole battle, at least in my experience. Jan got an unlucky hit from a Mind Flayer, but with 16 base INT (very min-maxy), he can take three more strikes before his head explodes. Also notice that Jan's Mislead spell doesn't really work: SCS2 illithids in my install can see through invisibility, as per the Tactics mod. Mislead still gives +4 bonus to melee THAC0.
Jan has two methods of stunning Mind Flayers: Celestial Fury and Kuo-toa Bolts, both of which can stun through MR. But even in spider form, he has very little luck stunning anybody. I don't know if he stunned a single flayer throughout the battle.
Without Chaotic Commands, Nalia's clones are very vulnerable to psionics, and one of them fails a save against Psionic Domination. Luckily, she does not use any spells against us.
Stil has just finished casting Improved Alacrity, and has started to use her newfound psionic abilities on the illithids. It's like irony, or something.
Her simulacrum is mostly just there for its attacks, since it has no Improved Alacrity. I don't think it makes much difference. Anyway, we encounter the same problem we had against Ka'rashur: because Psionic Blast offers no stun message and travels so slowly, we can waste several castings of Psionic Blast on a target that failed its first save. To maximize our use of the spell, we want to distribute our Psionic Blasts as evenly as possible, and concentrate on the groups of flayers that aren't yet stunned.
This is especially relevant when the Mind Flayers split up into two groups, and we can't focus on just one target to make sure we're covering the whole enemy group. In between Sil's blasts, I try to keep the other party members busy, but generally I just need them to attack the disabled flayers. All this produces a very chaotic scene, making it even harder to tell which Mind Flayers are already stunned.
An Ulitharid gets wise to Nalia's scheme and teleports over to chomp on her noggin. I can't send Sil over there without losing precious seconds she needs for Psionic Blast (Improved Alacrity only lasts so long), so I send the other party members out to help.
It's okay even if Nalia dies, though. Her role in this battle has largely already been played.
After Improved Alacrity wears off and we kill the stunned Mind Flayers, I notice that our Teleport Field has moved some of the enemy out of our reach.
I rush in to fight them, not knowing how long before they get unstunned.
Then, after the room is clear, I notice a peculiar orb floating in the air.
Jan uses Detect Traps and finds an invisible Mind Flayer, standing in the corner and stunned. We kill it before it can recover its senses.
We find another couple of enemies who had been teleported out of reach.
Our summons get in the way just long enough to let them regain consciousness and attack. But they're outnumbered by now, and though our buffs are wearing off, we established the upper hand several rounds before.
When searching the room, Sil triggers a trap.
I don't know what it was, but her pathetic 10% magic resistance might have just saved her life.
So it seems Mind Flayers are not immune to psionics. But they're awful good at making their saves. Even with all the Psionic Blasts we used, not all of them got stunned.
On the way south to the next batch of illithids, I accidentally ran over a trap. Multiple times. Lots of people got hit by it.
Everybody made their saving throws, however. I'd hate to think what would have happened if we didn't. Jan disarms it so we can move on. Traps are hard for me in Watcher's Keep and TOB because I don't know where all of them are.
For some reason, Aerie's Deva never appeared in the last battle, so I make sure to summon it before the next one begins. Turns out that wasn't the best idea.
I was so sure Devas were immune to stun. Now we will be fighting without it.
Incidentally, I LOVE the Devas and Planetar's voices. Their avatars are awesome, too. They just look and sound epic.
Detonate caused a fair amount of damage, so Aerie casts Mass Cure.
I really should have moved her out of the way. We have to drink potions instead. Notice our upgrade to Potions of Superior Healing. We gathered so many that we didn't have room for weaker potions.
Things start to get complicated really fast. I don't know if I can cast big spells without getting interrupted. The Mind Flayers take advantage of the lull and teleport in--ignoring the Deva, because they know it's not going anywhere.
Plus, Nalia is within the Mind Flayers' view. They can easily rush up and suck out her brains. And I just cast Teleport Field, but it doesn't cover where we are now.
Nalia's a smart girl. She probably has quite yummy brains.
That would probably explain this.
Also notice that they dispelled Imoen's defenses.
I bring back Nalia with the Rod of Resurrection. With this many enemies around me, I need to shunt the rod over to Jan, since Aerie, Sil, and Nalia's clones are all rather busy. Jan also switches cloaks with Sil, since the Cloak of Mirroring, normally on Jan, should keep Sil safe from Detonate.
Sil casts Improved Alacrity without getting interrupted, maybe thanks to the Cloak of Mirroring. All this time, Nalia's clones have been refraining from casting Time Stop, for fear that they'll get hit by Detonate. One of them has also been stunned, and another is flat out missing. Imoen, too, is stunned, and already is getting chomped.
Nalia is still under the effects of Project Image, so she's actually very vulnerable here. And her clones didn't vanish when she died, so using the Rod of Resurrection before Project Image ran out accomplished absolutely nothing.
At some point, I realize that I don't actually need to target any enemies to use Psionic Blast. Before, I had targeted the charmed Nalia clone, since trying to target a Mind Flayer got the spell canceled due to invisibility message. But since the Psionic Blast projectile, like Jan's flashers, affects only enemies no matter what the target is, I can target my own party and affect the Mind Flayers that way. Aerie is in a convenient location to reach some out of the way illithids.
It produces a rather dense stream of magic, heading south from Sil's head. There's a Mind Flayer down there who still doesn't have an orb over its head, indicating it's still not stunned.
Then I realize that I can use myself as a target to hit the illithids right next to me. I click 2 to target Sil.
Look at that chaos. This is what I have to search through to make the most of Sil's Psionic Blast. I spent minutes in this one round alone.
Teleport Field also gave me some targeting problems. As the seconds passed in these screenshots, I saw the Mind Flayers get teleported individually. Normally you see everybody teleport together. This is how slow things were going.
Earlier, I had one of Nalia's clones cast Teleport Field to protect Imoen. It wasn't enough in the end.
See the Draw Upon Holy Might animation on Sil? I got fed up with the pace and decided to use the remainder of Sil's Improved Alacrity, however much it was, to prepare her for melee combat. I activated my Minor Sequencer, cast PFMW, DUHM, and Boon of Lathander, and only then does the Improved Alacrity effect run out.
We tear apart the Mind Flayers in the hallway. Sil is a monster even when she's not shapeshifted. But we didn't move fast enough to save Imoen.
Nalia's Project Image runs out, too, and we regain control of the original. She goes back for her equipment but finds Imoen's instead. Since we don't have time to waste, she takes Imoen's stuff instead and equips what she needs.
Nalia gets targeted by a Psionic Blast. It's too late for Sil to cast her last Chaotic Commands spell on Nalia, so I just have Nalia cast PFMW, so she at least has 4 rounds of safety. I could Maze her to keep her alive a bit longer after that. [/spoiler][/spoiler] Without Robe of Vecna, Nalia can't cast PFMW instantly. I could have handed her the Amulet of Power, but then Sil would have lost it if Nalia failed her save vs. spell.
Also notice, in the above screenshot the Mind Flayers trapped in the nearby room, who are attacking us through the walls. And see that orb hovering over the leftmost Mind Flayer's head? It hasn't actually been stunned; it just has the animation over its head. So we have to roll to hit it.
We have excellent melee strength, however, and the Mind Flayers fall, but not before they can kill Nalia.
Two deaths. That's the highest death count of this entire run. I bring them back with CTRL-R (too lazy to memorize Raise Dead) and we rest and recover outside.
Well, it's not so much a rest as a vacation.
The rest of the illithid encampment is a breeze. The only two encounters are a trio of Umber Hulks and a pair of Vampiric Illithids, neither of whom can do any harm to us. Not as we are now.
There was a time when guys like these were bosses. At this point, they're just random goons.
With the last of the three colored oils in our possession, we light some prettyful torches and open the way to Rock and Garock. Sil summons a Simulacrum to help her fight the Minotaurs.
To my surprise, Sil and her clone are not the only ones getting anything done in this battle.
With the Crystal Mallet in hand, we stroll over to Carston's pod.
I don't actually know what happens if you hit it the wrong number of times.
Carston is quite happy with escaping with his life.
I wonder what he'll do now. Everyone he knows is dead by now. He has decades if not centuries of experience watching things kill each other, without any apparent social contact. What kind of life is open to him now?
I split up the special treats of the Machine of Lum the Mad. Aerie gets the DEX bonus for an extra point of AC. Sil gets the WIS bonus for an extra 1st- and 4th-level cleric spell (Aerie would get nothing), and memorizes Death Ward in case somebody gets hit by Breach. Sil also gets the magic resistance bonus and INT bonus, and also the CHA bonus, because why not. And Jan gets the STR bonus to improve his carrying capacity, since Haer'dalis and Sil will both be relying on items to boost their Strength.
So the illithids are done and the next level of Watcher's Keep is open. Some of the quests are there are fairly simple. What won't be so easy will be the gang of liches, or Azamantes, or the fight with Xei Win Toh.
I might stop short of that last one. Lots of unknowns about that battle.
As for the rest of Watcher's Keep, I'll probably take down Saladrex, but leave the Demilich well alone. I might do a test run to see if Jan's flashers work on an SCS2 demilich, but otherwise I have no reason to risk getting hit by Imprison. That's basically eternal hell.
I don't know why anyone would ever knowingly go up against a demilich. The penalty for losing is endless loneliness and insanity. The reward is winning is XP, and XP can be found lots of other places. You could do it for the bragging rights, but why bother? You could just lie about killing the demilich, and anyone who tried to double-check your story would never come back to expose you.
As for Demogorgon himself... well, Sil is Lawful Good. She's going to keep Demogorgon where ze belongs: in Watcher's Keep, away from both the Prime Material Plane and the Abyss. Demogorgon has no special loot and you get more XP from locking him up than setting him free into the Abyss.
The thing is, today I planned on fighting Saladrex, an extra beefy version of Firkraag. I figured I'd rush in, send down a Wizard Eye, then have Nalia's clones barrage Saladrex with Feeblemind spells. Same way I killed the last two dragons. Right?
Well, I headed back to the Githyanki encampment and prepared my spellbook for the encounter. Since the area has two exits besides the way you come in, and one of them leads to a Demilich, I go to DLTCEP and check the area file to make sure I've gotten the right one. I double-check the coordinates before entering, and head on in.
I knew the 300th screenshot was going to be a good one.
Well, this encounter is beyond me. Putting aside the fact that I don't ever really want to fight SCS2 demiliches, not in this run, I also am completely unprepared for this fight. I was expecting a dragon, not a demilich.
I decide to leave.
Uh oh.
Well, now the fight is unavoidable. I'm trapped in a room with a demilich. And in SCS2, both of BG2's demiliches cast spells as well as use Imprisonment. And like in PnP, SCS2 demiliches can cast spells and use Imprisonment in the same round.
I decide I need a trump card. I pull out a Protection from Magic scroll, but before I use it, I decide to check the files in DLTCEP to make sure it's going to work as I intended.
It turns out the scroll now works by casting a spell, which is why Spellstrike in SCS2 can take down a Protection from Magic scroll. The interesting thing is that, although the SPELL bypasses magic resistance entirely, the scroll does not. So MR can't block the spell, but it can prevent you from casting the spell.
