Just when I thought things were getting safe and boring.
After slaying Draconis, I spent some time tearing through the enemies in Abazigal's Enclave, from a Greater Werewyvern to a brown dragon (mostly I just whomped on it until it died) to a pair of Pit Fiends and their Cornugon underlings to a cluster of Kuo-toa and some Greater Water Elementals. We finally filled up our Ammo Belt. We now have over 1000 Kuo-toa Bolts. Wow.
I ran back and forth through the tunnels before checking my journal and realizing you have to go back to Amkethran to buy rope. I thought you found it inside Abazigal's place, like the Breath Potion. I'm really not familiar with ToB.
Nor am I, apparently, familiar with the Tactics mod. Or Ascension. Or whatever was responsible for the nightmare I faced on my return to Abazigal's Enclave.
I forgot about these guys. Two black dragons confront you simultaneously when you get back from Amkethran, ready to avenge the death of their irritating illusionist master.
And because I forgot about these two miserable creatures, I arrived completely unbuffed.
Even more irritating, I actually first spotted them on teleporting to the dungeon entrance with CTRL-J, which would unduly influence the course of the battle. This means I had to reload and walk back up to the entrance knowing that I was walking to a dragon battle unbuffed.
With two dragons facing the party, I had Sil use her Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer and moved the other party members away, so the dragons would concentrate on Sil, who would have 95% damage resistance after activating both her Spell Sequencer and Minor Sequencer. And since I assumed these dragons were shadow dragons, rather than black dragons, I assumed their breath weapon caused level drain, instead of acid damage.
Then I saw them casting their first spells.
See those pretty white-blue sparklers in front of the dragons? Alteration spells. If it's Time Stop, then we've got two dragons with 6 combined rounds of automatic hits on Sil.
And Sil just cast a spell. So she can't use PFMW, as if that would even be enough to keep her alive, or drink a Potion of Invisibility, as if the dragons couldn't see right through that.
I can't stop them from casting the spell. I send Sil to the south so the dragons spend their time murdering another party member. Offscreen, the dragons finish casting their spells.
It's better than I hoped, but we're still at a massive disadvantage. Some HLA summons will hopefully keep the dragons off our backs for a little while, but it seems the dragons are smarter than that. They know exactly who to target.
Haer'dalis is gone, along with one of the two Mislead clones he managed to conjure before he got dissolved. Now I realize the dragons are black dragons, and will be dealing acid damage, which nobody in my party is immune to. Sil tests the waters and finds them quite uncomfortable.
Almost at half HP. If both dragons should target her with their breath weapon, then she could very well die, despite her 100% chance of making her saving throw. The only way we can keep Sil safe is if she's in Iron Golem form, and to do that, we need Shapechange. I send Sil far to the east to drink a potion and cast Shapechange. She'll need the breathing room to cast Shapechange without being disrupted. Notice that Haer'dalis is back. I have multiple Rods of Resurrection, but Haer'dalis needs to spend time to recover his equipment, and it also takes a round from another party member. We're already short on time, considering our lack of buffs.
Meanwhile, the other party members cast Project Image for various purposes. We need traps from Jan and Pierce Magic and Horrid Wilting from Nalia and Imoen.
Unfortunately, we also arrived without Chain Contingencies prepared. So Imoen and Nalia only get one clone at a time.
Sil wastes a valuable round and an even more valuable spell trying to keep the dragons at bay.
We also bring back Aerie because of her many summoning spells. Jan is next.
But one of the dragons has found us, and is perfectly poised to keep Aerie out of the spellcasting game for quite some time. And his friend isn't far behind.
This all happened mere minutes ago, but I had to assign so many characters to cast so many spells that I don't remember what all they were doing. In any case, Jan now has some rounds of automatic hits. But there's nothing much I can do with him. Although we've lowered one of the dragon's MR by now, Jan can't hope to slay either of them with DEX drain, as both dragons have 21 DEX, which means he needs 6 hits or more, depending on their MR, to get one of them down to zero. Plus, they're both immune to backstabs. Jan can do nothing of use with his Time Stop.
Later, the dragons trigger more Time Traps while Jan is under the effects of Project Image, and neither Jan nor his clone can act while time is stopped.
All the while, the damage from Acid Arrow on Aerie builds up.
Another time stop effect pops up later, though I was sure the dragons didn't get any closer to our Time Stops. Still, nobody is able to act, and the time stop passes unused.
Very ominous. Nalia's Project Image clone literally in the shadow of a dragon. Notice the dead Mordenkainen's Sword to the northwest, and the newly created one to the east. We've been spawning these constantly to make sure we have a durable summons. But the dragons have Magic Missile and have been able to take down the swords nonetheless, albeit very slowly.
We bring back Imoen, who looks like a clone of Sil, but Aerie panicks, and Sil can't afford to spend a round casting Remove Fear on her.
The rest of the party is struggling to make headway on the dragons. We still aren't sure exactly how we're going to actually kill the dragons. We've considered fleeing, either outside the area or inside the dungeon, but I'm concerned about what it would be like to return and fight them later.
Imoen is slain once more, seconds after we get her back, and Haer'dalis' Mislead clone vanishes. He now has only one Mislead spell left, and our party is much weaker without the extra bard songs. I decide to wait to use his last spell. If things truly go to hell, I might have to use the Wand of Lightning trick to summon a bunch of Mislead clones, but even then, a breath weapon from the dragons could take out the whole group in one blow.
Nalia loses her Project Image clone. Everybody is low on spells, and our summons have run precariously thin.
I don't think Sil can deal with the rest of this encounter as it stands. Sil is a monster in Iron Golem form with her buffs intact, but she doesn't have her resistances anymore, since her Spell Sequencer ran out and her Minor Sequencer was disrupted by a Wing Buffet spell early on. I have a Heal+PFMW+Improved Haste Chain Contingency on 50% health, and a Heal Contingency on 25% health as a backup to the backup, but that will only keep her alive so long, and these dragons have over 700 HP apiece. We just can't deal that much damage without putting Sil, and therefore the entire run, in danger.
With 6 Mislead clones tucked away in the corner of the map, Haer'dalis has given the whole party a massive boost. And Nalia, with her Energy Blades, is the perfect person to start bringing down the dragons.
While Nalia is tearing down the closest dragon, Sil flees to the southwest to find a safe place to cast Wish. Despite Sil's 19 WIS, the best we can get is Improved Haste spell on the party. Sil casts Time Stop and takes down the less injured dragon.
Nalia keeps tearing up the remaining dragon, who manages to put down Aerie once again. We still don't have a defense against that acid breath.
Then Nalia gets targeted, after using her own Dragon's Breath spell. I'm sure she'll survive, since her base HP is relatively high.
That assumption doesn't pan out. But Nalia lived long enough to bring the dragon to the brink of death.
Haer'dalis left his troupe to join the fight, using the Firetooth dagger that he or Jan or Nalia had filched from Imoen's corpse. Everyone but Sil has been trying to grab whatever equipment they can grab off the ground, and the party has been much weaker and limited in its options as a result.
But with a whole party of bards supporting us from a safe distance, and an Offensive Spin for good measure, Haer'dalis can do a lot with that little dagger.
Sil did a lot, too. We finally took down the dragons.
Then we get an auto-save. That can only mean one thing.
Half the party is dead, we're out of our best spells, and now there are two new dragons in the fight. Our only blessing is that they come in one at a time.
The next battle begins, and we are off to a bad start. Green dragons use poisonous breath, and nobody in our party, not even Sil in Iron Golem form, is immune to poison damage.
The only thing we can use against that is the Periapt of Proof Against Poison. And I forget to track it down. Instead, I have Jan and his clones distract the dragon for a moment.
Once Sil is ready, she switches to Mind Flayer form and rushes in. Bolstered by Haer'dalis' songs, she can land enough hits even without Time Stop.
The next dragon comes in, a red dragon. I have Jan equip all the fire resistant equipment I can find (the Dragon Helm and a Robe of Fire Resistance, which isn't much) cast Mirror Image, then Mirror Image and Stoneskin via a Sequencer. It's not much, but it's all I've got. Jan leads the dragon around for a while. He's quite upbeat about it.
That's Jan for you. Tells you he hates being in the group when things are going stellar, and happy as taffy when everyone else in the party is dead and he's being used as bait for a red dragon.
I use the time to bring back Aerie and Nalia. But we lose something absolutely critical in the process.
Our melee power is shot. Even if we bring back Haer'dalis, he's got no Mislead spells left.
We make the most of our resources. While Jan is still keeping the dragon occupied, Sil begins casting Time Stop. It seems there was a Rest somewhere along the way, which I somehow failed to notice, because Sil already cast Time Stop once.
Jan is running out of Mirror Images and low on health, but Sil finishes casting the spell. She runs up and switches to Mind Flayer form.
Done. Finally.
I grow weary of these fights. The tension is awful. Sil is so close to the end of the game, and there are so many challenges left that I'm just not familiar with. Shadows of Amn is a monster I know. Throne of Bhaal is foreign, and mismanagement could bring the whole thing tumbling down.
Hm first of all, excellent work, and glad you made it! I guess that unnoticed rest came in very handy
I told you before that you could consider doing a test run through ToB with a different party. You're a very good player and you have a strong party but I'd still advise against stumbling through SCS/Tactics/Ascension ToB almost blindly. I know you told me you check enemy stats and abilities in dltcep, but you don't know how these enemies behave. Of course it's your call. I'm only saying this because it would be a shame to see Sil fall due to lack of familiarity with the game (I've just been there, with Norgath, it's not a lot of fun I can tell you).
As I was reading the first two dragon battles, I was like 'no way Sil will survive the next two dragon fights!' Because you have wasted too much resources. It was very exciting like from an old tv show 'will our hero survive? Tune in next week to find out. If you dare!'
I did not know about the rest between dragon fights I thought it was one big no rest fight (aside drom wish spells) One screenshot is wrong, when you describe Sil getting her hp halved by black dragon breath. It shows an old one from the prison area. Stellar read, as always. Go! Be happy that you don't have bg2:ee with the latest patch as it made Abazigal's dragon form immune to time stop. Very, very scary! There is a hidey hole in Abazigal's lair where he can not reach you for melee. (But his breath can! So get immunity to electricity!) many solo no-reloaders have hidden there when things got very dangerous. And it will get very dangerous, that battle is a blast! (Literally!) (tip:get immunity to sleep/uncounciousness effect. I am not sure but chaotic commands may work. This is essential in the final Abazigal fight. For reasons.)
I'm 99.9% certain that in my ToB EE the rope was in one of the underwater caverns. Possibly the mod makes you return to town for it so that you can get ambushed by the dragons upon your return?
Anyway that was quite a close battle there. Thanks for taking the time to post this entertainment.
@lunar: Everybody in the party already comes prebuffed with Chaotic Commands and Protection from Lightning. Chaotic Commands is probably my favorite spell in the game, given the huge spread of immunities it gives. Protection from Lightning was originally there so I could bounce around a whole bunch of lightning bolts, but now I mostly just have it because there's not much else Aerie can do with all of those 4th-level spell slots.
@hispls: That would explain why the rope caught me by surprise. And why Zack the innkeeper made such a big deal about buying the rope, and gave it to us for free.
@Blackraven: I think I'll do some tests to better familiarize myself with Ascension. I'd rather postpone Sil's success than risk her failure.
@lunar: Everybody in the party already comes prebuffed with Chaotic Commands and Protection from Lightning. Chaotic Commands is probably my favorite spell in the game, given the huge spread of immunities it gives. Protection from Lightning was originally there so I could bounce around a whole bunch of lightning bolts, but now I mostly just have it because there's not much else Aerie can do with all of those 4th-level spell slots.
@hispls: That would explain why the rope caught me by surprise. And why Zack the innkeeper made such a big deal about buying the rope, and gave it to us for free.
@Blackraven: I think I'll do some tests to better familiarize myself with Ascension. I'd rather postpone Sil's success than risk her failure.
The Abazigal upgrade was pretty immense iirc, but Sendai is changed less I think, and was always the easier base to go for first. Mind you, I think you've damn near cleared Abazigal out of Dragons! Only a handful left!
I'm 99.9% certain that in my ToB EE the rope was in one of the underwater caverns. Possibly the mod makes you return to town for it so that you can get ambushed by the dragons upon your return?
Anyway that was quite a close battle there. Thanks for taking the time to post this entertainment.
Yep, scs mod adds this so dragons can ambush you when you return from town. There is also a hillarious banter with the shopkeeper, he mocks that despite your epic, world-shaking magic and artifact like items, you come to buy some mundane rope. He finds it so funny that he charges no money for the rope.
Yep, scs mod adds this so dragons can ambush you when you return from town. There is also a hillarious banter with the shopkeeper, he mocks that despite your epic, world-shaking magic and artifact like items, you come to buy some mundane rope. He finds it so funny that he charges no money for the rope.
The irony being you'll be hard pressed to find any pen and paper D&D character without 50' of rope, a tinder box, and iron rations in their inventory from inception. This goes back to the late 1970's
After roughly a four-month hiatus, I looked back at this thread and decided to return to Sil's adventure. The Party of Spiders is back.
We were midway through Abazigal's Enclave before a quadruple dragon ambush caught our party off-guard and unbuffed. After fetching some rope from Amkethran, we dove back into the pools and emerged in Abazigal's peculiar eyeball room.
We can take on these guys with normal weapons, though I do use some minor spells to speed things up. The eyeballs break through our spell protections, but our resistances to fire and electricity negate most of the damage.
