@Blackraven: The hitpoints came from Vampiric Touch. Normally, at 12th level it gives the caster about 30 temporary hitpoints, which last for 5 turns, but I've seen a peculiar bug where the effects double or triple, or in one case, even quadruple. I don't know the cause, but Sil has about 100 HP at base, and the extra 69~ HP would have come from a double-strength Vampiric Touch spell. In my auto-buff spell, the spell just adds on 30 HP, so presumably it won't duplicate anymore, but before then, it wasn't uncommon for Sil to have over 150 HP entering a battle. Turns out Barbarians don't have the biggest potential HP pool, though the Vampiric Touch bonus is dispellable and wears off after an admittedly long duration.
Sil's MR comes from five different places: the Amulet of Power, the Robe of the Good Archmagi, the Shield of the Lost, the Machine of Lum the Mad, and the Hell reward. Normally, that only adds up to 30, but there's a trick you can do in Hell (I described it earlier on) that allows you to get up to 5 bonuses of the same kind in Hell. I chose the MR reward three times and the saving throw reward twice, giving me 50 undispellable MR. So the MR technically isn't innate, since 20% comes from items.
All right! More stuff to do in Saradush. But first, I try out my auto-buffing spell.
All those spells, triggered with a hotkey. I did the math and there are about 70 different spells I would normally need to click to get the party fully buffed.
Still, a lot of the party's power comes from Comet and Dragon's Breath.
A little boring, but they work. And they do cut short the less interesting encounters.
We are posed with our first moral dilemma of Throne of Bhaal!
Who knew ToB could be so philosophically compelling?
I do some random busywork around Saradush. Fetching Lazarus' spellbook is a boring chore, as usual. Same goes for pacifying the local ruffians and finding the elves a new place to stay. We sell some equipment so we can afford another pair of Boots of Speed. Half the party now has boosted movement rates.
Mercifully, the vampires beneath Saradush don't summon rats or anything. No Ancient Vampires or Elder Vampires, like we had to face in Firkraag's dungeon. Just run of the mill vampires.
This one is in an interesting position. It seems the hallways are just barely too narrow for him to get around Sil. She doesn't need to be in Iron Golem form to form a wall.
Phlydian and her cronies fall to Comet, Dragon's Breath, and melee force. The party just has lots of damage-dealing power against mid-range foes like these.
Next, though, we have to deal with some rather high-end fighters and thieves. At first, I intend to have Sil tank the enemy, but poor luck renders this unwise.
We still have lots of summons to deal with this sort of thing. But then, a sudden flicker of lag belies the introduction of another enemy: one of Gromnir's wizardly underlings.
We address the problem with Dragon's Breath, but our targeting is very poor.
I've never noticed DB doing that much damage, though.
The mage has lots of free room, since we're stuck behind our summons. We can't start applying the pressure we need to cause her any trouble.
Luckily, she spends the Time Stop on defensive-type spells. And since she has no Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap, we can Breach her directly. Her Stoneskins don't hold up under our rather heavy party APR.
More grunts in the sewers. Sil is built for precisely this kind of encounter.
The mage at the south is invisible but mostly defenseless, and quite vulnerable to Nalia's Horrid Wilting spell, currently casting.
I get a crash for some reason after I trigger a cutscene in the middle of the sewers. After reloading, I decide to see what happens if I talk-block one of the participants and then attack him.
With nobody to speak the first line, the cutscene stalls. I have to start over.
DB again proves useful in the battle before Gromnir. The amount of damage we can do these days is just obscene.
Plus, Comet knocks out the main enemy mage, giving us plenty of time to break through his defenses.
There's not much anyone can do against DB and Comet.
Since Imoen is near level 18, we do the Kiser Jhaeri quest to help bump her up to epic levels. She chooses Comet for the longer disabling duration, but Improved Alacrity might have been a better choice.
I sell off all of the equipment we filched off of Gromnir's guards.
Some people complain that ToB loot is too excessive. I don't really see the problem here.
With a newfound trove of gold, we buy a Time Stop and Chain Contingency scroll for Imoen. She can now spawn four clones, just like Sil and Nalia, but she can't do quite as much with the spell, since multiple Time Stops are a major drain on our buffs. We also get Spell Trigger for Sil, finally, so she can activate Righteous Magic while in Iron Golem form. Her Spell Trigger also includes Tenser's Transformation because of the need for stronger THAC0. We also get rid of Sil's old Spell Sequencer combining Holy Power, Stoneskin and DUHM for a triple Armor of Faith sequencer.
Plus, we manage to get an extra pair of Boots of Speed from the tavern somehow. Now four of the party members have Boots of Speed.
With only 29,000 gold left, we only pay for two of Cespenar's recipes: the Circlet of Netheril, for no special reason, and Ixil's Spike, for Haer'dalis' melee power. With Ixil's Spike, Haer'dalis gets a substantial power boost, plus a means of bypassing Improved Mantle and the ability to disable enemies through MR.
Since we now have three characters with Time Stop and triple Project Image Chain Contingencies, I decide our control over time is excessive. Sil dispels her current Chain Contingency and replaces it with a triple Horrid Wilting contingency, another classic that will require less micromanagement on my part.
It works better than I expected. When the fight begins, Sil is in the perfect place to nail Gromnir's mages.
Also note the completely gratuitous Dragon's Breath spell, courtesy of Nalia and her quick casting time..
Now that Sil has Spell Trigger, she can achieve max damage output without much fiddling. with Tenser's Transformation, Righteous Magic, and Improved Haste active, plus a Boon of Lathander, she has THAC0 well below zero and can deal dozens of damage in seconds. Gromnir doesn't last long, despite his innate 25% physical damage resistance, plus Hardiness.
Imoen dealt with Berena Elken and her two sidekicks with Comet, while Jan finally got back to using his flashers.
When the last of the enemies fall, we get a visit from Melissan.
The screen hangs there. It's not frozen; Melissan just isn't addressing us. I assume the dialogue can't start because Sil is in Iron Golem form.
I reload and mow down the whole group once again without trouble, and this time Melissan talks to us. With nothing left to do in Saradush besides sell off our excess loot, we head out into the wilderness, and get to play around with some of Yaga-shura's many soldiers, plus a handful of Fire Giants who wanted to join the party.
There is something very satisfying about turning into an Iron Golem and chunking a Fire Giant. Sil has truly become a monster.
The party has started returning to its roots as a group of melee spiders. Sil has taken on a more prominent role as an Iron Golem tank, at the cost of losing her spells to Tenser's Transformation, which prevent her from returning to natural form or recasting Boon of Lathander. Haer'dalis, meanwhile, has adopted spider form for the first time in the game (earlier, he was too weak to melee in any form). With Ixil's Spike, he can attack 8 times per round at 2 THAC0 with a +6 weapon that knocks the target unconscious on a failed save vs. death, bypassing magic resistance. If I actually remember to do so, I can also bump his STR up to 22 by activating the once per day Fire Giant strength ability of Angurvadal, which I may avoid upgrading for exactly that reason. Ixil's Spike also has fantastic damage potential. At base, it's just 10.5 with the spider's +1 STR bonus (not much compared to Sil's 50+ damage per hit), but on a failed save, we get another 25 damage over the next three rounds, which applies even if the victim is immune to unconsciousness.
Sil has achieved late-game fighter capabilities, and Haer'dalis has also gained a major boost thanks to Ixil's Spike. Once Haer'dalis has achieved epic levels, though (still about 300,000 XP away), everyone in the party should be able to operate as a fighter thanks to the Improved Bard Song.
Next up are the Fire Giants, who don't seem to have the Tactics-style abilities according to DLTCEP. I will have to fix up the install to make sure they're casting their Fireballs and Firestorms and lowering our fire resistance like they're supposed to.
I fixed the Fire Giants. All I had to do was copy the GIAFIR.itm file from the Tactics folder and move it to the override folder. Now Fire Giants have a chance of casting Fireball, Firestorm, or summoning a Greater Fire Elemental on every hit. They also have a 100% chance of casting Lower Fire Resistance every hit, which affects the entire party. Plus, they can use Enrage, giving them immunity to disablers.
And, of course they hit for ridiculously high damage values.
That one single Fire Giant gave me a lot of trouble.
I buffed the party properly beforehand, with Haer'dalis in spider form with Ixil's Spike and Sil in Iron Golem form with Boon of Lathander, but apparently the Fire Giant had spectacular regeneration. Many rounds after the fight began, he is back up to full health.
At least Haer'dalis can still disable Greater Fire Elementals. Jan is offscreen, setting traps (Time Trap, followed by damage traps) to the west in case we need to flee. If the Fire Giant runs into our traps, Jan will get a round of free hits at 2 APR, or about 10 APR considering he'll be using Assassination.
The party actually ended up in pretty lousy shape around here, which is why I sent Jan off to set up some traps. Both Sil and Haer'dalis lost a lot of health, which is saying something considering Sil's resistances. A Potion of Superior Healing was not enough to keep her safe; another character had to use the Rod of Resurrection on her. She switched to Mind Flayer form to get some extra physical damage resistance, but the Fire Giant switched targets. I tried Psionic Blast.
At first, I thought I saw the Fire Giant enter the rage state just as I hit him with Psionic Blast, which was very irritating. But looking back, it seems like he LEFT the rage state just BEFORE I hit him with Psionic Blast, which is even more irritating, since I could have nailed him if I had waited a couple seconds.
Nalia spawns her clones and begins casting Horrid Wilting, which in most situations would have been overkill for a single enemy.
Jan is still offscreen, setting traps. Aerie has gated in a Deva, Sil is summoning a Magical Sword, and either Haer'dalis, Imoen, or Nalia has hit the giant with Pierce Magic to help break through the resistance I didn't know it had (a Maze failed earlier due to MR, not the rage state). Only after much focus and preparation did the Fire Giant come down.
Devas are immune to fire, but Fire Giants can lower it, hence the damage the Deva took from the giant's Fire Shield.
Now we have to enter the Fire Giant's lair itself. When we first enter the place, there should be about ten Fire Giants coming at us simultaneously. To protect us from the fire spells, everyone but Sil (who is already immune by virtue of the Cloak of Mirroring) casts SI: Evocation. It won't give us immunity to fire damage itself, but Fireball and Firestorm won't be able to touch us.
Sil prepares a new Chain Contingency with three Project Image spells. I figure four clones in Iron Golem form will do a lot to keep the Fire Giants at bay.
I was wrong.
Sil spawned her clones at the start of battle. They all immediately switch to Iron Golem form, and it looks like the Fire Giants will keep their attention trained on the clones.
Notice the Clay Golem next to the southernmost Iron Golem. Since the GIAFIR item does blunt damage instead of slashing damage as in the vanilla game, the Clay Golem won't be immune to the enemy's attacks, but it will cast Golem Haste, which will give all the clones a boost without applying a fatigue penalty.
Nalia and Imoen spawn clones as well, but we have two problems. First, not all of the clones manage to buff with SI: Evocation.
Second, the Fire Giants are not content to busy themselves with Sil's clones. They have maneuvered around the wall of Iron Golem I was hoping to construct, and Sil's clones do precious little damage against the giants.
And Nalia, as I later noticed, appeared to only have one clone, meaning that either she had no Chain Contingency prepared, or three of her four clones were killed by Fireballs and Firestorms.
On top of that, with at least 20 enemy spells being cast every round, including Firestorms, which always slow down the system, the battle is experiecing severe lag. Here, we might have two frames per second.
All those spells triggering at once is hard to process. I had to scroll to a different part of the map sometimes to better cope with the lag. I considered quitting the game and removing the GIAFIR item just so I wouldn't have to deal with the slowdown. Lowering fire resistance is a neat trick, and multiple Firestorms are certainly powerful, but it doesn't justify slowing the game to a crawl.
To my surprise, Haer'dalis starts taking heavy damage. He still has SI: Evocation, but unfortunately that's not enough. The giants also have many, many attacks, and his Stoneskin was simply not sufficient. I have him drink a potion or two, but it's no use.
What especially irks me is that I'm trying to get Haer'dalis up to 3 million XP as quickly as possible, and his death deprives him of a lot of experience.
Aerie is next.
But, with Energy Blades active, she has Improved Haste, and can escape the crowd.
By now, all of Sil's clones have been slain, despite their high HP, 40% base physical damage resistance, low AC, immunity to fire, high-end summons, and our best efforts to defeat the giants.
I don't believe we've killed a single giant yet, despite multiple Horrid Wilting spells and four Iron Golems on our side, not to mention high-HD elementals and a Deva or Planetar. But now Sil has rejoined the battle, and unlike her clones, she can use sequencers and triggers. I can't give her Roranach's Horn, which would have given her 90% base resistance to crushing damage, since Imoen has it and she's still under the effects of Project Image (I gave it to her to free up inventory space elsewhere), but Sil does have a triple Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer along with a Righteous Magic+Improved Haste+Tenser's Transformation Spell Trigger, giving her 85% damage resistance and, after loading up on Boon of Lathander spells, eight attacks per round for over 50 damage a pop, at subzero THAC0 and therefore automatic hits.
With the clones out of the way, Sil begins trashing the opposition. The Fire Giants' Hardiness spells and Potions of Superior Healing are no longer enough. We also find room for summoning a new celestial.
Jan has also run out of Stoneskins, but he wasn't doing much anyway, so it's not a big loss to draw him away. Aerie fled to the right; Jan is to the left now.
Once we have a chance, we bring back Haer'dalis with the Rod of Resurrection, so he can share the XP from the rest of the battle. He just hides in a corner until it's over.