I double-check the Demilich's file.
100% magic resistance.
The scroll wouldn't work on it. Neither would Jan's flashers. Kuo-toa Bolts won't work either, because they only hit as +1 weapons.
I ponder my options. I do have multiple +4 and +5 weapons available, although the only +5 weapon that lasts forever is the Sling of Everard (Aerie's Energy Blades and Summon Deva spell are another option). But we don't have a whole lot of defenses. I have Potions of Magic Protection and Potions of Magic Resistance, but both of them are dispellable.
The main problem is I spent most of my 5th level spell slots on Feeblemind spells. Everyone in the party has precisely one casting of Spell Immunity, and no other spell protections memorized.
I begin by having Haer'dalis and Imoen target the Demilich with the Wand of Spell Striking. Even if it takes down their spell protections, at least it will break through the Demilich's Spell Turning and Protection from Magical Weapons. Nalia casts Project Image. I have her clone cast Time Stop.
It comes out instantly. I forgot to unequip Nalia's custom bracers of Improved Alacrity, which also give a bonus of 9 to casting time. I can't unequip it now that Nalia has cast Project Image. I decide not to reload to prevent the error from occurring. Instead, I'll just wait several seconds in between their spells, to simulate not having Improved Alacrity or instant spellcasting active.
Nalia's first clone casts Mordenkainen's Sword, Improved Haste (I think on Sil), and maybe Ruby Ray of Reversal, in case it makes any difference. Aerie casts RRoR, too, after the Time Stop runs out. I send Sil out to the corner and have the clones spread out to cover her, casting Mordenkainen's Sword for lack of any better options.
The Wand of Spell Striking succeeds, thankfully, but we have new problems to deal with. Now the Demilich has a friend.
Notice that Jan is suddenly level drained, which at the time I assumed was due to the Demilich. I'm pretty sure now it was the Balor, though.
Around this time, everybody casts SI: Abjuration to protect themselves from Imprisonment. But the Demilich should be able to take down Spell Immunity in a single round. That's what the placement of the clones is for: to keep the Demilich from turning his attention to Sil.
Since I saw a text line indicating that the Demilich attacked one of us, I decided that Sil needed PFMW to keep her safe. This slowed us down another round, but I really want to cast Improved Alacrity without getting interrupted.
Then, out of nowhere, Imoen vanishes from the party.
I go back through the dialogue box to see what happened, and spot a line saying Level Drain. It's worse than I thought.
I've seen this before, very long ago, when fighting Thaxll'ssillyia. He hit us with a breath weapon, draining our levels, and right before Charname died, I saw several party members removed from the party, and a shower of stony shards bursting in the air. Level drain somehow produced the same death as petrification: removing them from the party, killing them, and playing the shattered animation for stoned characters.
Imoen just got level drained to death. And permanently killed.
If we actually survive this fight, we'll be a member short. And the only non-fighter NPC left is Viconia.
Sil finishes casting Improved Alacrity and shapeshifts into a Mind Flayer. I don't know if the Demilich is vulnerable to Psionic Blast, but I do know spell level immunities and magic resistance are both incapable of blocking it. I target the Mordenkainen's Swords with Psionic Blast, in case the Demilich turns invisible and cancels one of my spells.
Meanwhile, Jan and his Simulacrum (conjured the first round) attack with Firetooth. We already broke through both of the Demilich's PFMW spells, and though Jan has terrible APR and THAC0, he might just be able to do a little bit of damage. Aerie uses the Sling of Everard, borrowed from Sil before shapeshifting. While this is happening, Nalia's clones cast three copies of Pierce Magic on the Balor, which we had planned to use to lower Saladrex' magic resistance, and one of them prepares to Maze it once its MR is down.
Then I see something beautiful.
See that little dot of magic over the Demilich's head? That's the beginning of the restoration animation, which appears when a target fails a save against Psionic Blast. We stunned the Demilich! Ten rounds of automatic hits!
Aerie lands a hit on the now-stunned Demilich... and I see a disturbing message in the dialog box.
Aerie disrupted its spell. You can't disrupt a spell unless the target is in the middle of casting. The Demilich wasn't stunned at all.
I keep firing off Psionic Blast, partly to hit the Balor in the north corner, but mostly because I'm hoping the Demilich isn't really immune, and the restoration animation was just an error. While Sil is busy firing off her Psionic Blasts, the situation deteriorates.
A second Balor. They're awful powerful critters, but the Demilich is still by far the biggest threat.
I double-check the Demilich's creature file and find out that it is equipped with RING95, which grants it all the standard undead immunities, including the immunity to stun. The Demilich is indeed immune to Psionic Blast. Or at least, to the stunning effect. The Demilich can still fail a save and get hit by the animation.
I switch gears. Sil returns to natural form, casts Improved Haste, then Boon of Lathander, another Boon of Lathander, and finally Draw Upon Holy Might, giving her six APR with reasonable THAC0, about 4 to the Demilich's roughly -10 AC. Aerie tosses her the Sling of Everard so Sil can attack from afar. Aerie uses the War Hammer +1, +4 vs. Giantkin, more for lack of a better weapon than anything else. She has no proficiency in war hammers, but at least she'll be able to do one or two damage on a critical hit. Every point of damage could turn failure into success.
The Demilich is actually in pretty bad shape right now, considering all the Mordenkainen's Swords around it. If it cast Teleport Field and wiggled around a little more, it could have avoided almost all the damage. Notice that we've manage to Maze the first Balor. The other one, mercifully, has been stunned, though I didn't notice that at the time.
The Demilich senses the danger and activates an Improved Invisibility+Spell Shield+SI: Divination Spell Trigger. Jan dispels his illusions quickly. If he did not, the Demilich could have spent up to 20 rounds waiting out our buffs and adding to his own.
The Demilich attacks Aerie. Since I want Aerie to have the breathing room to cast Summon Deva and Energy Blades (not sure in what order), I have her cast PFMW first.
Without its invisibility, the Demilich is blocked in and perilously low on health. Unlike Kangaxx, he has no regeneration to help him.
A Mordenkainen's Sword claims the final blow.
That was quite surprising. I just killed a Demilich without planning ahead. But we've lost Imoen forever. It was nowhere near worth the sacrifice.
The Balor teleports directly into the fray and we cut it down. It's still stunned from before.
The next Balor returns from its Maze, but it is also stunned and helpless. It seems Nalia's clone's Maze actually made no difference. But that speaks more to the strength of Psionic Blast than the weakness of Maze, since Maze did keep it out of combat when we needed all our attention on the Demilich.
Finally, the last of the enemies are dead. Nalia has just reached level 19. Imoen, however, has vanished. Even her equipment is gone.
The Demilich took that from us, too.
Out of curiosity, I rest and memorize Freedom. I saw her getting level drained, but I suppose it's possible the cause of death was something else. Sil casts Freedom.
Imoen is glad to see us. Aerie casts Restoration on Jan and Imoen and we fill in their spellbooks. It's good to have her back.
Oh, and I also killed Saladrex.
Bo-ring. But boring is good. Exciting is scary.
This was one of the crazier parts of this run, which is saying something. How often do people kill a Demilich without planning for the encounter? I did get 3 seconds cut off of the casting time of the first Time Stop, but since the Nalia clones did almost nothing besides summon Mordenkainen's Swords and Maze the Balor (the Teleport Field was Aerie's), their custom Improved Alacrity item made little difference, if any.
It seems SCS2 demiliches are not actually immune to all spell levels. They're only immune to level 4 spells and below, like SCS2 liches, but they come with 100% magic resistance and immunities to spells which bypass it, like Imprisonment. But they have no immunity to Breach, Pierce Magic, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Khelben's Warding Whip, and Spellstrike. Wands of Spell Striking work against them, too, since they have a spell level of 9. This lich only came buffed with Spell Turning, SI: Abjuration, and PFMW, which could easily be taken down with a couple of charges from the Wand of Spell Striking, or RRoR+Spell Thrust+Breach. He had an extra PFMW on a Contingency and/or memorized, but we could take that down, too, rendering him just as vulnerable as he is in the vanilla game.
The battle could have gone the other way if he had different spell choices. Death Spell would have rendered the party largely helpless, considering how much of the work was done by those Mordenkainen's Swords. Teleport Field would have had the same effect. Extra PFMW spells wouldn't have helped him, but a Magic Attack spell to remove our Spell Immunity would have ruined us. Remove Jan's SI: Abjuration, imprison him, and activate the Spell Trigger, and the Demilich could have waited out the rest of our buffs, and then just Imprisoned the whole group.
Thankfully, this little guy was prepared for a different party. One without Jan, or Mordenkainen's Swords.
Still not going to take on Kangaxx. I've seen him use Teleport Field in SCS2. He'd be better prepared than this one.
Comments
First, the good. I installed the tweakpack component that removes the drow avatars, and it worked. So I can do the quests now.
Before going to Ust Natha, I decided to grab the Kuo-toa Prince's blood so I wouldn't have to do it later. The Kuo-toa proved quite vulnerable to Jan's flashers. But then, almost everything is.
My party's ability to throw out five disablers at once makes it even more unfair.
The Kuo-toa Prince surprised us after the battle, but luckily he too failed a save against Jan's flashers, and with automatic hits we could overwhelm his regeneration.
I decided to avoid the Demon Knights, as I was not willing to deal with the level drain. But I did want to kill the drow at the Underdark exit, so I went out to attack them.
Turns out they're not hostile, which I should have expected, since we're drow. We have the option to bribe the door guard, but I accidentally offend him.
The enemy is pretty tough, actually forcing Cernd to use a potion.
But with a constant stream of flashers, the enemy usually cannot act. We still can't open the door, though.
At Ust Natha, we spent about 60,000 gold, half our supply, on potions, scrolls, and Kaligun's Amulet of Magic Resistance.
Lots of XP, very quickly. What else would we spend our gold on?
We meet Solaufein and Imrae, who ask us to kill some Mind Flayers. Jan sets a bunch of traps before the Mind Flayers spawn, and switches to Paralytic Bolts to bypass the Mind Flayers' MR. He was able to stun them successfully.
See that recurring "Mind Flayer- Magic Resistance" sign? It indicates that the Mind Flayer is resisting Jan's bolts with its MR. But it's still paralyzed, which is why there are no attack rolls in this text. The reason is because the stunning effect bypasses MR, while the text string that says "Stunned" is blocked by MR. So, if we stun something with Paralytic Bolts or Kuo-toa Bolts, we might not get a message telling us that.
We tell the Aboleth to buzz off. I don't know what stats you need to get that dialog option, but Sil has 18 INT and WIS, and with the Ring of Human Influence she has 18 CHA as well.
The Aboleth's response is perfect.
Mostly I just didn't want to have to bother with Qilue. Talking the Aboleth out of its quest isn't worth as much XP, but it doesn't pose any risks.
Phaere has a great line around here, too.
Very grim.
Even though the Nabassu managed to paralyze Cernd, his Ironskin and regeneration kept him alive. The rest of the battle was very long, though. Cernd could only hit the Nabassu on a critical hit. I left the game running for a little while on its own, since I knew it would take a long time and end in victory anyway. The Sahuagin was actually much more deadly, since it could hit Cernd more often. I lost a potion or two in that fight.