A bigger problem are these guys, whom I've never seen before.
Are Tyrant Golems even a thing? Google suggests otherwise. Anyway, these things' deal is that they've got normal golem immunities, plus 90% resistance to slashing, crushing, and missile damage, and 50% resistance to piercing damage (I guess because pointy stuff is especially bad for eyeballs). I'm still clumsy with this party, as this is the first time I've brought them into battle in four months. Our buffs, however, block many if not all of the Beholder rays that these golem whatevers keep spouting. Haer'dalis runs out to the front to attack with the Cutthroat +4 and Kundane (the latter of which is a +2 weapon and can't affect the Tyrant Golems), bolstered by a song from a Mislead clone hiding out in the south.
Then I notice two Death Tyrants at the back. Since I'm more worried about real Beholders and Death Tyrants don't have ridiculous resistances, we throw out Horrid Wilting and Comet. The Death Tyrants don't do too well.
Beholders have never excelled at defense. But the Tyrant Golems remain. We call in a Planetar to pitch in some extra damage, and have Sil switch to Iron Golem form to ensure her immunity to any Beholder rays (they stole her Cloak of Mirroring twice during the battle). Haer'dalis lands a very nasty critical, felling the last golem.
He would have done 60 damage to a foe without resistances. Very nice.
The rest of the area is uneventful. We focus on bringing down the Sentinels, who appear to be capable of using summoning spells (an Earth Elemental popped up out of nowhere earlier), and then restore a group of petrified adventurers. Since we don't want to face the Elder Orbs that are guarding the Scroll of Reversal we need to free Fll'Yissetat, we wow the young adventurers with extravagant words and promises of incomparable riches.
It's a good thing they work for cheap, because we've only got about 30,000 gold and we need lots more for scrolls and item upgrades.
The young adventurers betray us. It doesn't go so well.
For everyone who says reloading is cheesy, I refer them to this image, which proves that enemies use Power Word: Reload, too.
Part of our reward includes a pair of very uncomfortable undergarments.
Since we're operating under the assumption that the party began in BG1 and not BG2, I decide to go ahead and give the party the Golden Pantaloons they would have gotten in BG1, and the Silver Pantaloons they would have gotten in BG2. We forge the Big Metal Unit, which is promptly tossed into a Bag of Holding (it disables our spellcasting; what good is it for a party of casters?).
More importantly, we get the Scorcher Ammunition, Pulse Ammunition, and Frag Grenades. All of these grant the user 5 APR and a +10 bonus to THAC0. Jan has pretty nice damage output with Firetooth and the Scorcher Ammunition. His APR and THAC0 look like a fighter's.
These may be instrumental for overcoming Abazigal's low AC, at -17 in human form and -16 in dragon form. Nobody in our party has very good THAC0, and we are all very dependent on buffs, so it's a big problem, finding out a way to bring down Abazigal. It's not just his -16 AC or his 50% damage resistance or his 500 HP--he also regenerates 30 HP per round.
So far, my strategy for handling Abazigal and his consort Tamah is very vague. I do know both of them are vulnerable to Feeblemind, but I've done the math and our chances of hitting them both with Feeblemind are just under 90%, depending on the circumstances. That's really not good enough for a no-reload run. Part of the problem is that Abazigal casts True Seeing when he sees projected images, and appears to have no limit to how many times he can cast the spell. This means our normal tactic of spawning in lots of clones and spamming Feeblemind will only work for one or two rounds. Plus, Abazigal's breath weapon requires SI: Evocation to block, as the electrical damage is sufficient to bring down any clone, and everyone in our party needs SI: Abjuration to ward off Abazigal's level 30 Remove Magic spell. This means we have very few Feeblemind spell slots across the board, especially in our clones.
If Feeblemind doesn't work, then we may be faced with an enemy we can't bring down with damage alone. Worse yet, Abazigal also casts True Seeing when Haer'dalis casts Mislead (I've done some brief tests to see). This means we can't use song stacking as a last resort if things go badly.
Abazigal's files indicate he's immune to Time Stop, but due to a typo, he's actually not. There's a parameter that should be set to 1, but actually is 0. I might take advantage of that typo, but I'm not sure. Abazigal is immune to INT drain, but not to DEX drain. Unfortunately, the only people who can use the Chaos Blade are Haer'dalis and Jan, neither of which can cast Time Stop under normal circumstances. We'd need to bring Jan up another level before he can do that.
Luckily, Sendai's Enclave remains completely open, and though it's much tougher than Abazigal's Enclave, it doesn't compare to Abazigal himself. We can therefore bring Jan up to mage level 18 before facing Abazigal. If things ever truly go to hell in the Abazigal fight, then we might have Jan dual-wield the Chaos Blade and the Scarlet Ninja-to during one or two Time Stops (as a specialist mage, he'll have two level 9 spell slots at level 18) and slay the dragon with DEX drain. But this would require spider form or Improved Haste to ensure he could drain enough DEX to slay the dragon. Abazigal has 17 DEX, and therefore warrants nine hits from the Chaos Blade before he goes down.
Next stop is Sendai's Enclave. But we need to make sure we're ready for Abazigal. Right now, we have a fairly low chance of taking him down successfully.
I've been studying the party and correcting some things that changed since I fought Carnifex et al. I corrected the Robe of Vecna to have its original casting time bonus of 4, for one thing, and added a 9th-level spell slot so Imoen, Nalia, and Sil can use Improved Alacrity as normal (it's supposed to be an innate ability in my install, but is actually still a level 9 mage spell). I also restored everybody's sequencers and contingencies, as most were lost in the fight.
Outside Sendai's Enclave, we get another surprise enemy.
These unexpected factors really screw around with the gameplay. Thankfully the party is organized to be highly flexible. Nalia dedicates some limited resources to taking the Hive Mother down early, before it can start bringing down our defenses. She begins casting Time Stop.
To my surprise, the Hive Mother uses not Anti-Magic Ray, but Remove Magic, just as Nalia stops time.
I wasn't expecting Remove Magic, so nobody in the group has SI: Abjuration. Nalia casts Improved Alacrity and throws out all the damage spells she can--but forgoes her second and third Skull Trap spells, fearing they might hurt Sil if Sil's immunity to magic damage was dispelled (I forgot Sil is still wearing the Cloak of Mirroring and is therefore immune to Skull Trap). Nalia also uses both Comet and Dragon's Breath in her haste to bring down the Hive Mother, as well as a few Energy Blades to break through the Hive Mother's Improved Mantle, which still has one round left when Time Stop ends.
It works quite well.
Then Comet hits.
And finally, Haer'dalis' Flame Arrow finishes it off.
Most of the drow also perished as a side effect, the sole exception being the wizard. The wizard wasn't an issue. Half the party lost their defenses (makes sense, since the Hive Mother was a level 20 caster using Remove Magic on level 20 buffs) but their offensive and debuffing power was still well intact.
Hopefully we won't come across too many surprises in Sendai's Enclave. We'll just have to see.
First, I've encountered a weird hotkey problem I've seen before but do not understand.
Basically, when I try to make Aerie or another character do something, such as casting a spell, she might do it, but right afterward, she starts selecting and unselecting some other action, and gets stuck doing it, even while paused. The only way to stop it is to switch screens. This means that I need to make a clean install of BG2, or else I'm going to have to return to the inventory screen and go back every time I want to order a party member to attack, cast a spell, drink a potion, or even move.
But that's just a technical problem.
More importantly, I have realized that Abazigal can be taken down in three rounds with the Answerer.
The Answerer has been much maligned for its AC and MR penalties, the logic being that if you can hit something with the Answerer enough times for the AC to matter, then the critter in question is already doomed. This is not true.
The Answerer lowers the target's AC by 2 for 4 rounds on every hit. This offers no saving throw. But what good is it, if you need to land a hit in the first place for the AC penalty to make an impact? This is how.
Haer'dalis (or Jan, whichever) lays a Time Trap, takes on spider form, and another party members hits him with Improved Haste. Haer'dalis now has 8 attacks per round. We lure Abazigal into the Time Trap, granting Haer'dalis automatic hits. If Haer'dalis is already next to Abazigal when time stops, he will hit Abazigal 12 times, lowering Abazigal's AC by 16. His AC is now at 0. Everyone in the party now has 95% hit chance against Abazigal. With some mild buffs, and with Imoen using Energy Blades, the party does 250 damage. Abazigal's dragon form dies on round three. And even without Time Trap, Haer'dalis can impose the 16 AC penalty in three rounds, providing a slower but equally guaranteed death for Abazigal.
This party has awful THAC0, but with a little work the Answerer can give all of them the maximum 95% hit chance. Against problem targets like Abazigal, the Answerer allows us to deal six times as much damage as we could without it.
No other weapon can multiply an entire party's damage by six.
Stunning weapons, and FotA slow effect can completely euchre an enemy, but thats a pretty good use of The Answerer. Never disliked the weapon personally, but its not often the best choice; however, as we can see, exceptions exist!
Lots of stuff has happened. The bug that I thought would force a reinstall (with a CD I can't find) apparently vanished. I noticed when I was conducting a test. I can now continue with the run.
The first part of Sendai's Enclave was disappointingly simple. The cool part is with Abazigal, but I already took some screenshots of Sendai's goons, so I may as well post them.
Jan's new Scorcher Ammunition proves very effective. It does 2d12 nonmagical fire damage, with a save for half, and strikes twice per hit.
We plow through Sendai's goons with few offensive spells. Melee enemies don't have many options against us. Even high damage output critters like Thelynn'ss can't do anything against Stoneskin. With mage spells as a buffer, all we have to do is wear them down.
Using a clone certainly doesn't hurt.
And spellcasters are pretty easily disrupted with the Scorcher Ammunition's many hits.
We even get some early hits on Odamaron before his PFMW comes out, during the short cutscene before the fight begins.
And it hit him again, even after his PFMW came out.
That cost him a Time Stop. PFMW keeps him safe for a bit, and Nalia spawns in some clones to handle Odamaron's apprentices. Jan's fire returns.
We can't stop his apprentices completely, but we do distract one of them a bit during a Time Stop.
And when that doesn't work, we resort to HLAs.
That basically fixed everything. The liches didn't come buffed with any resistances.
Ogremoch can cast Stoneskin every few rounds, so a lot of our damage comes from magic damage. Jan is especially useful, with his 5 APR and excellent THAC0.
For Diaytha, Jan sneaks in and lobs a grenade at the enemy, prompting a teleport from the Demon Knight.
We send a Deva and a Magical Sword into the other room while we deal with the Demon Knight.
The Deva, of course, can't handle the enemy on its own. Especially when it's got an evil twin to deal with.
Sil exacts revenge with her own twin.
We then rush in and focus on the Hive Mother, anxious to preempt any Anti-Magic Rays which could expose our party to dangerous magic.
No Hive Mother means Diaytha's magic is harmless. And Spellstrike and Breach mean Diaytha herself is defenseless.
After much thought, I decide to fight Captain Egeissag one-on-one, rather than fighting the whole group with the full party. Looking at Egeissag's files, it seems like he's got some high-level mage spells. To ensure we stay on top, Sil takes the Robe of Vecna from Nalia and begins with Time Stop.
Turns out Egeissag doesn't cast any mage spells. Or at least, not when he's got 18 Energy Blades and a Comet raining down on him within the first round.
We meet up with the Spectator again, and Sil sums up the dungeon in five words.
Oh, and there were Mind Flayers. Dragon's Breath and Comet both bypass their MR.
Most of the enemies teleporting in were Umber Hulks, however, and the other Mind Flayers flooded in after the dust was clear.
A problem which we solved with more Dragon's Breath and Comet spells.
Also, we killed Lashar'ra. Stoneskin blocked the poison damage (it might be an SCS2 tweak).
I performed a single test run for the fight with Abazigal, and had great success thanks to some luck. But Abazigal ended the run with an Imprisonment spell.
Turns out the test run was a good idea. I had thought that enemies in SCS2 always avoided targeting Charname with Imprisonment, but apparently that's not how Abazigal works. Another critical detail I learned was that there are four drakes in the fight thanks to Ascension, and Tamah arrives at the beginning of the battle--I thought she came in only after Abazigal's transformation. This means Sil cannot engage Abazigal in melee combat, or allow her SI: Abjuration to expire, as she did in the rest run.
I spent roughly three in-game days organizing and revising the party's spellbook. There's fierce competition for 5th-level spell slots when we're fighting dragons. I've also been turning the matter over in my head on and off for about a week, partly thanks to the bug that stalled gameplay.
We have two redundant strategies. First, we're going to try and Feeblemind Abazigal's dragon form, along with Tamah. If that doesn't work, then we must switch to our backup plan, which is to soften up Abazigal and/or Tamah with the Answerer, having Nalia or Imoen attack during Time Stop, or having Jan or Haer'dalis attack during Time Trap (he has two castings thanks to levels he gained in Sendai's Enclave). The Answerer will give us extremely high hit rates throughout the party, boosting our damage by up to 500% depending on how many times we can hit Abazigal while time is stopped.
Everyone in the party has two castings of Spell Immunity to maintain their buffs. True Seeing will remove our Blur spells and any clones, but SI: Abjuration will let us hold onto our Chaotic Commands and Protection from Lightning, plus our more basic Stoneskin spells. We also pre-buff with Spell Shield. Any remaining 5th-level spells are dedicated to Feeblemind. Since Horrid Wilting will do little damage and Simulacrum can be dispelled, our 8th-level spell slots mostly consist of the oft-overlooked Maze spell. Otherwise our spells are the same as normal.