Sil chunks the last remaining giant.
That was a very frustrating battle, mostly just because of that lag. I might actually remove the GIAFIR item anyway. It increases the difficulty a lot, but mostly it's just a needless pain.
I clear up the northwesternmost room, with its Fire Trolls and Salamanders, only to get surprised when I use CTRL-J to teleport nearby the next room.
The party still has its buffs from the previous battle, but I would have preferred to have started fresh.
I draw Nalia and Imoen over to the west to escape the incoming fire spells, while Jan flees to the south to lay some traps. Imoen spawns her clones, but Nalia waits. I want to save Nalia's clones for the latter half of this battle. Sil creates a simulacrum and then switches to Iron Golem form. The battle goes much better, partly because there aren't so many Fire Giants, but also because we came better prepared, despite being surprised.
As it happens, we don't need Nalia's clones. Imoen does plenty of spell damage on her own, and, more importantly, Sil is operating at maximum capacity. The Fire Giants go down easily.
Project Image is probably not the best choice for Sil at the moment. With our party structured as it is, and with the enemies as tough as they are, we really do need more melee power in the group. And since I'm not willing to spam Animate Dead and Mordenkainen's Sword to solve that problem, I think I will have Sil focus on fighting in Iron Golem form for a while. But her projected images just aren't going to cut it without Tenser's Transformation, which they can't use in concert with Shapechange. Sil will probably start devoting her Chain Contingencies to other spells. Horrid Wilting comes to mind, but a Heal+Improved Haste+PFMW on 50% HP Chain Contingency might work better, since it would keep Sil going after an extended battle, when her Spell Trigger runs out and she can't prepare a new one without taking four whole rounds to prepare and cast it (since it would take two rounds to return to natural form and back).
The rest of the Fire Giant lair remains intact. We still have a lot more to go before we can get out. As I recall, there's a red dragon on the next level, and I may want to resort to Mind Flayer form to deal with that one. After that, we just have to deal with Nyalee and head to the Siege Camp.
I have tried the Yaga-shura battle in Tactics several times and I have never once been able to play it. The game has always crashed near the start of battle. I may have to fight the vanilla Yaga-shura instead, but if I can get the mod to work this time, things might get very difficult. Yaga-shura starts out with 99% resistance to almost all damage besides cold and acid, though the readme says this resistance lowers over time. Unfortunately, this party isn't well-suited to long, drawn-out conflicts, considering the duration of some of our buffs.
But, it's my understanding that the Chaos Blade's DEX drain works against Yaga-shura, as he has no MR and his DEX is about 14. In spider form, Haer'dalis should be able to hit him 50% of the time at 8 APR, for 16 DEX drained per round on average. I saw somebody kill Yaga-shura this way on Youtube, so it might just work.
Of course, I still need a viable strategy in case Haer'dalis fails. Who can say the guy won't get petrified and shattered in the middle of the battle? If it happened to Cernd, it can certainly happen to Haer'dalis.
The battles are bigger in TOB, and things seem to move slower. Maybe because they're so little in between the fights. Nothing in TOB is small.
I'll keep this post short, since the party hasn't grown much and doesn't have much to report in terms of new tactics and so forth.
One of the remaining encounters involves a Fire Lich. Ho hum. He casts Time Stop and then Comet.
Haer'dalis takes a small amount of damage. He isn't immune to fire, since he's in spider form and only gets 40% resistance from the Ring of Fire Resistance, but he does have excellent saves, enough to keep Comet at bay.
But since Comet isn't a big enough spell, the Fire Lich casts another Time Stop and this uses Dragon's Breath.
I'm getting kind of impatient with this part of the game. The Fire Lich might have a lot of defenses, but at this point in the game, there's not much he can actually DO to us. It's a common ailment for high-level parties. Get the right item, get the right spell, get the right ability, and the difficulty is broken.
Jan tries to paralyze the lich with his flashers. The lich fails its save!
Too bad SCS2 gives liches undead-style immunities. Stun has no effect on these guys. Notice Imoen casting Breach: our many spellcasters are turning their attention to breaking down the Fire Lich's defenses.
The Lich restores its defenses with a Spell Deflection+Spell Shield+PFMW Spell Trigger, but we break through the whole thing in one round. Haer'dalis impales the poor thing.
We spent the next 10 to 15 rounds trying to finish off the Efreetis, who kept changing back to mist form. Did you know Haer'dalis can pin a cloud to the ground? But he still can't kill them. They're immune to physical damage, although not immune to the unconsciousness effect of Ixil's Spike.
I notice that preparing the spider form still takes longer than it has to. I tweak the spider shapeshift so it does not create the spider weapon, negating the need for Shocking Grasp to dispel it. I also give a single casting of the spider shapeshift and the natural form shapeshift to everyone in the party save Sil, since Polymorph Self conflicts with Shapechange.
On to the next encounter!
More Fire Giants. Wow.
Even with Roranach's Horn, Sil is not truly immune to these guys. Her crushing resistance is at 90%, but they can still sneak in a little damage with every hit. Haer'dalis also has to drink a lot of potions. As before, once Sil is fully buffed and we start hurling out Horrid Wilting spells, the enemy collapses.
On to the second level! Aerie casts a bunch of Farsight spells to scout out the place. We're in for a treat.
So, basically, this is like our hectic first encounter at the start of the level. Plus Firkraag.
We might be immune to fire, but those giants--especially with a dragon at their side--have a lot of physical attacks that we can't just shrug off. Worse, a Wing Buffet could cause all kinds of mischief, dividing the party, spreading out the Fire Giants, and greatly weakening our area effect spells as a result.
Since I'm lazy, I have Sil cast Time Stop, run up to the dragon under Improved Haste, and crack open its skull. Mind Flayers are cool. But entering the battle under the effects of Time Stop is kind of boring.
Still better than dying, though. I'm not big on taking risks in no-reload runs.
Now that the dragon is dead, the Fire Giants realize something is wrong and come charging after us.
See that giant with the big yellow circle under his feet? Sil prepared a triple Symbol: Fear Chain Contingency, since Horrid Wilting would just get soaked up by the giants' regeneration and potions. I don't know if Enrage protects against fear, but Sil's Symbol spells triggered during the Time Stop, before the giants had a chance to throw a hissy fit.
I play the next part of the battle very loosely and offensive, paying fairly little attention to the party's positioning. The Fire Giants quickly mow down Jan and Haer'dalis' Mislead spells, which I just wanted for the few extra seconds of safety, and move on to the group. Imoen has spawned her clones, who will provide a couple castings of Horrid Wilting apiece, once they have an opportunity to do so safely.
Since I neglected to buff anybody with SI: Evocation, I decide to just cast PFMW on whoever is being attacked. The Fire Giants can't use their fire spells unless they land a hit on somebody, and PFMW blocks that entirely. Whoever doesn't need to cast PFMW just uses offensive spells instead. Meanwhile, Sil builds up her buffs over the rounds: a Boon of Lathander, a triple Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer to keep her safe, a second Boon of Lathander, and then the Spell Trigger with Tenser's Transformation, since the Spell Trigger prevents her from casting anything else.
The only enemies left are Imix and his two elemental buddies. He doesn't have much offensive power beyond a Sunfire spell of some sort, which nearly kills both Jan and Haer'dalis thanks to their lousy resistances in spider form.
A Planetar and Energy Blades spell Imix's doom. Sil deals with the rest.
We sell off a lot of treasure and fill in the remaining holes in our spellbook, trading tens of thousands of gold for now-negligible XP and spells we'll barely ever use, but there's not much else we need right now, not much to buy. The only thing I particularly want is the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, since Jan can use it to cast Improved Haste on himself while in spider form, allowing him to reach 8 APR while under the effects of Mislead, and therefore backstab for an effective 40 APR.
Now that I think about it, he could have done that with the Bracers of Blinding Strike. I forgot about those things. I got them off of the Kuo-toa Prince. But I don't have them now. Cernd must have died with them.
Haer'dalis is just barely short of 3.08 million XP, inches away from the Improved Bard Song I have been waiting for since Cernd died so long ago and we had to pick up this fruity bard and his bird fetish. We'd be a little closer if we had killed Brimstone through some other means (fully buffed, Sil probably could have killed him in two or three rounds, if Aerie and Nalia used Energy Blades to get through the dragon's Stoneskin), but we still have one last stop before Yaga-shura. We have a fight with the Master Wraith and his buddies, the Skeleton Cleric and its other buddies, and Nyalee and the woodsies of the forest, plus some quest experience, I assume, from giving Nyalee the two hearts we got from the fire giants' lair, so maybe we'll be able to get Haer'dalis up to the right amount of XP in time.
Failing that, we might just let Haer'dalis hit level 24 in the middle of the fight with Yaga-shura, and he can start singing the song right then. But hopefully DEX drain will make that unnecessary.
I have realized something potentially very, very important.
Sil was unable to handle those Fire Giants without Tenser's Transformation, and even then her Stoneskins were a pretty important buffer to help her wear down the enemy. Imoen's Horrid Wilting spells also dramatically shortened the battle, I'm sure.
Most of the benefit of Tenser's Transformation comes from the THAC0 changes, not the damage bonus, which is only +2. The spell sets Sil's base THAC0 to 1, where her normal THAC0 is 13. Thing is, Haer'dalis THAC0 isn't much better than Sil's, which suggests his THAC0 does not meet a certain threshold for TOB viability.
Sil's THAC0, fully buffed, is about -6. Many enemies in late-game TOB have AC or -10 or lower, which means that, just like in the fight with Irenicus in Hell, she might be unable to land hits on the toughest targets. If the enemy's AC is too low, then the encounter could drag on for quite some time, and this party suffers tremendously from long-duration battles, due to its reliance on buffs. Normally, this doesn't make much difference, since an encounter is over within 5 to 20 rounds, say. But if something goes wrong and our ability to end the fight is compromised, it might drag on for quite some time, and Sil would lose the buffs that she needs to land hits.
Sil can restore those buffs, if necessary. She has at least one spare casting of Righteous Magic, Tenser's Transformation, Improved Haste, PFMW, Spell Sequencer, and Spell Trigger, plus many castings of Armor of Faith. She can replace her Spell Sequencer and Spell Trigger without resting first. But she does not have any extra castings of Boon of Lathander, nor of Shapechange, and it would take six rounds at minimum to get her other critical buffs up and working. There is just so much that can happen in six rounds, so much time for the enemy to pull us down. The Improved Bard Song could ameliorate this somewhat, but Haer'dalis can only maintain a +4 bonus indefinitely; any more would require very finite castings of Mislead.
The possibility I foresee is that, at some point, we're going to come across a very tough melee-type of enemy that is going to resist our magic and outlast our buffs. Now, Sil is basically invincible when it comes to enemy spellcasters--she has undispellable magic immunity while in Iron Golem form--and she does have 40% resistance to physical damage on top of that. But her ability to renew her defenses is very limited while in Iron Golem form, and if she switches out of it, she has six seconds of vulnerability, and she might not be able to run.
We need more consumable items in case our spells run out. We need scrolls of Mislead, Stoneskin, PFMW, and maybe Teleport Field. And Sil may need to dedicate a second spell slot to Shapechange. Otherwise we might get stuck in a long fight where the enemy cannot bring down Sil, but Sil does not have the offensive potential to take down the enemy, and while the enemy will stay at normal strength, Sil will gradually weaken over time.
I remember getting so frustrated at these improved giants. I have done insta-kill tactics to prevent their massive regeneration and healing potions.
Basically enter invisible, retreat to a safe position to set up project images, use time stop constantly and never give them a chance to attack:Time stop+and in an improved alacrity fury, greater malison+doom and a few energy drain spells:energy drain spell greatly debuffs the enemy's saving throws, and with project images you can get a lot of castings. Giants have amazing saves but after this treatment they get something like -10 to all saves. Add in a flesh to stone, disintegrate, or even more powerful finger of death and they fall %50 of the time. Right from full health. I concentrate on debuffing one as most as possible in a time stop, and then get rid of it by killer spells. If you debuff a few of them, wail of the banshee can work on multiple giants:it was a very satisfying sight when I did that. Staff of magi is a very potent weapon here as you and your clones can vanish at will:giants can not see invisible.
A high lvl c/m can set up time stop+harm combo but then you should strike out the last remaining hp fast as giants regenerate in an astonishing rate!
Also, can't you just time stop and devour their brains in mf form? Haven't tried that as I never use the spell:are they immune to int drain? If not they should die in a couple hits I don't think they are the smartest of monsters.
@lunar: I forgot to mention, killing monsters with INT drain prevents you from getting any XP from the kill. I got nothing from eating Berenn and Brimstone's brains. And the Fire Giants are worth 16,000 XP each, as I recall.
What exactly are the mechanics for level drain? Does it really decrease their saving throws? Will it drain enemy spell slots? Decrease HP? THAC0? APR?
Okay just tested by ctrl+quing an elite fire giant. Energy drain does nothing to saves unless you cast it multiple times, so that the giant's lvl drops far below max saving throws. Needs four or more castings, not practical at all.
But, giant's save vs spells is 6. With greater malison and doom, it will be 12. With a chant effect it will be 13. (I think) Then a finger of death with its save vs spells penalty of -2, will force a saving throw of 15 or more from the giant, or else it will be slain. Thus, you will have a %70 chance of insta-killing one with a finger of death. Very cool, too!
Against multiple giants, a greater malison and a wail of the banshee will slay each giant with %30 chance. (Base death save is 3, with malison it becomes 7) Not too shabby chances, if there are more than five giants around, more than one may drop dead instantly. Especially if you cast the wail multiple times in a time stop. And you will reap sweet xp from insta kill attacks.
