Pacifist on Ice - A solo min-kill playthrough of IWD
joluv
Member Posts: 2,137
The (still unfinished) min-kill run I did through the Baldur's Gate series (http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/37678/im-not-a-murderer-a-minimal-kill-solo-playthrough) was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had with those games, and I've been meaning for a while to do a similar playthrough of IWDEE. It's not as poetic as the potential next Lord of Murder trying to avoid killing, but it was still a fun challenge.
Ahead of time, I could think of three big reasons why I thought this run might be easier than that one:
1. A rule change by me: ONLY THE LIVING COUNT. This means that killing undead is A-OK. They're already dead! More importantly, I knew I would rage-quit if I tried to do the Vale of Shadows while getting dry-humped by a hundred skeletons. I planned to play it by ear regarding other "constructs" like golems. Does anyone know what the heck a Tarnished Sentry is? Whatever it is, I didn't count it.
2. Heart of Winter gives a ton of easy kill-free experience.
3. Dimension Door. Some of the most difficult parts of my BG run involved getting stuck in a crowd of enemies. Being able to teleport past them would have been very helpful.
But I thought these would be outweighed by four ways this could be more difficult:
1. IWD is very linear, so there's less flexibility on how to do things.
2. It's also much more combat-based. Intuitively, you would expect more killing to be necessary.
3. There's no experience for using thief skills or learning spells.
4. The huge one is that enemies follow you even when they can't see you. They follow you FOREVER, even into adjacent areas, even weeks later after you've been in Lonelywood. To me, this is the number one most annoying thing about this game compared to BG. It just makes no sense at all, and it drives me nuts.
In the end, this run was clearly easier. Being allowed to kill undead made an enormous difference, and I was never running around trying to scrape together tiny amounts of experience or gold. I'd like to try it without the undead relaxation, but not until someone makes a mod to address the absurd following behavior.
My character is an Elven FMT named Zoran (in honor of Zoran Dragic and the $4,000,000 contract he got for having a brother). His stats are 18/79-19-17-18-3-11. Core rules, no mods, lots of reloads. I'll make a post for each chapter and write them all in the first person, even though I'm not really an Elven FMT (or a Slovenian basketball player).
To summarize, the "living beings" killed by Zoran were Lysan, Albion, Yxunomei, Krilag, Malavon, The Idol, Pomab, and Belhifet
Ahead of time, I could think of three big reasons why I thought this run might be easier than that one:
1. A rule change by me: ONLY THE LIVING COUNT. This means that killing undead is A-OK. They're already dead! More importantly, I knew I would rage-quit if I tried to do the Vale of Shadows while getting dry-humped by a hundred skeletons. I planned to play it by ear regarding other "constructs" like golems. Does anyone know what the heck a Tarnished Sentry is? Whatever it is, I didn't count it.
2. Heart of Winter gives a ton of easy kill-free experience.
3. Dimension Door. Some of the most difficult parts of my BG run involved getting stuck in a crowd of enemies. Being able to teleport past them would have been very helpful.
But I thought these would be outweighed by four ways this could be more difficult:
1. IWD is very linear, so there's less flexibility on how to do things.
2. It's also much more combat-based. Intuitively, you would expect more killing to be necessary.
3. There's no experience for using thief skills or learning spells.
4. The huge one is that enemies follow you even when they can't see you. They follow you FOREVER, even into adjacent areas, even weeks later after you've been in Lonelywood. To me, this is the number one most annoying thing about this game compared to BG. It just makes no sense at all, and it drives me nuts.
In the end, this run was clearly easier. Being allowed to kill undead made an enormous difference, and I was never running around trying to scrape together tiny amounts of experience or gold. I'd like to try it without the undead relaxation, but not until someone makes a mod to address the absurd following behavior.
My character is an Elven FMT named Zoran (in honor of Zoran Dragic and the $4,000,000 contract he got for having a brother). His stats are 18/79-19-17-18-3-11. Core rules, no mods, lots of reloads. I'll make a post for each chapter and write them all in the first person, even though I'm not really an Elven FMT (or a Slovenian basketball player).