Sil has a Spell Trigger with three Feeblemind spells. Imoen and Nalia also have Chain Contingency spells, loaded up with Feeblemind, scheduled to activate on helpless so we can trigger them via a fast-casting Project Image spell. Sil has a similar Chain Contingency, with Maze thrown in to provide some extra safety for after Project Image disables her. Also, Aerie has a triple Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer. Why is this? Because Aerie has just hit 6 million XP, and can now cast Shapechange. This means she can hit 95% physical damage resistance in Iron Golem form for 23 rounds, if we ever need a wall.
Finally, I enter Abazigal's lair, this time for real. We are buffed with all our normal spells, plus SI: Abjuration, and Spell Turning for Sil, Imoen, and Nalia, our dual-classed mages.
Nalia summons a Planetar and Aerie begins casting Elemental Summoning, providing us with a barrier against the drakes. Jan lays a Time Trap, granting him a little extra time to nail Tamah with Ruby Ray of Reversal and the Wand of Spell Striking, removing her Minor Spell Turning and dropped her MR by 20. Jan goes further out than he needs to, ensuring that Tamah's attention, and her awful crushing damage breath weapon, stays away from our vulnerable summons, none of which have Stoneskin to protect them.
While Tamah is distracted by Jan, and Abazigal lingers a safe distance to the southwest, our party concentrates on taking down the drakes, whose breath weapons threaten to disrupt our spells.
We target Abazigal and Tamah with the Wand of Spell Striking--we need their MR as low as possible, and we don't have the spell slots to use Lower Resistance or Pierce Magic instead--and concentrate our melee power on the drakes. We start to make progress, partly thanks to a vorpal strike from our Planetar.
Aerie finishes casting Elemental Summoning, and we get Zaaman Rul, plus an Air Elemental. Now our barrier is a little sturdier, and we can bring down the drakes faster. Now we need to get Tamah out of the way. Sil tries Maze, but apparently we haven't lowered Tamah's MR enough.
I have spoken before of the values of party redundancies. This is one of those times. With fresh auras and redundant spells, we can lower Tamah's MR to zero and hit her with Maze in less than a round. Nalia fills in for Sil with her own Maze spell.
Abazigal moves in for the kill. We finish off most of the drakes, leaving the map much clearer than when we began. This is important because Jan and Haer'dalis cannot lay any Time Traps unless they have a very large, open space with no enemies in it. Otherwise the trap will fail.
Tamah returns early, however. Jan neutralizes her from a distance, taking advantage of her zero MR.
Meanwhile, our Planetar and Zaaman Rul have been whittling away at Abazigal, bringing us closer to the second phase of the battle. With Abazigal distracted, the drakes dead, and Tamah blinded, we have some free time to act, and use it to take Tamah out of the fight. A few castings of Feeblemind later, and we see the telltale yellow shine indicating a failed save.
Tamah is out of the battle as long as nothing dispels her Feeblemind. We turn our attention to Abazigal, who will change into his dragon form when he has taken enough damage.
We damage Abazigal enough to prompt his transformation. He tries Remove Magic, but we are safe with SI: Abjuration.
Our party-wide Protection from Lightning will ward off his devastating lightning attack, but he can still lower our electrical resistance on a failed save vs. spell at -3. Only Sil has a guaranteed save without Blur spells, but the rest of the party is quite vulnerable.
We can't give Abazigal too many rounds to act. We immediately pelt him with Wands of Spell Striking, and follow up with Feeblemind. Just as Sil is about to activate her triple Feeblemind Spell Trigger, I see the yellow shimmer on Abazigal's hide.
For safety's sake, I activate the trigger anyway. I see Abazigal only makes one save, suggesting he failed the other two.
I wait a moment. Abazigal rears back his head--he's not disabled. That Spell Trigger only forced one save vs. spell, instead of three. Hoping to knock him out before things can go bad, I have Sil cast Project Image, activating her Maze+Feeblemind+Feeblemind Chain Contingency.
It has no apparent effect. Even the Maze fails to hit Abazigal, even though he's inches away from her and the only enemy on the map. I thought Chain Contingency would be able to hit the nearest target, but somehow it failed. Sil gets hit by Abazigal's lightning breath, and though it does no damage, it ends the Project Image spell.
But we have yet another redundant party member to pick up the slack: Aerie hits Abazigal with Maze, despite getting hit by Power Word: Blind. There's nothing Abazigal can do.
Now is the critical moment. We have several rounds before Abazigal reappears. We must set the stage for his return.
Haer'dalis sets a Time Trap where Abazigal vanished. Tamah is nearby, but she is out of sight and disabled, and will not disturb Haer'dalis, nor trigger his trap. But we must also keep any other critters from wandering in and triggering the trap. After Jan casts Improved Haste on Haer'dalis, the rest of the party hurries to the west to wipe out any lingering enemies. There's only one.
This ensures our Time Trap only activates when Abazigal appears. When the Frost Salamander falls, the rest of the party hurries back to Haer'dalis. They will be needed soon. Haer'dalis lays a second Time Trap, while the rest of the party hastes itself.
Our SI: Abjuration spells run out, so we renew them as well. We wait for Abazigal to return.
He doesn't show up.
We cast some minor buffs, making use of the time without expending precious resources. We scout around to see if Abazigal has somehow appeared elsewhere, but the map is empty, save for us and Tamah. I even have Jan set up his own traps to the west. With nothing else to do, we spend a little time attacking Tamah. I stay focused on Haer'dalis. His action could make or break this battle.
Finally, Abazigal returns, and the screen turns gray. Haer'dalis now has automatic hits with the Answerer.
But Abazigal took so long to escape Aerie's Maze, Haer'dalis' Improved Haste spell, which he got from Jan some time before, runs out. Haer'dalis now only has 2 APR with the Answerer (3 APR, dual-wielding with Kundane), and I'm not sure it's worth it to try and cast Improved Haste via the Amulet of Cheetah speed. That would take most of the duration of the Time Trap. Instead, Haer'dalis simply activates Offensive Spin for an extra 1 APR, and attacks Abazigal without Improved Haste.
The second Time Trap triggers. Haer'dalis keeps wearing down Abazigal's incredible -15 AC.
Weakened by the Answerer, Abazigal is easy to hit. The party pounces on him, and the damage pours in.
Abazigal nears his end. To maximize our chances, though, I start casting Feeblemind.
Finally, Abazigal fails his save, and we can attack him at our leisure.
But Abazigal won't go down. We keep hitting him over and over, but he won't die.
Right about here, I realize the Feeblemind effect is preventing is death.
Abazigal won't fall unless he gives his dying dialogue first. He can't do that if he's feebleminded. Sil casts Remove Magic, the party keeps attacking, and Abazigal delivers his final lines.
Only a few battles remain: Sendai, Balthazar (unless we can win over, which I don't know how to do), the Slayer, the Chosen of Cyric, the Ravager, and finally Melissan.
That was what I was thinking, if you feeblemind a boss that has to give out his speech before dying, it won't work:he will always stay at near death unless you dispel the feeblemind. Yagashura and Gromnir dies without a speech, IIRC, however Sendai and Abazigal are more dramatic villains ('no, noooo this can not beeee!') and thus they require their scripts working.
That was what I was thinking, if you feeblemind a boss that has to give out his speech before dying, it won't work:he will always stay at near death unless you dispel the feeblemind. Yagashura and Gromnir dies without a speech, IIRC, however Sendai and Abazigal are more dramatic villains ('no, noooo this can not beeee!') and thus they require their scripts working.
Whoever said that a sense of drama couldn't win battles?
Next up, Sendai. This was a such a long fight. It took ages for the battle music to get out of my head.
First, we took down the Slayer in the Pocket Plane. Basically, just buffing and attacking.
Sil got the evil bonus, to my surprise: Dark Taint, which at her level is an area effect poison spell. A save vs. death at -2 negates the effects, it seems, so it likely won't see much use--we might never use it at all.
Jan hit Illusionist level 18, and can now cast Time Stop twice per day, and also can summon a Fallen Planetar. I wasn't sure which HLA to pick, and was skeptical of Summon Fallen Planetar because I already could summon three of them, but a Planetar can always die midway through a fight, and Jan's Fallen Planetar will ensure we have one on the map at all times.
I pored over my spellbooks once more, not sure which ones I should prepare for the fight with Sendai. The one notable change I did was to use a new set of Chain Contingencies. Imoen and Nalia have been using triple Project Image Chain Contingencies, but after seeing so many True Seeing spells from the fight with Abazigal, and knowing Sendai is a real spellcaster who comes bolstered by other drow spellcasters, I decided we needed a safer option. Instead, Imoen and Nalia's Chain Contingencies have two Project Image spells, plus a Spell Immunity: Divination buff. That way, their clones can cast SI: Divination when they arrive, and persist despite enemy True Seeing spells.
We enter Sendai's chamber, fully buffed and protected by SI: Abjuration (such an important spell in SCS2, really). Seconds into battle, I realize that the situation facing me is not the one I remember.
My memory told me I'd be fighting each Sendai clone one by one. That is, we kill one, it goes down, and another one comes up. But we already see two copies of Sendai acting simultaneously.
That's one cleric and one mage. Already we're strained for options. I'm not sure which weapons we can use. The cleric has Physical Mirror and the mage is only vulnerable to +5 weapons and higher. And the mage is, as always, the greater worry.
The mage begins casting an Alteration spell. Time Stop. We have no means of stopping this. The best I can hope for is for our Planetar to knock Sendai's mage clone down with Earthquake.
But that's terribly overoptimistic, as Earthquake's unconsciousness effect does not bypass MR, and its damage is blocked by Stoneskin. Worse yet, Aerie has just lost her only Energy Blades spell, thanks to a surprise Storm of Vengeance (which you can just barely see in the above screenshot) from the cleric clone.
The Time Stop starts off fairly safe.
A Meteor Swarm is only to our benefit, as we are immune to fire, while the drow are not. But that Protection from Evil spell is a telling omen: the next spell is Gate. We now have a hostile Pit Fiend on the map, protecting the mage, which renews its Improved Mantle.
And Sendai's drow buddies spawn in, too.
We maintain our focus on killing the cleric, who has no annoying weapon immunity spells for us to break through. Nalia and Imoen can't attack the cleric with their best weapons (darts and shortbows), so I have Nalia flee from the Storm of Vengeance and spawn in her clones.
There is so much going on every round here, and I don't even remember all of it. But notice Haer'dalis' Mislead clone, badly damaged by the Meteor Swarm thanks to its lack of buffs, which I am sending north to safety. Also notice the Planetar, casting another Earthquake spell to hassle the incoming drow. Finally, another Sendai clone, a fighter dual-wielding axes, has targeted Nalia. All of Sendai's clones, I believe, can see through invisibility. Nalia's clones will die, SI: Divination or no, if that fighter clone hits Nalia more than 10 times, and breaks through her Stoneskin. You can also see a single Energy Blade on the screen: Imoen has conjured some in order to deal with the mage clone.
Since I'm worried about Nalia's clones and their safety, I have the easternmost clone, which is the farthest away from the fight, cast Time Stop. Then I realize that that particular clone can't actually do much of anything to stop Sendai's fighter clone from attacking Nalia, as the fighter clone is too far to hit with Maze. The best thing that happened during that Time Stop was the Planetar's Earthquake spell, which activates even during Time Stop.
Meanwhile, another clone of Sendai's appears, and takes control of time. But that Time Stop, too, is a waste.
All of these Time Stops wear down our buff durations.
As Sendai's cleric clone dies, two Sendai clones, both thieves, arrive on the map. We make progress on the first mage clone, as Nalia's clone was able to tear down its defenses with Spellstrike during her previous Time Stop spell, and Imoen has been taking down its Stoneskins.
I don't know what Sil's Conjuration spell is, or what target of Haer'dalis' just died, or what any of Nalia's clones are trying to do with their limited rounds of spellcasting. I've got to have all six characters acting productively every round, and still keep them responsive to changes in the fight.
We have a problem. I noticed it earlier, but had no time to fix it. Nalia's clones don't have SI: Divination. Why is this? Well, when I cast Spell Immunity, I pick Abjuration by default, when I was supposed to pick Divination. Nalia is immune to Divination magic, but her clones are only immune to Abjuration. Sure enough, Sendai takes down every clone, including Haer'dalis' Mislead clone.
We also lose our Blur spells. That costs us a lot of AC, and a substantial loss to our saving throws. Only Sil retains negative saving throws across the board.
The second mage clone of Sendai's is currently invisible, hiding near our party. We can't uncover it because we need Jan's attention on the first clone to the south. The southern mage is almost dead.
Notice the Weapon Ineffective message. It's easy to get misled by these images when you're dual-wielding speed weapons: Haer'dalis' main hand short sword is nonmagical but the Scarlet Ninja-to in his off hand is +3, so he gets the Weapon Ineffective message even though he's hitting Sendai's clone.
On many of these rounds, some of our party members don't have any critical spells to cast. To make the most of our precious rounds, we have to find opportunities everywhere. Sil uses one of her free rounds to add a Teleport Field to the mix, which won't do much to hurt Sendai's clones, but it will very slightly decrease the pressure on our own Stoneskins by displacing the drow melee fighters. This means we're less likely to get caught off guard by a missing Stoneskin spell.
The drow don't have many good options, either. They start casting Sunfire, even though it does no damage to us.
Our standard buffs include Protection from Fire and Protection from Magical Energy. These neutralize the most dangerous damage spells for 200 rounds: Fireball, Skull Trap, Sunfire, Horrid Wilting, Meteor Swarm, and Dragon's Breath.
