Although I've hardly achieved anything, I feel it's already time for a second entry. A lot has happened in what, two days? First of all there was this voice in my head telling me I was insufficiently skilled a cutpurse to nick an enchanted dagger from old Fuller in the barracks.
I also learned that I may have to heed that voice whenever I hear it again, for I ignored it and soon had Fuller and other Watchers on my heels.
Apart from the Watchers there were bounty hunters and assassins in the bunkhouse, the priests' quarters and the storehouse, all of whom were after me as well for some reason. One of them I handled quite nicely with my staff before I could even freak out; must have been some base survival instinct at work there.
But another one went invisible and hunted me, very scary.
I rushed to Gorion and I was pleased to see him as eager as I to leave Candlekeep.
Very well, no more babbling... Gorion... My dear foster father left Candlekeep with me, for me, because he knew someone or many someones wanted me dead. But in the end he was the one to fall. He died defending me from a band of ruffians, more bounty hunters it seemed, that wanted him to surrender me to them. I fled, as he instructed me to when an acid-coated arrow hit me, and saw nothing of the battle that ensued. I found his corpse the next morning, and that of two young men and two Ogres. Gorion was a good man, better than I am, for sure. I know he wasn't my true father but he had selflessly cared for me and tutored me for as long as I can remember. And now he's gone. I feel like I'm still in a state of shock, like all this isn't real.
My friend Imoen from Candlekeep found me that same morning after Gorion's death. She wanted to travel with me but I relcutantly declined and saw her back safely to Candlekeep. Obviously she had no clue what she would have got herself into. As much as I would have liked her company, I couldn't put her life at risk just like that.
A letter on Gorion's corpse hinted at friends to be found at the Friendly Arm Inn, but I decided against going there. Gorion's killers might have read that letter. The alternative route I took, via High Hedge to Beregost, was hardly safe either, replete with Ghouls and Skeletons as it was.
And what made it worse, even at night I had great difficulty hiding from the creatures.
I shall definitely have to hone my stealth skills.
Anyway, I made it to Beregost where I met with Firebead and spoke with some of the townsfolk to see if there were any jobs I could do. For a woman named Mirianne I accepted to look for a Halfling messenger, but I found him dead, killed by Ogrillons. I slew the Ogrillons (before three Flaming Fist mercenaries would; surprisingly they attacked an Ogrillon that had strayed off).
Further south I was approached by two other, independent mercenary-types, but becoming more wary, I backed off.
(I knew from my Barbarian Styn and from @Arnaeus' run that Tristan and Isolde were there, but it clearly hadn't become part of my metagaming system yet.)Mirianne gave me a Ring of the Princes, a generous reward, for handing her a letter from her husband (dropped by ine of the Ogrillons).
I'm currently at the Jovial Juggler inn, where I got another scare when a cloaked Half-Elf accosted me. I really seem to be becoming paranoid what with all those people that seem to want my scalp. I tried to impress the Half-Elf by telling her I was a mercenary that's not to be messed with, but she proved friendly, and even offered to join me.
I accepted. Morwen is my new companion's name, and Skald her profession. We'll see how she and I get along.
I'm really enjoying this tender young playthrough so far. Lots of unexpected stuff, such as the pickpocketing message, the Fist attacking the Ogrillons, and now Morwen. There were also Lathander priests/servants in the inn, but they wouldn't talk with Gerry yet. At the start of the game I had a solo challenge in mind, but feel inclined to just go with the flow now, which fits Gerry's CN alignment, and have Gerry travel with Morwen for the time being. Morwen is a Dark Horizons NPC, with a slight XP headstart and too many enchanted personal items for my liking, but I may lower her XP and will drop (some of) those items. I would also crop her portrait match Gerry's better. I've got no idea if she has any banter. If so, she'll have a better chance of staying on).
Varen and company have completed Chapter 2. I was worried about the Shadow Thief headquarters, particularly after we had two deaths in the first two fights, but things turned out okay. Varen, who has mostly played as a mage since she dualed, got in one of her few backstabs in this run, thanks to True Strike, which gives +10 to THAC0.
The cleric hid with Sanctuary, which in SR has a casting time of 1, but Varen could finish him off with a Sunfire spell.
We also did well against the mages, since I've finally gotten around to filling Varen's and Ivinhale's spellbooks with the right debuffs: Spell Thrust, Secret Word, Pierce Magic, and Breach. Haz fell early, however, thanks to a backlash from the Nature's Vengeance cloak (the IR version of the Cloak of Stars)
Unlike Fire Shields, Sanchuudoku, or Yamato, the backlash from Nature's Vengeance only has a 20% chance of firing per hit. But it has a spell level of zero and does nonmagical electricity damage, which means that it can bypass the defenses that Sanchuudoku and Yamato cannot: Sanchuudoku's Acidic Backlash is blocked by MGOI, while Yamato's slashing backlash is blocked by Stoneskin.
Despite our success against the previous mages, I was wary of Aran Linvail and his mage friend. I held them off with summons to draw out some of their spells, with a Cloudkill from Ivinhale to deal damage through the enemy's defenses.
In the end, that was all it took. By the time the enemy had worn through our summons, Aran Linvail was out of Stoneskins and any weapon immunity spells. So was his friend.
We got the Ring of Djinni Summoning, which in Item Revisions casts Limited Wish once per day--a huge, huge improvement in an otherwise uninteresting item. We used it several times to get the one-time wish bonuses: a few gems, Full Plate +2, and some extra XP from an Adamantite, Sand, and Juggernaut Golem. With those items, we finally reached just over 100,000 gold, and spend 70,000 of that on the last few items we could pull together: a few potions, some high-level scrolls (Ruby Ray of Reversal, notably, and Improved Haste), the Golden Girdle, and the Ring of Fire Control. Scrolls are ludicrously expensive (and very few in number) in Item Revisions, so it's a good thing we only have 1.5 mages.
We also got the Amulet of Power, which has new bonuses in place of the old ones: an extra level 1-4 mage and priest spell slots, and a +2 bonus to casting level, which allows me to use 5th-level spells in Varen's contingencies if she also wears the Robe of Arcane Might--though her contingency is for Invisibility Sphere on helpless, as an escape option.
Finally, Kolem Tao has reached level 14, and can now cast Nature's Beauty. In Spell Revisions, the instant death effect remains, but its save bonus is removed, its radius is increased to 30 (the old radius was ridiculously tiny), and it can now charm people on a failed save vs. spell at -4. It only affects humanoids, though.
It's been a while since I got a no-reload past Chapter 2. My randomized runs have been really screwy.
@blackraven yeah I like Morwen from her initial conversation but like you I found the amount (and power) of her magical items a bit distasteful. The mod author has so many good ideas but he ruins it with overpowered items. She's a better archer than either Coran or Kivan which is a bit ridiculous. The thing I find most unnecessary is how she just comes with 5 emeralds in her inventory for no good reason, just overpowered for the sake of it.
I will say the dwarf you get in Ulgoths beard is much less overpowered with his starting items. He does come with fullplate and a few vanilla +1 items which isn't normal for an NPC but I don't consider it that gamebreaking.
I can't report on if they have any banter but I'm hoping so as (once OP items are discarded) they both seem like interesting characters.
@Arnaeus, interesting. Yeah, Torfinn Stoneblade I think his name is, piqued my interest this morning when I caught up with part of your tale (the latest installments of which had escaped my attention, due to me not having bookmarked your thread). I'll catch up with the remainder tomorrow.
As to Morwen, I'm considering having her keep her armor and maybe the bow (as a Skald she won't be using it much anyway). The rest will have to go.
Hachiman quietly arrived to the Bridge area in front of the Baldur's Gate city and there he saw a new group of men and one woman waiting for someone. Their leader wanted to talk to Hachiman as soon as saw him, so the pair first went quite far away from the bridge so that nobody would interfere if things went bad and only then talked.
And, God, that was the right decision. This elven archer hit like a monster, seemingly to have a low THAC0 and use arrows of biting. I can't imagine Hachiman surviving this battle if there were other archers involved. It required several options of moderate healing and several antidotes to stay alive.
Other archers were not hugely easier. Only the lady with a crossbow was more or less safe for Hachiman.
In fact, it was necessary to rest (to heal) after fighting each of these mercenaries. Even while not changing their bows to swords when Hachiman attacked the elves in melee, they were a formidable force and rolled successfully to hit almost every time.
BTW, while one of these rests between these fights, Hachiman got his Bhaalspawn ability, @Blackraven - a lot later than the very first rest in the chapter:
Finally, the city was reached. Hachiman ran through all the areas of it trying to find another mercenaries sent after his soul but there weren't any. At least outdoors.
Then Hachiman bought a green scroll of Protection from Petrification on the second floor of the Elf Song Tavern, acquired the Helmet of Balduran from its general place (this item's location is not randomised) and found a new merchant provided by the DH mod:
Also, Hachiman didn't meet any new NPC in the city. One fun fact: the unthrowable Axe +1 the Sorcerous Sundries provided costs a lot more gold than the cheaper Beruel's Retort from the Beregost but it's actually not a much better weapon - 1d8+1 against 1d6+2 damage.
The clearing of the Seven Suns building was simple and the Ogre Mage from the Sewers was slain with the very first arrow Hachiman shot.
On the dead Ogre Mage Hachiman found his third manual, this time of Constitution. It could have a tremendous influence on all Hachiman's future because base 20 CON means Hachiman doesn't need any items to regenerate, which is especially important in BG2.
Overall, I can say that the Item Randomiser mod is a two-faced god: on the one hand, you can't plan to visit a certain location only to find there a certain item; on the other hand, Hachiman found the Boots of Speed in the Mulahey's container a lot sooner than he could find this powerful item without the mod. Also, Hachiman found the best in BG1 composite bow and the best in BG1 heavy crossbow while still being far from going to the Bandit Camp and reaching the BG city respectively.
Now Hachiman found the Manual of CON, otherwise located in the Golems' Cave under the protection of Sirens - and to beat the Sirens a soloing wizard slayer should use the Protection from Magic scroll. There's simply no other option because of the Sirens' Charm spells and Feeblemind melee attacks, and there're not many PfM scrolls in the game so that Charname could use them for the Sirens encounter if he wants to have them for quest fights.
I understand from what I've seen that the manuals can be found during important plot fights (the Drasus's party, Davaeorn, now this Ogre Mage), so it's also somewhat more convenient for a run, especially when you don't have a thief to open locked containers. If due to the Item Randomiser mod Hachiman finds a manual of STR, it would mean he overcomes an impossible task of opening the locked container under the Candlekeep while being a wizard slayer.
So, actually I cannot say that using the Item Randomiser mod makes the game more difficult - it makes the game different in terms of your approach of visiting certain areas and the order in which you complete certain quests.