Since I know we're going to have to fight a Beholder in the southeast corner of Ust Natha, I decide to make a few preparations before it arrives.
I also notice that our resting times are restricted by the Ust Natha quest, which means that I can't legitimately use CLUAConsole to add in Jan's flashers. I will have to ration them until I escape.
Phaere asks us to kill some svirfneblin. Aerie breaks our cover. She's not very good at this.
Speaking of Aerie, all this quest experience bumped her up to mage level 14. She is now at epic levels (I don't know how she got so much more XP than the rest of the party) and has chosen Summon Deva as her first pick. In SCS2, with my install options, mage and cleric HLAs can only be taken once, so they don't occupy the same slots as level 7 or level 9 spells. This means Aerie can cast both Earthquake and Summon Deva in one day, but as she gains cleric levels, she will not be able to summon a Deva more than once per day.
Matron Mother Ardulace is quite astute.
Thankfully, Phaere interrupts her probing.
Normally, you get interrupted on the way to Phaere's house by a drow named Taso Kala, who demands that you fight off some priests in the southeast corner of Ust Natha. I already laid 7 traps there, replacing the ones that the Beholder triggered earlier, but to circumvent Taso Kala's request entirely, I cast Invisibility 10' Radius and walk right past her.
Sil lost her invisibility on speaking to Phaere, so she drank a Potion of Invisibility before leaving Phaere's home, preventing Taso Kala from interrupting us on the way out.
Phaere has asked us to betray the Matron Mother, and Solaufein shortly arrives to help us betray Phaere. We have two sets of dragon eggs. Since I've confused them in the past, I make sure I've got them straight: I take the real dragon eggs from the treasury, plant Phaere's dragon eggs there, then return to give Solaufein's dragon eggs to Phaere.
And since I've turned the whole city hostile before in the process of retrieving those eggs, I check an online walkthrough to make sure I can avoid that. I use sorcerors.net and find some advice on how to avoid turning the other drow hostile:
"When you open the door, the two Egg Guards attack you. Make sure to kill them out of sight of the Matron's Guards, or there will be trouble."
So, I have to kill the Egg Guards where the other guards can't see them. As long as the other guards don't see them, I should be fine.
So, I cast all my buffs, approach the Egg Guards while invisible, unlock the door, and attack the Egg Guards, making sure the whole party is out of sight of the Matron Mother's guards. I even retreat a little bit into the treasury, exposing my party to the Golems, to make sure I "kill [the Egg Guards] out of sight of the Matron's Guards." Curiously, Jan seems unable to stun them with Paralytic Bolts.
One of the Egg Guards shouts about protecting the eggs. I've never seen that message before.
On the way out, I see the bad news.
The Matron Guards are hostile now. I decide to escape the city, but first I check to see if Phaere is hostile, in case I haven't actually broken the quest yet.
No such luck.
Everybody drinks a Potion of Invisibility and we run down to the city entrance. It is not a pleasant walk.
SCS2 improves the defenses of Ust Natha, adding lots of tough enemies to swarm the party if things go south. It's actually supposed to be impossible to fight your way through Ust Natha; the modders figured it didn't make sense for a party of adventurers to be able to take on an entire city.
Right before we get out, I hear a divination spell being cast. It's coming from a drow priestess at the city exit. Cernd interrupts the spell with a single attack, and then drinks a potion to regain his Invisibility.
I try to exit the city, but I can't get out. The city is still sealed.
I rush back to the treasury to save my place. I don't know how to get out of this.
In the past, when I've fought my way out of Ust Natha, I just killed everybody. That's not supposed to be possible in SCS2. According to the readme, you're supposed to have to "get out as soon as you can" instead. So, what do I have to do to open the city gates, if not kill everybody in the city?
I am considering reloading an earlier save, mostly because I am too attached to this run, but also because I was basing my actions on a misleading statement. Killing the Egg Guards out of sight of the Matron Mother's guards does not, apparently, prevent the city from turning on you. The walkthrough said, "When you open the door, the two Egg Guards attack you. Make sure to kill them out of sight of the Matron's Guards, or there will be trouble." That implies that killing them OUT of sight of the Matron Mother's guards would prevent the latter from going hostile. It does not. The Egg Guards died well out of the sight range of the other guards, but the city still went hostile, I assume because the Egg Guards will shout out if you let them live too long, and that dialogue turns the rest of the city hostile.
I'm upset that things have gone so wrong, but I'm especially upset that the walkthrough's advice didn't work. I was counting on the walkthrough to give me a solution to the problem. Now the quest is broken, the city is hostile, and the city entrance is blocked, and I do not know how to unblock it.
What now?
Our Haste spell from Imoen has run out, but we have Oil of Speed.
Kidding, but... yeah.
Cernd cast a summoning spell to become visible (everyone was under the effects of a Potion of Invisibility) so Nalia could cast Improved Haste on him. Everyone else used an Oil of Speed. We would need the speed to get past all the enemies without getting stuck. Nalia and Cernd returned to invisbility with potions and we ran out to the exit out of the Temple of Lolth. Nalia, Aerie, Jan, and Imoen hurried to the front to make sure we wouldn't get blocked off. Even if the enemy spawns formed a wall to the exit, we could still escape as long as one party member could reach the exit.
Meanwhile, Sil and Cernd hung out in the round chamber. The Matron Mother is standing alone in a room to the west. She's a high-level cleric and very sturdy (96 base magic resistance, plus 100 HP and lots of spell), so we need a special trick to deal with her.
Sil casts Limited Wish, which does not break her Invisibility. As soon as the djinni appears, she runs south to join the others. Cernd talks to the djinni and picks the Time Stop option.
Cernd now has 18 seconds of freedom, and every attack he makes will hit automatically. With Improved Haste and dual-wielding, that amounts to 96 damage every round on average. The Matron Mother, however, pre-casts Regeneration, so she heals 18 HP per round, or 54 over the course of the Time Stop, and Cernd has to run over to her, which costs us a second or two. Cernd just barely makes it.
Cernd picks up her equipment and drinks a Potion of Invisibility. The Time Stop ends almost immediately. Unlucky damage rolls could have allowed her to survive.
Cernd rushes back to the party and we escape the Temple of Lolth. We dash through the city, trying not to get stuck behind the gradually spawning enemies. We manage to slip through a couple of tight spots, just outside the temple, and run down the street, towards the city entrance.
Thankfully, the entrance itself stands clear, and the cleric waiting to dispel our invisibility no longer has her divination spell.
Sil and Nalia had a couple of Teleport Field spells in case the drow got too bunched up together, and we always had the option of leaving any stragglers in the party behind to die (they could have passed their equipment on to the next party member, and we could have raised them later), but that was never necessary.
We're outside the gate. We made it.
Then we get a surprise on the way to Adalon's lair.
Thankfully, the drow do not enter Adalon's lair. I suppose it makes sense, since you need the Light Gem to enter. I don't know how they got in the first time, to steal her eggs, though. They must have had another method.
Adalon is pleased with our success, though I'm still upset we didn't get all the XP for that quest.
Adalon leads us to the Underdark exit, which we have already cleared of drow. The way is open.
I am still disappointed in the whole affair. It seems like such a cheap resolution. I'm pleased with the escape itself, but none of the steps that preceded it.
As far as I'm aware, turning the city hostile when stealing the eggs is a completely random event. Sometimes you kill the Egg Guards and nobody notices, and sometimes they do notice, and the quest is automatically broken--you have to flee the city instead of completing the questline. This is one of the few times I've ever had that happen. I don't know how I was supposed to prevent that. I attacked the Egg Guards fully buffed, which should have killed anybody right away, and I did so when the Matron Mother's guards were out of sight. I even used Paralytic Bolts, which should have easily stunned the Egg Guards, since Paralytic Bolts stun through magic resistance.
The advice I followed did not pan out, and I got what seemed to be a random event. Even if that one line of dialogue interrupting the fight is what causes the city to go hostile--the Egg Guards suddenly yelled to protect the eggs, in the middle of the battle--it shouldn't have happened. I don't even remember seeing that line in my previous runs, for one thing, and if anything, I killed them faster than usual in this run... which ostensibly would have prevented them from shouting out. How do you prevent the city from turning hostile? Killing them quickly and out of sight was not sufficient.
Even more irritating was my own mistake, forgetting that the city was sealed. On top of that, I had to reload once--my plan to kill the Matron Mother during Time Stop failed because I forgot to cast Improved Haste on Cernd. Apparently either Cernd rolled some really terrible damage rolls the first time around, or the Matron Mother comes buffed with Armor of Faith. I had performed some tests beforehand, but in my head, I had decided to make that attempt a real run--not a test, but the real fight, and it failed due to a stupid mistake. Improved Haste would have won the battle.
None of this would have happened in the first place if those Egg Guards hadn't broken the whole quest. I don't even know why that happened, or why it doesn't happen in the vast majority of my runs of BG2.
Does anybody know why the city sometimes goes hostile when you kill the Egg Guards and replace the real eggs with Phaere's eggs?
Does anybody know why the Egg Guards sometimes turn the city hostile? Either way, I'm going to continue the run, but if the Egg Guard problem is just a fluke or a random event, I'm going to consider this still a no-reload run, given all the trouble they called. I just want to know if there was any way of avoiding that, besides just not completing the quest.
It is way too hard (impossible?) to do it inside in SCS because of the "better calls for help" modification. That's what misled you.
I suppose one way to do it would have been to use the Time Stop on the Egg Guards instead of the Matron Mother. We could have dealt enough damage within those 18 seconds to kill both Egg Guards, preventing them from calling for help entirely.
Screw everything. No reload run or not, I'm going to keep going.
With party visible, AI off, I open door and run all the way in, then flense the guards at leisure with no worries, even with them yelling about it. It might be a BG2EE feature, don't recall having this precise trouble in the old days.
Haeravon's walkthrough indicates the same thing about doing the deed inside the room.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/663934-baldurs-gate-ii-enhanced-edition/faqs/68513
Anyway, I decided to take on the Demon Knights before I left the Underdark. I did some calculations in Excel and found that, if the party was fully buffed, we could do enough damage to kill one Demon Knight per round on average.
Since Aerie is level 15 and we can reliably summon Skeleton Warriors now, Aerie casts Animate Dead twice, and with Kitthix and a Fire Elemental from Cernd, we have a small army with which to distract the Demon Knights.
Oddly enough, despite the removal of the summoning cap, we get a message saying we can't summon more than five critters. Aerie can still add a few undead to our group, but she apparently cannot summon her Deva. I decide to proceed without.
With Improved Haste and Boon of Lathander, Sil, is our strongest fighter surrogate. The Demon Knights have excellent AC, but we can handle them.
They also use Remove Magic and some other spells, but we have SI: Abjuration to maintain our immunities. The main problem is the Demon Knights' level drain on hit effect. It has a 50% chance of draining 2 levels every hit, and considering the Demon Knights' 0 THAC0 and 3 APR, they can drain your levels almost as fast as a vampire.
The early battle went slowly, and both Imoen and Nalia ended up level drained, but Jan managed to stun them later on.
The Demon Knights could clear up our Skeletons with Fireball, but we have multiple castings of Animate Dead to keep up the wall.