To summarize, the "living beings" killed by Zoran were Lysan, Albion, Yxunomei, Krilag, Malavon, The Idol, Pomab, and Belhifet
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Hid in shadows and went to look at the caravan. (Did you know that's all it takes to complete the caravan quest? Until recently, I really thought you had to at least kill the ogre.)
Walked through Kuldahar Pass under stealth. (I came back after getting Invisibility to deal with Ghereg and Jermsy.)
Used stealth to walk past Mirek and then outside in the Vale of Shadows. Everything inside the crypts and temple is undead, so that went as usual. Didn't go to the Yeti Cave until it was time to kill Lysan. Got the Yeti Chieftain to step away from the entrance, then stunned him with a Chromatic Orb. Killed Lysan fast and ran away before the Yetis could surround me. I had Invisibility and Haste by this point. The Yetis followed me back into and out of Black Wolf Temple.
Temple of the Forgotten God just requires walking to the back under Invisibility and walking back out. Nothing to see here.
And if you're against summons, you could in some of the encounters charm and enemy and have it kill the boss.
Walked through the first two levels of Dragon's Eye invisible. Interestingly, the trolls outside the Dragon's Eye entrance didn't try to follow me after I went invisible, unlike almost every other enemy in IWD.
The third level is full of undead, so I knew I could get a lot of experience there. I walked all the way to the entrance to the fourth level invisible and camped in front of it to grind. Pairs of Cold Wights spawn when you rest, good for 1400 XP each. Whenever my hit points started getting low, I just stepped through the door to rest up in the safety of the fourth level, then came back. Once I got to fighter level 7, I started taking on the groups of undead closer to the second level entrance. As soon as I got to 250,000 total XP, I was off to Lonelywood!
[Interlude: I did part of Heart of Winter here. That's discussed in a later post.]
Back in Dragon's Eye at significantly higher level, I killed Albion (you can't pickpocket his key) and walked straight through the rest of the level invisible. I badly wanted Dimension Door, so I stopped by the High Torturer's chambers to pick that up. (I later remembered that Edion also has it, which would have been helpful.) Turns out that enemies won't follow you through closed doors while you're invisible, so I shut the door to Yxumonei's chamber to keep out all the (many) enemies who were still following me from the fourth level. Yxumonei went down pretty quickly, but then I had to get back past the massive crowd waiting outside the door. I was already hasted, so I Dimension Doored past them and started running... straight into even more Yuan-ti. The others weren't as densely packed, though, so it was possible to run past them. I cast Invisibility and got the heck out of Dragon's Eye.
Except for that squirrel, every creature involved in this chapter is undead.
In Upper Dorn's Deep, I stopped by to pick up a spell or two from Bandoth, then walked to the Neo-Orog area. The two Drow Spellswords just inside block the path, so I had to Dimension Door past everyone. I went to the left side, then back to Krilag's area. He can't be pickpocketed (questioning whether I really needed to play a FMT instead of a FMC at this point), so I killed him, took his badge, and talked to Saablic. The Neo-Orogs were not very aggressive about following me, so this was all really easy.
Everything for the rest of this chapter is undead. (Except maybe Bronze Sentries? Not sure, so I didn't kill them.)
Asked Kerith for the key, gave it to Gareth, picked up Soth's book. Repaired the bridge, talked Joril into giving me his badge, and left the glacier. Don't worry, the next chapter's a lot longer.
Hailee, Tybald, Ambere, and Kieran give fast experience. So does the first visit to the Barbarian Camp and the subsequent conversation with Baldemar. I didn't have high enough charisma to sweet-talk Angaar, so I had to run away from his crew.
Fighting undead on the Burial Isle would be OK in this run, but I was still pretty low-level, so I avoided it. (I came back during Chapter 6 and cleared it out.) I walked to Wylfdene's Tomb invisible, told Mebdinga I'd leave, then cast Haste, looted the tomb, and went stealth. Talked to Hjollder and ran back to Young Ned. I had leveled up enough to be able to fight a Greater Werewolf, so I finished Emmerich's quest for a cool 840,000 XP.