The task of exploring the Iron Throne building was the next.
@Musigny It would be incredibly kind of you to start a project like that. I would definitely be interested to beta test your work. My opinion is that it would be best to work first on the components which aren't already improved in some way by SCS2. For example there is an Improved Irenicus component in Tactics, but there is also one in SCS2 and it is already very hard. To my mind, Kuroisan would be a good start. I remember @Tisamon months ago created some EE compatibles files of some fights in this thread : http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/34241/bg2ee-solo-masochistic-challenge-an-updated-version/p1 Anyway I'll send you a PM, and I hope other forumites want to beta test too !
@Jaheiras_Witness Excellent work here ! Your Limited Wish strategy against the Shadow Dragon was incredible, I really liked it. And good use of the Protection from Undead scroll, I didn't know the Shade Lord was that powerful, the only time I did it with SCS, I had two Blackguards (Dorn + Charname) + Korgan so everyone was immune to his Level Drain Aura. I guess I'll have to be a lot more cautious if I fight him without a team like that. Considering HLAs, you could pick one Exploding Trap, because the knockback effect has a save with a huge -10 penalty. Multiple Exploding Traps are of course not very good, but one of them can create chaos and some cool new strategies. Greater Evasion is also nice, or is it only the Rogue Rebalancing version ? I don't remember.
@Blackraven Solid start with Gerry ! I too think that Morwen's stuff is a bit over the top, but at the same time, a Skald without this kind of equipment will probably lack behind in fight I think. Plus she doesn't have excellent stats apart from her Dexterity.
@bengoshi Good progress with Hachiman, those Elven Archers are deadly. I didn't know about this new shop in the BG city ! You are telling me there is another Ring of Wizardry 1st thru 5th available and you aren't forced to do the Arcane Sanctum to do it ?! There is also a second Ring of Protection +3 !
@Gotural and @Musigny, I also volunteer to beta-test any Tactics components, and agree with the approach taken (focus on aspects that haven't already been touched by SCS). I'll check the othet discussion as soon as it's there.
@bengoshi, nice work with the archers! Very scary for my non-warrior (even with a green scroll of PfPoison I wonder if Gerry's HP pool will suffice). Thanks also for illustrating the delay that can occur in getting Bhaalpowers. Apparently that's how EE works, and I'm fine with that.
As to Randomization, I decided not to install it this time. I love the mod (and was actually using it with Alba the evil Assassin in my BGT install until I got those CTDs). My problem with the mod is that the player still knows the randomized items are to be found somewhere, often kept by enemies that need to be killed. This goes especially for the Tomes that I tend to like too much to ignore. So a guy like Gerry, who isn't that aggressive would, end up fighting lots of NPCs just to see if they drop a Tome (due to my stat OCD )
Short update, I wasn't really feeling Zeke in his current incarnation (too low STR for a Dragon Disciple for my taste, and I wasn't sure about his alignment) so I started another Sorcerer kitted Invoker, Jaden, who struggled to get 6,000 xp before he was killed by Tarnesh. A stupid, avoidable, death.
I'll think more about Zeke's character concept then I'll start playing him.
Could not sleep, so I played BG2. Not much fun, due to the sleep loss, but productive.
Perth the Adept proved vulnerable to lingering damage from normal traps.
We completed all the Brynnlaw quests and also had Horun Fallows seduce Desharik. It got us a free trip into Spellhold, among other unstated things.
Irenicus stole Varen's soul, tormented thing that it is. Has anyone noticed Irenicus is kind of a jerk to Charname?
Varen gave up a point of DEX, which reduced her Set Traps by 5--but conveniently enough, she had 105 base. There was no option to reduce her STR (I thought there was). She killed Bhaal with lingering trap damage.
Bodhi let us live, and also let us keep all of our crazy powerful items, thanks to my install options with SCS2. Kolem Tao's new Sphere of Chaos spell, and Varen and Ivinhale's debuffs, allowed us to take down the various Yuan-ti Mages of the Spellhold labyrinth without much risk. One problem:
I keep seeing these Yuan-ti Mages dealing tens of damage in a single hit, and there is no dialogue text saying which spell is responsible. I don't even remember seeing an attack roll, either, and Fire Shield isn't supposed to deal that much damage... in fact, if my memory is correct, the Yuan-ti did Fire Shield damage on top of the 30+ damage per hit that we see in the above screenshot. @Demivrgvs, any idea where that damage is coming from? I know Mestil's Acid Sheath could add some more, but I didn't see any mention of the spell in the dialog box.
Anyway. Traps on the Mind Flayer and the Beholder from the creature summoning altar thingy. I prepared for a fight with a Lich, but to my surprise, there was no lich in the Spellhold labyrinth. Traps on the Ruhk, then a melee rush against the Pit Fiend.
Traps on the Ulitharid in the next level. Got the Boots of Speed and no others. Bodhi tried to kill us and Varen completely freaked out. Having no soul must really mess with people.
Then, we had to face Irenicus. Since this is a no-reload run, I unequipped a bunch of items to make sure my clones wouldn't use all my best stuff. But the clones were the least of my problems: when my invisibility at the start of the battle was quickly dispelled, I could no longer hope to wait out Irenicus' bigger spells. He targeted my party, wiping out our buffs and following up with some very dangerous damage spells. He yells at us, too. He's so mean.
No need to be a Grumpy Gus, Jon-bon.
Ivinhale died, but the rest of the party struggled by with potions. Varen, having taken shelter to the far east, suffered no damage. But as the battle rages on, Irenicus' buffs start to slacken, and Varen helps take them down.
But Irenicus renews his defenses, and though our clones are falling, we are not doing well. Two of our party members die from Horrid Wilting, and another two get disabled by Irenicus' Sphere of Chaos spell.
Varen brings down Irenicus' Spell Deflection with a Pierce Magic spell, allowing Kolem Tao, safely out of range of the Sphere of Chaos, to hit Irenicus with the Wand of the Heavens.
This signals the end of the battle. Kolem Tao keeps hitting Irenicus with the wand--the charges are precious, but this is the sort of situation I was saving them for--while Varen hurries into the fray to add a Flame Arrow spell before fading back out of range.
Finally, Irenicus gives up and flees. We inherited some summons from the other inmates, which help us deal with the Murderers. We raise our fallen, collect our stuff, and replenish our stash of potions from the inmates and the murderers. SCS2 absolutely floods the game with potions, and it's a welcome change.
Saemon Bavarian helps us steal the Pirate Lord's ship, and Desharik is just crushed by the betrayal. Horun Fallows says his heart belongs to another, and splits the Pirate Lord in twain. The affair meant nothing to him.
Somehow we ended up in a city of fish people. It happens to the best of us. The big one asks us to go kill some fishies. We do!
By now, Ekayne has recovered her cleric levels, and our divine spellcasting power skyrockets. We can now cover everyone with both Death Ward and Free Action, which means we're immune to the paralyzation effect of Sahuagin Bolts. Sahuagin Bolts in IR use the Hold II effect, not stun, but Free Action in our install blocks stun, too. We take a lot of damage from the Sahuagin's damage spells--they're really a pain. They also persistently heal themselves, and summon undead, which drags things out a lot. But we get a LOT of loot from the process, as each and every one of the fishies is carrying a Spear +3 and a Light Crossbow of Speed. We also get several hundred Sahuagin Bolts, which in IR--thank goodness--have no weight, just like normal bolts.
We end up killing everything in the city except for a polite Beholder and some Sea Zombies I've chosen to overlook over the past several runs of the game. On to the Underdark!
We plowed our way through the elementals, the Kuo-Toa, and the first drow ambush. We have lots of melee power, thanks to our widespread dual-classing, and thanks to our many cleric levels, we are very, very resistant to disablers. We also have multiple anti-mage options, including multiple debuffers, Sunfire and Cone of Cold to deal damage through MGOI, and Creeping Doom and Sphere of Chaos to disable through MGOI. As always, Ivinhale plays a vital role in dealing with mages, dispelling all illusions whenever they come up.
I have managed to make the Sanchuudoku feedback loop work more reliably. Now that I actually have the right debuffing spells on hand, I can take down the MGOI that makes mages immune to Acidic Backlash. And with IR's various fire resistance items, Horun Fallows can get immunity to fire with a simple Resist Elements spell. He'd still need a Protection from Cold spell to deal with blue Fire Shields, which takes a 5th-level cleric spell slot we want for other things, but most enemies lately have been using the red ones, which makes our job that much easier.
Acidic Backlash also kills the Balor in the Svirfneblin camp, after some softening up with normal traps. SCS2 Balors come with a constant effect Aura of Flaming Death, which triggers Acidic Backlash just like a Fire Shield would.
We have gained many levels since starting the main quest. The quest XP rewards are so much higher. Varen is at level 15, Kolem Tao is at level 16, and Maeruo, the only person in the group who's still in the dual-class downtime period, is at fighter level 13. One more level and he'll be back in werewolf form.
In my current minimal-reloads run, I am about to enter Spellhold too, and tomorrow I am not working so I may catch up to your party maybe, @semiticgod your posts are too much fun.
I have reloaded a few times: -Planar prison, a yuanti mage's lightning bolt caught me against a wall in a very unlucky angle, and the bouncing bolt killed me:I had 60+ hp so I thought I would survive, I had a potion of absorbtion, and my aura was clear, I was paused, and everything, but I wanted to save the potion and went for it. Lesson:NEVER try to save any potions/wand charges/scrolls when your life depends on it!
-Troll mound:got cocky and careless and surrounded by trolls, and was so cloud minded that did not even notice I was surrounded and wasted my aura with a blindness spell, instead of going invisible for protection:realised my mistake and clicked to gulp a potion of invisibility, but was killed only a second before my aura was clean. Lesson:NEVER play careless or cocky, always pay attention!
-Tanova in Bodhi's guild, released a prismatic spray in her time stop and my pc croaked instantly. Was not petrified or disintegrated, so I guess it was the save vs poison or die effect, I think. Mages are notorious for failing their save vs paralyse/poison/death, when their lives depend on it. Knowing this weakness, I had lavender ioun stone, a knaves robes and ring of protection +2 to boost my sucky death save, it was 4 or 5 I think. And I STILL failed. Lesson:NEVER stay in the visible range of an enemy mage castin time stop, and NEVER trust a mage pc to make his save vs paralyse/poison/death.
Other than that, Minsc got smeared on the walls (chunked) by a golem in the Watcher's Keep, I was ready to go on without him but my game crashed, so I had to reload and he did not die this time. I think Boo's cosmic powers saved our beloved ranger!
@semiticgod is the yuan-ti you're talking about the one protected by multiple spell protections? If yes, the "golden sparkling globe" is the new animation for Prismatic Mantle. Could it be that?