I rrally love using insta kill attacks on enemies, and when they succeed I rejoice. Once, my wild mage got a very dangerous wild surge while casting a disintegrate:area effect, no save! That was one of the most dangerous spells ever casted in realms, surely.
As you progress in ToB be mindful of time stop. I just wrapped up my playthrough this weekend and there's a couple bosses that keep moving (at least in EE). Giving an opponent a free time stop will wreak havoc on your strategy.
@hispls: I think only Melissan and Demogorgon are immune to Time Stop. I'm not sure if I would get automatic hits on Melissan anyway during Time Stop, but it might make it worth it.
I am not collecting pantaloons. This party has no gear or bonuses from BG1, since in vanilla, non-BG:EE BG1, you can't be a Cleric of Lathander. I do love the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades, though. They're marvelous for Archers.
@DreadKhan: Well, since this is already a modded run by virtue of SCS, which itself applies to Tutu anyway, I think some BG1 bonuses are in order! Sil gets an extra 3 WIS and an extra 1 for every other ability score.
One thing: aren't there items besides the Golden Pantaloons that you can get from BG1? I think I've only actually imported a BG1 character into BG2 once in over ten years of playing BG2, so I don't really know what all the benefits are from importing.
Well, thats hardly gonna break the game anyways. Also, everyone knows good ol' Tutu is WAY more dignified than Trilogy. Or something. You can get other items now more readily, but I doubt you would care at this point about those.
@DreadKhan: Well, since this is already a modded run by virtue of SCS, which itself applies to Tutu anyway, I think some BG1 bonuses are in order! Sil gets an extra 3 WIS and an extra 1 for every other ability score.
One thing: aren't there items besides the Golden Pantaloons that you can get from BG1? I think I've only actually imported a BG1 character into BG2 once in over ten years of playing BG2, so I don't really know what all the benefits are from importing.
There's a handful of other stuff that you can import that will NOT be in your inventory but you do find scattered around the first dungeon. There's a chart somewhere online of the items that will port over. The memorable stuff is the Balduran sword and armor pieces... pretty much all of it is for sale in BG2 anyway apart from pantaloons so you're not missing that much but some items faster + a jump on XP by porting in a character.
As far as immunity to Time Stop, in my game Abazigal (sp?) managed to keep moving through it. Playing un-modded EE. Just be wary, you may or may not have an issue with original game + mods but in those really big boss fights I wouldn't bet a no-save game on it working.
In other news, I had a really rough time with the actual ToB battle. Not remembering the game, my spellbooks were very ill prepared for what was coming. I'm very interested to see how this plays out for you with the mods.
I decided to take on Yaga-shura. But it got late and I only had enough time for Nyalee.
I was nervous about today because I've been playing Rovala for a long time and I thought I might have gotten a little rusty on the details of Sil's strategy. I had to go over this thread a little and examine our inventory and spellbooks before I got an idea of how the party works. I spent a lot of time developing this party, building up a basic strategy and a set of backup plans and escape options, and different setups for dealing with the same encounter. There might have been a lot of memories of plans that are now forgotten. At least I'll have a fresh perspective, but handling the party feels kind of wonky. I'm not used to managing so many critters at once. Not after micromanaging Rovala's every little movement.
We hike out to the forest and get spooked by the shade of Gorion. He starts guilt-tripping us for being evil and bad.
I press "1" repeatedly for roleplaying and dialogue. But because this is ToB, the conversation ends in a fight with super bad monsters. The two Vampiric Wraiths are a major issue, as are the Devil Shades which apparently can also drain levels. Nalia brings out a Planetar in the first round thanks to her high casting speed, Sil hurries ahead to draw the attention of the level-draining shades, and Imoen and Jan cast PFMW to protect themselves from level drain (it doesn't work). Jan, Aerie, and Harry flee to the southeast. Aerie turns undead while Nalia tries out Dragon's Breath on the undead. We end up losing track of the Vampiric Wraiths, whom Aerie scares into the temple to the northwest, but the rest of the enemies aren't too difficult. The Master Wraith was never a heavy hitter.
We chase after the Vampiric Wraiths, but only see the party of skeletons that normally guard the place. Unlike most groups of skeletons, these are actually high-level class characters, including a mage, a cleric, a thief, and a fighter. The cleric, as I recall, uses Armor of Faith, which stacks with its innate skeleton damage resistances, but Sil can still disrupt its spells with the Flail of Ages. The mage comes out with some excellent buffs, but fails to include one of the most critical spells: Protection from Fire.
Nalia has come a long way. It wasn't that long ago she was at the de'Arnise Keep, suffocated by the confines of noble life and struggling to make her saves vs. Aunty's Crushing Hand.
The fighter-type skeleton proves ridiculously hard to kill, my only clue that it wasn't just another Skeleton Warrior. Check out its resistances.
That could only have come with Hardiness.
Then we meet Nyalee, whose name I thought for the longest time was pronounced Nyah-lee, which I think sounds more appropriate for a creepy bog witch.
Aside from the Cespenar syntax, she's a rather interesting character. She says she was a cleric of Bhaal, but then had to "turn to the older arts to survive." She sounds like she has a long and strange history.
But this is ToB, so the conversation ends in a fight. But it wasn't the fight I expected.
My memory of this battle was that you had a druid/cleric witch thingy in the form Nyalee, who summoned the woodsies of the forest, a couple Shambling Mounds and a couple Nymphs, maybe, and you might also get ambushed by some Mummies and Ghasts who happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by.
Early in the battle, I check the log to make sure Sil cast Boon of Lathander successfully. The first thing I come across is this.
At first I thought I had made a mistake, but that's not possible. I couldn't have clicked on the wrong icon; that's a wizard spell instead of an innate ability. Then I realize Nyalee has conjured a clone of me. I see no other clones, but even the one is worrying.
Sil has Time Stop memorized. She has Shapechange. She has the Flail of Ages. She has all manner of crazy items and spells, and unlike the fight in Spellhold, where I could disarm the party to make sure the clones came out unarmed, this Sil is fully equipped. Our only advantage over this character is our buffs and non-artificial AI.
I hear the voice of a nymph crooning. I hate that noise. It's the noise that signaled the death of an earlier multiclassed Cleric/Mage, also named Sil, in a vanilla no-reload ToB run, in Watcher's Keep. Even though everyone in the party is immune to charm, I assign Jan to go screw around with the Nymph's spellcasting. But the Nymph is the least of our worries.
Putting aside Nyalee's magic and her fantastic buffs, we have Sil casting a Transmutation spell with an apparently long duration. That's either a Time Stop, an Improved Alacrity, or a Shapechange spell. I can't tolerate any of those being cast, so I have the original Sil lob a rock at her doppelganger's head. But the Sil clone is the least of our worries.
Nyalee has managed to cast Creeping Doom and summon a clone of Jan. I can't help but wonder if Nyalee's script knows who to clone first: Jan and Sil have the most kills of the party, and in general they have been the critical factors in the first half and second third of this run, respectively, going back to Shadows of Amn.
I know the Jan clone is not going to be as vicious as our Jan, partly because our party is immune to stun and partly because SCS2 scripts are not going to know how to use flashers, much less do the spider gnome trick, since the former are only used by one, non-hostile character in the game... and the latter is something I personally invented. Still, another clone is bad news, and Creeping Doom is even worse. Nalia, Haer'dalis, and Sil are already in the thick of things, so I know they're not going to escape the cloud. But Aerie, Jan, and Imoen haven't been touched yet. I send them running out to the entrance to the temple, where they can hopefully cast SI: Conjuration before the swarm hits them. I also try to talk-block the Jan clone on the way out, since he had a green circle at first, but I don't know if it worked.
The Sil clone drinks a Potion of Invisibility, and though Jan can easily dispel it and render the clone visible and vulnerable, Jan is busy running away from Nyalee's Creeping Doom spell. I let the Sil clone heal herself and keep the party focused on killing Nyalee, but since Jan's clone is perfectly defenseless, I decide to Maze him.
I am quite pleased with this. It's a perfect way to get rid of an unbuffed character. Notice Sil's clone casting PFMW while invisible. Not a good use of her time, really.
By now, Jan, Aerie, and Imoen have reached the entrance to the temple to cast SI: Conjuration. But the Creeping Doom hits each of them before they finish casting the spell. Only Sil and Haer'dalis avoided the swarm, simply due to making a saving throw. So I just took half the party out of battle for more than two rounds for nothing.
But Creeping Doom is the least of our worries. We now have a hostile clone of Nalia active. Nalia, our top mage, with the Robe of Vecna to render many of her spells uninterruptable. And unlike our Nalia, this Nalia has no Creeping Doom effect to stop her spellcasting. Sil casts Comet, hoping to hit both the Nalia clone and Nyalee. Meanwhile, Jan, Aerie, and Imoen rush to get back to the fight.
Jan targets the Nalia clone with Bolts of Biting, knowing that Nalia's save vs. death is worse than her save vs. spell (the alternative being Kuo-toa Bolts or his flashers), but fails to poison the clone.
All this time, Chan and Haer'dalis have been struggling to kill Nyalee, who has switched to Earth Elemental form. As per SCS2-style shapeshifting, she can switch forms without causing any delay in her spellcasting, but some of her rounds are reserved for spawning clones, which I do not believe we could disrupt anyway. The rest of the party has also periodically targeted Nyalee with missile weapons, but to no avail. She will not die.
Three things happen all at once. First, with a concentration of missile fire, we manage to stop Nalia's clone from casting any spells. Second, we now have an Aerie clone in the fight.
Third, notice that our Nalia is now free of Creeping Doom. But our Aerie is not. This is because Aerie, Jan, and Imoen fled the area and made the Creeping Doom swarm chase them for many seconds before they got hit, meaning the Creeping Doom effect will last many seconds longer than it did for Nalia.
Now I realize that we've been focusing too much attention on dealing with the clones. Nyalee is the source of the clones, and we need to bring her down first. But she clearly has regeneration, plus access to high-end potions, and we need a boost.
I switch Sil to Iron Golem form. She can't reach Nyalee from her current location, so she has to run around the gazebo to get into position. By the time she's there, she can activate her Spell Trigger, giving her 6 APR at -6 THAC0, with maximum damage per hit. But it doesn't last.
Moments before, Aerie's clone used its copy of the Wand of Spell Striking on Sil, depriving us of Sil's many marvelous defenses and buffs. She still has 100% MR and a spare Boon of Lathander, but getting hit by Breach does a lot to weaken her. Also notice Jan casting Stoneskin. He ran out somewhere along the way and it's easier to spend a round casting Stoneskin than trying to run away from the Shambling Mound behind him. Haer'dalis had the same problem, running out of Stoneskins and having to flee temporarily, since he drank a Potion of Superior Healing right before I noticed his Stoneskins were gone, and could not immediately restore them.
So far, we've had to deal with clones of Sil, Jan, Aerie, and Nalia. We removed Sil's clone from combat by some aggressive missile fire from Sil herself; we threw Jan's clone into a Maze; and since Nalia's and Aerie's clones both used PFMW early on, we had Imoen, Jan, and to a lesser extent Sil equip normal ammunition to deal damage from afar, since they did not have Stoneskin up yet. Only Sil's clone managed to cast Stoneskin, because she was invisible.
Imoen, out of the fray and no longer hobbled by Creeping Doom, is now free to cast a Horrid Wilting spell. It's not a game changer, but it helps.
Nyalee is actually less injured here than in the last picture. That's just how resilient she is.
Frustrated by Nyalee's survival, I have Nalia and Haer'dalis begin casting Spellstrike and Breach to get rid of whatever defenses have been keeping her alive. But these spells came into play too late.
It doesn't matter. So long as Nyalee is dead, we are safe.
Except the clones are still around. Jan's clone returned from Maze without my noticing and Nalia's clone has been puttering around, but Sil's clone has been biding her time. She makes a truly brilliant move.
She cast this spell outside of our visual range. I pulled the same trick on Brimstone.
Sil's clone uses the time to debuff the party. Also, our Blur spells wear off while Time Stop is running.
That's a very high-level Remove Magic, and with Greater Malison on top of the loss of our Blur spells, our saves are quite poor. But only Imoen seems to have lost any buff, and Sil's clone can only do so much with a single casting of Teleport Field and no friends to help her out.
I don't know how Jan's clone or Nalia's clone died. Maybe Nalia's Planetar, summoned right after Creeping Doom wore off, killed both of them while I wasn't looking. But there's still one enemy left. Jan takes care of it.
Haer'dalis has now reached level 24. He chooses the Improved Bard Song as his first HLA.
We spend two days in the Pocket Plane going over our spellbooks and reviewing our items. We determine the levels of our simulacra and fill up on contingencies and spell sequencers. Nalia takes a moment to ask Aerie about her home.
Nalia is right. If Irenicus can win the attention of Matron Mother Ardulace, then Aerie could be accepted by the other avariel. And if they don't, we'll use Wish to give the whole party wings and launch a war against the avariel.
I notice an oddity in our spells. First, Improved Alacrity is in Imoen's spellbook, instead of being an innate ability listed among her spells. This means she can memorize it multiple times (after she gets more than one level 9 spell slot, anyway), but she cannot have it alongside Time Stop at the moment. We also notice Sil's and Nalia's simulacra both have Improved Alacrity.
This opens up some new possibilities. We make sure everybody has at least one casting of Simulacrum. Sil gets two, because the clone will get Shapechange abilities.
