The Nightmare Mode (Legacy of Bhaal) Thread
FinneousPJ
Member Posts: 6,455
Post your Nightmare Mode experiences here, from challenges to fun moments.
Here's me killing Niz, the Black Dragon in Suldanessellar.
http://youtu.be/4YZmNWpTkxU
Party
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FMT
Berserker 7/Cleric
Kensai 9/Mage
Inquisitor
Assassin 9/Fighter
Sorcerer
Apparantly Nightmare mode gives monsters 3 * Normal HP +80, so he should have 680 HP. I managed to deal 686, so that's pretty accurate. The reason I used such cautious tactics was to ensure easy tallying of damage.
Here's me killing Niz, the Black Dragon in Suldanessellar.
http://youtu.be/4YZmNWpTkxUParty
--------
FMT
Berserker 7/Cleric
Kensai 9/Mage
Inquisitor
Assassin 9/Fighter
Sorcerer
Apparantly Nightmare mode gives monsters 3 * Normal HP +80, so he should have 680 HP. I managed to deal 686, so that's pretty accurate. The reason I used such cautious tactics was to ensure easy tallying of damage.
Post edited by FinneousPJ on
8
Comments
@Lord_Tansheron I invite you to test this new metagame.
Right now my highest hope is my summer vacation, but as soon as I can make some time to ACTUALLY play and not just load things up and stay 15 minutes, I'll be sure to post a comprehensive analysis.
Final Seal battle @Lord_Tansheron @bengoshi
The rehearsal went better :P
My RAID failed and I lost all my gameplay vids. I might start a narrated Nightmare run to better capture your imaginations
I'll summarize my notes.
#1 Ranged damage is king. I have the post in the powergaming thread showing my exact comp but it is entirely designed around the strength of my ranged contributions.
#2 Summons are overpowered. This is one of those questionable aspects of increasing hit points across the board. The wand of monster summoning becomes such a powerful item. Even more so the skeleton warriors from cleric are intense. I use them for all the hardest fights (being careful to avoid death spell situations). Dragons in particular get completely destroyed by them.
#3 Experience is very high. I've actually left off parts of the game that have poor loot (IMHO) and I find myself avoiding XP that isn't necessary to get. After finishing Watcher's Keep and Irenicus I have around 6.5 million on each of my 4 characters.
#4 The mummy fight on watcher's level 4 (North East North East North West Archway) There is some randomness however I've counted up to 22 hits on my little guy and he still kills the mummy every time with this route. I only mention this because I saw two threads that mentioned that they couldn't get past this without reducing from nightmare.
#5 Tanking is very difficult because monsters stay around so long and an accumulation of 20s even on the best geared tank will eat through stone or ironskins. Be prepared to kite more. I use my bard to kite on purpose even when i have sufficient summons.
#6 I use only a couple of the options in the tweakpack and I have only messed around a bit with SCS. If you don't use AI mods, even nightmare becomes easy. I have a lot of respect for the mod makers but I get somewhat turned away from the ones that change so much.
#7 I do all my runs on a tight timer. I sleep as little as possible to "role-play" the immediacy. My most recent run I finished SOA and Watchers by Day 28 Hour 5. TOB should take me about 8 days if I remember correctly. Disregarding forced sleeps (phaere, windspear cabin, boat ride etc) I slept 4 times and most of that was in the beginning.
I find Nightmare to be a much more rewarding and interesting setting of play. I enjoy the feeling of monsters taking time to work down. Mages are still high priority targets for example but I can't reliably take them out in the first half of the first round anymore, so I need to be prepared to deal with their onslaught. It forces me to max/min a bit more, but since I normally gravitate to this style of play anyways, I don't mind the extra push. Experience is plentiful which allows me to experiment with different size compositions and my overall strategy gets altered by a greater degree fight to fight. All this being said, I definitely think Nightmare has some small issues that are worth mentioning. Whether they should be adjusted is a matter of opinion.
Problems with Nightmare
#1 NPCs will have much higher hit points than normal. It doesn't bother me because I never use NPCs unless it is to take their gear to sell. Small confession, I've mutilated Nalia on several runs in a vain attempt to get that amazing ring to work for me. I have done things...... At some point even my created characters are starting to doubt the lawful goodness of my protagonist. They just don't understand..... but I've gotten off topic.