We used CTRL-J to reach the imprisonment sphere in the hopes of netting a little more XP, but then the drow appeared, still chasing us. We all drank Potions of Invisibility and fled the Underdark.
We didn't tell Elhan so much, though.
To be fair, I did murder their Matron Mother. Not sure what kind of tricks Phaere is going to try and pull now.
Jan sums up our predicament perfectly.
On the way home, we enlist Drizzt's help. We'll need all the help we can get against Bodhi. Jan reminds us not to let his life fade in the shadow of greater beings.
Honestly, Drizzt can't hold a candle to Jan. I'd trade half of Drizzt's entire party for Jan and his ludicrous flashers.
We head to the Adventurer's Mart, pawn off a few remaining trinkets, and buy three 9th-level scrolls: Blade Blade of Disaster, Shapechange, and Time Stop. We go from 60,000 gold to 30,000, but it was worth it. Nalia will want Time Stop to go with her first HLA, which will probably be Improved Alacrity, and Sil will need Shapechange to tank. As for Black Blade of Disaster, I'm not sure if I'll actually use it. I've done the math and it's a decent alternative to the Iron Golem form. If I use Shapechange and right setup, Sil will have 6 APR at 5 THAC0 for 336 damage per round (not counting offhand attacks with the Defender of Easthaven), assuming all attacks hit, plus immunity to magic, the elements, and 40-70% resistance to physical damage. If I use Black Blade of Disaster and the right setup, Sil will have 6 APR at -1 THAC0 for 270 damage per round, and she will also be able to cast spells. The exact choice will likely depend on the encounter, but it's hard to weigh which one would be more useful overall.
Anyway, we're still inches away from epic levels for Jan and Nalia, so I decide to take care of some unfinished business.
First is the Sir Sarles quest. I haven't done this one in ages.
I feel bad for Unger Hilldark.
He sends us off to the Derelict House (when I first played the game, I assumed Derelict was somebody's surname) and we meet Neb, who has apparently enslaved the children he murdered. Aerie's Deva is absolutely ruthless.
Apparently the souls of children scream like Xvarts. Not a pleasant detail.
Neb is also improved by SCS2, turning invisible and looking for an opportunity to backstab us, but Jan dispels his invisibility and nails him with a flasher.
Meanwhile, the children move in to level drain Nalia and Imoen. But once Neb is dead, they vanish. Even though we entered the battle unbuffed, it turned out okay. It is, after all, a minor encounter.
I decide to use the illithium to complete the quest rather than improving the Mace of Disruption, even though I really could use the immunity to level drain. I've never actually gotten the improved Mace of Disruption before. It's a pity Sir Sarles can't spare a few pounds of the material. Surely we could have used less than 200 pounds to upgrade the Mace of Disruption.
I return to the Temple of Lathander to report my success, and I get another visit from a troubled soul.
I decide that telling him to kill all the witnesses wouldn't sit well with the other clerics of Lathander.
Finally, I turn Neb's head in to Chief Inspector Brega for a small reward. Every little bit counts. Right now, Nalia and Jan are both at 2.9 million XP, and Cernd isn't far behind.
From here, I will probably head to the Planar Prison before Bodhi. By now, the Warden and his buddies will be terribly underleveled compared to the party, and it should be a fairly easy quest. Also, I'll be able to get the Gauntlets of Weapon Skill and an extra pair of Boots of Speed.
As for Bodhi herself, that's going to be difficult. I don't think I'll be able to get either Nalia or Jan to epic levels, so there will be no Time Stop or Improved Alacrity. We will, however, have 3 last scrolls of Protection from Undead, though distributing them will be a hard choice, plus a Deva and Elemental Summoning, on top of our normal spells.
I think I will need to resort to some spell-based tactics to deal with Bodhi. With SCS2 scripting, she's not going to go for Sil, who has the Amulet of Power, and with her THAC0 at -5, she will be able to drain our levels quickly. Now, if we can get her to focus on one character, then that character could drink a Potion of Absorption and potentially tank her out, since the AC bonus vs. blunt weapons would be sufficient to force Bodhi to roll a natural 20 to hit them. But even that's just a temporary measure, since she drains 5 levels per hit and the battle may go on for quite some time.
Instead, I think I will use Lower Resistance to take her MR down to 0, then flood the area with fire damage spells. Bodhi has no immunity to fire damage, at least without buffs, and we have the perfect combination of spells: Protection from Fire (the mage version, enough to cover everybody in the party), Fireball, Sunfire, and most importantly, Incendiary Cloud. Greater Malison will also work wonders. We may need a triple Secret Word Spell Sequencer to break through any spell protections Bodhi might have, but once that's gone, we should be able to take down her MR quite readily.
In fact, if Aerie and Sil both put three Fireballs in their own Spell Sequencers, we might be able to take down Bodhi within three rounds: one round to remove her spell protections, another round to lower her resistance, and a third round to cast one Flame Arrow (Nalia) and eight Fireballs (Imoen, Aerie, Sil, and Jan). And if that's not enough, both Aerie and Cernd have Fire Storm, for a combined 42 damage per round for four rounds. Even if Bodhi heals herself completely, we should be able to bring her back down.
Bodhi still comes with some very dangerous offensive spells with massive save penalties, however, so we'll need to be careful if we want to get any spells off the ground.
We have just incurred by far the greatest loss of this entire run, eclipsing all other setbacks combined. I can only think of two things that could possibly be worse, and neither of them were possible to begin with. The worst possible thing has happened, and the rest of this run will be shaped by this event.
We need to get Nalia up to level 18 and therefore gain her first HLA, Improved Alacrity. This will open up all kinds of possibilities, but first we need to get her up to 3 million XP. We have one unfinished major quest--the Planar Prison--which should be sufficient to get her to that level. We have already dealt with Mekrath and freed Haer'dalis, so all that is left is to bring the Portal Gem to Raelis Shai (awesome name, really) and rescue the troupe from the Bounty Hunters and the Warden.
Raelis asks us to kill some critters while they tear apart reality. The first one appears.
Miraculously, we manage to kill it.
After several more critters fall, some Bounty Hunters appear and cut Raelis' ritual short. They haul the whole troupe through the portal, and we follow them through.
Aawill (I love these names), one of the Planar Prison's petty toughs, chuckles at our misfortune. We play it cool.
We have nothing to fear from these guys. We have come pre-buffed with immunity to fire, and we have lots of Fireballs and Sunfire spells already memorized. The Bounty Hunters are not so fortunate.
The whole group goes down in flames. We nick an extra pair of Boots of Speed from the fallen. Cernd dons the boots, just for a little extra boost.
We're still in good shape, so I decide to take on the enemies to the east without resting first. After doing away with some of the Warden's Thralls, I pick up the loot, pretty minor stuff, and am about to rest and prepare for the next battle. Then I realize the current one isn't quite over.
The Warden's Yuan-ti goons have heard the battle from afar and slithered over to help their mates.
Right about now, I realize that neither Imoen nor Nalia have cast their buffs. They've still got Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Remove Fear, Protection from Evil, and Protection from Lightning active, but they have no Blur, Shield, or Protection from Petrification. I only very recently started using that last one on every party member--except for Cernd, who can resist Flesh to Stone with his amazing MR--but it's not something I'd like to go without. Unfortunately, the battle has already begun, and I have no time to cast all of our normal buffs.
Oh, and nobody has Stoneskin active. I forgot about that one entirely.
Cernd runs out to hassle the mages, while Nalia uses the Wand of Cloudkill, which I have been neglecting lately. Some of the Yuan-ti choose to escape to the east, though one stays behind. Since he has PFMW active, Cernd can't hurt him, but Jan can. Jan summons a Flesh Golem and fires at it, but soon the Flesh Golem is slain by the Yuan-ti mages, so Jan switches to Bolts of Biting to finish off the nearest mage.
Then, Sil gets hit by Breach.
We have planned ahead for this, however, so Sil gets back both her Death Ward and Chaotic Commands in the same round. She is protected once more.
Out in the cloud, an Efreeti has just appeared. Cernd can't hit the Yuan-ti (still having trouble with PFMW), so he attacks the Efreeti instead, though I'm sure it will vanish into the mist before we can kill it. With his incredible regeneration and magic resistance, he should be able to handle the mages and the poison damage from the cloud.
Then the action bar goes blank.
Cernd has just been petrified.
I take a moment to register the situation. To my relief, Cernd has NOT SHATTERED. We can still turn him back to normal form and bring him back into the party. We still have the Ring of Earth Control, which can cast Stone to Flesh once per day. But first, we need to deal with the Yuan-ti. We summon some undead and brace for the attack. Now that Cernd is gone, the rest of the enemy will move forward.
We take down the Efreeti quickly--Jan could stun him, preventing the Efreeti from turning to mist and regenerating--but before we can get any farther, the Yuan-ti and the Wyvern both charge at us. With our wall of undead, we're still quite capable of resisting the attack, and since Jan is in spider form, we still have our best offensive asset.
The Wyvern falls. I look past the Yuan-ti to check on Cernd.
The cloud didn't affect him! He's still not shattered!
Only one Yuan-ti Mage is left, so the battle is more or less won. Aerie casts Sanctuary, in case there are any left we do not see, and runs out to check on Cernd.
I can't click on him. Aerie prepares to cast Stone to Flesh, just to see if anything changes.
Gray.
A gray icon. We can't click on him.
We finish off the Yuan-ti and hurry over to Cernd. We take down a couple more enemies as they approach, and then the scene is calm. We look over Cernd--perfectly intact, but frozen in place.
He never shattered. Aside from the fact that his sprite remains there, there are none of the stone fragments that appear when a petrified character is hit and shattered.
But we can't click on him. We rest once, to see if that changes anything.
He's not responsive. We rest again.
The pointer goes right through him. Only his shadow remains imprinted on the scene.
Cernd is dead.
He was our frontliner ever since we got him. The one character we knew would not get taken down by enemy spell damage, by enemy weapons. The one character who could charge ahead and take on the deadliest enemies, and keep the party safe. In all my years, the best tank I have ever seen in Baldur's Gate 2.
Undispellabled 80% magic resistance. Immunity to all elements. AC at -10. Permanent regeneration, 12 HP per round, enough to survive almost anything, without even using potions. A character so resilient we could use him as our target for Vampiric Touch every day, and he would absorb over 100 HP's worth of damage every day just to help keep our fragile mages alive--more health than he had himself.
And he was less than 300,000 XP from level 15. His first HLA, and 6 spells per spell level, even up to level 7. Inches away from having the strongest divine spells in the game, with virtual invulnerability to support it. But that's the thing about 80% magic resistance.
It isn't 100%.
Cernd has fallen to a Flesh to Stone spell cast by a Yuan-ti Mage, everyone's least favorite low-level spellcaster.
We have also lost our new pair of Boots of Speed. Plus the Ring of the Ram. And the Greater Werewolf Tokens, the only ones we could ever get in BG2 in single-player mode, which Jan could have used as soon as he got UAI... less than 100,000 XP away. Jan could have become our new tank, in a pinch.