We leave the Pocket Plane and head for the siege camp. I still feel uncomfortable handling the party, but Haer'dalis has the Improved Bard Song and three castings of Mislead, plus a Mislead Contingency and a few scrolls of Mislead, which will give the party a boost throughout the battle. And if we really, really need to power up the party, I might use the Wand of Lightning trick to spawn in six Mislead clones and have them sing for us. But I don't want to have to resort to that, and even that isn't a guarantee of success.
We cast our buffs and Jan begins summoning Shambling Mounds via the Staff of the Woodlands. They will form an important bulwark against the Fire Giants and various other enemies that will spawn incessantly until Yaga-shura is slain.
We confront the first few enemies, but we pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration instead of SI: Evocation, which means only Sil can safely handle the Fire Giants. I have the others hang back. Jan goes to lay a Time Trap to the far east, while the rest of the group uses missile weapons on the small number of unimportant enemies around us. Sil keeps the Fire Giants busy to keep the rest of the party safe.
Fortunately, not all of the mages in this battle are unmitigated monsters. The spells they use are more common to Yuan-ti Mages than Liches.
Eventually I remember I need to hurry further west to see Yaga-Shura, or else he'll never appear. I send Sil out to meet him, hoping for the best.
Bad news.
Yaga-shura declares his desire to murdalize us. This confirms my worst fears.
For the second time in all my playthroughs, the improved version of Yaga-shura does not crash the game. If the game had crashed, I would have uninstalled that component and fought the vanilla Yaga-Shura.
I was hoping the game would crash so I wouldn't have to face this battle. But it did not.
Yaga-Shura has come better prepared for this fight than I. He is bolstered by a literally endless supply of soldiers, plus some of the normal Tactics-style Fire Giants that cast Firestorm and Lower Fire Resistance on hit. I struggled against ONE of these critters outside the Fire Giants' lair, and was nearly broken down by a group of them just through the door. They are effectively impossible for me to kill unless I resort to using Sil's best buffs or multiple castings of Horrid Wilting, both very costly options.
We scare off Yaga-Shura by hitting him with a Magic Missile spell. Loser.
Sil runs back to the group, where Jan has been building up a wall of Shambling Mounds. But we haven't got very many yet.
The wall does not stand up. The Fire Giants are able to tear down the Shambling Mounds with great ease, and Jan spends several rounds doing nothing but summoning more. Imoen pitches in. We don't know how long it will be until Yaga-Shura returns, but until he does, we have some Fire Giants to deal with.
The party stands at a safe distance to avoid the Firestorms. I do not consider activating SI: Evocation to let us wade into melee combat and start taking down the Fire Giants with the strength of two bard songs supporting us (Haer'dalis and his clone are both best off spending their time singing).
I struggle to find ways to make the most of each round. It's easy to let one or more party members go for a round without doing anything useful, so I want them active and having a tangible impact on the battle. But every option besides flinging missile weapons comes with a cost. I want to save my best resources for the fight with Yaga-shura. When I have a spare round, I have everyone cast Mirror Image in anticipation of a melee tussle later on. Aerie summons a Storm of Vengeance to help out the Shambling Mounds, but it's never been a very high-damage spell.
Notice Sil's simulacrum at the bottom of the screen. I had Sil drink a Potion of Invisibility to escape the area, then cast Shapechange and Simulacrum to get a clone who could shapehange into Mind Flayer form. But first she has to cast Improved Alacrity, and a Stoneskin is needed to avoid spell disruption, given the many spawn points for enemies.
Sil herself drinks a Potion of Absorption, which gives her a -10 bonus to her AC vs. crushing. Vanilla Fire Giants all used slashing weapons, even the ones with war hammers, but these do crushing damage, and since damage type-specific AC bonuses bypass the AC cap of -24, Sil can achieve 95% miss chance against the Fire Giants with one or two of these potions.
The Fire Giants don't seem to have used Enrage, so they shouldn't be immune to disablers. Even if they are, though, Web should be able to bypass their immunities, though the odds of landing it are not great. We need to buy time until Sil's clone can cast Improved Alacrity.
Look at all those Lower Fire Resistance spells. Tactics is just crazy.
Our summons begin to break down. It's hard to tell from all the pauses and auto-pauses, but Sil's clone should have cast Improved Alacrity by now. I select her and find that her circle is a plain circle, not the four inward arrows indicating a spell is to be cast.
I assumed she'd been disrupted, but this is not the case. She never even cast the spell. Improved Alacrity still cannot be cast by clones.
Since hurling out a stream of Psionic Blasts is no longer an option, I have the clone switch to Iron Golem form, which hopefully will replace our rapidly disintegrating wall of summons. I keep everybody in the party busy, but I can't remember for long which spells I've been using. Too much is happening all at once. This whole battle is probably less than five rounds in.
One of the Fire Giants gets webbed. Excellent news. Not everybody can go over to fight it--the Firestorm isn't safe--but Sil and her clone can take advantage of the automatic hits.
The rest of the party has to deal with respawning spellcasters at the bridge. Jan's flashers are a major boon, particularly with a couple of bard songs to support them.
Then things start to get out of hand. This battle has been going on for quite some time, and I don't know when Yaga-Shura is supposed to show up. More importantly, the Fire Giants have summoned some Greater Fire Elementals, and those summons basically never run out of duration.
Between fighting the Fire Giants, interrupting the spellcasters, avoiding the Firestorms, and now the high-level elementals trying to get their paws on Jan and Imoen, the party is overwhelmed. Our defenses are terribly strong, so we can withstand the attacks, but most of our defenses come from Blur spells, and those are going to run out sooner or later.
The Fire Giants are too sturdy for us to tank out, and the other enemies are draining our spells and wearing out the duration of our defenses. This is not working.
Finally got it to work. Uploading as few as four images can make it stall, and these posts takes an hour apiece as it is. Very frustrating.
I have everyone in the party save Sil and Aerie drink a Potion of Invisibility (Aerie casts Sanctuary; Sil remains visible) and flee through the Firestorm, to the west. We need to get a hold of Yaga-Shura, and I'm sure we're not going to find him by the bridge.
I take Sil out to where I normally have seen Yaga-Shura, and have the rest of the party go to the south to escape the enemy's visual range. This keeps all the enemies focused on Sil, who can avoid almost all of their attacks by virtue of having drunk two Potions of Absorption. Even after her Blur spells have begun to wear off and Haer'dalis' Mislead clone has gone away, she can still tank the giants.
Meanwhile, Imoen casts Project Image and spawns her clones. They buff themselves with SI: Evocation to avoid spell disruption and then march forward, ready to cast Horrid Wilting.
Finally, Yaga-Shura appears. He's quite miffed about us breaking his heart and everything.
He brings in a group of high-level humans, including a thief, a cleric, a fighter, and a mage. But we've already got Imoen's clones lined up to cast Horrid Wilting.
Except, the enemy mage noticed Jan was lurking around nearby, using Detect Illusions to uncover her, so she cast True Seeing to dispel his invisibility. And it turns out True Seeing has a wider area of effect than I knew.
We have now lost all of Imoen's clones. That's a lot of damage spells they took away from us.
I originally planned to lure an enemy into Jan's Time Trap and then have Jan attack Yaga-Shura with the Chaos Blade and the Scarlet Ninja-to, relying on the DEX drain to kill the giant. But then I notice Haer'dalis has rather excellent THAC0 with his Mislead spells active, and the DEX penalties last for 5 rounds, so I decide to have Haer'dalis try killing Yaga-Shura instead. In an attempt to get at the enemy mage, currently invisible, Jan positions himself to use his flashers on the enemy group.
If that doesn't work, we still have Dragon's Breath from Nalia.
Nalia's Dragon's Breath makes contact! I go back through the combat log to confirm the mage is gone.
Unfortunately, we still have lots of giants to deal with, who not only are immune to Dragon's Breath but also are healed slightly by it. Plus, Haer'dalis is struggling to land a hit, despite his stellar THAC0.
Haer'dalis' Mislead clone gets knocked back and rendered unconscious, so he creates a new one. Now that the enemy mage is gone, we no longer have to worry about True Seeing, so Nalia can cast Project Image and spawn her clones, who join Aerie and Imoen in casting Horrid Wilting, our best way of dealing with Fire Giants.
We also use Spellstrike in case Yaga-Shura has any spell defense we might need to take down.
The giants fall! And Haer'dalis manages to hit Yaga-Shura. The giant remains concerned with Sil alone, who has the AC bonuses and the spells to absorb all of his attacks safely.
Notice the pitiful damage Haer'dalis is doing. Yaga-Shura starts out with 99% resistance, but it must have already started decreasing for Haer'dalis to do 2 damage.
Haer'dalis' first Mislead clone is still unconscious, so Jan runs over to wake him up with a quick smack to the face.
The Mislead clone starts singing to help Haer'dalis' chances of landing a hit.
Haer'dalis makes it.
Marvelous!
Yaga-Shura is gone, and though we didn't get the XP from his death, we did survive the battle, and we got gobs of valuable treasure from the remains of the fallen.
Now that Yaga-Shura is dead, we can safely move on to the next hideously dangerous encounter. Thank goodness Sil and company are as ridiculously overpowered as most the opposition.
After taking two trips back and forth from the Pocket Plane to gather up all the loot dropped by Yaga-Shura and his men, Imoen and Haer'dalis break the dour mood.
We like Imoen. She's great.
Anyway, now we have to fight a much cooler-looking version of Sil in the Pocket Plane, with a set of pitch black armor and a shiny red shield that unfortunately we can't get. She quite miffed about Sil's existence.
I had Jan set a couple of Spike Traps where I remembered a mage to have emerged. Apparently that was a good idea.
Both Imoen and Nalia made mistakes in preparing their Chain Contingencies, setting the condition to Enemy Sighted instead of Helpless. They spawn in their clones unprompted, which deprives us of two clones. Luckily we still have tons of Horrid Wilting spells, and with the support of Haer'dalis' songs, Sil is quite capable of breaking through her counterpart's bitchin' black plate mail.
Things could have gotten really messy if we hadn't slain Semaj early on, though.
On to the Oasis! Here we will get ambushed by a small army of well-equipped and well-meaning soldiers of Tethyr. Since it takes a while to reach the area and we arrive without buffs, I decide to rest before the battle can start.
That was not such a good idea.
Things don't look too good. My party isn't nearly as strong without its buffs, and the enemy has lots of attacks at excellent THAC0. Our Stoneskins won't last long unless we can take down the enemy quickly.
I talk-block the leader of the army and blast the trolls with Dragon's Breath. Turns out the rest of the army isn't so stupid, and Dragon's Breath doesn't work too well against Desert Trolls.
Things are already going badly. We need to raise our defenses, and I don't want to have to drink another six Potions of Invisibility to give us some breathing room. We've only got so many of those left, and they're supposed to be for real emergencies, and we're not quite at that stage yet. So I have Jan cast Invisibility 10' Radius, which has already saved the party from certain death at least once before.
My positioning, however, is terribly off. I could have had Nalia cast the spell, but her aura wasn't clear, since the Dragon's Breath spell was hers, which means the fastest Invisibility 10' Radius spell I could pull off belonged to Jan, despite Nalia's Robe of Vecna. Unfortunately, Jan ended up at the front of the party, leaving him quite vulnerable to attack.
I send Haer'dalis out into the fray singing his songs, with a Mislead spell to support him. The AC boost will do a lot to keep him alive. Jan takes a few steps away and drinks a Potion of Invisibility, but the rest of the party remains visible. Instead, they cast Stoneskin or PFMW.
With the few moments of safety that gives us (the enemy is overwhelming reliant on physical damage, with few spellcasters to give us grief), we summon a Planetar, cast Elemental Summoning, and set up a Teleport Field, which will keep the enemy soldiers distracted, disorganized, and distant from the party. The trolls are already right on our backs, so we need Horrid Wilting to deal with them quickly.
Finally, once Jan has PFMW up, he backstabs one of the archers, exposing himself to a gang of enemies completely incapable of harming him.
Note the absurd damage on his backstab. With 2 songs from Haer'dalis and his clone, Jan gets an extra 40 damage to his backstab.
The tide of battle starts to turn. Horrid Wilting, oddly enough, is more effective against the trolls than Dragon's Breath. The Desert Trolls collapse from dehydration, of all things, and Sil sweeps up their shriveled husks with the Flail of Ages. Comet brings Jamis Tombelthen to the ground, giving Aerie and Nalia the perfect opportunity to remove him from the equation. Haer'dalis' songs do a lot to speed things up.
The rest of the battle is won with missile weapons. We spend many more minutes gathering loot before heading to Amkethran.
All the loot from the Oasis battle takes a while to collect. While we're reaping the benefits of our labor, Jan and Haer'dalis start to whine.
For some reason, their reputation complaints (or maybe just Jan's) are much more bitter in ToB than SoA.
We sell all of our loot to an innkeeper and collect over 120,000 gold in the process, and spend about 100,000 of that gold buying scrolls and upgrading a few items with Cespenar. A fraction of that money would have been game-breaking in SoA. Now, it barely strengthens the party at all. This group hasn't quite reached its peak, but as far as equipment goes, we're not going to get much of any stronger.
Jan and Haer'dalis' whining starts to wear on the group's morale, so Imoen tries to cheer us up.
Classic Jan response.
Next up is Draconis, everyone's least favorite dragon and owner of BG2's most uninspired name. I have no idea what tricks he's going to pull in SCS2, but even in vanilla, he was an immense trial, easily one of the hardest and most frustrating enemies in the saga. Invisible dragons are just crazy.