#2 Summons (similar to NPCs) have significantly higher hit points than normal. This may in fact be intentional or desirable in either case. I feel as though the summoned creatures from spells used by the party should be stronger to keep consistency throughout the world, however I must mention that I've started to really abuse the wand of monster summoning. Later in the game these ogres and hobgoblins still explodicate (is a word) in 1 or 2 rounds max, but you can have 2 characters dumping them out non stop and it seems to be too good.
#3 Damage spells become relatively weaker. I used to skull trap the world and single handedly increase global warming through cloud kill carbon emissions but lately this hasn't been the case. These spells have lost nearly all their utility, and are never chosen by me over buffs or debuffs any longer. Everything is relative... a hold person has more value when it works against a 200 hit point mob instead of a 40 hp mob. and the reverse is true of a magic missile. I don't see a clean fix for this, and it promotes a rather large shift in the curve. One could argue that magic was too strong before, and this simply brings it back to a better balance. With a lack of any other positive way of looking at it, I choose to prescribe to this mentality.
#4 Minor annoyances, emphasis on minor. I can't kill certain npcs that run away too quickly - and some scripted fights between npcs (docks/pirates/drowfight) take a really long time. lets not even talk about ranged attacking down an adamantite golem in firkraag's dungeon. There's also the possible issue with the maze in watcher's keep level 4 that gets messed up from the higher hit point mummy.
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In the end - nightmare is just meant to be an optional mode to play in, and not supposed to replace the base game settings. Balance shifts, and character diversity drops but BG was never built on the assumption of balance anyways. I've finished quite a few runs, testing out my best character setups and only made a couple small adjustments.
My advice for fixing nightmare is likely less than you'd imagine. I'd recommend taking a look at those minor annoyances and if there was an EASY fix to it, then go for it - otherwise leave those alone. Other than that just try to fix the NPC hit points for those that enjoy using them and don't want to have to keeper them to fix. Unless you find a REALLY clever way of making damage spells come up a bit i'd stay the hell away from messing with those and I don't think the summon fixes are worth it. Afterall just do not USE the wand of monster summoning if you feel it is too strong, or don't recharge it.
As such, many of your concerns should hopefully be addressed in a future patch, when full NM functionality is implemented. But that will still leave some issues, as also plague IWD (which does have HoF fully implemented).
#3 is of course the most glaring. While I agree magic in general is a bit too strong in BG2, that doesn't really hold for DAMAGE magic. The powerful spells are rarely those that just deal damage; they're things like buffs, debuffs, etc. (Stoneskin, PfMW, Improved Haste, you name it). Making damage spells even WEAKER is perhaps not such a great thing, but as we have already discussed the issue in IWD, there is no easy solution to this. Furthermore, BG2 tends to have less enemy numbers, meaning AoE scaling doesn't even redeem spells to the degree that it can in IWD (which has hordes upon hordes of enemies around every corner). Honestly don't know how to deal with this.
There are some other issues, but that's just what you get from a new game mode. It's not just a linear scale. You could call it the allometry of BG, if you will, but some things just shift when you go to NM; and perhaps new paradigms are not necessarily a bad thing.
What I would absolutely LOVE though is integration of NM into the established, popular mods (SCS, BG2Tweaks, etc.) to offer some customization options. I'm thinking stuff like changing the HP scaling (iirc it's x3+80 by default for NM; going to x2+50 or x5+100 or whatever could be interesting scaling options), ideally even applied differently for different enemies: you could give summons x2 HP only, for example, or could disable HP scaling for things like the WK Spirit Warrior quest, etc. Lots of flexibility to be had, that would perhaps make things more interesting.
Instead - I can't even turn an undead mosquito with my maxed level cleric/ranger. It isn't the end of the world, but it was one of those really cool aspects to the cleric/ranger that I enjoyed. From what I've read there is no way to edit this in eekeeper to fix it since your turn level is just hard coded based on your cleric level. If anyone has a solution to this I'd love to hear it.
In much the same way, hit dice are also greatly increased. This in turn changes the way several spells work, as they have effects based on HD. Keep that in mind when doing NM!
I personally don't mind the TU thing too much. I always found TU to be a bit cheesy anyway, especially given that many of the difficult enemies in BG2 are undead (vampires, liches). Just going in there with a cleric and one-button chunking the entire room is a bit much for me.