Thankfully, the Bag of Holding was transported to Sil's inventory. I assume this is done to prevent the party from losing any quest items stored in the container, but it also preserved a small trove of magical items, including Vhailor's Helm, which I fortunately had stored in the Bag of Holding instead of Cernd's inventory.
To fill in the gap Cernd left, we reorganize our spells. Aerie replaces Mass Cure with Chaotic Commands, and fills her level 4 cleric spell slots with Death Ward. Neutralize Poison, on both Sil and Aerie, gets shunted aside to make room for Protection from Lightning. We no longer have a regenerating tank, so we must take greater care to protect our mages, who now compose the entirety of our party. Instead of casting Vampiric Touch on Cernd, we will use Skeletons. A reminder of the one who led us forward in every battle since the day we met.
We rest up, cast our buffs, and move on to the next fight. We bring up a wall of undead, plus a couple of Air Elementals from Aerie's Elemental Summoning, and the enemy fails miserably to stand up to the assault. The party is still strong.
We pilfer the Master of Thrall's little green orb, stated to be red in the unidentified description, and bring it over to the little pot of white light near the first room.
Once we destroy the orb, the Warden's personal Thralls will turn on him, and we will have to rush in to attack.
We re-cast our buffs, summon some undead, and destroy the orb. The Warden's hold on his prison has been broken.
We hurry over to the Warden's room. Before the fight begins, he delivers a truly chilling line.
The total master of this little pocket plane, the immortal being who controls the mind of every creature in his realm, has just promised to torture us for the rest of eternity.
Sil resists his Horrid Wilting spell, having come prepared with Protection from Magical Energy, and attacks with the Sling of Everard, the only weapon in our arsenal which can break through Improved Mantle. Aerie summons the Flesh Golem so Jan can damage the Warden despite his weapon immunities. Nalia casts Project Image.
Under pressure from Sil and Jan, the Warden cannot get any spells off the ground. And with Sil's 24 STR from the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength and Draw Upon Holy Might, she can massacre the Warden despite his Improved Mantle.
Nalia's clone casts Horrid Wilting.
Shortly thereafter, the Warden crumples. I check several times to make sure I have his key--if I don't have it when I come to rescue the troupe, I die instantly.
We return to the Prime Material Plane, leaving Cernd's shadow resting on the floor of an empty prison, drifting through the Astral Plane.
Haer'dalis offers to join us. We agree.
We don't have many other options, anyway.
Jan finally hits epic levels and chooses Use Any Item as his first HLA. Every little trinket in the game is at his fingertips, though he might need a stat boost to equip some of them at first. Once he gets Time Trap, he can get an instant kill on everyone not immune to magic or +2 weapons. Time Trap gives a 20-second Time Stop effect (the description says only 10 seconds), giving Jan three rounds of automatic hits. In spider form, with Improved Haste, he has 8 APR with Haer'Dalis Chaos Blade, which drains 2 DEX per hit, not bypassing magic resistance, so Jan can drain up to 48 Dexterity with a single trap. But we'll need a bit more XP before we can do that.
Also, we get automatic hits on helpless enemies, so Jan can stun a target with his flashers and then rush in to drain its Dexterity. Or, if we need him to keep using his flashers, Haer'dalis can dual-wield Chaos Blade and Kundane, and drain 4 DEX per round, unhasted.
Otherwise, however, Haer'dalis is mostly dead weight. I'm not even sure I should keep him at the moment.
He doesn't even have 1 million XP. The average party member has triple his experience, and we have rather little in the way of equipment to give him. He's a miserably weak fighter, a miserably weak spellcaster, and he will be extremely easy for enemies to kill. If he was a higher level, he might be able to hold his own, but right now, he's by far the single least useful character on the team. It might be better to leave him behind, so the rest of the group can get a little more XP and reach the levels that are becoming increasingly more useful to us. Nalia at level 17 isn't much stronger than Nalia at level 16, but when we're going from 18 to 19, that's a huge jump in power.
We spent a modest amount of money filling in Haer'dalis' spellbook, allowing Nalia to just barely reach 3 million XP.
After a lot of thought, she chooses Improved Alacrity as her first HLA, as planned.
The party is in very poor shape at the moment. We just lost a lot of druid spells, which means we have precious few spell slots for Negative Plane Protection. We also lost our best tank, so we will need to rely more on our summons, though thankfully we still have Aerie's Animate Dead and Elemental Summoning spells, which can give us some very tough summons, and her Deva, which is immune to level drain outright.
We've also gained some new powers in the process. Jan can use DEX drain on stunned enemies, though he does not yet have Time Trap, and Nalia has just gotten access to Chain Contingency, allowing her to cast Project Image four times at once. If we have everyone in the party, plus those four clones, cast Feeblemind simultaenously, we have a 70% chance of taking down Thaxll'ssilliyia in the first round, or 90% by the second round. And if that doesn't work, and Nalia's Project Image spells get taken down, she can re-cast Chain Contingency and throw out another three clones, and cast another three Feeblemind spells, within seconds.
If we do so, we might also choose to take on the Illithids under the Temple Sewers, which could net us the Hammer of Thunderbolts and therefore Crom Faeyr, which will obviate the need for Sil to cast DUHM and also let her attack with a stronger +5 weapon. Black Blade of Disaster would still be an improvement if we were using Righteous magic, but it would free up a 9th level spell slot.
The party has come out significantly weaker because of Cernd's loss, and Haer'dalis will nowhere near be able to compensate for it. Right now, his Chaos Blade will be a minor compensation, and in Throne of Bhaal, he'll be able to use the Improved Bard Song, a huge game changer even if I don't use Mislead.
Right now, though, a lot of my plans will need to be rethought. Dragons have suddenly become a viable target, while other encounters will be substantially more difficult. We are in dire need of XP, as the only remaining enemies of BG2 are absolutely monstrous. Sil is still over half a million XP away from getting level 9 spells, a result of the 675,000 XP investment she needed for those 11 cleric levels.
Things are changing very fast.
I wouldn't be surprised if the issue is due to his shapechange. Being petrified was always a buggy and game breaking experience in my experience.
With Nalia bumped up to level 18, and with Time Stop now in her spellbook, the party’s spellpower has taken a massive leap. We can now take on Firkraag and Thaxll’ssillyia.
On the way out, we get interrupted by a gang of Rakshasas in disguise. Since I know how nasty they can be, I talk-block them to run away. Haer’dalis decides this is the perfect time to hit on Aerie.
He’s pretty confident considering he’s the least useful person in the party. We slip past the Rakshasas and run off to the Temple Ruins to face Thaxll’ssillyia.
I plan on using Feeblemind to take down Thaxll’ssillyia (second-favorite dragon name, right behind Nizidramanii’yt), but Feeblemind’s success is entirely reliant on chance. If Feeblemind doesn’t work, I have no chance of defeating him, and will therefore have to flee.
So, if I want to get the 45,000 XP from beating him, I need to figure out how to maximize my chances. The setup is difficult to arrange, but it’s fairly simple conceptually.
Basically, Nalia prepares a Chain Contingency with three copies of Project Image, set to activate on “Helpless.” Experienced players will recognize this Chain Contingency. When Nalia casts Project Image, she becomes helpless, triggering the contingency and creating three additional clones. These clones are all at level 18 and therefore have all of Nalia’s spells, aside from those she uses for buffs and her HLAs.
The whole party fills their spellbooks with Feeblemind and Polymorph Other. We also make sure to have Greater Malison and Doom. Nalia memorizes one casting of Pierce Magic to deal with Thaxll’ssillyia’s magic resistance. Normally, if you’re trying to Feeblemind a dragon, it’s actually best not to cast Lower Resistance first, unless you’re going up against Abazigal and it’s a high-level caster (which, by then, it should be). But since we’ve got lots of castings of Feeblemind, and Thaxll’ssillyia’s magic resistance will also block Polymorph Other, Greater Malison, and Doom, it’s best if we lower his resistance first. Pierce Magic allows us to cut down his MR without taking up a 5th level spell slot. And, in case our target comes with spell protections, we also have Secret Word.
Aerie and Sil stock up on Negative Plane Protection in case Thaxll’ssillyia survives for long. Even if you make your save vs. breath, his breath weapon will drain lots of levels and cannot be blocked by anything except for NPP.
We enter Thaxll’ssillyia’s chamber, Nalia casts Project Image, and we distribute everyone evenly around the dragon, so a Wing Buffet won’t be able to hit all of Nalia’s clones.
Nalia’s clones start to cast Time Stop, one after another. Sil summons some undead in the hopes of drawing Thaxll’ssillyia’s attention. Meanwhile, the rest of the party casts Doom, Greater Malison, and Feeblemind. Note that we need Thaxll’ssillyia to be hostile if we want Greater Malison to affect him. Thankfully, he’s hostile by the time he comes into our sight, probably because of the Skeletons we summoned.
Each Nalia clone casts Pierce Magic and then Feeblemind. Thaxll’ssillyia fails his save early on.
The battle is won! All we have to do now is take down the 480 maximum HP that SCS2 gives him. That monstrous number is the reason why Nalia can’t just nuke him into oblivion. Even without their MR, SCS2 dragons are really hard to kill with spell damage.
Sil gets the final blow. Even when we had Cernd, Sil has been our strongest melee fighter. Only Jan has more kills than she, and not by much.
I almost never go to the North Forest, Small Teeth Pass, or Forest of Tethyr to grab the minor XP gains at those locations. But since I’m trying to get as much as I possibly can, I decide to go scrounging. Hey, it’s Coran!
Coran is doomed. An old flame has sought him out, but his slender frame can’t stand up to the forces of wolfwere lovemaking. One of the benefits of having played BG2 before BG1 is that the arbitrary killing off of BG1 NPCs doesn’t bother you as much.
Right now, Haer’dalis is so weak that it’s not even worth it to cast Chaotic Commands on him. Here he is, paralyzed by a Kuo-toa’s stray bolt.
I don’t know what Kuo-toa are doing in a cave in the middle of the forest, but there they are.
We move on to the next area. I recall this area has a particularly nasty encounter.
Nasty than I remember, and far more nasty than I’m willing to tolerate. I leave the place immediately.
Since we’ve taken out a lich before at lower levels, I decide to go fight the Shade Lich. Jan cast Project Image to bypass the trap limit, but I’m pretty sure the traps do poison damage (not sure if that’s the vanilla damage type), which the lich should be immune to.
I have Nalia prepare her triple Project Image Chain Contingency, so we can power through the lich’s defenses in case Jan’s traps fail. With Ruby Ray of Reversal, Pierce Magic, and Breach, our three Nalia clones should be able to remove all of the lich’s defenses by the second round, and he will be forced to renew his defenses in lieu of attacking us. I also make sure to summon Aerie’s Deva, since I haven’t used it very much.
The battle proves disappointing. Particularly since I got no experience from the kill.
Apparently enemies don’t give any XP if they’re killed by traps set by clones.
Traps are at once the most overpowered and most underpowered ability in BG2. Overpowered because of how dangerous they are, but underpowered because most people only use them for the biggest encounters. How many people bother to set even one trap to deal with a minor encounter?
For the next lich, the Elemental Lich, I decide to use only 4 traps, the most Jan can set in one day, so at least I’ll have a chance to kill him with something else, and to make sure I actually get some XP for the trouble. Nalia’s clones attack the lich’s defenses during Time Stop and hurl Horrid Wilting spells.