@Demivrgvs: Prismatic Mantle must be it. That must also be why I've been seeing my characters get Mazed without any Maze or Shadow Door spells active. I assumed the prismatic part was just a cooler name--I kind of scanned the description for Prismatic Mantle, and only checked the number indicating which weapons it defended against. I didn't notice it had those extra effects.
Prismatic Mantle is really, really vicious. Most of the damage effects do 10d6 damage, but one of them does 20 extra damage on a successful save, and 120 damage on a failed save... and it's poison damage, which almost nobody is going to resist. At least MR blocks it. I shudder to think what would have happened if Horun had triggered a feedback loop with one of those things. He could have gotten chunked.
I might be able to find some very devious uses for this spell, once Varen finds it. Unfortunately, she's also our Charname, so I'm not sure it'd be safe to try and get in some prismatic backlashes on a tough enemy. But imagine it: a tough melee enemy like Melissan, hitting a fighter/mage dual-wielding Sanchuudoku and Yamato, with both Fire Shields, Acidic Sheath, and Prismatic Mantle. That's about 80 damage per hit.
We stopped by the Kuo-Toa hideout to get some royal Kuo-Toa blood. All meta-gaming justified by Maeruo's 21 WIS. And divination spells. You can always just assume Charname is casting lots of divination spells to figure out what's going to happen. Wouldn't you?
The Kuo-Toa Prince died to Earthquake, which in SR has an instant death effect during one of the tremors... and if you fail a save during a previous round and get knocked unconscious, you automatically fail the save against the death effect (it gives you a -20 penalty to your save vs. breath, ensuring a failed save during the next tremor), and you fall into a fissure, to your death. It uses opcode 55, however (Finger of Death opcode), so we're all immune to both the unconsciousness effect and the instant death effect. The Kuo-Toa Prince didn't actually get knocked unconscious, but it received the "unconscious" message and still suffered the save penalty, guaranteeing death in the next round. Earthquake is party-unfriendly, but it also bypasses MR, which is a huge benefit against the drow.
We also take on the drow party guarding the way to the surface, so we don't have to do it later after Adalon teleports us there. SCS2 buffs up the encounter considerably, adding golems and demons to the mix, but Varen throws some traps while the enemy is still neutral, and a Cone of Cold spell, delivered by a projected image, softens up a mage just enough to kill him in the first round.
A Sphere of Chaos, Earthquake, Insect Plague, and Creeping Doom spell completely wreck the enemy's functioning. Kolem Tao and Horun Fallows manage this all in two rounds. The projected image, protected by Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Dispelling Screen, and PFMW, also helps to distract them, further increasing our advantage. It is good to have high-level spells.
After reviewing the relevant files for the Demon Knights, we decide not to fight them. They no longer carry the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, it seems, and the only item they have that we can use is a two-handed sword, usable only by TN characters like Horun and Mae-mae, neither of which has much use for a two-handed sword in the first place.
Adalon transforms us into very pretty black elves. Maeruo has never been less fuzzy. Now that we look like pretty drow, Carlig and the other Duergar are willing to show us a new set of merchandise, much to our delight, and the prices for selling our stuff are improved dramatically. They're not as good as the Sahuagin priestess' prices, which are about 50% better than Ribald's, but they're normal for the Adventurer's Mart. Know what this means?
I believe I mentioned earlier that we collected a lot of nice equipment from the Sahuagin. Specifically, we picked up 30 Spears +3 and 29 Light Crossbows of Speed. How much does that sell for, if we hold onto two crossbows for Varen and Ivinhale?
It nearly doubles our gold supply. The only quest in the entire saga that nets anywhere near that much gold is Watcher's Keep. And Watcher's Keep is Watcher's Keep. With the Tactics mod, it seems the City of Caverns is the single wealthiest area in all of Faerun. Waukeen is quite pleased with us. She keeps appearing in our dreams, too. It's.... weird.
But we are adventurers, and so we can't afford to spend our money on golden showers alone: we spend most of that newfound fortune on potions and scrolls from Carlig and the merchants at the entrance to Ust Natha. Unfortunately, we fail to scribe our first Prismatic Mantle scroll I've ever encountered, but the others all went fine. I hold back on some other purchases--Ust Natha also features the Defender of Easthaven, among other weapons, some of which are from ToB, but nerfed somewhat--but we do get a hold of Kaligun's Amulet of Magic Resistance and the Greenstone Amulet. The former now can cast Magic Resistance at casting level 15, once per day. But due to an error in the item file, it seems the spell is tagged to be cast instantly, which according to DLTCEP causes the casting level to be set to 10, instead of 15. Either way, it's a huge benefit. The Greenstone Amulet has been streamlined: it now grants immunities as a passive effect, no charges involved. Now Maeruo is immune to charm, confusion, feeblemind, stun, and hold II. The party is getting very powerful.
But I am apprehensive about Ust Natha, and may decline to complete it, and not just because of the constant sexual tension between Phaere and Solaufein: I might get stuck in the city and have to fight my way out, which is barely even possible in SCS2. I've had problems in past no-reload runs in which the Egg Guards would almost invariably alert the whole city to our mischief, and force us to kill Matron Mother Ardulace and flee the city, missing out on a lot of experience and ending the quest prematurely. It may be wiser to simply take the XP hit and escape the Underdark by casting Farsight and ordering Horun's bats to nibble on Adalon's ankles until she turns hostile and the way to the surface is made clear.
But the city gets locked down right after you give Matron Mother Ardulace the blood of the Kuo-Toa Prince, Elder Brain, or Elder Orb. So I need to make that decision before I continue the run. Does anyone know what the XP rewards for completing the quest normally are? And does anybody know any truly reliable means of silencing the Egg Guards? The only strategy I've found reliable so far is to just kill them really, really fast, and that would require dice rolls... which can and will go wrong in no-reload runs.
I just got Maeruo to fighter level 14, recovering his Shapeshifter levels and allowing him to equip his old Greater Werewolf Token. But due to an error with the drow avatars (which I thought I had disabled), equipping the token causes the game to crash. It would be a convenient excuse to abandon the quest and make our way to the surface without Adalon's aid, and though the XP loss would be steep, we would be entering the endgame with our last character finally done with dual-classing.
I have no intention of fighting my way through the Mind Flayer city or the Beholder hive. The Beholders will blast through our defenses like the evil jerkfaces they are, and the Mind Flayers could destroy the entire run with a few well-placed critical hits.
Shadows of Amn is approaching an end. There are only a few remaining major challenges, and the party has just now, finally, come into its own. We'll just have to see how things go.
Dual-classing at high levels in party runs is for losers and ToB fanatics. It gives very minimal additional bonuses, while increasing the downtime period exponentially. Maeruo has outrageous defensive advantages compared to the other fighters thanks to his Greater Werewolf form, but he has been dead weight on so many battles that it really wasn't worth it. What good is a moderately stronger werewolf form if you have to be an unarmored fighter for half the game, as Maeruo was?
Maeruo carried the party in the early game. And in the late game, he'll be a better tank than Horun Fallows. But for everything in between, Maeruo was nothing more than a drain on the party's XP. All he did was contribute minor slashing damage and then die midway through the battle.
Sigh.
At least Horun will get his big fuzzy teddy bear back.
@semiticgod, that party is looking very good. I get the same feeling as with your spiders, that they have it them to go all the way... As to the XP to be gained in Ust Natha, you could take a look at this link to make an estimation.
Gerry, Gnome Cleric/Thief, update 2
Soon after we teamed up, Morwen and I decided not to travel together after all, for we proved to have differing and irreconcilable expectations and preferences as to how to work. E.g. she desired to travel in a large band whereas I wasn't convinced of the need of that, and I was becoming increasingly convinced of the importance of stealth, which was something she had little affinity with. (In reality I nerfed Morwen and her items, which included removing an innate flat +2 Thac0 bonus but when I continued, the latter bonus still showed up in her character record. It prompted me to remove her from the party.)
Since then I've prevailed in various violent encounters, with Hobgoblins, Huge Spiders, a Bounty Hunter at the FAI,
a rogue Ogre (in two instances, because the first time I fought it, a Dire Wolf intervened on the Ogre's behalf), and even Basilisks and a Gnome controlling them.
My travails have furnished me with various powerful items, either bought or scavenged from the corpses of my fallen foes: Shadow Armor +3, Boots of Stealth, The One Gift Lost Necklace, a Sling +1 and two girdles: Elves' Bane and the Golden Girdle. The latter item I secured after a single Silence 15' Radius muffled a menacing looking hunting party of four.
and after an oil of speed was quaffed for safety (i.e. map leaving) purposes in case of Hold spells coming my way. With an overflowing inventory and taking into account the limited duration of Silence 15' Radius I only bothered with two of the hunters.
In Ulgoth's Beard I purchased Aule's Staff after I barely slipped by a band of four evil Elven archers unseen, at day time no less. Had I not, they would have surely killed me.
Again, little progress to justify an update, but the main reason I'm posting is that I have an important question regarding stealth. In my BGT experience there's a brief cooldown period of one round when a character fails to hide, before a new stealth attempt can be undertaken, and in BGEE it's the same. On the other hand, if the character purposely breaks stealth, for example to start a conversation, or to pick something up from the ground, the character can immediately re-enter stealth mode because they never clouded their "hiding aura". However my current EE-setup does not function that way. Gerry has to wait till the next round before he can hide again, just like after a failed stealth attempt. Is this how EE is supposed to work? I don't believe this to be a mod-thing, unless it's to do with Dark Horizons or SCS v30 since those are the only new/updated mods I'm playing with. Does anyone know whether it's possible to use NearInfinity get rid of the cooldown period after deliberate stealth-breaking (as opposed to failed hiding attempts)? Being able to turn a corner and quickly hide again before a pursuer sees you is both realistic imo and desirable for my playstyle, for example in Irenicus' Dungeon.
@Blackraven I can answer your question about stealth. This is how they changed stealth to "nerf" Shadowdancers some time ago. You just need to leave shadows a few seconds before so that your cooldown come back, still hidden, then you can break stealth. You'll get used to it very soon, with my F/M/T I have the habit to enter stealth, and immediately to click on my weapon slot to start to leave shadows.
I decided to go to Windspear Hills next...might as well get the tour of the provinces done rather than go back to Athkatla and then trek all the way out here again.