Nevertheless, it is definitely an iconic cleric ability. This is another case where I'd love to see mod support, e.g. an option to modify TU as desired to either work the same in NM, or work in a diminished fashion (deal damage each turn?), or something. My hope is that once NM is properly patched in and the bugs ironed out, that mod makers will incorporate it into a new paradigm and offer some nice tweaking options for the level of customization we so enjoy about BG and its mods.
To recap, I'm playing NMM on a modded extreme difficulty setup. It includes SCS with all settings to max, as well as the Spell Revisions and Item Revisions mods. Party is custom-made, but grafted onto game NPCs. Roll totals are 85 for CHARNAME and 80 for everyone else, min/maxed of course.
As I didn't get to play much for the longest time, I spent it all both pining to play, and thinking about how I would play once I finally found some free time. The core issue I was pondering was the paradigm shift induced to my established ideas from pre-NMM BG2. It's sort of a big deal for me in particular, because I was never a safe player. Forget scalpels and micro-sutures, my tools of the trade were the bulldozer and the wrecking ball. Kill first, don't ask questions later - which, naturally, doesn't work too well when enemies have hundreds of HP instead of dozens.
The other problem were the two new mods, Spell Revisions and Item Revisions. They are quite phenomenal and I highly recommend them, but they change a LOT of things I thought I had all figured out. Perhaps the gravest change is Improved Haste. That spell was the centerpiece of most of my strategy, and the single best buff in the game by a wide margin. However, under SR it no longer doubles APR - instead, it functions like the unmodded regular Haste spell, minus the fatigue; normal Haste in SR is single-target, but otherwise identical (movement bonus and +1 APR). To compound that problem, the Item Revisions mod *also* nerfs APR, making the incredibly powerful +1 APR weapons (Kundane and Belm) only give +1/2 APR.
The implications of this are HUGE. Much of my setup was designed around dual-classed Fighters, reaching high natural APR and then going completely crazy with Improved Haste. But where a true-and-trusted Kensai 9 -> Fighter used to have 5 APR unbuffed and 10 with IH, they now have 4.5 APR unbuffed and 5.5 with IH - cutting their maximum damage potential almost in half. Not the best spot to find yourself in for Nightmare Mode, where you need MORE damage, not less!
There's also a lot of nerfs to powerful weapons, reducing the general enchantment levels a little and curbing the damage of many high-end pieces (like FoA+5, which to be fair is completely ridiculous in its original version). Armor got nerfed, too, though not as much; the biggest hit comes to Robe of Vecna, which is just some random useful robe now. Well, it had it coming.
What does this all mean, then? Well, I have thought long and hard, as I said, and I have come up with a new setup that is perhaps not quite what you would expect given how things tended to go in normal mode. Here is what I ended up running with:
Fighter/Mage/Thief
Conjurer 9 -> Fighter
Conjurer 9 -> Fighter
Archer
Archer
Priest of Lathander 9 -> Fighter
Yep, that's right - it's essentially a complete reversal. Where before I would always dual all my Fighters to casters, I now do the opposite and dual my casters to Fighters. The reason is simply this: Greater Whirlwind Attack. Without IH, getting the damage output to where I'd like it to be essentially requires GWW; which in turn requires high Fighter level. Every member in that party will be able to get GWW, and thus max APR.
What about spells, then, you might ask. Well, here's the thing: without IH in the mix, you don't actually need a lot of spell levels. The most useful buff spells are actually all on the lower levels. Damage spells become very bad in NMM due to the increased HP pools as well, and summons appear, at least for the moment, to be nerfed to non-NMM hitpoints (unlike IWD). The increased enemy levels also invalidate a lot of spells - which brings me to my next point.
I am not taking an Inquisitor, an old powergaming favorite; and indeed, no Paladin of any kind. The reason is the aforementioned level increase. Even at x2 power dispel, you won't dispel squat in NMM. Enemies are regularly more than x2 your level, which means it's extremely unlikely you can dispel them; on the other hand, you will practically ALWAYS dispel your allies if they're in the area. Bad, bad, bad!
I briefly considered simply taking another Paladin, like Undead Hunter or Cavalier. Why? Well, Carsomyr of course. The Holy Avenger is now the single most damaging weapon in the game, and even though its dispel now allows a save, it's still EXTREMELY good (arguably the best weapon in fact) - doubly so because when you rely on GWW anyway, it doesn't matter that it's 2h and that Paladins don't have Grandmastery.