The mage finally dies, and our Planetar is free to heal itself. Meanwhile, Aerie has found a safe spot from which to cast Storm of Vengeance, which should weaken the drow mages who aren't affected much by Teleport Field. Jan now has enough time to start using Detect Illusions, but I've forgotten to have him equip his Spectroscopes (he wears the Helm of the Rock instead, for a small defensive boost), and so his Detect Illusions is only at 75%.
Finally Jan's Detect Illusions ability works. But the second Sendai mage clone, somehow, remains invisible. Its spell turning effect gives it away--it's just northwest of Jan--but we need to be able to target it before we can do it any harm.
This is a bad sign. We've made much progress against Sendai's clones, and haven't had to expend many resources in the process, but a permanently invisible mage is not something we're prepared to deal with. We could try Dragon's Breath, which doesn't require a visible target, but if that clone is immune to fire, we wasted an HLA.
While dealing with Sendai's first mage clone, we've also made sure to keep wearing down her other clones. Nalia's clones added a little damage to the fighter clone with their arrows, and Sil found an opportunity to summon a Simulacrum to bring a little more damage power into the party. Since Sendai's clones stay at the edges of the arena and we have to change targets often, we rely heavily on ranged attacks, while Haer'dalis, trying to make the most of his time, sings while he's running across the map to the next target. Another clone falls.
A new clone arrives, but it's just an archer. Thank goodness not all of her clones were mages.
We have our Planetar hit one of the drow with Insect Plague, hoping it will spread to the invisible mage clone, but it doesn't work out. But eventually the mage goes visible. I'm not sure why.
I do know Sil's simulacrum attacked the second mage clone's Mislead clone (so many clones), but I don't think that actually dispels Mislead. More likely, the Mislead spell just ran out, and so the mage clone turned visible. The time also shows on our characters. Only Nalia has the wiffle ball globe effect around her: everyone's SI: Abjuration spell has run out, while Nalia only retains her SI: Divination spell. Sil has just re-cast SI: Abjuration, but it doesn't show up. This is because the Cloak of Mirroring in my install grants the wearer immunity to the wiffle ball animation, which is the only way to keep your character from being permanently enshrouded in the globe.
Then the remaining mage clone re-casts Mislead.
It's invisible again. Impatient to start bringing down that clone, I cast Dragon's Breath. We get a marvelous damage roll, and the mage clone fails its save at -10. The archer clone is also on the way out.
The mage clone turns visible. Nalia nails it with Spellstrike. A Contingency grants it PFMW, so we switch to nonmagical weapons--in Sil's case, her bare hands.
Our single-target damage spells fail to break through the clone's MR, so we just Breach her and finish her off.
The final clone has fallen.
With the statues gone, Sendais appears herself, already buffed with various cleric spells. But her spell protections are limited to Shield of Archons, which is easily removed with a Pierce Magic spell. Her other buffs are then perfectly vulnerable to Breach.
But she's not helpless. She hits Haer'dalis with Harm, nearly killing him, and teleports away. Jan and Haer'dalis lose their last Stoneskins--the enemy finally broke through them.
Sendai teleports away again when she gets low on health. Our attacks don't seem to disrupt her healing spells.
While she's away, I have Haer'dalis lay a couple of Time Traps to the north, and Jan adds a Spike Trap as well. But the Spike Trap appears to do nothing, and Sendai doesn't even trigger the Time Traps. Somehow she's immune to them. Her next Heal spell goes uninterrupted.
That's her 3rd Heal spell so far. I'm not sure if she ever runs out; I haven't played this fight in ages. We may have to just damage her quick enough to kill her before the Heal spell is over. I start casting combat buffs, including Improved Haste and Boon of Lathander.
To my surprise, we eventually manage to interrupt a spell.
Sendai tries to cast another healing spell after wasting her time on Animate Dead. But with boosted APR from our buffs, we do her in before she can finish it. She gives a hammy dying line and the screen fades to black.
Only Balthazar, the Chosen of Cyric, the Ravager, and Melissan herself remain.
Woo. That Sendai fight is epic and fun but takes too much time. And my scs installation was bugged, that the final real Sendai did not have a correct script. I deleted the override final sendai creature, so it reverted back to original.
I gave her massive resistances and a boost to ac and hp, and even with vanilla script, she was very durable and very, very difficult to pin down/hurt. Twisting onyx ring to jump around, doing ranged harm shenenigans that reduce you to 1 hp, casting unlimited healing spells, with near max resistances all across the board she was a tough nut to crack. The battles up to the final one took 10-15 minutes. Sendai herself took nearly as much, if not more. My poor Ipad2 was overheated and I was about to give it up when she wielded her cheesy 'No! NoooOOoo!' line.
We got ambushed by respawning Mercenaries and Monks when we arrived in Amkethran. With no time to buff properly, we tried to escape using Invisibility: 10' Radius, but the enemies followed us across the map. We ended up having Imoen lead them around while the other characters spawned in clones and brought out some summons, then mowed them down unbuffed. Eventually the fight died down and the enemies stopped respawning, only to reappear again when I went to visit Saemon.
Saemon got me into Balthazar's monastery. I don't know what dialog options to pick to make him join me--Sil has 11 CHA, is Lawful Good, and has 20 reputation, but got the evil reward from the innocence trial--so I just pick what seems like it might work.
Balthazar is so depressed by Sil's argumentation that he commits suicide.
I'm not sure how we got to that line from our discussion, but Balthazar dies immediately after the dialog ends.
We have two more things to do before Melissan: the Favored of Cyric, and the Ravager. I decide to do the Ravager first. I do a test run and find out the Ascension Ravager is painfully easy for a party full of mages.
Round 1: PFMW on every party member Round 2: two Pierce Shield spells and two Pierce Magic spells on the Ravager. Round 3: Jan casts Greater Malison, once the Ravager's MR is down to zero, and the rest of the party casts Hold Monster.
Yes, the Ravager is vulnerable to Hold Monster. Hold Monster uses opcode 175, Hold II, to which the Ravager has no immunity. With Greater Malison and its MR reduced to zero (it's immune to Lower Resistance, but not Pierce Magic, Pierce Shield, the Wand of Spell Striking, or the Answerer), the Ravager has a 50% chance of failing its save. With three mages who know Hold Monster, we've got an 87.5% chance on round 3 of holding the Ravager for 20 rounds. Even if that didn't work, we had four other Hold Monster spells. A failed save is virtually guaranteed.
With the Ravager paralyzed for the next 2 turns, we have automatic hits, regardless of our THAC0. The Ravager is doomed.
All that's left is the Favored of Cyric. But since I don't feel like fighting them, I just blast them with HLAs.
There's only one battle left in the game. Melissan awaits us at the Throne of Bhaal.
I have beaten this fight at most once before. I barely remember anything, other than it being ridiculously hard. I have heard from @Alesia_BH that a critical part of this battle requires aura management, because if Sil doesn't have Focus (a spell I've never cast before, which I think you get when you reach the Throne of Bhaal) when Melissan casts Time Stop, Melissan can use Teleport Without Error from across the map, activate Greater Whirlwind Attack, and kill Sil automatically.
Looking at Focus, it gives the caster immunity to Time Stop, disintegration, and petrification for 5 rounds, as well as immunity to level 1-3 spells. The immunity to Time Stop can't be dispelled, but Focus counts as a Specific Protections spell, which means it could be taken down with, say, Breach.
It's also my understanding that Fallen Solars accompany the battle, and use Arrows of Dispelling, and that the difficulty of the battle is dependent on when you kill each member of the Five, as Melissan only arrives on the battlefield at a certain time. I will have to read more about the battle before I go into it, but I'm not sure it will be enough.
But I am happy with this run. I have found that a party of mages can in fact succeed in melee and ranged combat throughout BG2 and ToB if they use the right buffs. Shapeshifting and Improved Haste can overcome the APR deficit, and there are multiple ways of overcoming the THAC0 and damage deficit. One notable example is the Answerer, which significantly increases the party's damage output against low AC critters. Fighters don't benefit much from the enemy's AC penalties, but if you've got a traditionally balanced party--say, two fighters, a thief, a mage, a cleric, and a druid--each hit from the Answerer translates into roughly an extra 10 damage thanks to the rest of the party's increased hit chance. Skeleton Warriors, Planetars, Devas, and Mordenkainen's Swords also have low hit rates against ToB's toughest critters, so the Answerer is actually very valuable in ToB, as long as you have some spellcasters in your group. You don't need fighters to deal lots of physical damage, though it certainly helps, and fighters do require a lot less upkeep to stay at their strongest.
The Party of Spiders has been a success. Now all that's left to see is whether they can win the last battle with only one try.
I performed a test run of the final battle. Things are looking sketchy, but we can turn the tables by exploiting the mechanics of the fight. Lots of text in this post.
On Melissan herself:
The good news is my plan for Melissan herself is functional. Melissan has no immunity to Hold II, just like the Ravager, but she also, more importantly, lacks any immunity to stun. This means we can stun-lock her with flashers, just like we did with so many other enemies in this run. I just need to summon the Clay Golem or a Skeleton Warrior to use as a target. The Clay Golem will resist Melissan's spear and her Blade Barrier, so it should come out first. Once she's stunned and the Clay Golem starts to run out of duration, we can replace the Clay Golem with a Skeleton Warrior. Once she can no longer attack, and her Blade Barrier is inactive, the Skeleton Warrior will be just as safe as the Clay Golem was.
The bad news is that the logistics of this operation are very complex. Melissan can actually damage the Clay Golem, not with her Blade Barrier or her spear, but with Unleash. And Melissan moves around very, very fast. If I have to chase her, the flashers will not reach her until she stops moving and the Clay Golem can get close to her. Worse yet, in order to actually disable her, we need multiple party members acting simultaneously. We need to reduce her MR to zero, which requires multiple spells or uses of the Wand of Spell Striking. We then have to hit her with Greater Malison. In the same round, we must also summon the Clay Golem, and we have to start firing the flashers immediately.
This is because Melissan can reset her MR and saves with a spell. That spell sets her save vs. spell to 0, which means we can't stun her. So we have to stun her before she can reset her saves. This means, when we want to stun her, we have to have four or five characters available to act in a single round: two or three for lowering her MR, one for casting Greater Malison, and one character to fire the flashers.
What if one of those characters has to drink a potion in that round? Then the whole party has to wait.
On the initial fights:
On top of the difficulties with my plan for Melissan herself, the rest of the fight is going to be rather difficult. We begin by fighting Irenicus and Bodhi, with Imoen transformed into the Slayer and attacking us. That's already putting us in a bad spot. We then have to fight a bunch of demons, after which we get to rest. There are two other demon groups, each of which prompts a rest. This means we can set a LOT of traps all over the map in the meantime, and we can use a different spell set for the demon battles and the real fight, with Melissan and the Five.
The Five come out first and fight us while Melissan hides. Balthazar, for some reason, is fighting for Melissan, despite our previous conversation in which he said he would support me. This is bad.
The Five appear to have most of the abilities they had in their previous appearances. Sendai has no clones, but she remains a high-level cleric/mage. This means she is highly buffed and therefore will take much time to kill. With her high MR, she's also not vulnerable to flashers, though she has no immunity to stun. She turned invisible under pressure from Jan and fled the area, so she knows how to stay safe.
Yaga-Shura, it seems, still is invulnerable. He has 99% immunity to all forms of damage except for cold, for which he is only 50% resistant and apparently also regenerates 8 HP per second. Unless his resistances decrease at some point, he is simply unkillable without using DEX drain--it's just not possible for our party to overcome his regeneration. He's immune to stun and all disablers.
Abazigal seems to be a fighter/mage. He has gained access to an impressive assortment of buffs, which I failed to break through in the test run (though I wasn't micromanaging at the time, which may have changed this). He would be terribly difficult to kill, and every round he is alive costs us several Stoneskins. Like Sendai, his MR renders him highly resistant to flashers.
Balthazar is immune to Time Stop and will therefore attack during Sendai's Time Stop spell on the first round. He will also cast Sunfire.
Illasera has few buffs. She can be stunned with flashers and hit fairly easily.
I didn't actually notice Gromnir. He's just a melee tank, anyway.
What about traps?
If Jan dedicates all of his 7th-level spell slots to Project Image, and wears the Circlet of Netheril as well, he can lay 15 Spike Traps per rest period, or 45 in total. He can also lay 25 normal traps per rest period, or 75 in total. This translates to 4500 damage on average, but that's spread across five enemies, some will trigger more traps than I want them to, the normal traps may hit multiple targets, and enemy Stoneskins will completely block the traps. It's not clear how big of an impact I'd be able to make with Project Image traps, but it's possible that we could take down several major targets on round one. I've refrained from using Project Image to lay traps in this run, but I'm less interested in holding back, knowing that Melissan has infinite castings of Spell Trap, Absolute Immunity, and Time Stop, plus a whole lot of other things. We may also be able to lay more traps if Sil uses her own Project Image spells for attempts at Wish-resting.
Or maybe the traps will just fail. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some mechanism that fiddled with them. We might still be able to place our traps in a different location, though.
The plan so far:
It's going to be a miserable show, I think. The enemy has massive damage power, lots of immunities and buffs, and on top of that, they had debuffing spells. Plus, the fight stands to last long enough that our buffs may run out.
The first four fights, with Irenicus and Bodhi and then the groups of demons, will mostly just be distractions. The real danger will come from the Five. To deal with Melissan, we'll really want to be able to bounce our flashers off of a Clay Golem, and to do that, we'll need to kill off the rest of the Five. That's my current understanding of what I need to do.