Refused Garren's hospitality (still no need to rest, not fatigued) and the outside area was easy enough. First dungeon level was also easy except for getting level drained once by a Vampiric Mist, and the Ruhk Transmuter, who was very tough. I decided to use up some of my huge stock of scrolls by sending a bunch of summons at him in dribs and drabs to waste some of his better spells. Once I'd seen him use up a few offensive spells I went into melee myself but took a battering...he seemed to have something like 4APR and was hitting every time (only for 10 damage a pop but it added up really fast)...meanwhile I was struggling to hit at all (had to use FoA + Namarra as immune to +1 weapons) and even when I did and finally got through his stoneskins, he would just cast another set. Over the course of the battle I had to get through 4 lots of Stoneskins! That battle cost me 5 invisibility potions and 13(!) Potions of Extra Healing.
Onto level 2, and I've just stopped after the undead lair. What a battle that was, I'm shattered!
I did not have any Protection from Undead scrolls but I thought I did have a good plan. That plan was for the vampires not to know what hit them. Literally.
I have 5 Mislead scrolls
So I started off as above getting rid of the mummies and ghasts to create some room. The vampires were already summoning rat packs.
I then went after the first vampire. Shouldn't take more than 2 hits per vampire right? This will be so easy...
Uh-oh. They are immune to +2 weapons?! This isn't good.
The only (one-handed) +3 weapon I have is the Flail of Ages, but I cannot backstab with that. Which means I cannot use Mislead to backstab. Which means this plan is doomed!
I took a moment to re-assess and I decided I may as well press the attack. I didn't have a hope of fighting these vampires in melee, I'd be level drained to oblivion in seconds. So my only hope was to kill them all as fast as possible with the FoA under Mislead. The trouble is Mislead only lasts 1 round/level, which for a scroll (cast as level 10) means only 10 rounds of attack. And even hasted, I only have 2APR with the flail.
I killed the first vampire shortly before the Mislead wore off. The rats actually helped me here by restricting everybody's movement, which meant I could keep attacking the vampire without it just running away.
5 more to go. I decided to accompany the second Mislead with Improved Haste, which raised my APR to 3...that's still a 50% increase!
Killed the second vampire and started attacking the third as my second Mislead wore off. Immediately I got hit by a x4 backstab and level drained. Looks like I got a bit lucky with the damage roll...
Now onto my 3rd Mislead and 2nd Improved Haste. Killed the third and the fourth, my most successful Mislead so far!
Used my 4th Mislead with normal Oil of Speed (running very short of Improved Haste scrolls ). Got the 5th.
And located the 6th.
But then the Mislead wore off and...
Mesmerism? What on earth is that? What I don't understand here is I seem to have made my save vs spell and yet I still seem to have succumbed to it.
Checked my Character record and my INT was down to 3, so it looks like some kind of Feeblemind effect. At least it's not a Domination effect! I am wearing the Helm of Charm Protection so maybe that's why the vampire chose this attack rather than Domination?
So now I'm stood there doing nothing while the vampire takes swings at me. The only good thing appears to be that it's struggling to hit me (I have Saving Grace in the offhand so AC is -10). You can see in the above screenshot that it missed on a 19. So I can only be hit on a critical it appears.
And I stood there.
And still.
And then for a brief moment I started to wonder if this was a permanent Feeblemind effect, and my no-reload run was actually over.
But just before I panicked, it wore off and I dispatched the final vampire in short order.
Wow, what a fight, that was so intense and scary. I really did think it was all over for a brief moment under Mesmerise. Cost me 4 Mislead scrolls and 2 Improved Haste, that's a huge dent in my accumulated offensive power . In hindsight a scroll of Protection from Undead would have saved so much trouble!
Samia is going to have to wait until tomorrow.
PS: I have a question that people might be able to help me with. Is it possible to be suffering from the effects of fatigue without the icon appearing on your Character Record? It's just I noticed during that session rolling so many Critical Misses, often one after the other. Now that could just be statistical variance or it could be that my PC is fatigued and I really need to rest before disaster strikes. Does anybody know the answer to this?
@Jaheiras_Witness: I had the exact same problem with those vampires in a past solo run, though I saw no mesmeration message, and the spell was a domination spell. I was confused for a while because I couldn't select my character, but I didn't have a game over, so I just waited it out. I still don't know what the cause was, but perhaps it is a temporary Feeblemind effect... although I'd have thought the vampires would attack a Feebleminded character, which they did not.
I don't believe it's possible to be fatigued without the icon. I don't think they're separate things, the icon and the effect. You might have just gotten unlucky. I'd perform a test to see. CLUA in a critter--maybe a Clay Golem (GOLCA01), hit it with CTRL-Q, and take a bunch of swings at it with a slashing or piercing weapon. Then you can see if there are more critical misses than normal.
I couldn't bring myself to play my Dragon Disciple, I didn't find a good backstory for him and i was still unsure about his alignment ...
And at the same time, I was so into Jaden. I was really feeling him. So I decided to restart him again.
So far so good, he is in chapter 4 with 150,000 xp. I really got past the trouble of leveling up a non mix-max solo Sorcerer. Now he is doing very well in fights with a combination of MMM, Stoneskin, MGoI, Mirror Image, and MSD.
With Maeruo's druid levels back, we now have far more cleric and druid spells than we could ever cast in a day. We dedicate a bunch of spell slots to buffs, and I tweak my auto-buff spells accordingly. And since Maeruo can cast Limited Wish from the Ring of Djinni Summoning and restore some of our spells every day, we can get some extra mage spells, too. I tweak my auto-buff spells accordingly, to reflect the new buffs, and clear out our spellbooks to reflect the spells we will now be casting automatically.
Now, everyone in the party will come prebuffed with Barkskin, Aid, Death Ward, Free Action, Luck, Bless, Protection from Evil, and Resist Fear. Our fighter/druids and ranger/clerics also get Armor of Faith, Chaotic Commands, Stoneskin, and Regeneration. Our mage/thieves get Shield, Blur, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, and Dispelling Screen. The whole party is basically immune to all disablers. It's nice to have a comprehensive defensive setup for a no-reload run.
I thought a long while about the Ust Natha quests and finally decided I would give them one shot, and if the Egg Guards turned the city hostile, I would allow myself one reload. I at least wanted to try it out.
The Egg Guards in SCS2 will turn the city hostile pretty darn quick. You need to kill them as fast as possible to prevent them from shouting out. Now, they have just under 100 HP apiece, have 45% resistance to physical damage (!) thanks to Item Revisions' Drow Full Plate +3 (which retains it's normal -4 AC, despite ostensibly being only a +3 item), 76 innate MR, and an effective -8 AC from their 19 DEX and the full plate. I had Ivinhale lay her traps, since her normal traps, unlike Varen's, will deal a lot of nonmagical fire damage all at once, instead of lingering poison damage spread out over time. I also fully buff everyone in the party and have three of our frontliners drink Potions of Heroism for a slight damage boost. Horun gives Sanchuudoku to Maeruo, since Maeruo has twice Horun's APR.
I position the party so we have three party members to each Egg Guard, with Varen and Ivinhale posed to backstab. But Varen's target turns around, and Ivinhale misses. We lose a lot of damage that way. The traps do a lot to harm the Egg Guards, but the guards drink potions. Meanwhile, the other guards are within visual range and still won't notice the battle going on right next to them.
To my surprise, we actually manage to kill them before they turn the city hostile.
We complete the Ust Natha quests without trouble, and sneak out to the surface under the effects of Invisibility Sphere, though when the drow block the way, Varen has to disperse them with Teleport Field while Ivinhale restores her invisibility.
We gain Drizzt's aid and purchase some scrolls from Ribald, which cost tens of thousands of gold. Varen manages to scribe Time Stop and Spell Strike, but fails on Spell Trigger, despite her 20 INT. I am very disappointed. I haven't been able to use Spell Trigger in ages. I really miss that spell, and I won't get another chance (and it is just a chance) to learn it until ToB.
I am not yet ready to take on Bodhi, however. Our lack of Spell Immunity--SR's Dispelling Screen takes its place--means we can't block Bodhi's most dangerous spells. We may do better by gaining some levels first.
To do that, we return to Watcher's Keep and awaken the many Statues guarding the portal to the next level. Our traps absolutely trash the nearby fighters. The mages aren't affected, of course, but our summons absorb their initial spell damage.
The game crashes for some reason, so I start over. It plays out fairly similarly the second time around, with the first fighter Statues arriving in poor shape and the mages occupied with our summons.
That divination spell of Horun's is Farsight, not True Seeing. I wanted to be able to monitor the situation from afar.
We split up to take on the enemy mages. Ivinhale dispels the illusions on both, then the female mage heads north, so I have Maeruo run over to attack her with Sanchuudoku. Varen, tucked away in a corner to the north, is in place to take the mage's Globe of Invulnerability--which Ivinhale cannot do, as she only has Spell Thrust, which last I tested was blocked by GOI, and cannot dispel defenses greater than 5th level anyway, according to the SR description.
Maeruo can hit her with Nature's Vengeance through her GOI, but it's not reliable. Varen takes down the GOI, allowing a feedback loop with Acidic Backlash. Meanwhile, our other fighters and Ivinhale, having already torn down the other statues, break through the male mage's Stoneskins.
The first floor is cleared, and it was a breeze. What a difference high levels make. I've gotten rather accustomed to fighting with low levels, since my last several runs failed in Chapter 2 and featured many multi-classed characters.
Maeruo triggers a feedback loop with one of the Fire Giants on the next level, and I realize that he's going to die.
With his items and buffs, he has immunity to fire damage, but the Fire Giants lowered it to -50 and dropped Maeruo to 24 HP by the time I even noticed Maeruo had gotten hurt. He's doomed, but I have him drink a potion in the hopes that he'll be able to deal some more acid damage before he goes out.
The Fire Giant gets down to Badly Injured, but our party has to flee--we're just too vulnerable to fight the giants, when they can decrease our fire resistance to the negatives and flood the map with Firestorms and Fireballs. Even MR isn't enough, as Firestorm bypasses it. We cast Invisibility Sphere, have Horun pick up Maeruo's stuff, and leave the dungeon.
I check the files, as is my wont. The Fire Giants cast Lower Fire Resistance whenever they hit you or you hit them. It can be blocked by MR and offers a save vs. spell at -3, but those things are meaningless, really. The Fire Giants have over 150 HP, regenerate 5 HP per second, and have extremely low THAC0 with multiple--there are going to be dozens of Lower Fire Resistance spells triggered before we even get close to killing the giants, and each such spell lowers your fire resistance by 50%. Unless you have subzero saves across the board, you will have -128% fire resistance within a few rounds.
I consider my options. Without Spell Immunity, I can't get immunity to Evocation, which would block the Fireballs and Firestorms. And the Fire Giants have an illegal, undispellable immunity to disablers--as Berserkers, they're supposed to have Enrage to give them immunities, but it turns out their weapons give them constant effect immunity to all disablers, plus the normal Enrage bonuses to HP and damage. Which means that even after their Enrage wears off, they'll be immune to disablers. Which strikes me as ridiculously unfair. But that's sort of what the Tactics mod is about.