However, that got me thinking: do I really need a Paladin? There is, after all, another way to use Carsomyr: Use Any Item. That is what the F/M/T is for. The high XP in NMM will hopefully offset the triple class, and the loss of Grandmastery, as mentioned, is no big deal when you rely on GWW anyway (plus a Paladin wouldn't get GM anyway so nothing lost in the grand scheme, really).
Next on the chopping block was THE iconic PG character: the Kensai -> Mage. Long favored as the arguably most powerful class combinations, I feel that it loses a lot of its power in NMM. More HP means longer fights, means more chances to get hit and die because you run out of defensive options. Plus, the recurring theme of this thread, you don't get to max APR without GWW anymore. I feel that in many ways, Conjurer 9 -> Fighter is a great replacement, though. Being a specialist mage, you gain +1 to all spell levels, offsetting the lower mage level and spell availability nicely. You get two 5th level spells, but you don't really need more - all the good combat buffs are basically at lower levels, and 5th is enough for Breach and several magic protection removal spells. Looking back, I actually realized that I didn't even use those high level spells a lot anyway. Some Incendiary Clouds or Horrid Wiltings here and there to mop up, but that's not a good plan in NMM; Time Stop here and there, but that can be done without (and is often a net party dps loss anyway); Warding Whip? Yeah that one hurts a bit, as does the loss of Spell Strike. However, I still have the F/M/T for those high-level spells; it should be enough. What I really want from the C9->Fs is to be melee powerhouses, well-protected and dishing out tons.
Speaking of dishing out - the Archer is the sole constant throughout the ages. The more I play with it the more I love the class. It is just so, so good in early/mid game, and respectable enough at late game. Plus, their weapons are among the least nerfed under Item Revisions, in fact they even got BUFFED because now there's +APR longbows as well as the readily available and thoroughly silly +10 damage Strong Arm+2. Having powerful longbows available means you can run a second Archer easily. Short bows remain strong with Tuigan and Gesen (which is very good and somewhat underrated btw), only crossbows have been nerfed so much they aren't really competitive at higher levels (added reload time curbs max potential APR even under GWW).
Ranged damage is good in NMM. Long fights means more incoming damage, and not getting hit is a good way to deal with that. For that reason, and because I've always wanted to try it, I'm running with a 3rd ranged character, the Priest of Lathander 9 -> Fighter, using Slings. There are some very nice slings in IR, including a quasi-vorpal sling with a chance of dealing 100 extra damage on hit. A Priest of Lathander will also have some extra APR to compensate for the lower rate of fire on Slings, as well as provide some of the nice defensive Cleric buffs (ProtEvil, Chaotic Commands, etc.). You also get a +spell levels ring very early, making up for the lower spell count.
Well, that's my setup for the nonce. I'm a few hours into the game, having regained all my levels from dualing after a bit of back-and-forth through Athkatla and the surrounding lands. So far, no big problems. The hardest fights were some of the random ambushes, particularly the one with 1 mage and 2 clerics (+4 melee) which took me quite a few tries. Chaos sucks when your Cleric isn't quite active yet
I'd also very much love to hear other people's input, ideas, and critique of my setup. I am still only getting into the deeper layers, and no doubt more experienced people will have a lot to say and point out. Looking forward to some nice, powergame-y discussion!
Looking forward to reading your evaluation of this very different iteration of your power-gaming party.
With all the extra XP that Nightmare mode offers, I wonder why you don't take your Priest of Lathander to a level high enough to get two Boons.
So, now I've gone through most of early game, finishing up the majority of side quests. Shadow Dungeon is still left because of Liches, and Firkraag is not quite within reach yet either. Rest went down fairly smoothly, the only fight that was a bit difficult was TorGal but once I figured out how to isolate the two Yuan-Ti Mages it wasn't a big problem - the very fact that I even had to do that, by the way, speaks volumes as to the new approach! For years and years I just brute-forced this fight, storming in and slaughtering, safe in the knowledge that everything dangerous would die before it became a problem. No more!
The party composition is working very well so far. The three front-liners are pretty tanky, and it turns out that you really can stand there forever under Mirror Image and Stoneskin :P Definitely F/M hybrids for tanking in this game, unlike IWD. Having M->F duals also doesn't seem too much of a problem. You don't actually need all that many spells, and having great THAC0s is becoming quite noticeable. It also makes it easier to use shields (they give THAC0 penalties in IR), a very valid option now that the +APR offhands only add 1/2 APR and IH doesn't double. I might switch over to dual-wield eventually anyway, but in the early game I found the extra AC to be quite handy when battles take forever.