That really shouldn’t do anything. Horrid Wilting is supposed to do damage by sucking water out of the victim’s body, but liches and other undead shouldn’t need any body fluids to survive. So liches are vulnerable to both poison and dehydration.
Jan, of course, still gets the final blow. And luckily for us, we get the XP this time.
We do not continue to Kangaxx. Even with three party members at epic levels, Kangaxx poses too big of a risk to make his ring worth it.
We head to the Windspear Hills to go kill Firkraag. Firkraag is much tougher, though his breath weapon isn’t quite so deadly, but for our purposes, he’s just Thaxll’ssillyia with an awful red rash.
We tweak our sequencers and contingencies a bit before entering Firkraag’s lair. I had prepared multiple Minor Sequencers with Blindness, and a couple of triple Polymorph Other Spell Sequencers, but since we’re only going to have so many rounds to try and disable Firkraag before he starts to kill us, we need defensive options instead. We switch to Blur+Mirror Image Minor Sequencers, or a double Armor of Faith sequencer for Sil, who also switches to a Cure Serious Wounds+Cure Serious Wounds+Haste Spell Sequencer, since Firkraag can do lots of damage very quickly and it would do more to help Sil get out alive than a potion.
We send out a Wizard Eye so Nalia’s clones can operate without us present.
Firkraag is not hostile, despite the clones. He does not view us as a threat.
We proceed the same as before. Pierce Magic to soften him up for later spells.
Firkraag resists our magic much longer than Thaxll’sillyia. But this was not to be a long fight.
The odds of Firkraag holding onto his wits by the end of our last clone-based Time Stop were about 3%. That’s not a guarantee of success, but in this case, it worked. Our attempts to cut out the luck factor appear to have succeeded.
Firkraag doesn’t have much more HP than Thaxll’ssillyia. The rest of the battle, as always, is uneventful.
Sil gets the final blow. Again.
Thankfully, Neeber passes on some of his experience to us, 1000 XP per head, and a teensy bit of treasure, to boot.
We take a gander at the statues in the center of Trademeet.
The artists got awful creative with the color scheme. Cernd didn’t get a makeover, though. There’s just no way to improve on his rugged good looks.
We pawn off our excess equipment at the Adventurer’s Mart, where Haer’dalis discusses his play with Aerie. She feels a bit too meek to handle the role he’s given her.
If I didn’t know Haer’dalis was a decent fellow, I’d be awful suspicious of his prodding. Fortunately, with Know Alignment, we can rest assured he is simply a whimsical Chaotic Neutral sprite, just like Jan. Pity Jan’s heart still belongs to another. I’m sure he could have devised any number of lovely inventions for Aerie.
I finally get fed up with Sil’s sluggish progress to level 18. I’m really itching for that Iron Golem form, and I’m not sure the party is strong enough to deal with Bodhi at its current level. I’m even less confident that we can deal with the demons of Watcher’s Keep without the Iron Golem form.
In Chapter 6, the Adventurer’s Mart has a special selection of items you can pay 50 gold to see. One of the items for sale is a scroll of Freedom, and Ribald sells an infinite number of them. Plus, they’re only about 670 gold apiece. I do some calculations and find that we can get Sil up to 3 million XP if we remove all other party members and spend ALL of our gold, over 30,000 pieces, on Freedom scrolls. I avoided doing this in the past, but I am impatient and there’s not much else for us to buy.
I buy 40 scrolls in total and scribe every single one. I don’t like the method, but it works.
I picked Improved Alacrity as Sil’s first HLA. There is a cute trick that I know is possible, but have never tried, involving Shapechange and Improved Alacrity. Normally, you’d need to be level 19 to cast both, but in SCS2, HLAs are innate abilities, and can only be cast once per day. Mage and cleric HLAs, however, appear next to your normal spells, not in the special abilities section of the toolbar (Improved Alacrity is right next to Shapechange, not Boon of Lathander), and cannot be cast by clones.
The nice thing about Improved Alacrity is that it allows automatic shapeshifting as well, and every time you shapechange into a Mind Flayer, you get one casting of Psionic Blast, which has a casting time of zero if Sil equips the Amulet of Power. This means that Sil can cast Improved Alacrity, shapechange into a Mind Flayer 10 times, and then cast Psionic Blast 10 times, in less than one round. It’s basically an infinite supply of Psionic Blasts for 2 rounds. It doesn’t hurt that, in SCS2, Mind Flayers get 50% resistance to physical damage along with their vanilla 90% magic resistance. If Sil equips the Defender of Easthaven in her off hand and activates her Minor Sequencer, she can achieve immunity to physical damage and near immunity to magic, so she’s quite safe while she does this.
Psionic Blast stuns for 10 rounds on a failed save vs. spell. It bypasses magic resistance, cannot be dispelled, is an area effect, and has a spell level of zero. It’s basically a trump card against everything not immune to stun.
I gather the party back together and decide to go back to Watcher’s Keep.
The last time I went to Watcher’s keep, I failed a no-reload solo run with a Cleric/Mage, due to being charmed by the Succubus and her Erinyes friends. But now the party is much stronger, and I think we can take on the demons of Watcher’s Keep. Although I’m deeply unfamiliar with Watcher’s Keep and much of TOB’s content, and there’s a lot I don’t know about how to deal with them.
The Succubus battle comes right after a dead magic zone, so I won’t be able to rely on Chaotic Commands to keep me safe from Domination. Nalia, however, has gobs of spellpower, and dead magic zones don’t affect her contingencies or spell sequencers.
Nalia wipes out most of the Erinyes with Horrid Wilting. We break through the Succubus’ defenses, but she teleports away before we can mob her. After summoning a bunch of undead to occupy the Erinyes’ attention, we take down the enemy one by one, finally swarming on the Succubus.
Jan and Haer’dalis, both charmed, cause us trouble by poisoning Nalia. But with her allies gone, the Succubus is defenseless, and quickly falls.
Our summons target Haer’dalis instead, as does our Deva. We can’t dispel it, so we just wait until it wears off. I just have to select all of our undead and give them constant orders to distract them from the raving bard in their midst.
We rest, memorize a couple of Restoration spells for Aerie and Haer’dalis, and once they’re back to their normal levels, Haer’dalis resumes charming Aerie.
He is indeed a silly man.
On the way out of the area, a couple of Glabrezus appear. Oddly enough, they’re not hostile, though I’m sure they soon will be. I talk-block them and retreat to prepare for a fight.
When I return to them, fully buffed and bolstered with summons, they have nothing to say.
Before they can turn hostile, we attack, and the twin Glabrezus fall quickly.
I assume this is an SCS2 innovation, adding little demon ambushes to spice up the already very chaotic third level of Watcher’s Keep.
I send out Aerie and the Flesh Golem to distract the enemy. I need to buy Nalia and Sil a few seconds to cast their spells uninterrupted, so they hurry to the back of the room. Nalia casts Project Image, triggering her Chain Contingency as usual, and her clones begin to cast Time Stop. Sil will shortly be casting Improved Alacrity so she can flood the area with Psionic Blasts, but first, Nalia’s clones start softening up the enemy.
We use Maze to remove a couple of troublesome enemies (one an Erinyes; I forget what the other one was) and use Horrid Wilting to weaken the various Cornugons and Velithuus littered around the room. To keep Nalia and Sil safe, we also throw out Teleport Field, which will make it significantly more difficult for the demons to touch us.
The Time Stops end, and Sil’s Improve Alacrity begins. She switches to Mind Flayer form and begins firing off Psionic Blasts. With Auto-Pause on spell cast, I can cram in many such spells, and I will need a lot for this battle. The demons are not immune to stun, and Psionic Blast bypasses their ample magic resistance, but they are very numerous and very strong. I need to disable as many as I can if I am to survive.
Note the extra Teleport Fields. Since we haven’t stunned everybody yet, we don’t need to resort to melee combat, and Teleport Field does not interfere with our plans. In between Sil’s incessant spamming of Psionic Blast, I try to keep everyone else in the party proactive, adding their little spells and attacks to the battle.
Finally we stun Ka’rashur, currently standing in the northeast corner of the map. Notice that the residue of our Horrid Wilting spells is still linger on the map. Barely any in-game time has passed in between the last two screenshots. We can’t actually see very well which enemies are being disabled, as Psionic Blast does not display a “Stunned” string on a successful hit, unlike Jan’s flashers, and since it has a slow-moving projectile, Sil can end up wasting several Psionic Blasts, since we don’t know if her target has been stunned yet.
Now that Ka’rashur is disabled, we can quickly whittle him down. I assign everyone but Sil and Aerie to attack him, since she is still needed for Psionic Blasts and I’m pretty sure Ka’rashur is immune to +2 weapons and below, which includes the Mind Flayer weapon and Aerie’ Gnasher.
Ka’rashur falls. With so many ways to disable enemies, the party’s terrible THAC0 often doesn’t matter. Sil’s Improved Alacrity has run out, so she changes to Iron Golem form and helps finish off Ka’rashur. Aerie has been working on the Velithuu, who are also rapidly dying.
One of the Cornugons has managed to escape being stunned, and the Bone Fiends are immune, so they are our last potential threats. Against non-disabled enemies, our poor THAC0 makes things slow.
Due to some error, our projected images appear to be able to attack. I use our last Time Stop to get in some automatic hits with the Crimson Dart.
It’s not quite enough. The Bone Fiends are quite sturdy.
Finally, we manage to bring them down. Nalia’s clones played a critical role in managing the environment, removing some enemies early on and weakening the others enough to cut the encounter a bit shorter. Sil was, for once, the critical variable, where past encounters tended to revolve around Jan, or (more recently) Cernd, or (more recently still) Nalia. Her Psionic Blasts immobilized the vast majority of the enemy group, including Ka’rashur himself, who would have been exceptionally difficult to defeat if he were not disabled, given his -9 AC, 25% resistance to physical damage, and regeneration of 2 HP per round.
Like in the Succubus room, we get ambushed after resting. We talk-block an Erinyes and an Imp, then summon some critters to do the work for us.
Sil prepares Improved Alacrity and begins using Psionic Blast again. It only takes her one round to start throwing out psionic attacks, and she requires no Chain Contingency, making her the most rapidly effective member of our party. She no longer needs tons of buffs to be useful.
Once her Improved Alacrity runs out, she switches to Iron Golem form to finish off the Erinyes. Finally, Aerie is free to cast Remove Fear, as she has already cast her HLAs and can divert her attention to regaining our control over the Flesh Golem.
I find that the Bone Fiends are surprisingly vulnerable to Magic Missile once Jan dispels their invisibility. The last enemy falls to magical damage. Once the carnage is over, Haer’dalis starts messing with Aerie, as is his wont.
The party hasn’t been very chatty since Cernd died, but Haer’dalis never met him and is in good spirits.
Some investigation suggests that Mind Flayers have no immunity to stun or even to Psionic Blast alone, meaning Jan and Sil can both easily disable them, if Jan uses Kuo-toa Bolts in lieu of his normal flashers. With a Mind Flayer’s base save vs. spell of 5, we have about a 90% chance of stunning them with 10 separate Psionic Blasts. If we use Psionic Blast 20 times (I don’t know exactly how many times Sil can cast it in two rounds with Improved Alacrity), that chance is about 99%. For the Ulitharid in the Watcher’s Keep Illithid encampment, the chances are about 65% and 88%.