I come up with a solution. It's pretty simple, actually. We re-enter Watcher's Keep while invisible and move out of the nearest Fire Giant's line of sight to get ready for the fight. Maeruo casts Farsight on the Fire Giants' room while Varen casts Project Image. Varen's clone turns invisible, runs over to the Fire Giants, casts PFMW to ward off the Fire Giants' weapons (which is how they cast their fire spells), and then nails one of them with Finger of Death.
Notice she gets hurt through PFMW. Apparently they can do that with +3 war hammers.
No matter. Though Varen's clone fails to kill the other Fire Giant, we can rest outside and try again. This time, her clone buffs with Stoneskin and Mirror Image as well, plus Protection from Fire, which, as I eventually realize, gives the caster immunity to Fireball and Firestorm in Spell Revisions. This prevents her Finger of Death spells from getting dispelled. She can't disintegrate the surviving Fire Giant, but she eventually does him in with a Finger of Death spell. The rest of the party rushes in, fully buffed, to kill the remaining Fire Elementals.
Maeruo kills the Guardian of Air on his own, since he's the only one with immunity to the electricity damage that the air room constantly fires off. We also break down some golems in the northeast room.
I'm not sure how much further we'll go in Watcher's Keep. The Chromatic Demon is doable, but the third level can be very trying, with the wild magic and dead magic zones, and the many, many, MANY demons with all their nasty disablers and so forth. That's probably doable as well, but it carries greater risk. The fourth level is even worse, since we'd have to fight lots of Mind Flayers, and one of them in SCS2 carries a wand that can dispel your defenses--including Chaotic Commands, meaning almost guaranteed death. I have ways of dealing with this, but again, lots of stuff could go wrong.
I'm also not sure about Kangaxx. The Shade Lich and Elemental Lich would probably be fairly simple, considering our access to Earthquake and Sunray and False Dawn... and traps. But Kangaxx's Tactics guardians are another story. They have two Liches guarding his tomb (though the Liches appear to have pretty poor AI, oddly enough), plus a dwarf with a vorpal sword. Death Ward in Spell Revisions blocks vorpal strikes, but we might get that buff dispelled.
But I think I will go after Kangaxx. We can probably take down the dwarf in a few rounds, wear down the other enemy fighters with traps when we retreat outside, and outrun the Liches until their buffs wear off, or try and trigger a feedback loop using Yamato. Kangaxx himself would be pretty tough, but his demi-lich form shouldn't be too complicated. Horun can block the maze/imprisonment effect with Enrage and possibly trigger a few feedback loops with Yamato, as Kangaxx uses Fire Shield in his demi-lich form in SCS2.
@semiticgod few things: - PRISMATIC MANTLE still last only few rounds and it's very expensive. The idea behind it was to make it a superior PfMW (it was silly that the lesser spell was actually performing better) leaving its immunity to +2 weapons untouched. Mind you, I do prefer what I did with its 8th lvl improved version that got replaced with MOMENT OF PRESCIENCE (divination school was in dire need of cool stuff), but I couldn't find any better way to handle the 7th lvl Mantle.
- is that silly amount of +3 spears added by some mod, or was that always like that in vanilla? If the latter, I need to do something about it.
- UD's Demon Knights loot was partially changed within Store Revision because I felt such encounter should not be done by non-evil parties considering the pre-requisite for it is a sacrifice to the altar of Demogorgon. That's why you get only evil oriented loot there.
- I'm glad you discovered SR's ProElement spells can actually perform better than SI:Evo did, I was about to write you about them when I read you had problems because of the apparent lack of SI (you actually have all SI variants within SR, but "merged" into proper PnP spells ).
- what do you think about the current CONE OF COLD? I thought faster casting time was needed to allow proper targeting but I didn't know how players could react to the small pause and the spell is now extremely powerful imo.
Quick question: so we know SCS dragons are immune to backstab. Does that also make them immune to Asassination HLA? So if I use that and take on Firky, will I get "The backstab seems to have failed"?
Just wondering whether to save that HLA for the big fight...
Prepped for the Samia fight with some minor buffs as well as Protection from Normal Weapons. Given the positions of the opponents I started the fight with a blast from a Wand of Frost.
Killed Samia and Legdoril before the mage hit me with Remove Magic.
Went invisible to cast more buffs before re-commencing the fight with a backstab for the thief.
Then finished off the mage with Arrows of Dispelling + backstab, and then Akae and Chak.
Killed the greater wolfweres and then all the genies in the King Strohm quest. Got rewarded with 2 wonderful rings at the end of the quest...Fire Control (very apt) and Regeneration!
Dealt with the golems and the remaining wolfweres, using Tansheron's Bow to grind down the (stuck) Adamantite Golem.
Prepared for the Tazok fight by summoning a Berserker from the Iron Horn (which I had just found) and casting Mantle.
The Berserker wasn't much help but I cleared out the riffraff and then tried to disable Tazok with a whole bunch of crowd control spells (don't want to melee, he hits often and very hard). Among many unsuccessful attempts, I did manage to get him with Ray of Enfeeblement and Blindness. I then finished him off with a beautiful backstab.
I prepared for Conster by setting a Time Trap.
Idea was to use the mini Time Stop to backstab Conster before all his defences went up.
The Tiem Stop did indeed fire immediately.
Unfortunately when I backstabbed Conster he wasn't affected as his Stoneskins were already up Hit him with an Arrow of Dispelling and tried again but the dispel effect did not kick in until after the Time Stop ended. And then all his buffs went up and I had to temporarily get out of there.
Evaded for a bit while his PfMW wore off and after he had cast AoE spells centred on himself (Sphere of Chaos, Teleport Field, Stinking Cloud). Then hit him with a couple of Arrows of Dispelling and finally finished him off in the usual style.
So Firkraag next...and I'm going to have to beat him fair and square in a straight out melee
I'm not taking any chances for this fight. I started by donning full plate +1 for the first time (an Assassin in full plate ) and then buffing to the max as follows:
Potions of Fire Giant Strength, Clarity and Magic Shielding. Stoneskin Shield Blur Protection From Fire Mirror Image Simulacrum Improved Haste Improved Invisibility Spell Immunity Abjuration
I also have several Protection from Magical Weapons scrolls to use in the fight.
I then set a normal snare and a single spike trap.
I have more Spike Traps available but don't want to turn this into trap cheese (in hindsight I should have used the Simulacrum's Spike Trap instead of my PC's but forgot at the time!).
Nadeem and Simulacrum went either side of Firkraag, poisoned their weapons and started the fight.
Nadeem was immune to Firkraag's attempts to lower his fire resistance or dispel his buffs (thanks to SI Abjuration) but in turn he was finding it very difficult to land any hits on the dragon. The Simulacrum even tried the Assassination HLA but as per Gotural's advice, the hits did not count as backstabs.
Firkraag initially concentrated on the Simulacrum and killed it off fairly quickly.
Firkraag then focused on Nadeem himself. It was time for the Protection from Magical Weapons scrolls. That made Firkraag's attacks ineffective and so the dragon tried its breath attack...
...to no avail.
You can see that Nadeem had finally managed to land a few hits and Firkraag was taking some poison damage if nothing else. The dragon now resorted to wing buffets as its attacks were still ineffective. 3 times the dragon flung Nadeem across the cavern, but Nadeem was never knocked unconscious (thanks in part to the Potion of Magic Shielding giving +20 to all saves).
Unfortunately for Firkraag, he had flung Nadeem to near the entrance of the cavern, where Nadeem had some surprises waiting...
...but Firkraag was unaffected by the normal snare!
The spike trap on the other hand...
One red dragon defeated fair and square .
The loot was also decent: Red Dragon Scales, Cloak of the Shield with 40 charges, Boneblade +4, Bracers of Blinding Strike and most importantly, Carsomyr \o/
Windspear Hills complete, here's a character update.
@Demivrgvs: The +3 spears and Light Crossbows of Speed are due to the Tactics mod, I believe. It certainly helps with IR, since in IR you can't actually afford all of the best items unless you do the potion swap glitch to duplicate gems or something.
The Demon Knights' new loot makes sense. But where do you get the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength? Isn't that still a requirement for forging Crom Faeyr?
You said SI was "merged into proper PnP spells." What does that mean? I've seen at least one enemy mage use SI: Divination, but is there a way I could access SI myself?
The new Cone of Cold is useful. I've actually used it a few times, like Sunfire. The casting time change is worth the pause. The only problem is the loot destroying problem that cold damage has. But it's nice to have a useful alternative to Sunfire.
@semiticgod you can avoid the issue with cold damage destroying the loot by simply turning off the gore mode option (you may need the ini file I don't remember if it's in the in-game menu too). That option only gives silly exploding animations.
Spell Immunity doesn't exist within SRV4 but: - (Otiluke's) Dispelling Screen replaces SI:Abj (this spell is there only because SCS needs it) - Non-detection has been improved to replace the role of SI:Div - ProEnergy replaces of SI:Evo (it also partially cover SI:Conj) - Mind Blank replaces SI:Enchantment - True Seeing grants immunity to offensive illusions (e.g. Spook, the upcoming Phantasmal Killer, etc.) I replaced the various SI filenames too, thus SCS should use Non-detection now insteadof SI:Div, can you check if there's a mod-added SI:Div variant on your install?
The Girdle of (Frost) Giant Strength is now a loot for killing the Shadow Dragon. The scroll to forge Crom instead has been moved to UD's beholder lair, the very end of it. Now you do have a reason to clear it.
The "lack of gold" within IR is intended. For example the Greenstone Amulet has to be bought at a really high price now, and limited amount of gold you have force you to make choices (e.g. do I want that uber powerful amulet or should I keep the money for something else?). Tactics mod obviously throw my plan out of the window.
Comments
Although I've hardly achieved anything, I feel it's already time for a second entry. A lot has happened in what, two days? First of all there was this voice in my head telling me I was insufficiently skilled a cutpurse to nick an enchanted dagger from old Fuller in the barracks.
Very well, no more babbling... Gorion... My dear foster father left Candlekeep with me, for me, because he knew someone or many someones wanted me dead. But in the end he was the one to fall. He died defending me from a band of ruffians, more bounty hunters it seemed, that wanted him to surrender me to them. I fled, as he instructed me to when an acid-coated arrow hit me, and saw nothing of the battle that ensued. I found his corpse the next morning, and that of two young men and two Ogres.
Gorion was a good man, better than I am, for sure. I know he wasn't my true father but he had selflessly cared for me and tutored me for as long as I can remember. And now he's gone. I feel like I'm still in a state of shock, like all this isn't real.