The only tricky thing in the Gloomfrost is that you can't walk past the Ice Salamanders in the northeastern corner of the map. I didn't have Dimension Door yet (although I could have gotten it from Edion), so I just provoked them into moving and then maneuvered around them while Hasted before going invisible again. I walked right past all the Remorhazes and Ice Golem Sentries, stopping only to get the mirror, rose, shield, and weapon (I went with the Fist) from Tiernon.
After talking to the seer and having her transport me back to the surface, I went straight to the Barbarian Camp. I made another thread about what happens when you sit out the Elk vs. Wyrm battle when I was contemplating this playthrough (http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/39971/non-intervention-in-how-spoilers). To summarize, the Elk Tribe won without my help, and Hjollder took me back to Kuldahar.
I hope Tarnished Sentries aren't alive, because they can see through stealth, so I killed a bunch of them.
Marketh gave me his badge after I asked nicely, but his rude underlings still followed me around. I went outside, onto the glacier, into the Ice Museum's basement, into the slaves' area, and back again. Somewhere along the line I temporarily lost everyone. Fleezum and Flozum ended up coming back and harassing me for the rest of the game, though.
Malavon gets the asterisk because his Iron Golems also killed four Umber Hulks and Fake Malavon after I read from the Golem Manual. My feeling is that I didn't summon or control them; I just released them from his service so that they wouldn't be forced to kill me. If they decided to exact revenge on their creator, that's none of my business. I did avoid letting an Invisible Stalker follow me into the room with them. I was like, "Listen, Pal. I know stalking me is your main jam, but two of your boss's golems are on a murderous rampage in there, so let's both just chill over here where it's relatively safe, OK?" Then I ran back in there to grab all the loot and back out before my invisible frenemy could catch up and get himself crushed.
At this point I decided to take care of some sidequest business, so I went back into Marketh's palace to pick up potatoes and give Ginafae the Oil of Null Effect. I gave Tarnelm the spuds and said I would kill the Umber Hulks for him (You really think I'm going to randomly slaughter a dozen Umber Hulks? It's like you don't even know me, Tarnelm.) I Dimensioned Doored past them fast enough they didn't attack and bought the animals and a spell or two from Nym, and rested up. Then I made a quick trip back to the glacier to pick up the Barrel of Pure Water and took it, the seeds, and the animals to Valestis. I also went back to the Burial Isle to get some more experience before what I expected to be a tough fight with Maiden Ilmadia...
But pickpocketing Ilmadia worked! I spent most of this run marveling at the uselessness of my thief class, but this completely justified it. I tried to have a nice conversation with her, but she ended up attacking and following me anyway. None of her allies did, though, so my entourage entering Brother Perdiem's temple was just Fleezum, Flozum, and Ilmadia. I didn't want to fight a bunch of undead with those three pestering me, so I made a beeline for The Idol and took it out fast. Likewise, I went straight for Poquelin, and I was back in Easthaven almost immediately.
I was worried that Everard wouldn't talk to me next to an attacking Cyclops, but he did. I picked up the sword from Jhonen and went into the tower. To my surprise, the detect illusion thief skill showed me which one was the real Pomab, so that battle was a breeze. I've always just randomly hacked away at all of them before.
Heading into the battle with Belhifet, I was at level 18/17/22. It was honestly the easiest time I've ever had with this battle. As soon as he'd dispelled my effects, I pulled a Spell Trigger with Stoneskin, Improved Haste, and Trollish Fortitude (didn't have PfMW). Then I just whacked him with the Restored Sword of Aihonen and the Fist of the Gloomfrost and occasionally gulped an Elixir of Health (which I had seven of). I'm guessing it took five rounds before Belhifet went down. Crisis averted, and with minimal collateral damage. Thanks for reading, everyone!