Sendai may warrant our last Protection from Magic scroll. Melissan is more dangerous, but we already have a means of dealing with her, and she's immune to miscast magic anyway. Irenicus is also more dangerous than Sendai, I think, but we get a free rest after we fight him.
Abazigal will probably need to be dealt with using traps. I'd have to check when exactly each enemy arrives on screen to know who will trigger what traps where, but ideally we'd hit him with ten normal traps to break down his Stoneskins, with another five or six Spike Traps, which would deal enough damage to kill him.
Balthazar is another good candidate for traps, as his AC is low and he has an unfortunate immunity to Time Stop that could cause lots of trouble if we don't manage him properly.
Illasera is not an issue, nor is Gromnir, as they have no spell buffs to speak of that would keep them alive under melee pressure.
Yaga-Shura may warrant a kill from DEX drain, but this may interfere with how his death is supposed to affect Melissan. Still, the main reason we want him out is because he stands to mess with our ability to stun-lock Melissan. We would probably have Haer'dalis or Jan lay some Time Traps to the far north, then lead an enemy towards them. They would then attack Yaga-Shura during the Time Stop with the Chaos Blade. We only need 7 hits to bring him to zero.
Melissan, without her allies to distract us, will be fairly straightforward. We must get our party organized and well-protected, and then use that buffer period to soften her up for the flasher assault, and cast Improved Haste on Haer'dalis or Jan, whoever is using the flashers. Once Melissan is stunned, we can expect her to stay stunned for the duration of the battle. Testing found that we could take her from Uninjured to Near Death once we got in our initial stun, even with only half our party alive to attack her.
We will need to make maximum use of those three rest periods. That offers us a great deal of flexibility in how we approach each phase of combat, and opens up some rather powerful exploits featuring Project Image. I'd rather not use Project Image so heavily, but I'm even more averse to letting Sil die.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Bodhi is vulnerable to Imprisonment. Looking at one of Alesia's old runs reminded me. And when I checked back at the other files, it seems that all of the Five are also vulnerable to Imprisonment. Only Imoen and Nalia know Imprisonment, oddly--SoA has one scroll, and Lazarus Librarus has 2, so we should have three altogether--and we therefore have 6 castings of Imprisonment, at maximum, for the fight with the Five. And we would really want to have a Spellstrike, I think, which cuts into our supply of 9th-level spells. We'd probably want to Imprison Balthazar and Abazigal, once the latter is debuffed. Yaga-Shura should be immune by virtue of his Enrage ability, and we don't need one for Sendai if we're using a Protection from Magic scroll on her. Imprisonment probably won't weaken Melissan, but the flasher setup only requires that we be free of interruptions.
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Just when I thought things were getting safe and boring.
After slaying Draconis, I spent some time tearing through the enemies in Abazigal's Enclave, from a Greater Werewyvern to a brown dragon (mostly I just whomped on it until it died) to a pair of Pit Fiends and their Cornugon underlings to a cluster of Kuo-toa and some Greater Water Elementals. We finally filled up our Ammo Belt. We now have over 1000 Kuo-toa Bolts. Wow.
I ran back and forth through the tunnels before checking my journal and realizing you have to go back to Amkethran to buy rope. I thought you found it inside Abazigal's place, like the Breath Potion. I'm really not familiar with ToB.
Nor am I, apparently, familiar with the Tactics mod. Or Ascension. Or whatever was responsible for the nightmare I faced on my return to Abazigal's Enclave.
I forgot about these guys. Two black dragons confront you simultaneously when you get back from Amkethran, ready to avenge the death of their irritating illusionist master.
And because I forgot about these two miserable creatures, I arrived completely unbuffed.
Even more irritating, I actually first spotted them on teleporting to the dungeon entrance with CTRL-J, which would unduly influence the course of the battle. This means I had to reload and walk back up to the entrance knowing that I was walking to a dragon battle unbuffed.
With two dragons facing the party, I had Sil use her Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer and moved the other party members away, so the dragons would concentrate on Sil, who would have 95% damage resistance after activating both her Spell Sequencer and Minor Sequencer. And since I assumed these dragons were shadow dragons, rather than black dragons, I assumed their breath weapon caused level drain, instead of acid damage.
Then I saw them casting their first spells.
See those pretty white-blue sparklers in front of the dragons? Alteration spells. If it's Time Stop, then we've got two dragons with 6 combined rounds of automatic hits on Sil.
And Sil just cast a spell. So she can't use PFMW, as if that would even be enough to keep her alive, or drink a Potion of Invisibility, as if the dragons couldn't see right through that.
I can't stop them from casting the spell. I send Sil to the south so the dragons spend their time murdering another party member. Offscreen, the dragons finish casting their spells.
It's better than I hoped, but we're still at a massive disadvantage. Some HLA summons will hopefully keep the dragons off our backs for a little while, but it seems the dragons are smarter than that. They know exactly who to target.
Haer'dalis is gone, along with one of the two Mislead clones he managed to conjure before he got dissolved. Now I realize the dragons are black dragons, and will be dealing acid damage, which nobody in my party is immune to. Sil tests the waters and finds them quite uncomfortable.
Almost at half HP. If both dragons should target her with their breath weapon, then she could very well die, despite her 100% chance of making her saving throw. The only way we can keep Sil safe is if she's in Iron Golem form, and to do that, we need Shapechange. I send Sil far to the east to drink a potion and cast Shapechange. She'll need the breathing room to cast Shapechange without being disrupted. Notice that Haer'dalis is back. I have multiple Rods of Resurrection, but Haer'dalis needs to spend time to recover his equipment, and it also takes a round from another party member. We're already short on time, considering our lack of buffs.
Meanwhile, the other party members cast Project Image for various purposes. We need traps from Jan and Pierce Magic and Horrid Wilting from Nalia and Imoen.
Unfortunately, we also arrived without Chain Contingencies prepared. So Imoen and Nalia only get one clone at a time.
Not that it matters.
We also bring back Aerie because of her many summoning spells. Jan is next.
But one of the dragons has found us, and is perfectly poised to keep Aerie out of the spellcasting game for quite some time. And his friend isn't far behind.
This all happened mere minutes ago, but I had to assign so many characters to cast so many spells that I don't remember what all they were doing. In any case, Jan now has some rounds of automatic hits. But there's nothing much I can do with him. Although we've lowered one of the dragon's MR by now, Jan can't hope to slay either of them with DEX drain, as both dragons have 21 DEX, which means he needs 6 hits or more, depending on their MR, to get one of them down to zero. Plus, they're both immune to backstabs. Jan can do nothing of use with his Time Stop.
Later, the dragons trigger more Time Traps while Jan is under the effects of Project Image, and neither Jan nor his clone can act while time is stopped.
All the while, the damage from Acid Arrow on Aerie builds up.
Another time stop effect pops up later, though I was sure the dragons didn't get any closer to our Time Stops. Still, nobody is able to act, and the time stop passes unused.
Very ominous. Nalia's Project Image clone literally in the shadow of a dragon. Notice the dead Mordenkainen's Sword to the northwest, and the newly created one to the east. We've been spawning these constantly to make sure we have a durable summons. But the dragons have Magic Missile and have been able to take down the swords nonetheless, albeit very slowly.
We bring back Imoen, who looks like a clone of Sil, but Aerie panicks, and Sil can't afford to spend a round casting Remove Fear on her.
The rest of the party is struggling to make headway on the dragons. We still aren't sure exactly how we're going to actually kill the dragons. We've considered fleeing, either outside the area or inside the dungeon, but I'm concerned about what it would be like to return and fight them later.
Imoen is slain once more, seconds after we get her back, and Haer'dalis' Mislead clone vanishes. He now has only one Mislead spell left, and our party is much weaker without the extra bard songs. I decide to wait to use his last spell. If things truly go to hell, I might have to use the Wand of Lightning trick to summon a bunch of Mislead clones, but even then, a breath weapon from the dragons could take out the whole group in one blow.
Nalia loses her Project Image clone. Everybody is low on spells, and our summons have run precariously thin.
I don't think Sil can deal with the rest of this encounter as it stands. Sil is a monster in Iron Golem form with her buffs intact, but she doesn't have her resistances anymore, since her Spell Sequencer ran out and her Minor Sequencer was disrupted by a Wing Buffet spell early on. I have a Heal+PFMW+Improved Haste Chain Contingency on 50% health, and a Heal Contingency on 25% health as a backup to the backup, but that will only keep her alive so long, and these dragons have over 700 HP apiece. We just can't deal that much damage without putting Sil, and therefore the entire run, in danger.
I have Haer'dalis spawn in his clones.
Time to take back control of the situation.
While Nalia is tearing down the closest dragon, Sil flees to the southwest to find a safe place to cast Wish. Despite Sil's 19 WIS, the best we can get is Improved Haste spell on the party. Sil casts Time Stop and takes down the less injured dragon.
Nalia keeps tearing up the remaining dragon, who manages to put down Aerie once again. We still don't have a defense against that acid breath.
Then Nalia gets targeted, after using her own Dragon's Breath spell. I'm sure she'll survive, since her base HP is relatively high.
That assumption doesn't pan out. But Nalia lived long enough to bring the dragon to the brink of death.
Haer'dalis left his troupe to join the fight, using the Firetooth dagger that he or Jan or Nalia had filched from Imoen's corpse. Everyone but Sil has been trying to grab whatever equipment they can grab off the ground, and the party has been much weaker and limited in its options as a result.
But with a whole party of bards supporting us from a safe distance, and an Offensive Spin for good measure, Haer'dalis can do a lot with that little dagger.
Sil did a lot, too. We finally took down the dragons.
Then we get an auto-save. That can only mean one thing.
Half the party is dead, we're out of our best spells, and now there are two new dragons in the fight. Our only blessing is that they come in one at a time.
The only thing we can use against that is the Periapt of Proof Against Poison. And I forget to track it down. Instead, I have Jan and his clones distract the dragon for a moment.
Once Sil is ready, she switches to Mind Flayer form and rushes in. Bolstered by Haer'dalis' songs, she can land enough hits even without Time Stop.
The next dragon comes in, a red dragon. I have Jan equip all the fire resistant equipment I can find (the Dragon Helm and a Robe of Fire Resistance, which isn't much) cast Mirror Image, then Mirror Image and Stoneskin via a Sequencer. It's not much, but it's all I've got. Jan leads the dragon around for a while. He's quite upbeat about it.
That's Jan for you. Tells you he hates being in the group when things are going stellar, and happy as taffy when everyone else in the party is dead and he's being used as bait for a red dragon.
I use the time to bring back Aerie and Nalia. But we lose something absolutely critical in the process.
Our melee power is shot. Even if we bring back Haer'dalis, he's got no Mislead spells left.
We make the most of our resources. While Jan is still keeping the dragon occupied, Sil begins casting Time Stop. It seems there was a Rest somewhere along the way, which I somehow failed to notice, because Sil already cast Time Stop once.
Jan is running out of Mirror Images and low on health, but Sil finishes casting the spell. She runs up and switches to Mind Flayer form.
Done. Finally.
I grow weary of these fights. The tension is awful. Sil is so close to the end of the game, and there are so many challenges left that I'm just not familiar with. Shadows of Amn is a monster I know. Throne of Bhaal is foreign, and mismanagement could bring the whole thing tumbling down.
I told you before that you could consider doing a test run through ToB with a different party. You're a very good player and you have a strong party but I'd still advise against stumbling through SCS/Tactics/Ascension ToB almost blindly. I know you told me you check enemy stats and abilities in dltcep, but you don't know how these enemies behave. Of course it's your call. I'm only saying this because it would be a shame to see Sil fall due to lack of familiarity with the game (I've just been there, with Norgath, it's not a lot of fun I can tell you).
I did not know about the rest between dragon fights I thought it was one big no rest fight (aside drom wish spells)
One screenshot is wrong, when you describe Sil getting her hp halved by black dragon breath. It shows an old one from the prison area.
Stellar read, as always. Go! Be happy that you don't have bg2:ee with the latest patch as it made Abazigal's dragon form immune to time stop. Very, very scary!
There is a hidey hole in Abazigal's lair where he can not reach you for melee. (But his breath can! So get immunity to electricity!) many solo no-reloaders have hidden there when things got very dangerous. And it will get very dangerous, that battle is a blast! (Literally!) (tip:get immunity to sleep/uncounciousness effect. I am not sure but chaotic commands may work. This is essential in the final Abazigal fight. For reasons.)
Anyway that was quite a close battle there. Thanks for taking the time to post this entertainment.
@hispls: That would explain why the rope caught me by surprise. And why Zack the innkeeper made such a big deal about buying the rope, and gave it to us for free.
@Blackraven: I think I'll do some tests to better familiarize myself with Ascension. I'd rather postpone Sil's success than risk her failure.
After roughly a four-month hiatus, I looked back at this thread and decided to return to Sil's adventure. The Party of Spiders is back.
We were midway through Abazigal's Enclave before a quadruple dragon ambush caught our party off-guard and unbuffed. After fetching some rope from Amkethran, we dove back into the pools and emerged in Abazigal's peculiar eyeball room.
We can take on these guys with normal weapons, though I do use some minor spells to speed things up. The eyeballs break through our spell protections, but our resistances to fire and electricity negate most of the damage.
A bigger problem are these guys, whom I've never seen before.