My friend Imoen from Candlekeep found me that same morning after Gorion's death. She wanted to travel with me but I relcutantly declined and saw her back safely to Candlekeep. Obviously she had no clue what she would have got herself into. As much as I would have liked her company, I couldn't put her life at risk just like that.
A letter on Gorion's corpse hinted at friends to be found at the Friendly Arm Inn, but I decided against going there. Gorion's killers might have read that letter. The alternative route I took, via High Hedge to Beregost, was hardly safe either, replete with Ghouls and Skeletons as it was.
Anyway, I made it to Beregost where I met with Firebead and spoke with some of the townsfolk to see if there were any jobs I could do. For a woman named Mirianne I accepted to look for a Halfling messenger, but I found him dead, killed by Ogrillons. I slew the Ogrillons (before three Flaming Fist mercenaries would; surprisingly they attacked an Ogrillon that had strayed off).
I'm currently at the Jovial Juggler inn, where I got another scare when a cloaked Half-Elf accosted me. I really seem to be becoming paranoid what with all those people that seem to want my scalp. I tried to impress the Half-Elf by telling her I was a mercenary that's not to be messed with, but she proved friendly, and even offered to join me.
I'm really enjoying this tender young playthrough so far. Lots of unexpected stuff, such as the pickpocketing message, the Fist attacking the Ogrillons, and now Morwen. There were also Lathander priests/servants in the inn, but they wouldn't talk with Gerry yet.
At the start of the game I had a solo challenge in mind, but feel inclined to just go with the flow now, which fits Gerry's CN alignment, and have Gerry travel with Morwen for the time being. Morwen is a Dark Horizons NPC, with a slight XP headstart and too many enchanted personal items for my liking, but I may lower her XP and will drop (some of) those items. I would also crop her portrait match Gerry's better.
I've got no idea if she has any banter. If so, she'll have a better chance of staying on).
The cleric hid with Sanctuary, which in SR has a casting time of 1, but Varen could finish him off with a Sunfire spell.
We also did well against the mages, since I've finally gotten around to filling Varen's and Ivinhale's spellbooks with the right debuffs: Spell Thrust, Secret Word, Pierce Magic, and Breach. Haz fell early, however, thanks to a backlash from the Nature's Vengeance cloak (the IR version of the Cloak of Stars)
Unlike Fire Shields, Sanchuudoku, or Yamato, the backlash from Nature's Vengeance only has a 20% chance of firing per hit. But it has a spell level of zero and does nonmagical electricity damage, which means that it can bypass the defenses that Sanchuudoku and Yamato cannot: Sanchuudoku's Acidic Backlash is blocked by MGOI, while Yamato's slashing backlash is blocked by Stoneskin.
Despite our success against the previous mages, I was wary of Aran Linvail and his mage friend. I held them off with summons to draw out some of their spells, with a Cloudkill from Ivinhale to deal damage through the enemy's defenses.
In the end, that was all it took. By the time the enemy had worn through our summons, Aran Linvail was out of Stoneskins and any weapon immunity spells. So was his friend.
We got the Ring of Djinni Summoning, which in Item Revisions casts Limited Wish once per day--a huge, huge improvement in an otherwise uninteresting item. We used it several times to get the one-time wish bonuses: a few gems, Full Plate +2, and some extra XP from an Adamantite, Sand, and Juggernaut Golem. With those items, we finally reached just over 100,000 gold, and spend 70,000 of that on the last few items we could pull together: a few potions, some high-level scrolls (Ruby Ray of Reversal, notably, and Improved Haste), the Golden Girdle, and the Ring of Fire Control. Scrolls are ludicrously expensive (and very few in number) in Item Revisions, so it's a good thing we only have 1.5 mages.
We also got the Amulet of Power, which has new bonuses in place of the old ones: an extra level 1-4 mage and priest spell slots, and a +2 bonus to casting level, which allows me to use 5th-level spells in Varen's contingencies if she also wears the Robe of Arcane Might--though her contingency is for Invisibility Sphere on helpless, as an escape option.
Finally, Kolem Tao has reached level 14, and can now cast Nature's Beauty. In Spell Revisions, the instant death effect remains, but its save bonus is removed, its radius is increased to 30 (the old radius was ridiculously tiny), and it can now charm people on a failed save vs. spell at -4. It only affects humanoids, though.
It's been a while since I got a no-reload past Chapter 2. My randomized runs have been really screwy.
I will say the dwarf you get in Ulgoths beard is much less overpowered with his starting items. He does come with fullplate and a few vanilla +1 items which isn't normal for an NPC but I don't consider it that gamebreaking.
I can't report on if they have any banter but I'm hoping so as (once OP items are discarded) they both seem like interesting characters.
As to Morwen, I'm considering having her keep her armor and maybe the bow (as a Skald she won't be using it much anyway). The rest will have to go.
I left her with her bracers and armor
Hachiman quietly arrived to the Bridge area in front of the Baldur's Gate city and there he saw a new group of men and one woman waiting for someone. Their leader wanted to talk to Hachiman as soon as saw him, so the pair first went quite far away from the bridge so that nobody would interfere if things went bad and only then talked.
And, God, that was the right decision. This elven archer hit like a monster, seemingly to have a low THAC0 and use arrows of biting. I can't imagine Hachiman surviving this battle if there were other archers involved. It required several options of moderate healing and several antidotes to stay alive.
Other archers were not hugely easier. Only the lady with a crossbow was more or less safe for Hachiman.
In fact, it was necessary to rest (to heal) after fighting each of these mercenaries. Even while not changing their bows to swords when Hachiman attacked the elves in melee, they were a formidable force and rolled successfully to hit almost every time.
BTW, while one of these rests between these fights, Hachiman got his Bhaalspawn ability, @Blackraven - a lot later than the very first rest in the chapter:
Finally, the city was reached. Hachiman ran through all the areas of it trying to find another mercenaries sent after his soul but there weren't any. At least outdoors.
Then Hachiman bought a green scroll of Protection from Petrification on the second floor of the Elf Song Tavern, acquired the Helmet of Balduran from its general place (this item's location is not randomised) and found a new merchant provided by the DH mod:
Also, Hachiman didn't meet any new NPC in the city. One fun fact: the unthrowable Axe +1 the Sorcerous Sundries provided costs a lot more gold than the cheaper Beruel's Retort from the Beregost but it's actually not a much better weapon - 1d8+1 against 1d6+2 damage.
The clearing of the Seven Suns building was simple and the Ogre Mage from the Sewers was slain with the very first arrow Hachiman shot.
On the dead Ogre Mage Hachiman found his third manual, this time of Constitution. It could have a tremendous influence on all Hachiman's future because base 20 CON means Hachiman doesn't need any items to regenerate, which is especially important in BG2.
Overall, I can say that the Item Randomiser mod is a two-faced god: on the one hand, you can't plan to visit a certain location only to find there a certain item; on the other hand, Hachiman found the Boots of Speed in the Mulahey's container a lot sooner than he could find this powerful item without the mod. Also, Hachiman found the best in BG1 composite bow and the best in BG1 heavy crossbow while still being far from going to the Bandit Camp and reaching the BG city respectively.
Now Hachiman found the Manual of CON, otherwise located in the Golems' Cave under the protection of Sirens - and to beat the Sirens a soloing wizard slayer should use the Protection from Magic scroll. There's simply no other option because of the Sirens' Charm spells and Feeblemind melee attacks, and there're not many PfM scrolls in the game so that Charname could use them for the Sirens encounter if he wants to have them for quest fights.
I understand from what I've seen that the manuals can be found during important plot fights (the Drasus's party, Davaeorn, now this Ogre Mage), so it's also somewhat more convenient for a run, especially when you don't have a thief to open locked containers. If due to the Item Randomiser mod Hachiman finds a manual of STR, it would mean he overcomes an impossible task of opening the locked container under the Candlekeep while being a wizard slayer.
So, actually I cannot say that using the Item Randomiser mod makes the game more difficult - it makes the game different in terms of your approach of visiting certain areas and the order in which you complete certain quests.
The task of exploring the Iron Throne building was the next.
To my mind, Kuroisan would be a good start.
I remember @Tisamon months ago created some EE compatibles files of some fights in this thread : http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/34241/bg2ee-solo-masochistic-challenge-an-updated-version/p1
Anyway I'll send you a PM, and I hope other forumites want to beta test too !
@Jaheiras_Witness Excellent work here ! Your Limited Wish strategy against the Shadow Dragon was incredible, I really liked it. And good use of the Protection from Undead scroll, I didn't know the Shade Lord was that powerful, the only time I did it with SCS, I had two Blackguards (Dorn + Charname) + Korgan so everyone was immune to his Level Drain Aura. I guess I'll have to be a lot more cautious if I fight him without a team like that.
Considering HLAs, you could pick one Exploding Trap, because the knockback effect has a save with a huge -10 penalty. Multiple Exploding Traps are of course not very good, but one of them can create chaos and some cool new strategies. Greater Evasion is also nice, or is it only the Rogue Rebalancing version ? I don't remember.
@Blackraven Solid start with Gerry ! I too think that Morwen's stuff is a bit over the top, but at the same time, a Skald without this kind of equipment will probably lack behind in fight I think. Plus she doesn't have excellent stats apart from her Dexterity.
@bengoshi Good progress with Hachiman, those Elven Archers are deadly. I didn't know about this new shop in the BG city ! You are telling me there is another Ring of Wizardry 1st thru 5th available and you aren't forced to do the Arcane Sanctum to do it ?! There is also a second Ring of Protection +3 !
Improved Ilyich and Kuroisan will be the first to be included.
@bengoshi, nice work with the archers! Very scary for my non-warrior (even with a green scroll of PfPoison I wonder if Gerry's HP pool will suffice). Thanks also for illustrating the delay that can occur in getting Bhaalpowers. Apparently that's how EE works, and I'm fine with that.
As to Randomization, I decided not to install it this time. I love the mod (and was actually using it with Alba the evil Assassin in my BGT install until I got those CTDs). My problem with the mod is that the player still knows the randomized items are to be found somewhere, often kept by enemies that need to be killed. This goes especially for the Tomes that I tend to like too much to ignore. So a guy like Gerry, who isn't that aggressive would, end up fighting lots of NPCs just to see if they drop a Tome (due to my stat OCD
I'll think more about Zeke's character concept then I'll start playing him.
Perth the Adept proved vulnerable to lingering damage from normal traps.
We completed all the Brynnlaw quests and also had Horun Fallows seduce Desharik. It got us a free trip into Spellhold, among other unstated things.
Irenicus stole Varen's soul, tormented thing that it is. Has anyone noticed Irenicus is kind of a jerk to Charname?
Varen gave up a point of DEX, which reduced her Set Traps by 5--but conveniently enough, she had 105 base. There was no option to reduce her STR (I thought there was). She killed Bhaal with lingering trap damage.