Speaking of fight length, a very real problem is arising with my two Archers. They are definitely performing very well, with well over 50% of party kills among the two of them, but... they are running out of arrows! I knew this might be a concern in NMM, but it is a much more pressing matter with TWO Archers. I am almost out of Arrows+2 and running low on +1, and that is with buying everything there is to buy. Luckily I now have Tansheron's Bow+3 for one of them, but I may have to go to WK lvl1 much earlier than expected to get the Quiver of Plenty for the other one. Annoys me to no end that there is only one such quiver in the game by the way...
I am quite happy with how things are going in general. NMM is definitely something that was sorely needed. I am actually paying attention now, micromanaging things, etc. instead of just right-click attack and /afk until everything is dead. It's also interesting to manage buffs/debuffs with the long fight durations, those packs of trolls in De'Arnise Keep for example can take several minutes to defeat at lower levels making use and timing of your spells a very real concern.
I haven't really had a big mage battle yet, though. The closest was Ihtafeer and friends, which involved a lot of running away and dispelling illusions, as well a large chunk of buff potions and scrolls... may come back to bite me at endgame, who knows! I gave the Daystar Lich a try or two, but got my butt whupped quite quickly; this may be tricky with two low-level mages and a low-level cleric. I don't think you can chunk Liches with Mace of Disruption in my setup, and their high HP means you can't just bomb them with Delayed Blast Fireballs etc. either. I probably need a few more levels to compete, it will definitely be a challenge.
Next on the agenda is Firkraag, though. I'm not even close yet to UAI of course, but I expect to hit it during the Underdark part, if XP keeps going this way. Might depend on how deeply I venture into WK before I go to Spellhold, I probably won't do too much of it in this setup. XP is certainly plentiful, but it's not as out of hand as it is in IWD. I suspect it's because BG2 had a lot of XP from quests to begin with and that doesn't increase in NMM (at least not that I notice, am I wrong?). It might jump with enemies that give a lot of XP, like Beholders etc., and maybe jump me to those 3m sooner than anticipated. I'll see!
I started a minimal reload SCS Nightmare mode run in the "Maybe this time" thread (first post on https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/40393/maybe-this-time-no-reload-thread-featuring-welcoming-elaira-the-skald/p29), using a blind Kensai(9)->Thief. For those who aren't aware, thieves can hide in plain sight and use traps in front of enemies (EE only) when blinded. Nightmare mode was supposed to be a way of stress-testing the blind thief trick. Rather than using the Blindness spell, I applied a permanent blindness effect using EEKeeper.
I also used EEKeeper to remove the Nightmare mode bonuses from NPCs in the party. In addition to the HP and level bonuses mentioned above, Nightmare mode also adds 1 attack per round. Note that, in order to remove the HP bonuses from NPCs, you have to use EEKeeper twice: set their HP to the correct value in EEKeeper (you can find the right value in Near Infinity if you don't want to do the math yourself), load the save, save again, and then correct that save in EEKeeper. You have to repeat the process whenever an NPC joins, but it doesn't take too long.
I used a very magic-heavy party, under the assumption that having extra summoning spells would make a big difference in gameplay. Jan and Aerie have been with us for the long haul, and Edwin and Cernd joined later on, but many other characters came and went. Jaheira left when I got tired of the Harper ambushes (and because Cernd had more spellcaster growth left, Anomen left when he complained about Hexxat, Hexxat left when Jan complained about her, and Viconia left because I wanted to save her space for Imoen.
Our party has been heavily reliant on disablers and invisibility. With a distinct lack of fighters in the group, and with our summons getting chewed up very quickly, hold spells were necessary to bring down tough melee enemies. Nymphs were a big part of this. Later on, Fire Elementals, with their immunity to nonmagical weapons, served as impressive tanks--until we encountered enemies with magical weapons, because apparently our Fire Elementals haven't been getting Nightmare mode bonuses to HP or APR, and were easily slain by tougher enemies.
I was surprised by the weakness of summons, considering my experience in IWD. I expected them to be able to hold the fort for long periods of time, but Nightmare mode, unlike Heart of Fury mode, adds 1 APR to enemies and (most) summons, and so the extra HP for our summons doesn't last nearly as long. Our summons didn't last long enough to keep us safe, which meant we needed invisibility spells.