Draconis shouts out his insecurities at us before attacking. Sounds like he has a pretty poor relationship with Abazigal.
Jan has prepared a couple of Time Traps to the far southeast, and Haer'dalis and his Mislead clone are busy singing offscreen. Sil alone is facing Draconis, with the rest of the party ready to jump in if something should go wrong.
To my surprise, Draconis takes the initiative.
Due to some error, Sil retains her buffs. Draconis also summons a Dark Planetar, but its vorpal strikes mean very little to Sil, who will automatically make all of her saves without fail (SCS2 Planetar vorpal strikes offer a save vs. death).
Most importantly, Draconis began the battle with PFMW, and renewed it right before his Time Stop ended. I need Nalia if I'm going to get through Draconis' weapon immunities without spending a lot of charges of my Wands of Spell Striking, so I have her cast Time Stop and run over to hit Draconis with Pierce Magic, Spellstrike, and Breach from a wand. Draconis re-casts PFMW, which Haer'dalis immediately Breaches with his own wand. The Planetar tries to heal itself from the damage Nalia did during Time Stop with Energy Blades, but with Aerie and Nalia still using Energy Blades, Imoen using the Firetooth dagger, and Jan using the Firetooth crossbow, all boosted by Haer'dalis' songs, the Planetar is easily interrupted.
Meanwhile, Sil starts munching on Draconis' noggin, which deals rather respectable damage and hits quite reliably thanks to Haer'dalis' music. Finally, Sil cracks open Draconis' melon.
I hear brains are actually extremely unhealthy to eat. They're full of fat and cholesterol. Makes you wonder how the illithids maintain those slim, sexy figures.
We don't get any XP from the kill, which weakens us in the long run, but Draconis was too big of a wild card given what I knew about his dragon form, at least in the vanilla game. It made more sense to slay him early and avoid a dicey dragon fight than to tough it out for the XP reward. It's not worth risking our lives over 60,000 XP. Not at this stage of the game, anyway.
Despite being in human form and having his skull cracked open by Sil's beak, Draconis drops a dragon's head. Just what we need to enter Abazigal's Enclave, and fight more dragons.
Comments
Sil's MR comes from five different places: the Amulet of Power, the Robe of the Good Archmagi, the Shield of the Lost, the Machine of Lum the Mad, and the Hell reward. Normally, that only adds up to 30, but there's a trick you can do in Hell (I described it earlier on) that allows you to get up to 5 bonuses of the same kind in Hell. I chose the MR reward three times and the saving throw reward twice, giving me 50 undispellable MR. So the MR technically isn't innate, since 20% comes from items.
All those spells, triggered with a hotkey. I did the math and there are about 70 different spells I would normally need to click to get the party fully buffed.
Still, a lot of the party's power comes from Comet and Dragon's Breath.
A little boring, but they work. And they do cut short the less interesting encounters.
We are posed with our first moral dilemma of Throne of Bhaal!
Who knew ToB could be so philosophically compelling?
I do some random busywork around Saradush. Fetching Lazarus' spellbook is a boring chore, as usual. Same goes for pacifying the local ruffians and finding the elves a new place to stay. We sell some equipment so we can afford another pair of Boots of Speed. Half the party now has boosted movement rates.
Mercifully, the vampires beneath Saradush don't summon rats or anything. No Ancient Vampires or Elder Vampires, like we had to face in Firkraag's dungeon. Just run of the mill vampires.
This one is in an interesting position. It seems the hallways are just barely too narrow for him to get around Sil. She doesn't need to be in Iron Golem form to form a wall.
Phlydian and her cronies fall to Comet, Dragon's Breath, and melee force. The party just has lots of damage-dealing power against mid-range foes like these.
Next, though, we have to deal with some rather high-end fighters and thieves. At first, I intend to have Sil tank the enemy, but poor luck renders this unwise.
We still have lots of summons to deal with this sort of thing. But then, a sudden flicker of lag belies the introduction of another enemy: one of Gromnir's wizardly underlings.
We address the problem with Dragon's Breath, but our targeting is very poor.
I've never noticed DB doing that much damage, though.
The mage has lots of free room, since we're stuck behind our summons. We can't start applying the pressure we need to cause her any trouble.
Luckily, she spends the Time Stop on defensive-type spells. And since she has no Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap, we can Breach her directly. Her Stoneskins don't hold up under our rather heavy party APR.
More grunts in the sewers. Sil is built for precisely this kind of encounter.
The mage at the south is invisible but mostly defenseless, and quite vulnerable to Nalia's Horrid Wilting spell, currently casting.
I get a crash for some reason after I trigger a cutscene in the middle of the sewers. After reloading, I decide to see what happens if I talk-block one of the participants and then attack him.
With nobody to speak the first line, the cutscene stalls. I have to start over.
DB again proves useful in the battle before Gromnir. The amount of damage we can do these days is just obscene.
Plus, Comet knocks out the main enemy mage, giving us plenty of time to break through his defenses.
There's not much anyone can do against DB and Comet.
Since Imoen is near level 18, we do the Kiser Jhaeri quest to help bump her up to epic levels. She chooses Comet for the longer disabling duration, but Improved Alacrity might have been a better choice.
I sell off all of the equipment we filched off of Gromnir's guards.
Some people complain that ToB loot is too excessive. I don't really see the problem here.
With a newfound trove of gold, we buy a Time Stop and Chain Contingency scroll for Imoen. She can now spawn four clones, just like Sil and Nalia, but she can't do quite as much with the spell, since multiple Time Stops are a major drain on our buffs. We also get Spell Trigger for Sil, finally, so she can activate Righteous Magic while in Iron Golem form. Her Spell Trigger also includes Tenser's Transformation because of the need for stronger THAC0. We also get rid of Sil's old Spell Sequencer combining Holy Power, Stoneskin and DUHM for a triple Armor of Faith sequencer.
Plus, we manage to get an extra pair of Boots of Speed from the tavern somehow. Now four of the party members have Boots of Speed.
With only 29,000 gold left, we only pay for two of Cespenar's recipes: the Circlet of Netheril, for no special reason, and Ixil's Spike, for Haer'dalis' melee power. With Ixil's Spike, Haer'dalis gets a substantial power boost, plus a means of bypassing Improved Mantle and the ability to disable enemies through MR.
Since we now have three characters with Time Stop and triple Project Image Chain Contingencies, I decide our control over time is excessive. Sil dispels her current Chain Contingency and replaces it with a triple Horrid Wilting contingency, another classic that will require less micromanagement on my part.
It works better than I expected. When the fight begins, Sil is in the perfect place to nail Gromnir's mages.
Also note the completely gratuitous Dragon's Breath spell, courtesy of Nalia and her quick casting time..
Now that Sil has Spell Trigger, she can achieve max damage output without much fiddling. with Tenser's Transformation, Righteous Magic, and Improved Haste active, plus a Boon of Lathander, she has THAC0 well below zero and can deal dozens of damage in seconds. Gromnir doesn't last long, despite his innate 25% physical damage resistance, plus Hardiness.
Imoen dealt with Berena Elken and her two sidekicks with Comet, while Jan finally got back to using his flashers.
When the last of the enemies fall, we get a visit from Melissan.
The screen hangs there. It's not frozen; Melissan just isn't addressing us. I assume the dialogue can't start because Sil is in Iron Golem form.
I reload and mow down the whole group once again without trouble, and this time Melissan talks to us. With nothing left to do in Saradush besides sell off our excess loot, we head out into the wilderness, and get to play around with some of Yaga-shura's many soldiers, plus a handful of Fire Giants who wanted to join the party.
There is something very satisfying about turning into an Iron Golem and chunking a Fire Giant. Sil has truly become a monster.
The party has started returning to its roots as a group of melee spiders. Sil has taken on a more prominent role as an Iron Golem tank, at the cost of losing her spells to Tenser's Transformation, which prevent her from returning to natural form or recasting Boon of Lathander. Haer'dalis, meanwhile, has adopted spider form for the first time in the game (earlier, he was too weak to melee in any form). With Ixil's Spike, he can attack 8 times per round at 2 THAC0 with a +6 weapon that knocks the target unconscious on a failed save vs. death, bypassing magic resistance. If I actually remember to do so, I can also bump his STR up to 22 by activating the once per day Fire Giant strength ability of Angurvadal, which I may avoid upgrading for exactly that reason. Ixil's Spike also has fantastic damage potential. At base, it's just 10.5 with the spider's +1 STR bonus (not much compared to Sil's 50+ damage per hit), but on a failed save, we get another 25 damage over the next three rounds, which applies even if the victim is immune to unconsciousness.
Sil has achieved late-game fighter capabilities, and Haer'dalis has also gained a major boost thanks to Ixil's Spike. Once Haer'dalis has achieved epic levels, though (still about 300,000 XP away), everyone in the party should be able to operate as a fighter thanks to the Improved Bard Song.
Next up are the Fire Giants, who don't seem to have the Tactics-style abilities according to DLTCEP. I will have to fix up the install to make sure they're casting their Fireballs and Firestorms and lowering our fire resistance like they're supposed to.
And, of course they hit for ridiculously high damage values.
That one single Fire Giant gave me a lot of trouble.
I buffed the party properly beforehand, with Haer'dalis in spider form with Ixil's Spike and Sil in Iron Golem form with Boon of Lathander, but apparently the Fire Giant had spectacular regeneration. Many rounds after the fight began, he is back up to full health.
At least Haer'dalis can still disable Greater Fire Elementals. Jan is offscreen, setting traps (Time Trap, followed by damage traps) to the west in case we need to flee. If the Fire Giant runs into our traps, Jan will get a round of free hits at 2 APR, or about 10 APR considering he'll be using Assassination.
The party actually ended up in pretty lousy shape around here, which is why I sent Jan off to set up some traps. Both Sil and Haer'dalis lost a lot of health, which is saying something considering Sil's resistances. A Potion of Superior Healing was not enough to keep her safe; another character had to use the Rod of Resurrection on her. She switched to Mind Flayer form to get some extra physical damage resistance, but the Fire Giant switched targets. I tried Psionic Blast.
At first, I thought I saw the Fire Giant enter the rage state just as I hit him with Psionic Blast, which was very irritating. But looking back, it seems like he LEFT the rage state just BEFORE I hit him with Psionic Blast, which is even more irritating, since I could have nailed him if I had waited a couple seconds.
Nalia spawns her clones and begins casting Horrid Wilting, which in most situations would have been overkill for a single enemy.
Jan is still offscreen, setting traps. Aerie has gated in a Deva, Sil is summoning a Magical Sword, and either Haer'dalis, Imoen, or Nalia has hit the giant with Pierce Magic to help break through the resistance I didn't know it had (a Maze failed earlier due to MR, not the rage state). Only after much focus and preparation did the Fire Giant come down.
Devas are immune to fire, but Fire Giants can lower it, hence the damage the Deva took from the giant's Fire Shield.
Sil prepares a new Chain Contingency with three Project Image spells. I figure four clones in Iron Golem form will do a lot to keep the Fire Giants at bay.
I was wrong.
Sil spawned her clones at the start of battle. They all immediately switch to Iron Golem form, and it looks like the Fire Giants will keep their attention trained on the clones.
Notice the Clay Golem next to the southernmost Iron Golem. Since the GIAFIR item does blunt damage instead of slashing damage as in the vanilla game, the Clay Golem won't be immune to the enemy's attacks, but it will cast Golem Haste, which will give all the clones a boost without applying a fatigue penalty.
Nalia and Imoen spawn clones as well, but we have two problems. First, not all of the clones manage to buff with SI: Evocation.
Second, the Fire Giants are not content to busy themselves with Sil's clones. They have maneuvered around the wall of Iron Golem I was hoping to construct, and Sil's clones do precious little damage against the giants.
And Nalia, as I later noticed, appeared to only have one clone, meaning that either she had no Chain Contingency prepared, or three of her four clones were killed by Fireballs and Firestorms.
On top of that, with at least 20 enemy spells being cast every round, including Firestorms, which always slow down the system, the battle is experiecing severe lag. Here, we might have two frames per second.
All those spells triggering at once is hard to process. I had to scroll to a different part of the map sometimes to better cope with the lag. I considered quitting the game and removing the GIAFIR item just so I wouldn't have to deal with the slowdown. Lowering fire resistance is a neat trick, and multiple Firestorms are certainly powerful, but it doesn't justify slowing the game to a crawl.
To my surprise, Haer'dalis starts taking heavy damage. He still has SI: Evocation, but unfortunately that's not enough. The giants also have many, many attacks, and his Stoneskin was simply not sufficient. I have him drink a potion or two, but it's no use.
What especially irks me is that I'm trying to get Haer'dalis up to 3 million XP as quickly as possible, and his death deprives him of a lot of experience.
Aerie is next.
But, with Energy Blades active, she has Improved Haste, and can escape the crowd.
By now, all of Sil's clones have been slain, despite their high HP, 40% base physical damage resistance, low AC, immunity to fire, high-end summons, and our best efforts to defeat the giants.
I don't believe we've killed a single giant yet, despite multiple Horrid Wilting spells and four Iron Golems on our side, not to mention high-HD elementals and a Deva or Planetar. But now Sil has rejoined the battle, and unlike her clones, she can use sequencers and triggers. I can't give her Roranach's Horn, which would have given her 90% base resistance to crushing damage, since Imoen has it and she's still under the effects of Project Image (I gave it to her to free up inventory space elsewhere), but Sil does have a triple Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer along with a Righteous Magic+Improved Haste+Tenser's Transformation Spell Trigger, giving her 85% damage resistance and, after loading up on Boon of Lathander spells, eight attacks per round for over 50 damage a pop, at subzero THAC0 and therefore automatic hits.