Bodhi let us live, and also let us keep all of our crazy powerful items, thanks to my install options with SCS2. Kolem Tao's new Sphere of Chaos spell, and Varen and Ivinhale's debuffs, allowed us to take down the various Yuan-ti Mages of the Spellhold labyrinth without much risk. One problem:
I keep seeing these Yuan-ti Mages dealing tens of damage in a single hit, and there is no dialogue text saying which spell is responsible. I don't even remember seeing an attack roll, either, and Fire Shield isn't supposed to deal that much damage... in fact, if my memory is correct, the Yuan-ti did Fire Shield damage on top of the 30+ damage per hit that we see in the above screenshot. @Demivrgvs, any idea where that damage is coming from? I know Mestil's Acid Sheath could add some more, but I didn't see any mention of the spell in the dialog box.
Anyway. Traps on the Mind Flayer and the Beholder from the creature summoning altar thingy. I prepared for a fight with a Lich, but to my surprise, there was no lich in the Spellhold labyrinth. Traps on the Ruhk, then a melee rush against the Pit Fiend.
Traps on the Ulitharid in the next level. Got the Boots of Speed and no others. Bodhi tried to kill us and Varen completely freaked out. Having no soul must really mess with people.
Then, we had to face Irenicus. Since this is a no-reload run, I unequipped a bunch of items to make sure my clones wouldn't use all my best stuff. But the clones were the least of my problems: when my invisibility at the start of the battle was quickly dispelled, I could no longer hope to wait out Irenicus' bigger spells. He targeted my party, wiping out our buffs and following up with some very dangerous damage spells. He yells at us, too. He's so mean.
No need to be a Grumpy Gus, Jon-bon.
Ivinhale died, but the rest of the party struggled by with potions. Varen, having taken shelter to the far east, suffered no damage. But as the battle rages on, Irenicus' buffs start to slacken, and Varen helps take them down.
But Irenicus renews his defenses, and though our clones are falling, we are not doing well. Two of our party members die from Horrid Wilting, and another two get disabled by Irenicus' Sphere of Chaos spell.
Varen brings down Irenicus' Spell Deflection with a Pierce Magic spell, allowing Kolem Tao, safely out of range of the Sphere of Chaos, to hit Irenicus with the Wand of the Heavens.
This signals the end of the battle. Kolem Tao keeps hitting Irenicus with the wand--the charges are precious, but this is the sort of situation I was saving them for--while Varen hurries into the fray to add a Flame Arrow spell before fading back out of range.
Finally, Irenicus gives up and flees. We inherited some summons from the other inmates, which help us deal with the Murderers. We raise our fallen, collect our stuff, and replenish our stash of potions from the inmates and the murderers. SCS2 absolutely floods the game with potions, and it's a welcome change.
Saemon Bavarian helps us steal the Pirate Lord's ship, and Desharik is just crushed by the betrayal. Horun Fallows says his heart belongs to another, and splits the Pirate Lord in twain. The affair meant nothing to him.
Somehow we ended up in a city of fish people. It happens to the best of us. The big one asks us to go kill some fishies. We do!
By now, Ekayne has recovered her cleric levels, and our divine spellcasting power skyrockets. We can now cover everyone with both Death Ward and Free Action, which means we're immune to the paralyzation effect of Sahuagin Bolts. Sahuagin Bolts in IR use the Hold II effect, not stun, but Free Action in our install blocks stun, too. We take a lot of damage from the Sahuagin's damage spells--they're really a pain. They also persistently heal themselves, and summon undead, which drags things out a lot. But we get a LOT of loot from the process, as each and every one of the fishies is carrying a Spear +3 and a Light Crossbow of Speed. We also get several hundred Sahuagin Bolts, which in IR--thank goodness--have no weight, just like normal bolts.
We end up killing everything in the city except for a polite Beholder and some Sea Zombies I've chosen to overlook over the past several runs of the game. On to the Underdark!
We plowed our way through the elementals, the Kuo-Toa, and the first drow ambush. We have lots of melee power, thanks to our widespread dual-classing, and thanks to our many cleric levels, we are very, very resistant to disablers. We also have multiple anti-mage options, including multiple debuffers, Sunfire and Cone of Cold to deal damage through MGOI, and Creeping Doom and Sphere of Chaos to disable through MGOI. As always, Ivinhale plays a vital role in dealing with mages, dispelling all illusions whenever they come up.
I have managed to make the Sanchuudoku feedback loop work more reliably. Now that I actually have the right debuffing spells on hand, I can take down the MGOI that makes mages immune to Acidic Backlash. And with IR's various fire resistance items, Horun Fallows can get immunity to fire with a simple Resist Elements spell. He'd still need a Protection from Cold spell to deal with blue Fire Shields, which takes a 5th-level cleric spell slot we want for other things, but most enemies lately have been using the red ones, which makes our job that much easier.
Acidic Backlash also kills the Balor in the Svirfneblin camp, after some softening up with normal traps. SCS2 Balors come with a constant effect Aura of Flaming Death, which triggers Acidic Backlash just like a Fire Shield would.
We have gained many levels since starting the main quest. The quest XP rewards are so much higher. Varen is at level 15, Kolem Tao is at level 16, and Maeruo, the only person in the group who's still in the dual-class downtime period, is at fighter level 13. One more level and he'll be back in werewolf form.
I have reloaded a few times:
-Planar prison, a yuanti mage's lightning bolt caught me against a wall in a very unlucky angle, and the bouncing bolt killed me:I had 60+ hp so I thought I would survive, I had a potion of absorbtion, and my aura was clear, I was paused, and everything, but I wanted to save the potion and went for it.
Lesson:NEVER try to save any potions/wand charges/scrolls when your life depends on it!
-Troll mound:got cocky and careless and surrounded by trolls, and was so cloud minded that did not even notice I was surrounded and wasted my aura with a blindness spell, instead of going invisible for protection:realised my mistake and clicked to gulp a potion of invisibility, but was killed only a second before my aura was clean.
Lesson:NEVER play careless or cocky, always pay attention!
-Tanova in Bodhi's guild, released a prismatic spray in her time stop and my pc croaked instantly. Was not petrified or disintegrated, so I guess it was the save vs poison or die effect, I think. Mages are notorious for failing their save vs paralyse/poison/death, when their lives depend on it. Knowing this weakness, I had lavender ioun stone, a knaves robes and ring of protection +2 to boost my sucky death save, it was 4 or 5 I think. And I STILL failed.
Lesson:NEVER stay in the visible range of an enemy mage castin time stop, and NEVER trust a mage pc to make his save vs paralyse/poison/death.
Other than that, Minsc got smeared on the walls (chunked) by a golem in the Watcher's Keep, I was ready to go on without him but my game crashed, so I had to reload and he did not die this time. I think Boo's cosmic powers saved our beloved ranger!
Prismatic Mantle is really, really vicious. Most of the damage effects do 10d6 damage, but one of them does 20 extra damage on a successful save, and 120 damage on a failed save... and it's poison damage, which almost nobody is going to resist. At least MR blocks it. I shudder to think what would have happened if Horun had triggered a feedback loop with one of those things. He could have gotten chunked.
I might be able to find some very devious uses for this spell, once Varen finds it. Unfortunately, she's also our Charname, so I'm not sure it'd be safe to try and get in some prismatic backlashes on a tough enemy. But imagine it: a tough melee enemy like Melissan, hitting a fighter/mage dual-wielding Sanchuudoku and Yamato, with both Fire Shields, Acidic Sheath, and Prismatic Mantle. That's about 80 damage per hit.
We stopped by the Kuo-Toa hideout to get some royal Kuo-Toa blood. All meta-gaming justified by Maeruo's 21 WIS. And divination spells. You can always just assume Charname is casting lots of divination spells to figure out what's going to happen. Wouldn't you?
The Kuo-Toa Prince died to Earthquake, which in SR has an instant death effect during one of the tremors... and if you fail a save during a previous round and get knocked unconscious, you automatically fail the save against the death effect (it gives you a -20 penalty to your save vs. breath, ensuring a failed save during the next tremor), and you fall into a fissure, to your death. It uses opcode 55, however (Finger of Death opcode), so we're all immune to both the unconsciousness effect and the instant death effect. The Kuo-Toa Prince didn't actually get knocked unconscious, but it received the "unconscious" message and still suffered the save penalty, guaranteeing death in the next round. Earthquake is party-unfriendly, but it also bypasses MR, which is a huge benefit against the drow.
We also take on the drow party guarding the way to the surface, so we don't have to do it later after Adalon teleports us there. SCS2 buffs up the encounter considerably, adding golems and demons to the mix, but Varen throws some traps while the enemy is still neutral, and a Cone of Cold spell, delivered by a projected image, softens up a mage just enough to kill him in the first round.
A Sphere of Chaos, Earthquake, Insect Plague, and Creeping Doom spell completely wreck the enemy's functioning. Kolem Tao and Horun Fallows manage this all in two rounds. The projected image, protected by Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Dispelling Screen, and PFMW, also helps to distract them, further increasing our advantage. It is good to have high-level spells.
After reviewing the relevant files for the Demon Knights, we decide not to fight them. They no longer carry the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, it seems, and the only item they have that we can use is a two-handed sword, usable only by TN characters like Horun and Mae-mae, neither of which has much use for a two-handed sword in the first place.
Adalon transforms us into very pretty black elves. Maeruo has never been less fuzzy. Now that we look like pretty drow, Carlig and the other Duergar are willing to show us a new set of merchandise, much to our delight, and the prices for selling our stuff are improved dramatically. They're not as good as the Sahuagin priestess' prices, which are about 50% better than Ribald's, but they're normal for the Adventurer's Mart. Know what this means?
I believe I mentioned earlier that we collected a lot of nice equipment from the Sahuagin. Specifically, we picked up 30 Spears +3 and 29 Light Crossbows of Speed. How much does that sell for, if we hold onto two crossbows for Varen and Ivinhale?
It nearly doubles our gold supply. The only quest in the entire saga that nets anywhere near that much gold is Watcher's Keep. And Watcher's Keep is Watcher's Keep. With the Tactics mod, it seems the City of Caverns is the single wealthiest area in all of Faerun. Waukeen is quite pleased with us. She keeps appearing in our dreams, too. It's.... weird.