Are Tyrant Golems even a thing? Google suggests otherwise. Anyway, these things' deal is that they've got normal golem immunities, plus 90% resistance to slashing, crushing, and missile damage, and 50% resistance to piercing damage (I guess because pointy stuff is especially bad for eyeballs). I'm still clumsy with this party, as this is the first time I've brought them into battle in four months. Our buffs, however, block many if not all of the Beholder rays that these golem whatevers keep spouting. Haer'dalis runs out to the front to attack with the Cutthroat +4 and Kundane (the latter of which is a +2 weapon and can't affect the Tyrant Golems), bolstered by a song from a Mislead clone hiding out in the south.
Then I notice two Death Tyrants at the back. Since I'm more worried about real Beholders and Death Tyrants don't have ridiculous resistances, we throw out Horrid Wilting and Comet. The Death Tyrants don't do too well.
Beholders have never excelled at defense. But the Tyrant Golems remain. We call in a Planetar to pitch in some extra damage, and have Sil switch to Iron Golem form to ensure her immunity to any Beholder rays (they stole her Cloak of Mirroring twice during the battle). Haer'dalis lands a very nasty critical, felling the last golem.
He would have done 60 damage to a foe without resistances. Very nice.
The rest of the area is uneventful. We focus on bringing down the Sentinels, who appear to be capable of using summoning spells (an Earth Elemental popped up out of nowhere earlier), and then restore a group of petrified adventurers. Since we don't want to face the Elder Orbs that are guarding the Scroll of Reversal we need to free Fll'Yissetat, we wow the young adventurers with extravagant words and promises of incomparable riches.
It's a good thing they work for cheap, because we've only got about 30,000 gold and we need lots more for scrolls and item upgrades.
The young adventurers betray us. It doesn't go so well.
For everyone who says reloading is cheesy, I refer them to this image, which proves that enemies use Power Word: Reload, too.
Part of our reward includes a pair of very uncomfortable undergarments.
Since we're operating under the assumption that the party began in BG1 and not BG2, I decide to go ahead and give the party the Golden Pantaloons they would have gotten in BG1, and the Silver Pantaloons they would have gotten in BG2. We forge the Big Metal Unit, which is promptly tossed into a Bag of Holding (it disables our spellcasting; what good is it for a party of casters?).
More importantly, we get the Scorcher Ammunition, Pulse Ammunition, and Frag Grenades. All of these grant the user 5 APR and a +10 bonus to THAC0. Jan has pretty nice damage output with Firetooth and the Scorcher Ammunition. His APR and THAC0 look like a fighter's.
These may be instrumental for overcoming Abazigal's low AC, at -17 in human form and -16 in dragon form. Nobody in our party has very good THAC0, and we are all very dependent on buffs, so it's a big problem, finding out a way to bring down Abazigal. It's not just his -16 AC or his 50% damage resistance or his 500 HP--he also regenerates 30 HP per round.
So far, my strategy for handling Abazigal and his consort Tamah is very vague. I do know both of them are vulnerable to Feeblemind, but I've done the math and our chances of hitting them both with Feeblemind are just under 90%, depending on the circumstances. That's really not good enough for a no-reload run. Part of the problem is that Abazigal casts True Seeing when he sees projected images, and appears to have no limit to how many times he can cast the spell. This means our normal tactic of spawning in lots of clones and spamming Feeblemind will only work for one or two rounds. Plus, Abazigal's breath weapon requires SI: Evocation to block, as the electrical damage is sufficient to bring down any clone, and everyone in our party needs SI: Abjuration to ward off Abazigal's level 30 Remove Magic spell. This means we have very few Feeblemind spell slots across the board, especially in our clones.
If Feeblemind doesn't work, then we may be faced with an enemy we can't bring down with damage alone. Worse yet, Abazigal also casts True Seeing when Haer'dalis casts Mislead (I've done some brief tests to see). This means we can't use song stacking as a last resort if things go badly.
Abazigal's files indicate he's immune to Time Stop, but due to a typo, he's actually not. There's a parameter that should be set to 1, but actually is 0. I might take advantage of that typo, but I'm not sure. Abazigal is immune to INT drain, but not to DEX drain. Unfortunately, the only people who can use the Chaos Blade are Haer'dalis and Jan, neither of which can cast Time Stop under normal circumstances. We'd need to bring Jan up another level before he can do that.
Luckily, Sendai's Enclave remains completely open, and though it's much tougher than Abazigal's Enclave, it doesn't compare to Abazigal himself. We can therefore bring Jan up to mage level 18 before facing Abazigal. If things ever truly go to hell in the Abazigal fight, then we might have Jan dual-wield the Chaos Blade and the Scarlet Ninja-to during one or two Time Stops (as a specialist mage, he'll have two level 9 spell slots at level 18) and slay the dragon with DEX drain. But this would require spider form or Improved Haste to ensure he could drain enough DEX to slay the dragon. Abazigal has 17 DEX, and therefore warrants nine hits from the Chaos Blade before he goes down.
Next stop is Sendai's Enclave. But we need to make sure we're ready for Abazigal. Right now, we have a fairly low chance of taking him down successfully.
Outside Sendai's Enclave, we get another surprise enemy.
These unexpected factors really screw around with the gameplay. Thankfully the party is organized to be highly flexible. Nalia dedicates some limited resources to taking the Hive Mother down early, before it can start bringing down our defenses. She begins casting Time Stop.
To my surprise, the Hive Mother uses not Anti-Magic Ray, but Remove Magic, just as Nalia stops time.
I wasn't expecting Remove Magic, so nobody in the group has SI: Abjuration. Nalia casts Improved Alacrity and throws out all the damage spells she can--but forgoes her second and third Skull Trap spells, fearing they might hurt Sil if Sil's immunity to magic damage was dispelled (I forgot Sil is still wearing the Cloak of Mirroring and is therefore immune to Skull Trap). Nalia also uses both Comet and Dragon's Breath in her haste to bring down the Hive Mother, as well as a few Energy Blades to break through the Hive Mother's Improved Mantle, which still has one round left when Time Stop ends.
It works quite well.
Then Comet hits.
And finally, Haer'dalis' Flame Arrow finishes it off.
Most of the drow also perished as a side effect, the sole exception being the wizard. The wizard wasn't an issue. Half the party lost their defenses (makes sense, since the Hive Mother was a level 20 caster using Remove Magic on level 20 buffs) but their offensive and debuffing power was still well intact.
Hopefully we won't come across too many surprises in Sendai's Enclave. We'll just have to see.
First, I've encountered a weird hotkey problem I've seen before but do not understand.
Basically, when I try to make Aerie or another character do something, such as casting a spell, she might do it, but right afterward, she starts selecting and unselecting some other action, and gets stuck doing it, even while paused. The only way to stop it is to switch screens. This means that I need to make a clean install of BG2, or else I'm going to have to return to the inventory screen and go back every time I want to order a party member to attack, cast a spell, drink a potion, or even move.
But that's just a technical problem.
More importantly, I have realized that Abazigal can be taken down in three rounds with the Answerer.
The Answerer has been much maligned for its AC and MR penalties, the logic being that if you can hit something with the Answerer enough times for the AC to matter, then the critter in question is already doomed. This is not true.
The Answerer lowers the target's AC by 2 for 4 rounds on every hit. This offers no saving throw. But what good is it, if you need to land a hit in the first place for the AC penalty to make an impact? This is how.
Haer'dalis (or Jan, whichever) lays a Time Trap, takes on spider form, and another party members hits him with Improved Haste. Haer'dalis now has 8 attacks per round. We lure Abazigal into the Time Trap, granting Haer'dalis automatic hits. If Haer'dalis is already next to Abazigal when time stops, he will hit Abazigal 12 times, lowering Abazigal's AC by 16. His AC is now at 0. Everyone in the party now has 95% hit chance against Abazigal. With some mild buffs, and with Imoen using Energy Blades, the party does 250 damage. Abazigal's dragon form dies on round three. And even without Time Trap, Haer'dalis can impose the 16 AC penalty in three rounds, providing a slower but equally guaranteed death for Abazigal.
This party has awful THAC0, but with a little work the Answerer can give all of them the maximum 95% hit chance. Against problem targets like Abazigal, the Answerer allows us to deal six times as much damage as we could without it.
No other weapon can multiply an entire party's damage by six.
The first part of Sendai's Enclave was disappointingly simple. The cool part is with Abazigal, but I already took some screenshots of Sendai's goons, so I may as well post them.
Jan's new Scorcher Ammunition proves very effective. It does 2d12 nonmagical fire damage, with a save for half, and strikes twice per hit.
We plow through Sendai's goons with few offensive spells. Melee enemies don't have many options against us. Even high damage output critters like Thelynn'ss can't do anything against Stoneskin. With mage spells as a buffer, all we have to do is wear them down.
Using a clone certainly doesn't hurt.
And spellcasters are pretty easily disrupted with the Scorcher Ammunition's many hits.
We even get some early hits on Odamaron before his PFMW comes out, during the short cutscene before the fight begins.
And it hit him again, even after his PFMW came out.
That cost him a Time Stop. PFMW keeps him safe for a bit, and Nalia spawns in some clones to handle Odamaron's apprentices. Jan's fire returns.
We can't stop his apprentices completely, but we do distract one of them a bit during a Time Stop.
And when that doesn't work, we resort to HLAs.
That basically fixed everything. The liches didn't come buffed with any resistances.
Ogremoch can cast Stoneskin every few rounds, so a lot of our damage comes from magic damage. Jan is especially useful, with his 5 APR and excellent THAC0.
For Diaytha, Jan sneaks in and lobs a grenade at the enemy, prompting a teleport from the Demon Knight.
We send a Deva and a Magical Sword into the other room while we deal with the Demon Knight.
The Deva, of course, can't handle the enemy on its own. Especially when it's got an evil twin to deal with.
Sil exacts revenge with her own twin.
We then rush in and focus on the Hive Mother, anxious to preempt any Anti-Magic Rays which could expose our party to dangerous magic.
No Hive Mother means Diaytha's magic is harmless. And Spellstrike and Breach mean Diaytha herself is defenseless.
After much thought, I decide to fight Captain Egeissag one-on-one, rather than fighting the whole group with the full party. Looking at Egeissag's files, it seems like he's got some high-level mage spells. To ensure we stay on top, Sil takes the Robe of Vecna from Nalia and begins with Time Stop.
Turns out Egeissag doesn't cast any mage spells. Or at least, not when he's got 18 Energy Blades and a Comet raining down on him within the first round.
We meet up with the Spectator again, and Sil sums up the dungeon in five words.
Oh, and there were Mind Flayers. Dragon's Breath and Comet both bypass their MR.
Most of the enemies teleporting in were Umber Hulks, however, and the other Mind Flayers flooded in after the dust was clear.
A problem which we solved with more Dragon's Breath and Comet spells.
Also, we killed Lashar'ra. Stoneskin blocked the poison damage (it might be an SCS2 tweak).
Boring stuff over. Now for Abazigal.
Turns out the test run was a good idea. I had thought that enemies in SCS2 always avoided targeting Charname with Imprisonment, but apparently that's not how Abazigal works. Another critical detail I learned was that there are four drakes in the fight thanks to Ascension, and Tamah arrives at the beginning of the battle--I thought she came in only after Abazigal's transformation. This means Sil cannot engage Abazigal in melee combat, or allow her SI: Abjuration to expire, as she did in the rest run.
I spent roughly three in-game days organizing and revising the party's spellbook. There's fierce competition for 5th-level spell slots when we're fighting dragons. I've also been turning the matter over in my head on and off for about a week, partly thanks to the bug that stalled gameplay.
We have two redundant strategies. First, we're going to try and Feeblemind Abazigal's dragon form, along with Tamah. If that doesn't work, then we must switch to our backup plan, which is to soften up Abazigal and/or Tamah with the Answerer, having Nalia or Imoen attack during Time Stop, or having Jan or Haer'dalis attack during Time Trap (he has two castings thanks to levels he gained in Sendai's Enclave). The Answerer will give us extremely high hit rates throughout the party, boosting our damage by up to 500% depending on how many times we can hit Abazigal while time is stopped.
Everyone in the party has two castings of Spell Immunity to maintain their buffs. True Seeing will remove our Blur spells and any clones, but SI: Abjuration will let us hold onto our Chaotic Commands and Protection from Lightning, plus our more basic Stoneskin spells. We also pre-buff with Spell Shield. Any remaining 5th-level spells are dedicated to Feeblemind. Since Horrid Wilting will do little damage and Simulacrum can be dispelled, our 8th-level spell slots mostly consist of the oft-overlooked Maze spell. Otherwise our spells are the same as normal.
Sil has a Spell Trigger with three Feeblemind spells. Imoen and Nalia also have Chain Contingency spells, loaded up with Feeblemind, scheduled to activate on helpless so we can trigger them via a fast-casting Project Image spell. Sil has a similar Chain Contingency, with Maze thrown in to provide some extra safety for after Project Image disables her. Also, Aerie has a triple Armor of Faith Spell Sequencer. Why is this? Because Aerie has just hit 6 million XP, and can now cast Shapechange. This means she can hit 95% physical damage resistance in Iron Golem form for 23 rounds, if we ever need a wall.
Finally, I enter Abazigal's lair, this time for real. We are buffed with all our normal spells, plus SI: Abjuration, and Spell Turning for Sil, Imoen, and Nalia, our dual-classed mages.