The Ulitharid is problematic because it carries a Wand of Spell Striking, which it will use on us. From our experience using it on Lavok, we believe the only way of blocking that wand is Spell Turning/Deflection/Trap, and Sil has no such spell, meaning the Ulitharid can easily take down Sil’s Chaotic Commands, rendering her vulnerable to Psionic Blast. If Sil gets stunned, we’re pretty much doomed. However, after some testing, I have found that Sil can achieve immunity to Psionic Blast. With the Ring of Protection +2, the Ring of Earth Control, the Helm of Balduran, and the Robe of the Good Archmagi, her save vs. spell is 1, which made her immune to the stun effect of Celestial Fury. Celestial Fury and Psionic Blast both have no save penalty and bypass MR.
There is a version of Psionic Blast that has a -4 save penalty, and Psionic Domination has a -2 save penalty, so Sil cannot achieve undispellable immunity to all Mind Flayer attacks. But the Breach effect of the Wand of Spell Striking does not dispel Blur or the effects of a Potion of Stone Form, so she should still be able to resist the Mind Flayers' attacks, if we buff her properly. Also, the Mind Flayers can always land a critical hit and drain Sil's Intelligence, and she can only take 4 hits before dying. Multiple Teleport Field spells, however, should keep the Mind Flayers at bay.
First, I had to pawn off a lot of gear to Garlena. The Githyanki dropped more potions than I could carry, even with the Potion Bag. Turns out that battle was quite profitable.
Unenchanted plate mail doesn't seem like much at this point in the game, but the Githyanki dropped a lot of them.
I buffed the party and headed into the Mind Flayer lair. Generally not a good idea, considering Mind Flayers have amazing powers and their average Intelligence is 18.
Anyway, Aerie started out with Summon Deva and Sil started out with Simulacrum, just for a little extra melee power. We also brought out the Flesh Golem.
The golem got stunned before it even appeared. But Jan doesn't need a target for his flashers here--the Mind Flayers's 90% MR makes flashers almost completely useless.
Nalia's clones used Emotion and Greater Malison, followed by Horrid Wilting, mostly just to get the Umber Hulks out of the way.
Luckily for us, Mind Flayers appear to have some pretty bad AC. Even with 50% physical damage resistance, they don't stand up well in melee.
Sil's clone got mazed shortly before this, but she reappeared during Nalia's clone's Time Stop. Usually Maze lasts a whole battle, at least in my experience. Jan got an unlucky hit from a Mind Flayer, but with 16 base INT (very min-maxy), he can take three more strikes before his head explodes. Also notice that Jan's Mislead spell doesn't really work: SCS2 illithids in my install can see through invisibility, as per the Tactics mod. Mislead still gives +4 bonus to melee THAC0.
Jan has two methods of stunning Mind Flayers: Celestial Fury and Kuo-toa Bolts, both of which can stun through MR. But even in spider form, he has very little luck stunning anybody. I don't know if he stunned a single flayer throughout the battle.
Without Chaotic Commands, Nalia's clones are very vulnerable to psionics, and one of them fails a save against Psionic Domination. Luckily, she does not use any spells against us.
Stil has just finished casting Improved Alacrity, and has started to use her newfound psionic abilities on the illithids. It's like irony, or something.
Her simulacrum is mostly just there for its attacks, since it has no Improved Alacrity. I don't think it makes much difference. Anyway, we encounter the same problem we had against Ka'rashur: because Psionic Blast offers no stun message and travels so slowly, we can waste several castings of Psionic Blast on a target that failed its first save. To maximize our use of the spell, we want to distribute our Psionic Blasts as evenly as possible, and concentrate on the groups of flayers that aren't yet stunned.
This is especially relevant when the Mind Flayers split up into two groups, and we can't focus on just one target to make sure we're covering the whole enemy group. In between Sil's blasts, I try to keep the other party members busy, but generally I just need them to attack the disabled flayers. All this produces a very chaotic scene, making it even harder to tell which Mind Flayers are already stunned.
An Ulitharid gets wise to Nalia's scheme and teleports over to chomp on her noggin. I can't send Sil over there without losing precious seconds she needs for Psionic Blast (Improved Alacrity only lasts so long), so I send the other party members out to help.
It's okay even if Nalia dies, though. Her role in this battle has largely already been played.
After Improved Alacrity wears off and we kill the stunned Mind Flayers, I notice that our Teleport Field has moved some of the enemy out of our reach.
I rush in to fight them, not knowing how long before they get unstunned.
Then, after the room is clear, I notice a peculiar orb floating in the air.
Jan uses Detect Traps and finds an invisible Mind Flayer, standing in the corner and stunned. We kill it before it can recover its senses.
We find another couple of enemies who had been teleported out of reach.
Our summons get in the way just long enough to let them regain consciousness and attack. But they're outnumbered by now, and though our buffs are wearing off, we established the upper hand several rounds before.
When searching the room, Sil triggers a trap.
I don't know what it was, but her pathetic 10% magic resistance might have just saved her life.
So it seems Mind Flayers are not immune to psionics. But they're awful good at making their saves. Even with all the Psionic Blasts we used, not all of them got stunned.
Everybody made their saving throws, however. I'd hate to think what would have happened if we didn't. Jan disarms it so we can move on. Traps are hard for me in Watcher's Keep and TOB because I don't know where all of them are.
For some reason, Aerie's Deva never appeared in the last battle, so I make sure to summon it before the next one begins. Turns out that wasn't the best idea.
I was so sure Devas were immune to stun. Now we will be fighting without it.
Incidentally, I LOVE the Devas and Planetar's voices. Their avatars are awesome, too. They just look and sound epic.
Detonate caused a fair amount of damage, so Aerie casts Mass Cure.
I really should have moved her out of the way. We have to drink potions instead. Notice our upgrade to Potions of Superior Healing. We gathered so many that we didn't have room for weaker potions.
Things start to get complicated really fast. I don't know if I can cast big spells without getting interrupted. The Mind Flayers take advantage of the lull and teleport in--ignoring the Deva, because they know it's not going anywhere.
Plus, Nalia is within the Mind Flayers' view. They can easily rush up and suck out her brains. And I just cast Teleport Field, but it doesn't cover where we are now.
Nalia's a smart girl. She probably has quite yummy brains.
That would probably explain this.
Also notice that they dispelled Imoen's defenses.
I bring back Nalia with the Rod of Resurrection. With this many enemies around me, I need to shunt the rod over to Jan, since Aerie, Sil, and Nalia's clones are all rather busy. Jan also switches cloaks with Sil, since the Cloak of Mirroring, normally on Jan, should keep Sil safe from Detonate.
Sil casts Improved Alacrity without getting interrupted, maybe thanks to the Cloak of Mirroring. All this time, Nalia's clones have been refraining from casting Time Stop, for fear that they'll get hit by Detonate. One of them has also been stunned, and another is flat out missing. Imoen, too, is stunned, and already is getting chomped.
Nalia is still under the effects of Project Image, so she's actually very vulnerable here. And her clones didn't vanish when she died, so using the Rod of Resurrection before Project Image ran out accomplished absolutely nothing.
At some point, I realize that I don't actually need to target any enemies to use Psionic Blast. Before, I had targeted the charmed Nalia clone, since trying to target a Mind Flayer got the spell canceled due to invisibility message. But since the Psionic Blast projectile, like Jan's flashers, affects only enemies no matter what the target is, I can target my own party and affect the Mind Flayers that way. Aerie is in a convenient location to reach some out of the way illithids.
It produces a rather dense stream of magic, heading south from Sil's head. There's a Mind Flayer down there who still doesn't have an orb over its head, indicating it's still not stunned.
Then I realize that I can use myself as a target to hit the illithids right next to me. I click 2 to target Sil.
Look at that chaos. This is what I have to search through to make the most of Sil's Psionic Blast. I spent minutes in this one round alone.
Teleport Field also gave me some targeting problems. As the seconds passed in these screenshots, I saw the Mind Flayers get teleported individually. Normally you see everybody teleport together. This is how slow things were going.
Earlier, I had one of Nalia's clones cast Teleport Field to protect Imoen. It wasn't enough in the end.
See the Draw Upon Holy Might animation on Sil? I got fed up with the pace and decided to use the remainder of Sil's Improved Alacrity, however much it was, to prepare her for melee combat. I activated my Minor Sequencer, cast PFMW, DUHM, and Boon of Lathander, and only then does the Improved Alacrity effect run out.
We tear apart the Mind Flayers in the hallway. Sil is a monster even when she's not shapeshifted. But we didn't move fast enough to save Imoen.
Nalia's Project Image runs out, too, and we regain control of the original. She goes back for her equipment but finds Imoen's instead. Since we don't have time to waste, she takes Imoen's stuff instead and equips what she needs.
Nalia gets targeted by a Psionic Blast. It's too late for Sil to cast her last Chaotic Commands spell on Nalia, so I just have Nalia cast PFMW, so she at least has 4 rounds of safety. I could Maze her to keep her alive a bit longer after that.
[/spoiler]
Without Robe of Vecna, Nalia can't cast PFMW instantly. I could have handed her the Amulet of Power, but then Sil would have lost it if Nalia failed her save vs. spell.
Also notice, in the above screenshot the Mind Flayers trapped in the nearby room, who are attacking us through the walls. And see that orb hovering over the leftmost Mind Flayer's head? It hasn't actually been stunned; it just has the animation over its head. So we have to roll to hit it.
We have excellent melee strength, however, and the Mind Flayers fall, but not before they can kill Nalia.
Two deaths. That's the highest death count of this entire run. I bring them back with CTRL-R (too lazy to memorize Raise Dead) and we rest and recover outside.
Well, it's not so much a rest as a vacation.
The rest of the illithid encampment is a breeze. The only two encounters are a trio of Umber Hulks and a pair of Vampiric Illithids, neither of whom can do any harm to us. Not as we are now.
There was a time when guys like these were bosses. At this point, they're just random goons.
With the last of the three colored oils in our possession, we light some prettyful torches and open the way to Rock and Garock. Sil summons a Simulacrum to help her fight the Minotaurs.
To my surprise, Sil and her clone are not the only ones getting anything done in this battle.
With the Crystal Mallet in hand, we stroll over to Carston's pod.
I don't actually know what happens if you hit it the wrong number of times.
Carston is quite happy with escaping with his life.
I wonder what he'll do now. Everyone he knows is dead by now. He has decades if not centuries of experience watching things kill each other, without any apparent social contact. What kind of life is open to him now?
I split up the special treats of the Machine of Lum the Mad. Aerie gets the DEX bonus for an extra point of AC. Sil gets the WIS bonus for an extra 1st- and 4th-level cleric spell (Aerie would get nothing), and memorizes Death Ward in case somebody gets hit by Breach. Sil also gets the magic resistance bonus and INT bonus, and also the CHA bonus, because why not. And Jan gets the STR bonus to improve his carrying capacity, since Haer'dalis and Sil will both be relying on items to boost their Strength.