With the clones out of the way, Sil begins trashing the opposition. The Fire Giants' Hardiness spells and Potions of Superior Healing are no longer enough. We also find room for summoning a new celestial.
Jan has also run out of Stoneskins, but he wasn't doing much anyway, so it's not a big loss to draw him away. Aerie fled to the right; Jan is to the left now.
Once we have a chance, we bring back Haer'dalis with the Rod of Resurrection, so he can share the XP from the rest of the battle. He just hides in a corner until it's over.
Sil chunks the last remaining giant.
That was a very frustrating battle, mostly just because of that lag. I might actually remove the GIAFIR item anyway. It increases the difficulty a lot, but mostly it's just a needless pain.
I clear up the northwesternmost room, with its Fire Trolls and Salamanders, only to get surprised when I use CTRL-J to teleport nearby the next room.
The party still has its buffs from the previous battle, but I would have preferred to have started fresh.
I draw Nalia and Imoen over to the west to escape the incoming fire spells, while Jan flees to the south to lay some traps. Imoen spawns her clones, but Nalia waits. I want to save Nalia's clones for the latter half of this battle. Sil creates a simulacrum and then switches to Iron Golem form. The battle goes much better, partly because there aren't so many Fire Giants, but also because we came better prepared, despite being surprised.
As it happens, we don't need Nalia's clones. Imoen does plenty of spell damage on her own, and, more importantly, Sil is operating at maximum capacity. The Fire Giants go down easily.
Project Image is probably not the best choice for Sil at the moment. With our party structured as it is, and with the enemies as tough as they are, we really do need more melee power in the group. And since I'm not willing to spam Animate Dead and Mordenkainen's Sword to solve that problem, I think I will have Sil focus on fighting in Iron Golem form for a while. But her projected images just aren't going to cut it without Tenser's Transformation, which they can't use in concert with Shapechange. Sil will probably start devoting her Chain Contingencies to other spells. Horrid Wilting comes to mind, but a Heal+Improved Haste+PFMW on 50% HP Chain Contingency might work better, since it would keep Sil going after an extended battle, when her Spell Trigger runs out and she can't prepare a new one without taking four whole rounds to prepare and cast it (since it would take two rounds to return to natural form and back).
The rest of the Fire Giant lair remains intact. We still have a lot more to go before we can get out. As I recall, there's a red dragon on the next level, and I may want to resort to Mind Flayer form to deal with that one. After that, we just have to deal with Nyalee and head to the Siege Camp.
I have tried the Yaga-shura battle in Tactics several times and I have never once been able to play it. The game has always crashed near the start of battle. I may have to fight the vanilla Yaga-shura instead, but if I can get the mod to work this time, things might get very difficult. Yaga-shura starts out with 99% resistance to almost all damage besides cold and acid, though the readme says this resistance lowers over time. Unfortunately, this party isn't well-suited to long, drawn-out conflicts, considering the duration of some of our buffs.
But, it's my understanding that the Chaos Blade's DEX drain works against Yaga-shura, as he has no MR and his DEX is about 14. In spider form, Haer'dalis should be able to hit him 50% of the time at 8 APR, for 16 DEX drained per round on average. I saw somebody kill Yaga-shura this way on Youtube, so it might just work.
Of course, I still need a viable strategy in case Haer'dalis fails. Who can say the guy won't get petrified and shattered in the middle of the battle? If it happened to Cernd, it can certainly happen to Haer'dalis.
I'll keep this post short, since the party hasn't grown much and doesn't have much to report in terms of new tactics and so forth.
One of the remaining encounters involves a Fire Lich. Ho hum. He casts Time Stop and then Comet.
Haer'dalis takes a small amount of damage. He isn't immune to fire, since he's in spider form and only gets 40% resistance from the Ring of Fire Resistance, but he does have excellent saves, enough to keep Comet at bay.
But since Comet isn't a big enough spell, the Fire Lich casts another Time Stop and this uses Dragon's Breath.
I'm getting kind of impatient with this part of the game. The Fire Lich might have a lot of defenses, but at this point in the game, there's not much he can actually DO to us. It's a common ailment for high-level parties. Get the right item, get the right spell, get the right ability, and the difficulty is broken.
Jan tries to paralyze the lich with his flashers. The lich fails its save!
Too bad SCS2 gives liches undead-style immunities. Stun has no effect on these guys. Notice Imoen casting Breach: our many spellcasters are turning their attention to breaking down the Fire Lich's defenses.
The Lich restores its defenses with a Spell Deflection+Spell Shield+PFMW Spell Trigger, but we break through the whole thing in one round. Haer'dalis impales the poor thing.
We spent the next 10 to 15 rounds trying to finish off the Efreetis, who kept changing back to mist form. Did you know Haer'dalis can pin a cloud to the ground? But he still can't kill them. They're immune to physical damage, although not immune to the unconsciousness effect of Ixil's Spike.
I notice that preparing the spider form still takes longer than it has to. I tweak the spider shapeshift so it does not create the spider weapon, negating the need for Shocking Grasp to dispel it. I also give a single casting of the spider shapeshift and the natural form shapeshift to everyone in the party save Sil, since Polymorph Self conflicts with Shapechange.
On to the next encounter!
More Fire Giants. Wow.
Even with Roranach's Horn, Sil is not truly immune to these guys. Her crushing resistance is at 90%, but they can still sneak in a little damage with every hit. Haer'dalis also has to drink a lot of potions. As before, once Sil is fully buffed and we start hurling out Horrid Wilting spells, the enemy collapses.
On to the second level! Aerie casts a bunch of Farsight spells to scout out the place. We're in for a treat.
So, basically, this is like our hectic first encounter at the start of the level. Plus Firkraag.
We might be immune to fire, but those giants--especially with a dragon at their side--have a lot of physical attacks that we can't just shrug off. Worse, a Wing Buffet could cause all kinds of mischief, dividing the party, spreading out the Fire Giants, and greatly weakening our area effect spells as a result.
Since I'm lazy, I have Sil cast Time Stop, run up to the dragon under Improved Haste, and crack open its skull. Mind Flayers are cool. But entering the battle under the effects of Time Stop is kind of boring.
Still better than dying, though. I'm not big on taking risks in no-reload runs.
Now that the dragon is dead, the Fire Giants realize something is wrong and come charging after us.
See that giant with the big yellow circle under his feet? Sil prepared a triple Symbol: Fear Chain Contingency, since Horrid Wilting would just get soaked up by the giants' regeneration and potions. I don't know if Enrage protects against fear, but Sil's Symbol spells triggered during the Time Stop, before the giants had a chance to throw a hissy fit.
I play the next part of the battle very loosely and offensive, paying fairly little attention to the party's positioning. The Fire Giants quickly mow down Jan and Haer'dalis' Mislead spells, which I just wanted for the few extra seconds of safety, and move on to the group. Imoen has spawned her clones, who will provide a couple castings of Horrid Wilting apiece, once they have an opportunity to do so safely.
Since I neglected to buff anybody with SI: Evocation, I decide to just cast PFMW on whoever is being attacked. The Fire Giants can't use their fire spells unless they land a hit on somebody, and PFMW blocks that entirely. Whoever doesn't need to cast PFMW just uses offensive spells instead. Meanwhile, Sil builds up her buffs over the rounds: a Boon of Lathander, a triple Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer to keep her safe, a second Boon of Lathander, and then the Spell Trigger with Tenser's Transformation, since the Spell Trigger prevents her from casting anything else.
The only enemies left are Imix and his two elemental buddies. He doesn't have much offensive power beyond a Sunfire spell of some sort, which nearly kills both Jan and Haer'dalis thanks to their lousy resistances in spider form.
A Planetar and Energy Blades spell Imix's doom. Sil deals with the rest.
We sell off a lot of treasure and fill in the remaining holes in our spellbook, trading tens of thousands of gold for now-negligible XP and spells we'll barely ever use, but there's not much else we need right now, not much to buy. The only thing I particularly want is the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, since Jan can use it to cast Improved Haste on himself while in spider form, allowing him to reach 8 APR while under the effects of Mislead, and therefore backstab for an effective 40 APR.
Now that I think about it, he could have done that with the Bracers of Blinding Strike. I forgot about those things. I got them off of the Kuo-toa Prince. But I don't have them now. Cernd must have died with them.
Haer'dalis is just barely short of 3.08 million XP, inches away from the Improved Bard Song I have been waiting for since Cernd died so long ago and we had to pick up this fruity bard and his bird fetish. We'd be a little closer if we had killed Brimstone through some other means (fully buffed, Sil probably could have killed him in two or three rounds, if Aerie and Nalia used Energy Blades to get through the dragon's Stoneskin), but we still have one last stop before Yaga-shura. We have a fight with the Master Wraith and his buddies, the Skeleton Cleric and its other buddies, and Nyalee and the woodsies of the forest, plus some quest experience, I assume, from giving Nyalee the two hearts we got from the fire giants' lair, so maybe we'll be able to get Haer'dalis up to the right amount of XP in time.
Failing that, we might just let Haer'dalis hit level 24 in the middle of the fight with Yaga-shura, and he can start singing the song right then. But hopefully DEX drain will make that unnecessary.
Sil was unable to handle those Fire Giants without Tenser's Transformation, and even then her Stoneskins were a pretty important buffer to help her wear down the enemy. Imoen's Horrid Wilting spells also dramatically shortened the battle, I'm sure.
Most of the benefit of Tenser's Transformation comes from the THAC0 changes, not the damage bonus, which is only +2. The spell sets Sil's base THAC0 to 1, where her normal THAC0 is 13. Thing is, Haer'dalis THAC0 isn't much better than Sil's, which suggests his THAC0 does not meet a certain threshold for TOB viability.
Sil's THAC0, fully buffed, is about -6. Many enemies in late-game TOB have AC or -10 or lower, which means that, just like in the fight with Irenicus in Hell, she might be unable to land hits on the toughest targets. If the enemy's AC is too low, then the encounter could drag on for quite some time, and this party suffers tremendously from long-duration battles, due to its reliance on buffs. Normally, this doesn't make much difference, since an encounter is over within 5 to 20 rounds, say. But if something goes wrong and our ability to end the fight is compromised, it might drag on for quite some time, and Sil would lose the buffs that she needs to land hits.
Sil can restore those buffs, if necessary. She has at least one spare casting of Righteous Magic, Tenser's Transformation, Improved Haste, PFMW, Spell Sequencer, and Spell Trigger, plus many castings of Armor of Faith. She can replace her Spell Sequencer and Spell Trigger without resting first. But she does not have any extra castings of Boon of Lathander, nor of Shapechange, and it would take six rounds at minimum to get her other critical buffs up and working. There is just so much that can happen in six rounds, so much time for the enemy to pull us down. The Improved Bard Song could ameliorate this somewhat, but Haer'dalis can only maintain a +4 bonus indefinitely; any more would require very finite castings of Mislead.
The possibility I foresee is that, at some point, we're going to come across a very tough melee-type of enemy that is going to resist our magic and outlast our buffs. Now, Sil is basically invincible when it comes to enemy spellcasters--she has undispellable magic immunity while in Iron Golem form--and she does have 40% resistance to physical damage on top of that. But her ability to renew her defenses is very limited while in Iron Golem form, and if she switches out of it, she has six seconds of vulnerability, and she might not be able to run.
We need more consumable items in case our spells run out. We need scrolls of Mislead, Stoneskin, PFMW, and maybe Teleport Field. And Sil may need to dedicate a second spell slot to Shapechange. Otherwise we might get stuck in a long fight where the enemy cannot bring down Sil, but Sil does not have the offensive potential to take down the enemy, and while the enemy will stay at normal strength, Sil will gradually weaken over time.
Basically enter invisible, retreat to a safe position to set up project images, use time stop constantly and never give them a chance to attack:Time stop+and in an improved alacrity fury, greater malison+doom and a few energy drain spells:energy drain spell greatly debuffs the enemy's saving throws, and with project images you can get a lot of castings. Giants have amazing saves but after this treatment they get something like -10 to all saves. Add in a flesh to stone, disintegrate, or even more powerful finger of death and they fall %50 of the time. Right from full health. I concentrate on debuffing one as most as possible in a time stop, and then get rid of it by killer spells. If you debuff a few of them, wail of the banshee can work on multiple giants:it was a very satisfying sight when I did that. Staff of magi is a very potent weapon here as you and your clones can vanish at will:giants can not see invisible.
A high lvl c/m can set up time stop+harm combo but then you should strike out the last remaining hp fast as giants regenerate in an astonishing rate!
Also, can't you just time stop and devour their brains in mf form? Haven't tried that as I never use the spell:are they immune to int drain? If not they should die in a couple hits I don't think they are the smartest of monsters.
What exactly are the mechanics for level drain? Does it really decrease their saving throws? Will it drain enemy spell slots? Decrease HP? THAC0? APR?
But, giant's save vs spells is 6. With greater malison and doom, it will be 12. With a chant effect it will be 13. (I think) Then a finger of death with its save vs spells penalty of -2, will force a saving throw of 15 or more from the giant, or else it will be slain. Thus, you will have a %70 chance of insta-killing one with a finger of death. Very cool, too!
Against multiple giants, a greater malison and a wail of the banshee will slay each giant with %30 chance. (Base death save is 3, with malison it becomes 7) Not too shabby chances, if there are more than five giants around, more than one may drop dead instantly. Especially if you cast the wail multiple times in a time stop. And you will reap sweet xp from insta kill attacks.