Nalia summons a Planetar and Aerie begins casting Elemental Summoning, providing us with a barrier against the drakes. Jan lays a Time Trap, granting him a little extra time to nail Tamah with Ruby Ray of Reversal and the Wand of Spell Striking, removing her Minor Spell Turning and dropped her MR by 20. Jan goes further out than he needs to, ensuring that Tamah's attention, and her awful crushing damage breath weapon, stays away from our vulnerable summons, none of which have Stoneskin to protect them.
While Tamah is distracted by Jan, and Abazigal lingers a safe distance to the southwest, our party concentrates on taking down the drakes, whose breath weapons threaten to disrupt our spells.
We target Abazigal and Tamah with the Wand of Spell Striking--we need their MR as low as possible, and we don't have the spell slots to use Lower Resistance or Pierce Magic instead--and concentrate our melee power on the drakes. We start to make progress, partly thanks to a vorpal strike from our Planetar.
Aerie finishes casting Elemental Summoning, and we get Zaaman Rul, plus an Air Elemental. Now our barrier is a little sturdier, and we can bring down the drakes faster. Now we need to get Tamah out of the way. Sil tries Maze, but apparently we haven't lowered Tamah's MR enough.
I have spoken before of the values of party redundancies. This is one of those times. With fresh auras and redundant spells, we can lower Tamah's MR to zero and hit her with Maze in less than a round. Nalia fills in for Sil with her own Maze spell.
Abazigal moves in for the kill. We finish off most of the drakes, leaving the map much clearer than when we began. This is important because Jan and Haer'dalis cannot lay any Time Traps unless they have a very large, open space with no enemies in it. Otherwise the trap will fail.
Tamah returns early, however. Jan neutralizes her from a distance, taking advantage of her zero MR.
Meanwhile, our Planetar and Zaaman Rul have been whittling away at Abazigal, bringing us closer to the second phase of the battle. With Abazigal distracted, the drakes dead, and Tamah blinded, we have some free time to act, and use it to take Tamah out of the fight. A few castings of Feeblemind later, and we see the telltale yellow shine indicating a failed save.
Tamah is out of the battle as long as nothing dispels her Feeblemind. We turn our attention to Abazigal, who will change into his dragon form when he has taken enough damage.
Our party-wide Protection from Lightning will ward off his devastating lightning attack, but he can still lower our electrical resistance on a failed save vs. spell at -3. Only Sil has a guaranteed save without Blur spells, but the rest of the party is quite vulnerable.
We can't give Abazigal too many rounds to act. We immediately pelt him with Wands of Spell Striking, and follow up with Feeblemind. Just as Sil is about to activate her triple Feeblemind Spell Trigger, I see the yellow shimmer on Abazigal's hide.
For safety's sake, I activate the trigger anyway. I see Abazigal only makes one save, suggesting he failed the other two.
I wait a moment. Abazigal rears back his head--he's not disabled. That Spell Trigger only forced one save vs. spell, instead of three. Hoping to knock him out before things can go bad, I have Sil cast Project Image, activating her Maze+Feeblemind+Feeblemind Chain Contingency.
It has no apparent effect. Even the Maze fails to hit Abazigal, even though he's inches away from her and the only enemy on the map. I thought Chain Contingency would be able to hit the nearest target, but somehow it failed. Sil gets hit by Abazigal's lightning breath, and though it does no damage, it ends the Project Image spell.
But we have yet another redundant party member to pick up the slack: Aerie hits Abazigal with Maze, despite getting hit by Power Word: Blind. There's nothing Abazigal can do.
Now is the critical moment. We have several rounds before Abazigal reappears. We must set the stage for his return.
Haer'dalis sets a Time Trap where Abazigal vanished. Tamah is nearby, but she is out of sight and disabled, and will not disturb Haer'dalis, nor trigger his trap. But we must also keep any other critters from wandering in and triggering the trap. After Jan casts Improved Haste on Haer'dalis, the rest of the party hurries to the west to wipe out any lingering enemies. There's only one.
This ensures our Time Trap only activates when Abazigal appears. When the Frost Salamander falls, the rest of the party hurries back to Haer'dalis. They will be needed soon. Haer'dalis lays a second Time Trap, while the rest of the party hastes itself.
Our SI: Abjuration spells run out, so we renew them as well. We wait for Abazigal to return.
He doesn't show up.
We cast some minor buffs, making use of the time without expending precious resources. We scout around to see if Abazigal has somehow appeared elsewhere, but the map is empty, save for us and Tamah. I even have Jan set up his own traps to the west. With nothing else to do, we spend a little time attacking Tamah. I stay focused on Haer'dalis. His action could make or break this battle.
Finally, Abazigal returns, and the screen turns gray. Haer'dalis now has automatic hits with the Answerer.
But Abazigal took so long to escape Aerie's Maze, Haer'dalis' Improved Haste spell, which he got from Jan some time before, runs out. Haer'dalis now only has 2 APR with the Answerer (3 APR, dual-wielding with Kundane), and I'm not sure it's worth it to try and cast Improved Haste via the Amulet of Cheetah speed. That would take most of the duration of the Time Trap. Instead, Haer'dalis simply activates Offensive Spin for an extra 1 APR, and attacks Abazigal without Improved Haste.
The second Time Trap triggers. Haer'dalis keeps wearing down Abazigal's incredible -15 AC.
Weakened by the Answerer, Abazigal is easy to hit. The party pounces on him, and the damage pours in.
Abazigal nears his end. To maximize our chances, though, I start casting Feeblemind.
Finally, Abazigal fails his save, and we can attack him at our leisure.
But Abazigal won't go down. We keep hitting him over and over, but he won't die.
Right about here, I realize the Feeblemind effect is preventing is death.
Abazigal won't fall unless he gives his dying dialogue first. He can't do that if he's feebleminded. Sil casts Remove Magic, the party keeps attacking, and Abazigal delivers his final lines.
Only a few battles remain: Sendai, Balthazar (unless we can win over, which I don't know how to do), the Slayer, the Chosen of Cyric, the Ravager, and finally Melissan.
Yagashura and Gromnir dies without a speech, IIRC, however Sendai and Abazigal are more dramatic villains ('no, noooo this can not beeee!') and thus they require their scripts working.
First, we took down the Slayer in the Pocket Plane. Basically, just buffing and attacking.
Sil got the evil bonus, to my surprise: Dark Taint, which at her level is an area effect poison spell. A save vs. death at -2 negates the effects, it seems, so it likely won't see much use--we might never use it at all.
Jan hit Illusionist level 18, and can now cast Time Stop twice per day, and also can summon a Fallen Planetar. I wasn't sure which HLA to pick, and was skeptical of Summon Fallen Planetar because I already could summon three of them, but a Planetar can always die midway through a fight, and Jan's Fallen Planetar will ensure we have one on the map at all times.
I pored over my spellbooks once more, not sure which ones I should prepare for the fight with Sendai. The one notable change I did was to use a new set of Chain Contingencies. Imoen and Nalia have been using triple Project Image Chain Contingencies, but after seeing so many True Seeing spells from the fight with Abazigal, and knowing Sendai is a real spellcaster who comes bolstered by other drow spellcasters, I decided we needed a safer option. Instead, Imoen and Nalia's Chain Contingencies have two Project Image spells, plus a Spell Immunity: Divination buff. That way, their clones can cast SI: Divination when they arrive, and persist despite enemy True Seeing spells.
We enter Sendai's chamber, fully buffed and protected by SI: Abjuration (such an important spell in SCS2, really). Seconds into battle, I realize that the situation facing me is not the one I remember.
My memory told me I'd be fighting each Sendai clone one by one. That is, we kill one, it goes down, and another one comes up. But we already see two copies of Sendai acting simultaneously.
That's one cleric and one mage. Already we're strained for options. I'm not sure which weapons we can use. The cleric has Physical Mirror and the mage is only vulnerable to +5 weapons and higher. And the mage is, as always, the greater worry.
The mage begins casting an Alteration spell. Time Stop. We have no means of stopping this. The best I can hope for is for our Planetar to knock Sendai's mage clone down with Earthquake.
But that's terribly overoptimistic, as Earthquake's unconsciousness effect does not bypass MR, and its damage is blocked by Stoneskin. Worse yet, Aerie has just lost her only Energy Blades spell, thanks to a surprise Storm of Vengeance (which you can just barely see in the above screenshot) from the cleric clone.
The Time Stop starts off fairly safe.
A Meteor Swarm is only to our benefit, as we are immune to fire, while the drow are not. But that Protection from Evil spell is a telling omen: the next spell is Gate. We now have a hostile Pit Fiend on the map, protecting the mage, which renews its Improved Mantle.
And Sendai's drow buddies spawn in, too.
We maintain our focus on killing the cleric, who has no annoying weapon immunity spells for us to break through. Nalia and Imoen can't attack the cleric with their best weapons (darts and shortbows), so I have Nalia flee from the Storm of Vengeance and spawn in her clones.
There is so much going on every round here, and I don't even remember all of it. But notice Haer'dalis' Mislead clone, badly damaged by the Meteor Swarm thanks to its lack of buffs, which I am sending north to safety. Also notice the Planetar, casting another Earthquake spell to hassle the incoming drow. Finally, another Sendai clone, a fighter dual-wielding axes, has targeted Nalia. All of Sendai's clones, I believe, can see through invisibility. Nalia's clones will die, SI: Divination or no, if that fighter clone hits Nalia more than 10 times, and breaks through her Stoneskin. You can also see a single Energy Blade on the screen: Imoen has conjured some in order to deal with the mage clone.
Since I'm worried about Nalia's clones and their safety, I have the easternmost clone, which is the farthest away from the fight, cast Time Stop. Then I realize that that particular clone can't actually do much of anything to stop Sendai's fighter clone from attacking Nalia, as the fighter clone is too far to hit with Maze. The best thing that happened during that Time Stop was the Planetar's Earthquake spell, which activates even during Time Stop.
Meanwhile, another clone of Sendai's appears, and takes control of time. But that Time Stop, too, is a waste.
All of these Time Stops wear down our buff durations.
As Sendai's cleric clone dies, two Sendai clones, both thieves, arrive on the map. We make progress on the first mage clone, as Nalia's clone was able to tear down its defenses with Spellstrike during her previous Time Stop spell, and Imoen has been taking down its Stoneskins.
I don't know what Sil's Conjuration spell is, or what target of Haer'dalis' just died, or what any of Nalia's clones are trying to do with their limited rounds of spellcasting. I've got to have all six characters acting productively every round, and still keep them responsive to changes in the fight.
We have a problem. I noticed it earlier, but had no time to fix it. Nalia's clones don't have SI: Divination. Why is this? Well, when I cast Spell Immunity, I pick Abjuration by default, when I was supposed to pick Divination. Nalia is immune to Divination magic, but her clones are only immune to Abjuration. Sure enough, Sendai takes down every clone, including Haer'dalis' Mislead clone.
We also lose our Blur spells. That costs us a lot of AC, and a substantial loss to our saving throws. Only Sil retains negative saving throws across the board.
The second mage clone of Sendai's is currently invisible, hiding near our party. We can't uncover it because we need Jan's attention on the first clone to the south. The southern mage is almost dead.
Notice the Weapon Ineffective message. It's easy to get misled by these images when you're dual-wielding speed weapons: Haer'dalis' main hand short sword is nonmagical but the Scarlet Ninja-to in his off hand is +3, so he gets the Weapon Ineffective message even though he's hitting Sendai's clone.
On many of these rounds, some of our party members don't have any critical spells to cast. To make the most of our precious rounds, we have to find opportunities everywhere. Sil uses one of her free rounds to add a Teleport Field to the mix, which won't do much to hurt Sendai's clones, but it will very slightly decrease the pressure on our own Stoneskins by displacing the drow melee fighters. This means we're less likely to get caught off guard by a missing Stoneskin spell.
The drow don't have many good options, either. They start casting Sunfire, even though it does no damage to us.
Our standard buffs include Protection from Fire and Protection from Magical Energy. These neutralize the most dangerous damage spells for 200 rounds: Fireball, Skull Trap, Sunfire, Horrid Wilting, Meteor Swarm, and Dragon's Breath.
The mage finally dies, and our Planetar is free to heal itself. Meanwhile, Aerie has found a safe spot from which to cast Storm of Vengeance, which should weaken the drow mages who aren't affected much by Teleport Field. Jan now has enough time to start using Detect Illusions, but I've forgotten to have him equip his Spectroscopes (he wears the Helm of the Rock instead, for a small defensive boost), and so his Detect Illusions is only at 75%.
Finally Jan's Detect Illusions ability works. But the second Sendai mage clone, somehow, remains invisible. Its spell turning effect gives it away--it's just northwest of Jan--but we need to be able to target it before we can do it any harm.
This is a bad sign. We've made much progress against Sendai's clones, and haven't had to expend many resources in the process, but a permanently invisible mage is not something we're prepared to deal with. We could try Dragon's Breath, which doesn't require a visible target, but if that clone is immune to fire, we wasted an HLA.
A new clone arrives, but it's just an archer. Thank goodness not all of her clones were mages.
We have our Planetar hit one of the drow with Insect Plague, hoping it will spread to the invisible mage clone, but it doesn't work out. But eventually the mage goes visible. I'm not sure why.
I do know Sil's simulacrum attacked the second mage clone's Mislead clone (so many clones), but I don't think that actually dispels Mislead. More likely, the Mislead spell just ran out, and so the mage clone turned visible. The time also shows on our characters. Only Nalia has the wiffle ball globe effect around her: everyone's SI: Abjuration spell has run out, while Nalia only retains her SI: Divination spell. Sil has just re-cast SI: Abjuration, but it doesn't show up. This is because the Cloak of Mirroring in my install grants the wearer immunity to the wiffle ball animation, which is the only way to keep your character from being permanently enshrouded in the globe.