In SCS, enemy spellcasters cast divination spells obsessively, but by packing on enough illusion spells and running away from Oracle spells and such, we were able to stay invisible despite SCS's improved AI. This allowed us to wait out MGOI and GOI spells (mages in my install always began the fight with pre-buffs) and hit enemy spellcasters with Acid Arrow, Magic Missile, Blindness, Slow, and Silence 15' Radius. With their spellcasting shut down, our summons had enough time to break down their Stoneskins, which opened up the mages to backstabs from Charname.
The fights were always very lengthy, so much so that we seemed to gain levels even slower than we would have in normal mode, in terms of real time. I noticed that hunting kobolds or goblins in the sewers would have been a more efficient means of gathering XP than fighting the bigger enemies.
I do not think the normal NPCs are very well optimized to handle Nightmare mode. Only Aerie, with her wide variety of tanking spells, disablers, and summons, proved consistently useful. Jaheira, despite having both strong damage output and good summoning spells, proved unable to use the former: in EE, Ironskins has a casting time of 9, which meant that Jaheira could not cast it safely in the middle of battle. This made her far less useful as a tank than she would have been otherwise, and is the main reason I didn't keep her in the group. And though we did very well overall--managing two reloads by Spellhold and defeating the Twisted Rune at level 12, mostly due to Charname's blindness--I found the party consistently struggling.
I think we were sorely lacking in damage output. The fights tended to take forever. A steady supply of Teleport Field spells and ranged weapons would have been much more effective. Archers with Called Shot would have been fantastic, as we could have gotten guaranteed failed saving throws on problem enemies. One of the biggest "weaknesses" of Called Shot is that its penalties have less and less importance as they add up, because the target is already taking physical damage from the hits. In Nightmare mode, that would be much less true, as the targets would live long enough to suffer badly from the saving throw penalties.
The core of my setup seems fairly certain.
Archer
Inquisitor
Fighter/Mage/Thief
No real doubt about any of those. Seem like no-brainers for my setup, Archer and Inquisitor for obvious reasons and F/M/T because I find it the best SNT user (which is quite good in my setup due to being the only +1 APR).
But now I'm a bit unsure as to what to do with the rest. I'd probably want another caster at least, so I've been thinking about the Conjurer->Fighter dual I already tested. Seemed fine, but I'm not convinced it's the best choice there is for arcane spells.
Cleric is another issue. They're pretty okay under SR, but I just can't find the best way to make it work. Priest of Lathander->Fighter, Berserker->Cleric? Very confuse. Much unknown.
Another option would also be simply a second Paladin, one that can actually cast spells (like DuHM, mainly). Undead Hunter or Blackguard seem the options, also can't quite decide which, if any.
I haven't had too much time to test deep NM mode, anyone have some experience with late mid and end game? What's going on? If it's with SR and IR mods, that's even better :P
Besides obvious it was NM with pretty much all AI and Tactics challenges and some personal tweaks from SCS. I tried IR and SR in v2 after yoga kill but so late in the game it just felt odd and I kept dying because of it.
I created my entire party so that 6/6 members do something in the fight and not just sit in the back or invisible. So far what I concluded is even though I like inquisitor I couldn't play with him because I dislike melee fighters without stoneskin/ironskins because they need to stand in the back because they simply get destroyed.
There are many things to consider in such playthrough but so far my party was
- Kensai (pure dagger throwing beast) CHARNAME
- FMT (most of the game as ranged using firetooth xbow - I tend to buy it as soon as I can leave city; probably best value item for the buck especially as I like to travel early to de'arnise where it is invaluable). Later on in the game he goes dual wielding or carsomyr. At times I liked to put shield on him so that he can serve as my second tank.
- Archer - I think archer is the most gamebreaking single spec char for NM (except mindflayer mage) because with Vhailor helmet and IH you can drain dragons to 0str in one round so they simply die regardless of their HP. On my second run I stopped doing this as it felt cheesy.