I rrally love using insta kill attacks on enemies, and when they succeed I rejoice. Once, my wild mage got a very dangerous wild surge while casting a disintegrate:area effect, no save! That was one of the most dangerous spells ever casted in realms, surely.
Also are you collecting pantaloons?
I am not collecting pantaloons. This party has no gear or bonuses from BG1, since in vanilla, non-BG:EE BG1, you can't be a Cleric of Lathander. I do love the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades, though. They're marvelous for Archers.
One thing: aren't there items besides the Golden Pantaloons that you can get from BG1? I think I've only actually imported a BG1 character into BG2 once in over ten years of playing BG2, so I don't really know what all the benefits are from importing.
As far as immunity to Time Stop, in my game Abazigal (sp?) managed to keep moving through it. Playing un-modded EE. Just be wary, you may or may not have an issue with original game + mods but in those really big boss fights I wouldn't bet a no-save game on it working.
In other news, I had a really rough time with the actual ToB battle. Not remembering the game, my spellbooks were very ill prepared for what was coming. I'm very interested to see how this plays out for you with the mods.
I was nervous about today because I've been playing Rovala for a long time and I thought I might have gotten a little rusty on the details of Sil's strategy. I had to go over this thread a little and examine our inventory and spellbooks before I got an idea of how the party works. I spent a lot of time developing this party, building up a basic strategy and a set of backup plans and escape options, and different setups for dealing with the same encounter. There might have been a lot of memories of plans that are now forgotten. At least I'll have a fresh perspective, but handling the party feels kind of wonky. I'm not used to managing so many critters at once. Not after micromanaging Rovala's every little movement.
We hike out to the forest and get spooked by the shade of Gorion. He starts guilt-tripping us for being evil and bad.
I press "1" repeatedly for roleplaying and dialogue. But because this is ToB, the conversation ends in a fight with super bad monsters. The two Vampiric Wraiths are a major issue, as are the Devil Shades which apparently can also drain levels. Nalia brings out a Planetar in the first round thanks to her high casting speed, Sil hurries ahead to draw the attention of the level-draining shades, and Imoen and Jan cast PFMW to protect themselves from level drain (it doesn't work). Jan, Aerie, and Harry flee to the southeast. Aerie turns undead while Nalia tries out Dragon's Breath on the undead. We end up losing track of the Vampiric Wraiths, whom Aerie scares into the temple to the northwest, but the rest of the enemies aren't too difficult. The Master Wraith was never a heavy hitter.
We chase after the Vampiric Wraiths, but only see the party of skeletons that normally guard the place. Unlike most groups of skeletons, these are actually high-level class characters, including a mage, a cleric, a thief, and a fighter. The cleric, as I recall, uses Armor of Faith, which stacks with its innate skeleton damage resistances, but Sil can still disrupt its spells with the Flail of Ages. The mage comes out with some excellent buffs, but fails to include one of the most critical spells: Protection from Fire.
Nalia has come a long way. It wasn't that long ago she was at the de'Arnise Keep, suffocated by the confines of noble life and struggling to make her saves vs. Aunty's Crushing Hand.
The fighter-type skeleton proves ridiculously hard to kill, my only clue that it wasn't just another Skeleton Warrior. Check out its resistances.
That could only have come with Hardiness.
Then we meet Nyalee, whose name I thought for the longest time was pronounced Nyah-lee, which I think sounds more appropriate for a creepy bog witch.
Aside from the Cespenar syntax, she's a rather interesting character. She says she was a cleric of Bhaal, but then had to "turn to the older arts to survive." She sounds like she has a long and strange history.
But this is ToB, so the conversation ends in a fight. But it wasn't the fight I expected.
Will our Heros succumb to the slimey embrace of Shamblers? Will the foul Witch use vile magic of evil to slaughter the party?
STAY TUNED!
Early in the battle, I check the log to make sure Sil cast Boon of Lathander successfully. The first thing I come across is this.
At first I thought I had made a mistake, but that's not possible. I couldn't have clicked on the wrong icon; that's a wizard spell instead of an innate ability. Then I realize Nyalee has conjured a clone of me. I see no other clones, but even the one is worrying.
Sil has Time Stop memorized. She has Shapechange. She has the Flail of Ages. She has all manner of crazy items and spells, and unlike the fight in Spellhold, where I could disarm the party to make sure the clones came out unarmed, this Sil is fully equipped. Our only advantage over this character is our buffs and non-artificial AI.
I hear the voice of a nymph crooning. I hate that noise. It's the noise that signaled the death of an earlier multiclassed Cleric/Mage, also named Sil, in a vanilla no-reload ToB run, in Watcher's Keep. Even though everyone in the party is immune to charm, I assign Jan to go screw around with the Nymph's spellcasting. But the Nymph is the least of our worries.
Putting aside Nyalee's magic and her fantastic buffs, we have Sil casting a Transmutation spell with an apparently long duration. That's either a Time Stop, an Improved Alacrity, or a Shapechange spell. I can't tolerate any of those being cast, so I have the original Sil lob a rock at her doppelganger's head. But the Sil clone is the least of our worries.
Nyalee has managed to cast Creeping Doom and summon a clone of Jan. I can't help but wonder if Nyalee's script knows who to clone first: Jan and Sil have the most kills of the party, and in general they have been the critical factors in the first half and second third of this run, respectively, going back to Shadows of Amn.
I know the Jan clone is not going to be as vicious as our Jan, partly because our party is immune to stun and partly because SCS2 scripts are not going to know how to use flashers, much less do the spider gnome trick, since the former are only used by one, non-hostile character in the game... and the latter is something I personally invented. Still, another clone is bad news, and Creeping Doom is even worse. Nalia, Haer'dalis, and Sil are already in the thick of things, so I know they're not going to escape the cloud. But Aerie, Jan, and Imoen haven't been touched yet. I send them running out to the entrance to the temple, where they can hopefully cast SI: Conjuration before the swarm hits them. I also try to talk-block the Jan clone on the way out, since he had a green circle at first, but I don't know if it worked.
The Sil clone drinks a Potion of Invisibility, and though Jan can easily dispel it and render the clone visible and vulnerable, Jan is busy running away from Nyalee's Creeping Doom spell. I let the Sil clone heal herself and keep the party focused on killing Nyalee, but since Jan's clone is perfectly defenseless, I decide to Maze him.
I am quite pleased with this. It's a perfect way to get rid of an unbuffed character. Notice Sil's clone casting PFMW while invisible. Not a good use of her time, really.
By now, Jan, Aerie, and Imoen have reached the entrance to the temple to cast SI: Conjuration. But the Creeping Doom hits each of them before they finish casting the spell. Only Sil and Haer'dalis avoided the swarm, simply due to making a saving throw. So I just took half the party out of battle for more than two rounds for nothing.
But Creeping Doom is the least of our worries. We now have a hostile clone of Nalia active. Nalia, our top mage, with the Robe of Vecna to render many of her spells uninterruptable. And unlike our Nalia, this Nalia has no Creeping Doom effect to stop her spellcasting. Sil casts Comet, hoping to hit both the Nalia clone and Nyalee. Meanwhile, Jan, Aerie, and Imoen rush to get back to the fight.
Jan targets the Nalia clone with Bolts of Biting, knowing that Nalia's save vs. death is worse than her save vs. spell (the alternative being Kuo-toa Bolts or his flashers), but fails to poison the clone.
All this time, Chan and Haer'dalis have been struggling to kill Nyalee, who has switched to Earth Elemental form. As per SCS2-style shapeshifting, she can switch forms without causing any delay in her spellcasting, but some of her rounds are reserved for spawning clones, which I do not believe we could disrupt anyway. The rest of the party has also periodically targeted Nyalee with missile weapons, but to no avail. She will not die.
Three things happen all at once. First, with a concentration of missile fire, we manage to stop Nalia's clone from casting any spells. Second, we now have an Aerie clone in the fight.
Third, notice that our Nalia is now free of Creeping Doom. But our Aerie is not. This is because Aerie, Jan, and Imoen fled the area and made the Creeping Doom swarm chase them for many seconds before they got hit, meaning the Creeping Doom effect will last many seconds longer than it did for Nalia.
Now I realize that we've been focusing too much attention on dealing with the clones. Nyalee is the source of the clones, and we need to bring her down first. But she clearly has regeneration, plus access to high-end potions, and we need a boost.
I switch Sil to Iron Golem form. She can't reach Nyalee from her current location, so she has to run around the gazebo to get into position. By the time she's there, she can activate her Spell Trigger, giving her 6 APR at -6 THAC0, with maximum damage per hit. But it doesn't last.
Moments before, Aerie's clone used its copy of the Wand of Spell Striking on Sil, depriving us of Sil's many marvelous defenses and buffs. She still has 100% MR and a spare Boon of Lathander, but getting hit by Breach does a lot to weaken her. Also notice Jan casting Stoneskin. He ran out somewhere along the way and it's easier to spend a round casting Stoneskin than trying to run away from the Shambling Mound behind him. Haer'dalis had the same problem, running out of Stoneskins and having to flee temporarily, since he drank a Potion of Superior Healing right before I noticed his Stoneskins were gone, and could not immediately restore them.
So far, we've had to deal with clones of Sil, Jan, Aerie, and Nalia. We removed Sil's clone from combat by some aggressive missile fire from Sil herself; we threw Jan's clone into a Maze; and since Nalia's and Aerie's clones both used PFMW early on, we had Imoen, Jan, and to a lesser extent Sil equip normal ammunition to deal damage from afar, since they did not have Stoneskin up yet. Only Sil's clone managed to cast Stoneskin, because she was invisible.
Imoen, out of the fray and no longer hobbled by Creeping Doom, is now free to cast a Horrid Wilting spell. It's not a game changer, but it helps.
Nyalee is actually less injured here than in the last picture. That's just how resilient she is.
Frustrated by Nyalee's survival, I have Nalia and Haer'dalis begin casting Spellstrike and Breach to get rid of whatever defenses have been keeping her alive. But these spells came into play too late.
It doesn't matter. So long as Nyalee is dead, we are safe.
Except the clones are still around. Jan's clone returned from Maze without my noticing and Nalia's clone has been puttering around, but Sil's clone has been biding her time. She makes a truly brilliant move.
She cast this spell outside of our visual range. I pulled the same trick on Brimstone.
Sil's clone uses the time to debuff the party. Also, our Blur spells wear off while Time Stop is running.
That's a very high-level Remove Magic, and with Greater Malison on top of the loss of our Blur spells, our saves are quite poor. But only Imoen seems to have lost any buff, and Sil's clone can only do so much with a single casting of Teleport Field and no friends to help her out.
I don't know how Jan's clone or Nalia's clone died. Maybe Nalia's Planetar, summoned right after Creeping Doom wore off, killed both of them while I wasn't looking. But there's still one enemy left. Jan takes care of it.
Haer'dalis has now reached level 24. He chooses the Improved Bard Song as his first HLA.
Hopefully we're ready for Yaga-shura.
We spend two days in the Pocket Plane going over our spellbooks and reviewing our items. We determine the levels of our simulacra and fill up on contingencies and spell sequencers. Nalia takes a moment to ask Aerie about her home.
Nalia is right. If Irenicus can win the attention of Matron Mother Ardulace, then Aerie could be accepted by the other avariel. And if they don't, we'll use Wish to give the whole party wings and launch a war against the avariel.
I notice an oddity in our spells. First, Improved Alacrity is in Imoen's spellbook, instead of being an innate ability listed among her spells. This means she can memorize it multiple times (after she gets more than one level 9 spell slot, anyway), but she cannot have it alongside Time Stop at the moment. We also notice Sil's and Nalia's simulacra both have Improved Alacrity.
This opens up some new possibilities. We make sure everybody has at least one casting of Simulacrum. Sil gets two, because the clone will get Shapechange abilities.
We leave the Pocket Plane and head for the siege camp. I still feel uncomfortable handling the party, but Haer'dalis has the Improved Bard Song and three castings of Mislead, plus a Mislead Contingency and a few scrolls of Mislead, which will give the party a boost throughout the battle. And if we really, really need to power up the party, I might use the Wand of Lightning trick to spawn in six Mislead clones and have them sing for us. But I don't want to have to resort to that, and even that isn't a guarantee of success.
We cast our buffs and Jan begins summoning Shambling Mounds via the Staff of the Woodlands. They will form an important bulwark against the Fire Giants and various other enemies that will spawn incessantly until Yaga-shura is slain.
We confront the first few enemies, but we pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration instead of SI: Evocation, which means only Sil can safely handle the Fire Giants. I have the others hang back. Jan goes to lay a Time Trap to the far east, while the rest of the group uses missile weapons on the small number of unimportant enemies around us. Sil keeps the Fire Giants busy to keep the rest of the party safe.
Fortunately, not all of the mages in this battle are unmitigated monsters. The spells they use are more common to Yuan-ti Mages than Liches.
Eventually I remember I need to hurry further west to see Yaga-Shura, or else he'll never appear. I send Sil out to meet him, hoping for the best.
Bad news.
Yaga-shura declares his desire to murdalize us. This confirms my worst fears.
For the second time in all my playthroughs, the improved version of Yaga-shura does not crash the game. If the game had crashed, I would have uninstalled that component and fought the vanilla Yaga-Shura.
I was hoping the game would crash so I wouldn't have to face this battle. But it did not.