Then the remaining mage clone re-casts Mislead.
It's invisible again. Impatient to start bringing down that clone, I cast Dragon's Breath. We get a marvelous damage roll, and the mage clone fails its save at -10. The archer clone is also on the way out.
The mage clone turns visible. Nalia nails it with Spellstrike. A Contingency grants it PFMW, so we switch to nonmagical weapons--in Sil's case, her bare hands.
Our single-target damage spells fail to break through the clone's MR, so we just Breach her and finish her off.
The final clone has fallen.
With the statues gone, Sendais appears herself, already buffed with various cleric spells. But her spell protections are limited to Shield of Archons, which is easily removed with a Pierce Magic spell. Her other buffs are then perfectly vulnerable to Breach.
But she's not helpless. She hits Haer'dalis with Harm, nearly killing him, and teleports away. Jan and Haer'dalis lose their last Stoneskins--the enemy finally broke through them.
Sendai teleports away again when she gets low on health. Our attacks don't seem to disrupt her healing spells.
While she's away, I have Haer'dalis lay a couple of Time Traps to the north, and Jan adds a Spike Trap as well. But the Spike Trap appears to do nothing, and Sendai doesn't even trigger the Time Traps. Somehow she's immune to them. Her next Heal spell goes uninterrupted.
That's her 3rd Heal spell so far. I'm not sure if she ever runs out; I haven't played this fight in ages. We may have to just damage her quick enough to kill her before the Heal spell is over. I start casting combat buffs, including Improved Haste and Boon of Lathander.
To my surprise, we eventually manage to interrupt a spell.
Sendai tries to cast another healing spell after wasting her time on Animate Dead. But with boosted APR from our buffs, we do her in before she can finish it. She gives a hammy dying line and the screen fades to black.
Only Balthazar, the Chosen of Cyric, the Ravager, and Melissan herself remain.
I gave her massive resistances and a boost to ac and hp, and even with vanilla script, she was very durable and very, very difficult to pin down/hurt. Twisting onyx ring to jump around, doing ranged harm shenenigans that reduce you to 1 hp, casting unlimited healing spells, with near max resistances all across the board she was a tough nut to crack. The battles up to the final one took 10-15 minutes. Sendai herself took nearly as much, if not more. My poor Ipad2 was overheated and I was about to give it up when she wielded her cheesy 'No! NoooOOoo!' line.
Saemon got me into Balthazar's monastery. I don't know what dialog options to pick to make him join me--Sil has 11 CHA, is Lawful Good, and has 20 reputation, but got the evil reward from the innocence trial--so I just pick what seems like it might work.
Balthazar is so depressed by Sil's argumentation that he commits suicide.
I'm not sure how we got to that line from our discussion, but Balthazar dies immediately after the dialog ends.
We have two more things to do before Melissan: the Favored of Cyric, and the Ravager. I decide to do the Ravager first. I do a test run and find out the Ascension Ravager is painfully easy for a party full of mages.
Round 1: PFMW on every party member
Round 2: two Pierce Shield spells and two Pierce Magic spells on the Ravager.
Round 3: Jan casts Greater Malison, once the Ravager's MR is down to zero, and the rest of the party casts Hold Monster.
Yes, the Ravager is vulnerable to Hold Monster. Hold Monster uses opcode 175, Hold II, to which the Ravager has no immunity. With Greater Malison and its MR reduced to zero (it's immune to Lower Resistance, but not Pierce Magic, Pierce Shield, the Wand of Spell Striking, or the Answerer), the Ravager has a 50% chance of failing its save. With three mages who know Hold Monster, we've got an 87.5% chance on round 3 of holding the Ravager for 20 rounds. Even if that didn't work, we had four other Hold Monster spells. A failed save is virtually guaranteed.
With the Ravager paralyzed for the next 2 turns, we have automatic hits, regardless of our THAC0. The Ravager is doomed.
All that's left is the Favored of Cyric. But since I don't feel like fighting them, I just blast them with HLAs.
There's only one battle left in the game. Melissan awaits us at the Throne of Bhaal.
I have beaten this fight at most once before. I barely remember anything, other than it being ridiculously hard. I have heard from @Alesia_BH that a critical part of this battle requires aura management, because if Sil doesn't have Focus (a spell I've never cast before, which I think you get when you reach the Throne of Bhaal) when Melissan casts Time Stop, Melissan can use Teleport Without Error from across the map, activate Greater Whirlwind Attack, and kill Sil automatically.
Looking at Focus, it gives the caster immunity to Time Stop, disintegration, and petrification for 5 rounds, as well as immunity to level 1-3 spells. The immunity to Time Stop can't be dispelled, but Focus counts as a Specific Protections spell, which means it could be taken down with, say, Breach.
It's also my understanding that Fallen Solars accompany the battle, and use Arrows of Dispelling, and that the difficulty of the battle is dependent on when you kill each member of the Five, as Melissan only arrives on the battlefield at a certain time. I will have to read more about the battle before I go into it, but I'm not sure it will be enough.
But I am happy with this run. I have found that a party of mages can in fact succeed in melee and ranged combat throughout BG2 and ToB if they use the right buffs. Shapeshifting and Improved Haste can overcome the APR deficit, and there are multiple ways of overcoming the THAC0 and damage deficit. One notable example is the Answerer, which significantly increases the party's damage output against low AC critters. Fighters don't benefit much from the enemy's AC penalties, but if you've got a traditionally balanced party--say, two fighters, a thief, a mage, a cleric, and a druid--each hit from the Answerer translates into roughly an extra 10 damage thanks to the rest of the party's increased hit chance. Skeleton Warriors, Planetars, Devas, and Mordenkainen's Swords also have low hit rates against ToB's toughest critters, so the Answerer is actually very valuable in ToB, as long as you have some spellcasters in your group. You don't need fighters to deal lots of physical damage, though it certainly helps, and fighters do require a lot less upkeep to stay at their strongest.
The Party of Spiders has been a success. Now all that's left to see is whether they can win the last battle with only one try.
On Melissan herself:
The good news is my plan for Melissan herself is functional. Melissan has no immunity to Hold II, just like the Ravager, but she also, more importantly, lacks any immunity to stun. This means we can stun-lock her with flashers, just like we did with so many other enemies in this run. I just need to summon the Clay Golem or a Skeleton Warrior to use as a target. The Clay Golem will resist Melissan's spear and her Blade Barrier, so it should come out first. Once she's stunned and the Clay Golem starts to run out of duration, we can replace the Clay Golem with a Skeleton Warrior. Once she can no longer attack, and her Blade Barrier is inactive, the Skeleton Warrior will be just as safe as the Clay Golem was.
The bad news is that the logistics of this operation are very complex. Melissan can actually damage the Clay Golem, not with her Blade Barrier or her spear, but with Unleash. And Melissan moves around very, very fast. If I have to chase her, the flashers will not reach her until she stops moving and the Clay Golem can get close to her. Worse yet, in order to actually disable her, we need multiple party members acting simultaneously. We need to reduce her MR to zero, which requires multiple spells or uses of the Wand of Spell Striking. We then have to hit her with Greater Malison. In the same round, we must also summon the Clay Golem, and we have to start firing the flashers immediately.
This is because Melissan can reset her MR and saves with a spell. That spell sets her save vs. spell to 0, which means we can't stun her. So we have to stun her before she can reset her saves. This means, when we want to stun her, we have to have four or five characters available to act in a single round: two or three for lowering her MR, one for casting Greater Malison, and one character to fire the flashers.
What if one of those characters has to drink a potion in that round? Then the whole party has to wait.
On the initial fights:
On top of the difficulties with my plan for Melissan herself, the rest of the fight is going to be rather difficult. We begin by fighting Irenicus and Bodhi, with Imoen transformed into the Slayer and attacking us. That's already putting us in a bad spot. We then have to fight a bunch of demons, after which we get to rest. There are two other demon groups, each of which prompts a rest. This means we can set a LOT of traps all over the map in the meantime, and we can use a different spell set for the demon battles and the real fight, with Melissan and the Five.
The Five come out first and fight us while Melissan hides. Balthazar, for some reason, is fighting for Melissan, despite our previous conversation in which he said he would support me. This is bad.
The Five appear to have most of the abilities they had in their previous appearances. Sendai has no clones, but she remains a high-level cleric/mage. This means she is highly buffed and therefore will take much time to kill. With her high MR, she's also not vulnerable to flashers, though she has no immunity to stun. She turned invisible under pressure from Jan and fled the area, so she knows how to stay safe.
Yaga-Shura, it seems, still is invulnerable. He has 99% immunity to all forms of damage except for cold, for which he is only 50% resistant and apparently also regenerates 8 HP per second. Unless his resistances decrease at some point, he is simply unkillable without using DEX drain--it's just not possible for our party to overcome his regeneration. He's immune to stun and all disablers.
Abazigal seems to be a fighter/mage. He has gained access to an impressive assortment of buffs, which I failed to break through in the test run (though I wasn't micromanaging at the time, which may have changed this). He would be terribly difficult to kill, and every round he is alive costs us several Stoneskins. Like Sendai, his MR renders him highly resistant to flashers.
Balthazar is immune to Time Stop and will therefore attack during Sendai's Time Stop spell on the first round. He will also cast Sunfire.
Illasera has few buffs. She can be stunned with flashers and hit fairly easily.
I didn't actually notice Gromnir. He's just a melee tank, anyway.
What about traps?
If Jan dedicates all of his 7th-level spell slots to Project Image, and wears the Circlet of Netheril as well, he can lay 15 Spike Traps per rest period, or 45 in total. He can also lay 25 normal traps per rest period, or 75 in total. This translates to 4500 damage on average, but that's spread across five enemies, some will trigger more traps than I want them to, the normal traps may hit multiple targets, and enemy Stoneskins will completely block the traps. It's not clear how big of an impact I'd be able to make with Project Image traps, but it's possible that we could take down several major targets on round one. I've refrained from using Project Image to lay traps in this run, but I'm less interested in holding back, knowing that Melissan has infinite castings of Spell Trap, Absolute Immunity, and Time Stop, plus a whole lot of other things. We may also be able to lay more traps if Sil uses her own Project Image spells for attempts at Wish-resting.
Or maybe the traps will just fail. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some mechanism that fiddled with them. We might still be able to place our traps in a different location, though.
The plan so far:
It's going to be a miserable show, I think. The enemy has massive damage power, lots of immunities and buffs, and on top of that, they had debuffing spells. Plus, the fight stands to last long enough that our buffs may run out.
The first four fights, with Irenicus and Bodhi and then the groups of demons, will mostly just be distractions. The real danger will come from the Five. To deal with Melissan, we'll really want to be able to bounce our flashers off of a Clay Golem, and to do that, we'll need to kill off the rest of the Five. That's my current understanding of what I need to do.
Sendai may warrant our last Protection from Magic scroll. Melissan is more dangerous, but we already have a means of dealing with her, and she's immune to miscast magic anyway. Irenicus is also more dangerous than Sendai, I think, but we get a free rest after we fight him.
Abazigal will probably need to be dealt with using traps. I'd have to check when exactly each enemy arrives on screen to know who will trigger what traps where, but ideally we'd hit him with ten normal traps to break down his Stoneskins, with another five or six Spike Traps, which would deal enough damage to kill him.
Balthazar is another good candidate for traps, as his AC is low and he has an unfortunate immunity to Time Stop that could cause lots of trouble if we don't manage him properly.
Illasera is not an issue, nor is Gromnir, as they have no spell buffs to speak of that would keep them alive under melee pressure.
Yaga-Shura may warrant a kill from DEX drain, but this may interfere with how his death is supposed to affect Melissan. Still, the main reason we want him out is because he stands to mess with our ability to stun-lock Melissan. We would probably have Haer'dalis or Jan lay some Time Traps to the far north, then lead an enemy towards them. They would then attack Yaga-Shura during the Time Stop with the Chaos Blade. We only need 7 hits to bring him to zero.
Melissan, without her allies to distract us, will be fairly straightforward. We must get our party organized and well-protected, and then use that buffer period to soften her up for the flasher assault, and cast Improved Haste on Haer'dalis or Jan, whoever is using the flashers. Once Melissan is stunned, we can expect her to stay stunned for the duration of the battle. Testing found that we could take her from Uninjured to Near Death once we got in our initial stun, even with only half our party alive to attack her.
We will need to make maximum use of those three rest periods. That offers us a great deal of flexibility in how we approach each phase of combat, and opens up some rather powerful exploits featuring Project Image. I'd rather not use Project Image so heavily, but I'm even more averse to letting Sil die.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Bodhi is vulnerable to Imprisonment. Looking at one of Alesia's old runs reminded me. And when I checked back at the other files, it seems that all of the Five are also vulnerable to Imprisonment. Only Imoen and Nalia know Imprisonment, oddly--SoA has one scroll, and Lazarus Librarus has 2, so we should have three altogether--and we therefore have 6 castings of Imprisonment, at maximum, for the fight with the Five. And we would really want to have a Spellstrike, I think, which cuts into our supply of 9th-level spells. We'd probably want to Imprison Balthazar and Abazigal, once the latter is debuffed. Yaga-Shura should be immune by virtue of his Enrage ability, and we don't need one for Sendai if we're using a Protection from Magic scroll on her. Imprisonment probably won't weaken Melissan, but the flasher setup only requires that we be free of interruptions.