- R/C - my favorite tank, mostly because I like having cleric in the team and tank with stoneskin which with this combo I can achieve, obviously he's built around as low AC as possible so he can hold of anything as single tank very early
- Sorcerer - even though I could swap this for other powerful char often Sorc is simply winning fights alone
- Skald - there has been so much discussion around this char but for me it became irreplaceable character, +4AC, hit and dmg is simply amazing because in NM summons are great deal and his singing works too, at some point if fight is too hard I just gave him vhailor and mislead so I could get +12 to all bonuses
Above team I would say sorc and kensai are the ones I would consider replaceable but I had fun with both. Kensai being able to throw daggers for around 40-45 dmg was able to dish out 400 (800 with Critical Strikes) dmg per round. Archer was not far off. Those two bad boys made most fights a breeze.
I tend to use summons a lot especially very early and against vampires. Again I rather have this than sit in invis or out of line of sight.
For my next run I planned to go Kensai/Mage to see if downtime pays off but I don't like duals in 6man party because it takes quite long to regain your main spec. Also as powergamer in heart I hate to dual at 9 so I only consider dual at 13.
With above party I don't think I reloaded much throughout the game so I can't say if any fights were particularly difficult. Usually when something was harder infinite power of sorcerer just handled it. PI -> TS -> IA -> everything.
Few things I felt in love in NM are
- crowd control spells
- glitter dust
- all spells that modify throws or AC or hit
Mostly because you can dish them out very fast and greatly increase your damage and prevent damage on your tanks.
Few thoughts about the whole experience.
- As mentioned earlier in this thread, XP is VERY high. That creates a different curve of difficulty than in the Vanilla, because my party levels up much earlier. The more we advance in the game, the more my partie's level compensates for the tougher foes.
On top of that, I am playing, of course, with a 6 member party against a group of 4 usually, and it makes a HUGE difference.
I expect the end of ToB to be really much harder again. As soon as my "normal" party would usually get HLA's and the leveling becomes a bit less dramatic (maybe 3,5 M xp), the NM real difficulty will kick again. So my first observation is that the NM makes the game harder at its beginning and probably at its end. In between, I think the fast leveling and absurd summons almost compensates.
- Skeletons warriors are broken. I basically summon five of them in most areas and let them walk in front. They just won't die. And when they do, well... I resummon while throwing daggers, bolts, arrows and everything I can at whoever tries to take them down.
Thing is that since your summons are just as unkillable as your enemies, the (range) damage output is what decides most fight.
- Any fight that you don't have the possibility to prepare is a nightmare (well, that was the point I guess). I kept getting roflstomped again and again by orcs and bandits random encounter until I could basically throw 4 chaos at once at the very start of the fight. Without summons, you will die very, very, very fast.
- I need to sleep a LOT. Just the summoning is exhausting I guess. My characters need to recharge their spells much much more often than usually because without there are no medium to hard fight that you can do without at least a couple of summons. You need them all the time.
- On the party composition, I have a few remarks:
a. Lord Tasheron mentioned that Inquisitor is not that good anymore because of the high level of your foes. I don't really agree for two reasons. First, you cast "only" 6 levels lower than you would in the normal game, because enemies are in average 12 level higher and you double your level with DM. And more importantly, you also will be at a higher level at almost any point of the game. So say that you are 2 level higher than you would be in a non NM game, that means you "only" lose 4 levels. Still efficient considering how broken Inquisitor DM is.
b. Multi class shines. That is going to be controversial, but I opted for multi rather than dual. Thing is that there is so much XP that you really level up fast enough. I think the extra spell of the illusionists and the better fighter capabilities makes multi class perfectly viable.
Now I really don't understand the concept of Conjurer -> Fighter. You will get your fighter HLA at the same time, and you deprive yourself of Time stop and such, for what? A slightly better THACO? Few more Hit points? I think a Fighter Illusionist stomps a Conjurer Fighter any day of the week.
On top of that, as usual, I find the whole leveling process of dual really annoying and especially considering all your enemies are now REALLY strong and you don't want a character sitting behind reading books about how to cast fireballs while your party is fighting Torgal.
c. Range is basically a matter of survival early game, but as soon as you have really good equipment and a reasonable level, you actually can start alternating with dual wielding again. I keep both options open, but I find more often than not that three of my characters are much more efficient in melee.
d. I usually take a sorcerer (I know, I shouldn't), because they basically win half the fights by themselves as soon as they reach HLAs, and I kind of like abusing ADHW to death. But in NM, even ADHW is not really powerful enough to be worth a whole slot in your team. Also, I usually use my sorcerer to display magic with Kelben, Pierce Magic and such, getting into complex buff and display battles, but that's a bit irrelevant if you count on physical damages anyway to roast your foes.