Yaga-Shura has come better prepared for this fight than I. He is bolstered by a literally endless supply of soldiers, plus some of the normal Tactics-style Fire Giants that cast Firestorm and Lower Fire Resistance on hit. I struggled against ONE of these critters outside the Fire Giants' lair, and was nearly broken down by a group of them just through the door. They are effectively impossible for me to kill unless I resort to using Sil's best buffs or multiple castings of Horrid Wilting, both very costly options.
We scare off Yaga-Shura by hitting him with a Magic Missile spell. Loser.
Sil runs back to the group, where Jan has been building up a wall of Shambling Mounds. But we haven't got very many yet.
The wall does not stand up. The Fire Giants are able to tear down the Shambling Mounds with great ease, and Jan spends several rounds doing nothing but summoning more. Imoen pitches in. We don't know how long it will be until Yaga-Shura returns, but until he does, we have some Fire Giants to deal with.
The party stands at a safe distance to avoid the Firestorms. I do not consider activating SI: Evocation to let us wade into melee combat and start taking down the Fire Giants with the strength of two bard songs supporting us (Haer'dalis and his clone are both best off spending their time singing).
I struggle to find ways to make the most of each round. It's easy to let one or more party members go for a round without doing anything useful, so I want them active and having a tangible impact on the battle. But every option besides flinging missile weapons comes with a cost. I want to save my best resources for the fight with Yaga-shura. When I have a spare round, I have everyone cast Mirror Image in anticipation of a melee tussle later on. Aerie summons a Storm of Vengeance to help out the Shambling Mounds, but it's never been a very high-damage spell.
Notice Sil's simulacrum at the bottom of the screen. I had Sil drink a Potion of Invisibility to escape the area, then cast Shapechange and Simulacrum to get a clone who could shapehange into Mind Flayer form. But first she has to cast Improved Alacrity, and a Stoneskin is needed to avoid spell disruption, given the many spawn points for enemies.
Sil herself drinks a Potion of Absorption, which gives her a -10 bonus to her AC vs. crushing. Vanilla Fire Giants all used slashing weapons, even the ones with war hammers, but these do crushing damage, and since damage type-specific AC bonuses bypass the AC cap of -24, Sil can achieve 95% miss chance against the Fire Giants with one or two of these potions.
The Fire Giants don't seem to have used Enrage, so they shouldn't be immune to disablers. Even if they are, though, Web should be able to bypass their immunities, though the odds of landing it are not great. We need to buy time until Sil's clone can cast Improved Alacrity.
Look at all those Lower Fire Resistance spells. Tactics is just crazy.
Our summons begin to break down. It's hard to tell from all the pauses and auto-pauses, but Sil's clone should have cast Improved Alacrity by now. I select her and find that her circle is a plain circle, not the four inward arrows indicating a spell is to be cast.
I assumed she'd been disrupted, but this is not the case. She never even cast the spell. Improved Alacrity still cannot be cast by clones.
Since hurling out a stream of Psionic Blasts is no longer an option, I have the clone switch to Iron Golem form, which hopefully will replace our rapidly disintegrating wall of summons. I keep everybody in the party busy, but I can't remember for long which spells I've been using. Too much is happening all at once. This whole battle is probably less than five rounds in.
One of the Fire Giants gets webbed. Excellent news. Not everybody can go over to fight it--the Firestorm isn't safe--but Sil and her clone can take advantage of the automatic hits.
The rest of the party has to deal with respawning spellcasters at the bridge. Jan's flashers are a major boon, particularly with a couple of bard songs to support them.
Then things start to get out of hand. This battle has been going on for quite some time, and I don't know when Yaga-Shura is supposed to show up. More importantly, the Fire Giants have summoned some Greater Fire Elementals, and those summons basically never run out of duration.
Between fighting the Fire Giants, interrupting the spellcasters, avoiding the Firestorms, and now the high-level elementals trying to get their paws on Jan and Imoen, the party is overwhelmed. Our defenses are terribly strong, so we can withstand the attacks, but most of our defenses come from Blur spells, and those are going to run out sooner or later.
The Fire Giants are too sturdy for us to tank out, and the other enemies are draining our spells and wearing out the duration of our defenses. This is not working.
We have to find Yaga-Shura.
I have everyone in the party save Sil and Aerie drink a Potion of Invisibility (Aerie casts Sanctuary; Sil remains visible) and flee through the Firestorm, to the west. We need to get a hold of Yaga-Shura, and I'm sure we're not going to find him by the bridge.
I take Sil out to where I normally have seen Yaga-Shura, and have the rest of the party go to the south to escape the enemy's visual range. This keeps all the enemies focused on Sil, who can avoid almost all of their attacks by virtue of having drunk two Potions of Absorption. Even after her Blur spells have begun to wear off and Haer'dalis' Mislead clone has gone away, she can still tank the giants.
Meanwhile, Imoen casts Project Image and spawns her clones. They buff themselves with SI: Evocation to avoid spell disruption and then march forward, ready to cast Horrid Wilting.
Finally, Yaga-Shura appears. He's quite miffed about us breaking his heart and everything.
He brings in a group of high-level humans, including a thief, a cleric, a fighter, and a mage. But we've already got Imoen's clones lined up to cast Horrid Wilting.
Except, the enemy mage noticed Jan was lurking around nearby, using Detect Illusions to uncover her, so she cast True Seeing to dispel his invisibility. And it turns out True Seeing has a wider area of effect than I knew.
We have now lost all of Imoen's clones. That's a lot of damage spells they took away from us.
I originally planned to lure an enemy into Jan's Time Trap and then have Jan attack Yaga-Shura with the Chaos Blade and the Scarlet Ninja-to, relying on the DEX drain to kill the giant. But then I notice Haer'dalis has rather excellent THAC0 with his Mislead spells active, and the DEX penalties last for 5 rounds, so I decide to have Haer'dalis try killing Yaga-Shura instead. In an attempt to get at the enemy mage, currently invisible, Jan positions himself to use his flashers on the enemy group.
If that doesn't work, we still have Dragon's Breath from Nalia.
Unfortunately, we still have lots of giants to deal with, who not only are immune to Dragon's Breath but also are healed slightly by it. Plus, Haer'dalis is struggling to land a hit, despite his stellar THAC0.
Haer'dalis' Mislead clone gets knocked back and rendered unconscious, so he creates a new one. Now that the enemy mage is gone, we no longer have to worry about True Seeing, so Nalia can cast Project Image and spawn her clones, who join Aerie and Imoen in casting Horrid Wilting, our best way of dealing with Fire Giants.
We also use Spellstrike in case Yaga-Shura has any spell defense we might need to take down.
The giants fall! And Haer'dalis manages to hit Yaga-Shura. The giant remains concerned with Sil alone, who has the AC bonuses and the spells to absorb all of his attacks safely.
Notice the pitiful damage Haer'dalis is doing. Yaga-Shura starts out with 99% resistance, but it must have already started decreasing for Haer'dalis to do 2 damage.
Haer'dalis' first Mislead clone is still unconscious, so Jan runs over to wake him up with a quick smack to the face.
The Mislead clone starts singing to help Haer'dalis' chances of landing a hit.
Haer'dalis makes it.
Marvelous!
Yaga-Shura is gone, and though we didn't get the XP from his death, we did survive the battle, and we got gobs of valuable treasure from the remains of the fallen.
After taking two trips back and forth from the Pocket Plane to gather up all the loot dropped by Yaga-Shura and his men, Imoen and Haer'dalis break the dour mood.
We like Imoen. She's great.
Anyway, now we have to fight a much cooler-looking version of Sil in the Pocket Plane, with a set of pitch black armor and a shiny red shield that unfortunately we can't get. She quite miffed about Sil's existence.
I had Jan set a couple of Spike Traps where I remembered a mage to have emerged. Apparently that was a good idea.
Both Imoen and Nalia made mistakes in preparing their Chain Contingencies, setting the condition to Enemy Sighted instead of Helpless. They spawn in their clones unprompted, which deprives us of two clones. Luckily we still have tons of Horrid Wilting spells, and with the support of Haer'dalis' songs, Sil is quite capable of breaking through her counterpart's bitchin' black plate mail.
Things could have gotten really messy if we hadn't slain Semaj early on, though.
On to the Oasis! Here we will get ambushed by a small army of well-equipped and well-meaning soldiers of Tethyr. Since it takes a while to reach the area and we arrive without buffs, I decide to rest before the battle can start.
That was not such a good idea.
Things don't look too good. My party isn't nearly as strong without its buffs, and the enemy has lots of attacks at excellent THAC0. Our Stoneskins won't last long unless we can take down the enemy quickly.
I talk-block the leader of the army and blast the trolls with Dragon's Breath. Turns out the rest of the army isn't so stupid, and Dragon's Breath doesn't work too well against Desert Trolls.
Things are already going badly. We need to raise our defenses, and I don't want to have to drink another six Potions of Invisibility to give us some breathing room. We've only got so many of those left, and they're supposed to be for real emergencies, and we're not quite at that stage yet. So I have Jan cast Invisibility 10' Radius, which has already saved the party from certain death at least once before.
My positioning, however, is terribly off. I could have had Nalia cast the spell, but her aura wasn't clear, since the Dragon's Breath spell was hers, which means the fastest Invisibility 10' Radius spell I could pull off belonged to Jan, despite Nalia's Robe of Vecna. Unfortunately, Jan ended up at the front of the party, leaving him quite vulnerable to attack.
I send Haer'dalis out into the fray singing his songs, with a Mislead spell to support him. The AC boost will do a lot to keep him alive. Jan takes a few steps away and drinks a Potion of Invisibility, but the rest of the party remains visible. Instead, they cast Stoneskin or PFMW.
With the few moments of safety that gives us (the enemy is overwhelming reliant on physical damage, with few spellcasters to give us grief), we summon a Planetar, cast Elemental Summoning, and set up a Teleport Field, which will keep the enemy soldiers distracted, disorganized, and distant from the party. The trolls are already right on our backs, so we need Horrid Wilting to deal with them quickly.
Finally, once Jan has PFMW up, he backstabs one of the archers, exposing himself to a gang of enemies completely incapable of harming him.
Note the absurd damage on his backstab. With 2 songs from Haer'dalis and his clone, Jan gets an extra 40 damage to his backstab.
The tide of battle starts to turn. Horrid Wilting, oddly enough, is more effective against the trolls than Dragon's Breath. The Desert Trolls collapse from dehydration, of all things, and Sil sweeps up their shriveled husks with the Flail of Ages. Comet brings Jamis Tombelthen to the ground, giving Aerie and Nalia the perfect opportunity to remove him from the equation. Haer'dalis' songs do a lot to speed things up.
The rest of the battle is won with missile weapons. We spend many more minutes gathering loot before heading to Amkethran.
For some reason, their reputation complaints (or maybe just Jan's) are much more bitter in ToB than SoA.
We sell all of our loot to an innkeeper and collect over 120,000 gold in the process, and spend about 100,000 of that gold buying scrolls and upgrading a few items with Cespenar. A fraction of that money would have been game-breaking in SoA. Now, it barely strengthens the party at all. This group hasn't quite reached its peak, but as far as equipment goes, we're not going to get much of any stronger.
Jan and Haer'dalis' whining starts to wear on the group's morale, so Imoen tries to cheer us up.
Classic Jan response.
Next up is Draconis, everyone's least favorite dragon and owner of BG2's most uninspired name. I have no idea what tricks he's going to pull in SCS2, but even in vanilla, he was an immense trial, easily one of the hardest and most frustrating enemies in the saga. Invisible dragons are just crazy.
Draconis shouts out his insecurities at us before attacking. Sounds like he has a pretty poor relationship with Abazigal.
Jan has prepared a couple of Time Traps to the far southeast, and Haer'dalis and his Mislead clone are busy singing offscreen. Sil alone is facing Draconis, with the rest of the party ready to jump in if something should go wrong.
To my surprise, Draconis takes the initiative.
Due to some error, Sil retains her buffs. Draconis also summons a Dark Planetar, but its vorpal strikes mean very little to Sil, who will automatically make all of her saves without fail (SCS2 Planetar vorpal strikes offer a save vs. death).
Most importantly, Draconis began the battle with PFMW, and renewed it right before his Time Stop ended. I need Nalia if I'm going to get through Draconis' weapon immunities without spending a lot of charges of my Wands of Spell Striking, so I have her cast Time Stop and run over to hit Draconis with Pierce Magic, Spellstrike, and Breach from a wand. Draconis re-casts PFMW, which Haer'dalis immediately Breaches with his own wand. The Planetar tries to heal itself from the damage Nalia did during Time Stop with Energy Blades, but with Aerie and Nalia still using Energy Blades, Imoen using the Firetooth dagger, and Jan using the Firetooth crossbow, all boosted by Haer'dalis' songs, the Planetar is easily interrupted.
Meanwhile, Sil starts munching on Draconis' noggin, which deals rather respectable damage and hits quite reliably thanks to Haer'dalis' music. Finally, Sil cracks open Draconis' melon.
I hear brains are actually extremely unhealthy to eat. They're full of fat and cholesterol. Makes you wonder how the illithids maintain those slim, sexy figures.
We don't get any XP from the kill, which weakens us in the long run, but Draconis was too big of a wild card given what I knew about his dragon form, at least in the vanilla game. It made more sense to slay him early and avoid a dicey dragon fight than to tough it out for the XP reward. It's not worth risking our lives over 60,000 XP. Not at this stage of the game, anyway.
Despite being in human form and having his skull cracked open by Sil's beak, Draconis drops a dragon's head. Just what we need to enter Abazigal's Enclave, and fight more dragons.