So the illithids are done and the next level of Watcher's Keep is open. Some of the quests are there are fairly simple. What won't be so easy will be the gang of liches, or Azamantes, or the fight with Xei Win Toh.
I might stop short of that last one. Lots of unknowns about that battle.
As for the rest of Watcher's Keep, I'll probably take down Saladrex, but leave the Demilich well alone. I might do a test run to see if Jan's flashers work on an SCS2 demilich, but otherwise I have no reason to risk getting hit by Imprison. That's basically eternal hell.
I don't know why anyone would ever knowingly go up against a demilich. The penalty for losing is endless loneliness and insanity. The reward is winning is XP, and XP can be found lots of other places. You could do it for the bragging rights, but why bother? You could just lie about killing the demilich, and anyone who tried to double-check your story would never come back to expose you.
As for Demogorgon himself... well, Sil is Lawful Good. She's going to keep Demogorgon where ze belongs: in Watcher's Keep, away from both the Prime Material Plane and the Abyss. Demogorgon has no special loot and you get more XP from locking him up than setting him free into the Abyss.
The thing is, today I planned on fighting Saladrex, an extra beefy version of Firkraag. I figured I'd rush in, send down a Wizard Eye, then have Nalia's clones barrage Saladrex with Feeblemind spells. Same way I killed the last two dragons. Right?
Well, I headed back to the Githyanki encampment and prepared my spellbook for the encounter. Since the area has two exits besides the way you come in, and one of them leads to a Demilich, I go to DLTCEP and check the area file to make sure I've gotten the right one. I double-check the coordinates before entering, and head on in.
I knew the 300th screenshot was going to be a good one.
Well, this encounter is beyond me. Putting aside the fact that I don't ever really want to fight SCS2 demiliches, not in this run, I also am completely unprepared for this fight. I was expecting a dragon, not a demilich.
I decide to leave.
Uh oh.
Well, now the fight is unavoidable. I'm trapped in a room with a demilich. And in SCS2, both of BG2's demiliches cast spells as well as use Imprisonment. And like in PnP, SCS2 demiliches can cast spells and use Imprisonment in the same round.
I decide I need a trump card. I pull out a Protection from Magic scroll, but before I use it, I decide to check the files in DLTCEP to make sure it's going to work as I intended.
It turns out the scroll now works by casting a spell, which is why Spellstrike in SCS2 can take down a Protection from Magic scroll. The interesting thing is that, although the SPELL bypasses magic resistance entirely, the scroll does not. So MR can't block the spell, but it can prevent you from casting the spell.
I double-check the Demilich's file.
100% magic resistance.
The scroll wouldn't work on it. Neither would Jan's flashers. Kuo-toa Bolts won't work either, because they only hit as +1 weapons.
I ponder my options. I do have multiple +4 and +5 weapons available, although the only +5 weapon that lasts forever is the Sling of Everard (Aerie's Energy Blades and Summon Deva spell are another option). But we don't have a whole lot of defenses. I have Potions of Magic Protection and Potions of Magic Resistance, but both of them are dispellable.
The main problem is I spent most of my 5th level spell slots on Feeblemind spells. Everyone in the party has precisely one casting of Spell Immunity, and no other spell protections memorized.
I begin by having Haer'dalis and Imoen target the Demilich with the Wand of Spell Striking. Even if it takes down their spell protections, at least it will break through the Demilich's Spell Turning and Protection from Magical Weapons. Nalia casts Project Image. I have her clone cast Time Stop.
It comes out instantly. I forgot to unequip Nalia's custom bracers of Improved Alacrity, which also give a bonus of 9 to casting time. I can't unequip it now that Nalia has cast Project Image. I decide not to reload to prevent the error from occurring. Instead, I'll just wait several seconds in between their spells, to simulate not having Improved Alacrity or instant spellcasting active.
Nalia's first clone casts Mordenkainen's Sword, Improved Haste (I think on Sil), and maybe Ruby Ray of Reversal, in case it makes any difference. Aerie casts RRoR, too, after the Time Stop runs out. I send Sil out to the corner and have the clones spread out to cover her, casting Mordenkainen's Sword for lack of any better options.
The Wand of Spell Striking succeeds, thankfully, but we have new problems to deal with. Now the Demilich has a friend.
Notice that Jan is suddenly level drained, which at the time I assumed was due to the Demilich. I'm pretty sure now it was the Balor, though.
Around this time, everybody casts SI: Abjuration to protect themselves from Imprisonment. But the Demilich should be able to take down Spell Immunity in a single round. That's what the placement of the clones is for: to keep the Demilich from turning his attention to Sil.
Since I saw a text line indicating that the Demilich attacked one of us, I decided that Sil needed PFMW to keep her safe. This slowed us down another round, but I really want to cast Improved Alacrity without getting interrupted.
Then, out of nowhere, Imoen vanishes from the party.
I go back through the dialogue box to see what happened, and spot a line saying Level Drain. It's worse than I thought.
I've seen this before, very long ago, when fighting Thaxll'ssillyia. He hit us with a breath weapon, draining our levels, and right before Charname died, I saw several party members removed from the party, and a shower of stony shards bursting in the air. Level drain somehow produced the same death as petrification: removing them from the party, killing them, and playing the shattered animation for stoned characters.
Imoen just got level drained to death. And permanently killed.
If we actually survive this fight, we'll be a member short. And the only non-fighter NPC left is Viconia.
Sil finishes casting Improved Alacrity and shapeshifts into a Mind Flayer. I don't know if the Demilich is vulnerable to Psionic Blast, but I do know spell level immunities and magic resistance are both incapable of blocking it. I target the Mordenkainen's Swords with Psionic Blast, in case the Demilich turns invisible and cancels one of my spells.
Meanwhile, Jan and his Simulacrum (conjured the first round) attack with Firetooth. We already broke through both of the Demilich's PFMW spells, and though Jan has terrible APR and THAC0, he might just be able to do a little bit of damage. Aerie uses the Sling of Everard, borrowed from Sil before shapeshifting. While this is happening, Nalia's clones cast three copies of Pierce Magic on the Balor, which we had planned to use to lower Saladrex' magic resistance, and one of them prepares to Maze it once its MR is down.
Then I see something beautiful.
See that little dot of magic over the Demilich's head? That's the beginning of the restoration animation, which appears when a target fails a save against Psionic Blast. We stunned the Demilich! Ten rounds of automatic hits!
Aerie lands a hit on the now-stunned Demilich... and I see a disturbing message in the dialog box.
Aerie disrupted its spell. You can't disrupt a spell unless the target is in the middle of casting. The Demilich wasn't stunned at all.
I keep firing off Psionic Blast, partly to hit the Balor in the north corner, but mostly because I'm hoping the Demilich isn't really immune, and the restoration animation was just an error. While Sil is busy firing off her Psionic Blasts, the situation deteriorates.
A second Balor. They're awful powerful critters, but the Demilich is still by far the biggest threat.
I double-check the Demilich's creature file and find out that it is equipped with RING95, which grants it all the standard undead immunities, including the immunity to stun. The Demilich is indeed immune to Psionic Blast. Or at least, to the stunning effect. The Demilich can still fail a save and get hit by the animation.
I switch gears. Sil returns to natural form, casts Improved Haste, then Boon of Lathander, another Boon of Lathander, and finally Draw Upon Holy Might, giving her six APR with reasonable THAC0, about 4 to the Demilich's roughly -10 AC. Aerie tosses her the Sling of Everard so Sil can attack from afar. Aerie uses the War Hammer +1, +4 vs. Giantkin, more for lack of a better weapon than anything else. She has no proficiency in war hammers, but at least she'll be able to do one or two damage on a critical hit. Every point of damage could turn failure into success.
The Demilich is actually in pretty bad shape right now, considering all the Mordenkainen's Swords around it. If it cast Teleport Field and wiggled around a little more, it could have avoided almost all the damage. Notice that we've manage to Maze the first Balor. The other one, mercifully, has been stunned, though I didn't notice that at the time.
The Demilich senses the danger and activates an Improved Invisibility+Spell Shield+SI: Divination Spell Trigger. Jan dispels his illusions quickly. If he did not, the Demilich could have spent up to 20 rounds waiting out our buffs and adding to his own.
The Demilich attacks Aerie. Since I want Aerie to have the breathing room to cast Summon Deva and Energy Blades (not sure in what order), I have her cast PFMW first.
Without its invisibility, the Demilich is blocked in and perilously low on health. Unlike Kangaxx, he has no regeneration to help him.
A Mordenkainen's Sword claims the final blow.
That was quite surprising. I just killed a Demilich without planning ahead. But we've lost Imoen forever. It was nowhere near worth the sacrifice.
The Balor teleports directly into the fray and we cut it down. It's still stunned from before.
The next Balor returns from its Maze, but it is also stunned and helpless. It seems Nalia's clone's Maze actually made no difference. But that speaks more to the strength of Psionic Blast than the weakness of Maze, since Maze did keep it out of combat when we needed all our attention on the Demilich.
Finally, the last of the enemies are dead. Nalia has just reached level 19. Imoen, however, has vanished. Even her equipment is gone.
The Demilich took that from us, too.
Out of curiosity, I rest and memorize Freedom. I saw her getting level drained, but I suppose it's possible the cause of death was something else. Sil casts Freedom.
Imoen is glad to see us. Aerie casts Restoration on Jan and Imoen and we fill in their spellbooks. It's good to have her back.
Oh, and I also killed Saladrex.
Bo-ring. But boring is good. Exciting is scary.
This was one of the crazier parts of this run, which is saying something. How often do people kill a Demilich without planning for the encounter? I did get 3 seconds cut off of the casting time of the first Time Stop, but since the Nalia clones did almost nothing besides summon Mordenkainen's Swords and Maze the Balor (the Teleport Field was Aerie's), their custom Improved Alacrity item made little difference, if any.
It seems SCS2 demiliches are not actually immune to all spell levels. They're only immune to level 4 spells and below, like SCS2 liches, but they come with 100% magic resistance and immunities to spells which bypass it, like Imprisonment. But they have no immunity to Breach, Pierce Magic, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Khelben's Warding Whip, and Spellstrike. Wands of Spell Striking work against them, too, since they have a spell level of 9. This lich only came buffed with Spell Turning, SI: Abjuration, and PFMW, which could easily be taken down with a couple of charges from the Wand of Spell Striking, or RRoR+Spell Thrust+Breach. He had an extra PFMW on a Contingency and/or memorized, but we could take that down, too, rendering him just as vulnerable as he is in the vanilla game.
The battle could have gone the other way if he had different spell choices. Death Spell would have rendered the party largely helpless, considering how much of the work was done by those Mordenkainen's Swords. Teleport Field would have had the same effect. Extra PFMW spells wouldn't have helped him, but a Magic Attack spell to remove our Spell Immunity would have ruined us. Remove Jan's SI: Abjuration, imprison him, and activate the Spell Trigger, and the Demilich could have waited out the rest of our buffs, and then just Imprisoned the whole group.
Thankfully, this little guy was prepared for a different party. One without Jan, or Mordenkainen's Swords.
Still not going to take on Kangaxx. I've seen him use Teleport Field in SCS2. He'd be better prepared than this one.