So here is my party:
Felix Jaeger, semi elf, Skald.
My song bot. I think on the long run, Blade would have been better (well, they simply are by a long margin as soon as you get the enhanced song), but I did the whole of BG1 with this team and I wanted to hear some music. I am planning on using Vailhor and go full Polyphonic Cheddar if things get too hairy later. Also, Felix is a REALLY strong secondary mage. So not only songs do an insane amount of indirect damage and enhance your team enormously, but he can occasionally cast some dual webs, breach, and so on. Amazing character. Probably really dumb to take him as PC, but I like the theatre. See, I am an artist myself.
Gotrek Gurnisson, gnome (oh well, let's pretend he is a dwarf shall we...), Fighter/Illusionist.
Weapons are throwing dagger, with a very high damage output or Pixie Prick/Belm. Eventually, I will give him a better weapon (I have some Axe of the Unyelding plans for my slayer), but I wanted him to be both efficient at ranged and dual melee. And god, he really is a beast.
Ulrika Van Karstein, elfe, F/M/T
A no brainer. I regret only not to have chosen a gnome. She dual wields Celestial Fury and Kundane for now. I didn't give her any range weapons, but she has the boots of speed and I use her as "light cavalry". She scouts, flanks, retreats a lot, backstab and when necessary MMM. She wears Vecna and rebuff instantly/ I think she will really, really shine later in the game.
Kira, Inquisitor
I am on my way to slay Firkraag, but until now she has been using Firetooth (the Xbow) almost exclusively which is basically the first weapon I bought. God that is useful in De Arnise hold. She has been one of my best character early on, now she is a bit less efficient because other characters have simply more APR, and I don't expect her to really make a difference other than her displays before the HLAs and GWW.
Magdalena, elfe, archer
Not much to say; she is using Tuigan and destroying everything. When I don't like someone, I Vailhor her, get a speed potion and drain their strength to 0 in one round. /fight. That's called the Roquefort Attack.
Eltarion, half elfe, Ranger Cleric
As stupidly good as ever, he is waving the Flail of Ages and DoE. With Armor of Faith and Iron Skins plus an AC at -12 when Felix is around, he just can hold forever, which is exactly what you want.
One of the problem of those teams without sorcerers in my opinion is that you are constantly short of Arcane 6 spells. PaMW and Improved Hast are just needed all the time. How do you guys deal with that problem? I am NOT using IE and SE because it took me long enough to figure the damn game and I would rather avoid starting from scratch every runthrough. Maybe the revised IH makes those level 6 spells a bit irrelevant anyway?
Anyway. It's not very original, but I have to say it's performing amazingly until now. Suggestions or remarks welcome...
- Few remarks on the game itself until now. Torgal is REALLY hard. Maybe I did it too soon. I had to throw 6 webs and nuke everything from orbit. The Shade Lords blows as usual; he died really really fast and couldn't do much to my buffed RC. The shade dragons died basically instantly to a few skeletons and two speed archers (the Vailhor of Gruyère again). The beholder are ABSURDLY strong. Gauth accept to die eventually but Observers are just stupid. I threw so many death clouds from outside their range that the area is gonna smell for the next decades. I recommend doing the bard stronghold early, it's not that hard of you avoid the cells, that are totally deadly due to no time to summon.
Multiple mages and cleric battles are very hard because SCS seems to have made it harder to interrupt spells and because your average mageling now has 100+ HP. I am waiting to see what happens in the Asylum fight and such when multiple strong mages are involved at once. It's going to be interesting.
(A little trick of mine I never posted: if anyone is ever playing with a 4 or 5 person party again, a good advice if you are without a thief. Get Nalia (later Imoen), kill her. And keep her dead. When a thief is really needed, resurrect and kill her again once she has done her job. She will not take away any XP from the party and she will actually level up from the quests rewards. That's not very nice, that's pure camembert, but that does the trick.)
As I've mentioned in other places, TorGal is usually one of the hardest fights for me as well, largely because I go there very early. I think it has my highest reload % by far, above even Ascension etc. There's just so much to deal with, with so few tools!
For reference, the party I'm currently testing is:
Blackguard
Inquisitor
F/M/T
F/M/C
Archer
Archer
Looking to be the strongest setup I've tested so far, but since my time is limited and I can't play at work the way I can post on the forums, it'll be a while sadly until I have more solid data...