But we are adventurers, and so we can't afford to spend our money on golden showers alone: we spend most of that newfound fortune on potions and scrolls from Carlig and the merchants at the entrance to Ust Natha. Unfortunately, we fail to scribe our first Prismatic Mantle scroll I've ever encountered, but the others all went fine. I hold back on some other purchases--Ust Natha also features the Defender of Easthaven, among other weapons, some of which are from ToB, but nerfed somewhat--but we do get a hold of Kaligun's Amulet of Magic Resistance and the Greenstone Amulet. The former now can cast Magic Resistance at casting level 15, once per day. But due to an error in the item file, it seems the spell is tagged to be cast instantly, which according to DLTCEP causes the casting level to be set to 10, instead of 15. Either way, it's a huge benefit. The Greenstone Amulet has been streamlined: it now grants immunities as a passive effect, no charges involved. Now Maeruo is immune to charm, confusion, feeblemind, stun, and hold II. The party is getting very powerful.
But I am apprehensive about Ust Natha, and may decline to complete it, and not just because of the constant sexual tension between Phaere and Solaufein: I might get stuck in the city and have to fight my way out, which is barely even possible in SCS2. I've had problems in past no-reload runs in which the Egg Guards would almost invariably alert the whole city to our mischief, and force us to kill Matron Mother Ardulace and flee the city, missing out on a lot of experience and ending the quest prematurely. It may be wiser to simply take the XP hit and escape the Underdark by casting Farsight and ordering Horun's bats to nibble on Adalon's ankles until she turns hostile and the way to the surface is made clear.
But the city gets locked down right after you give Matron Mother Ardulace the blood of the Kuo-Toa Prince, Elder Brain, or Elder Orb. So I need to make that decision before I continue the run. Does anyone know what the XP rewards for completing the quest normally are? And does anybody know any truly reliable means of silencing the Egg Guards? The only strategy I've found reliable so far is to just kill them really, really fast, and that would require dice rolls... which can and will go wrong in no-reload runs.
I just got Maeruo to fighter level 14, recovering his Shapeshifter levels and allowing him to equip his old Greater Werewolf Token. But due to an error with the drow avatars (which I thought I had disabled), equipping the token causes the game to crash. It would be a convenient excuse to abandon the quest and make our way to the surface without Adalon's aid, and though the XP loss would be steep, we would be entering the endgame with our last character finally done with dual-classing.
I have no intention of fighting my way through the Mind Flayer city or the Beholder hive. The Beholders will blast through our defenses like the evil jerkfaces they are, and the Mind Flayers could destroy the entire run with a few well-placed critical hits.
Shadows of Amn is approaching an end. There are only a few remaining major challenges, and the party has just now, finally, come into its own. We'll just have to see how things go.
Dual-classing at high levels in party runs is for losers and ToB fanatics. It gives very minimal additional bonuses, while increasing the downtime period exponentially. Maeruo has outrageous defensive advantages compared to the other fighters thanks to his Greater Werewolf form, but he has been dead weight on so many battles that it really wasn't worth it. What good is a moderately stronger werewolf form if you have to be an unarmored fighter for half the game, as Maeruo was?
Maeruo carried the party in the early game. And in the late game, he'll be a better tank than Horun Fallows. But for everything in between, Maeruo was nothing more than a drain on the party's XP. All he did was contribute minor slashing damage and then die midway through the battle.
Sigh.
At least Horun will get his big fuzzy teddy bear back.
As to the XP to be gained in Ust Natha, you could take a look at this link to make an estimation.
Gerry, Gnome Cleric/Thief, update 2
Soon after we teamed up, Morwen and I decided not to travel together after all, for we proved to have differing and irreconcilable expectations and preferences as to how to work. E.g. she desired to travel in a large band whereas I wasn't convinced of the need of that, and I was becoming increasingly convinced of the importance of stealth, which was something she had little affinity with. (In reality I nerfed Morwen and her items, which included removing an innate flat +2 Thac0 bonus but when I continued, the latter bonus still showed up in her character record. It prompted me to remove her from the party.)
Since then I've prevailed in various violent encounters, with Hobgoblins, Huge Spiders, a Bounty Hunter at the FAI,
Again, little progress to justify an update, but the main reason I'm posting is that I have an important question regarding stealth. In my BGT experience there's a brief cooldown period of one round when a character fails to hide, before a new stealth attempt can be undertaken, and in BGEE it's the same. On the other hand, if the character purposely breaks stealth, for example to start a conversation, or to pick something up from the ground, the character can immediately re-enter stealth mode because they never clouded their "hiding aura". However my current EE-setup does not function that way. Gerry has to wait till the next round before he can hide again, just like after a failed stealth attempt. Is this how EE is supposed to work? I don't believe this to be a mod-thing, unless it's to do with Dark Horizons or SCS v30 since those are the only new/updated mods I'm playing with. Does anyone know whether it's possible to use NearInfinity get rid of the cooldown period after deliberate stealth-breaking (as opposed to failed hiding attempts)? Being able to turn a corner and quickly hide again before a pursuer sees you is both realistic imo and desirable for my playstyle, for example in Irenicus' Dungeon.
You'll get used to it very soon, with my F/M/T I have the habit to enter stealth, and immediately to click on my weapon slot to start to leave shadows.
Edit: thanks also for the tip!
I didn't know the stealth cooldown applied to all Thieves (I thought only Shadowdancers).
I decided to go to Windspear Hills next...might as well get the tour of the provinces done rather than go back to Athkatla and then trek all the way out here again.
Refused Garren's hospitality (still no need to rest, not fatigued) and the outside area was easy enough. First dungeon level was also easy except for getting level drained once by a Vampiric Mist, and the Ruhk Transmuter, who was very tough. I decided to use up some of my huge stock of scrolls by sending a bunch of summons at him in dribs and drabs to waste some of his better spells. Once I'd seen him use up a few offensive spells I went into melee myself but took a battering...he seemed to have something like 4APR and was hitting every time (only for 10 damage a pop but it added up really fast)...meanwhile I was struggling to hit at all (had to use FoA + Namarra as immune to +1 weapons) and even when I did and finally got through his stoneskins, he would just cast another set. Over the course of the battle I had to get through 4 lots of Stoneskins! That battle cost me 5 invisibility potions and 13(!) Potions of Extra Healing.
Onto level 2, and I've just stopped after the undead lair. What a battle that was, I'm shattered!
I did not have any Protection from Undead scrolls but I thought I did have a good plan. That plan was for the vampires not to know what hit them. Literally.
I have 5 Mislead scrolls
So I started off as above getting rid of the mummies and ghasts to create some room. The vampires were already summoning rat packs.
I then went after the first vampire. Shouldn't take more than 2 hits per vampire right? This will be so easy...
Uh-oh. They are immune to +2 weapons?! This isn't good.
The only (one-handed) +3 weapon I have is the Flail of Ages, but I cannot backstab with that. Which means I cannot use Mislead to backstab. Which means this plan is doomed!
I took a moment to re-assess and I decided I may as well press the attack. I didn't have a hope of fighting these vampires in melee, I'd be level drained to oblivion in seconds. So my only hope was to kill them all as fast as possible with the FoA under Mislead. The trouble is Mislead only lasts 1 round/level, which for a scroll (cast as level 10) means only 10 rounds of attack. And even hasted, I only have 2APR with the flail.
I killed the first vampire shortly before the Mislead wore off. The rats actually helped me here by restricting everybody's movement, which meant I could keep attacking the vampire without it just running away.
5 more to go. I decided to accompany the second Mislead with Improved Haste, which raised my APR to 3...that's still a 50% increase!
Killed the second vampire and started attacking the third as my second Mislead wore off. Immediately I got hit by a x4 backstab and level drained. Looks like I got a bit lucky with the damage roll...
Now onto my 3rd Mislead and 2nd Improved Haste. Killed the third and the fourth, my most successful Mislead so far!
Used my 4th Mislead with normal Oil of Speed (running very short of Improved Haste scrolls
And located the 6th.
But then the Mislead wore off and...
Mesmerism? What on earth is that? What I don't understand here is I seem to have made my save vs spell and yet I still seem to have succumbed to it.
Checked my Character record and my INT was down to 3, so it looks like some kind of Feeblemind effect. At least it's not a Domination effect! I am wearing the Helm of Charm Protection so maybe that's why the vampire chose this attack rather than Domination?
So now I'm stood there doing nothing while the vampire takes swings at me. The only good thing appears to be that it's struggling to hit me (I have Saving Grace in the offhand so AC is -10). You can see in the above screenshot that it missed on a 19. So I can only be hit on a critical it appears.
And I stood there.
And still.
And then for a brief moment I started to wonder if this was a permanent Feeblemind effect, and my no-reload run was actually over.
But just before I panicked, it wore off and I dispatched the final vampire in short order.
Wow, what a fight, that was so intense and scary. I really did think it was all over for a brief moment under Mesmerise. Cost me 4 Mislead scrolls and 2 Improved Haste, that's a huge dent in my accumulated offensive power
Samia is going to have to wait until tomorrow.
PS: I have a question that people might be able to help me with. Is it possible to be suffering from the effects of fatigue without the icon appearing on your Character Record? It's just I noticed during that session rolling so many Critical Misses, often one after the other. Now that could just be statistical variance or it could be that my PC is fatigued and I really need to rest before disaster strikes. Does anybody know the answer to this?
I don't believe it's possible to be fatigued without the icon. I don't think they're separate things, the icon and the effect. You might have just gotten unlucky. I'd perform a test to see. CLUA in a critter--maybe a Clay Golem (GOLCA01), hit it with CTRL-Q, and take a bunch of swings at it with a slashing or piercing weapon. Then you can see if there are more critical misses than normal.
Otherwise, I'd rest just to be sure.
And at the same time, I was so into Jaden. I was really feeling him. So I decided to restart him again.
So far so good, he is in chapter 4 with 150,000 xp. I really got past the trouble of leveling up a non mix-max solo Sorcerer. Now he is doing very well in fights with a combination of MMM, Stoneskin, MGoI, Mirror Image, and MSD.
Now, everyone in the party will come prebuffed with Barkskin, Aid, Death Ward, Free Action, Luck, Bless, Protection from Evil, and Resist Fear. Our fighter/druids and ranger/clerics also get Armor of Faith, Chaotic Commands, Stoneskin, and Regeneration. Our mage/thieves get Shield, Blur, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, and Dispelling Screen. The whole party is basically immune to all disablers. It's nice to have a comprehensive defensive setup for a no-reload run.
I thought a long while about the Ust Natha quests and finally decided I would give them one shot, and if the Egg Guards turned the city hostile, I would allow myself one reload. I at least wanted to try it out.
The Egg Guards in SCS2 will turn the city hostile pretty darn quick. You need to kill them as fast as possible to prevent them from shouting out. Now, they have just under 100 HP apiece, have 45% resistance to physical damage (!) thanks to Item Revisions' Drow Full Plate +3 (which retains it's normal -4 AC, despite ostensibly being only a +3 item), 76 innate MR, and an effective -8 AC from their 19 DEX and the full plate. I had Ivinhale lay her traps, since her normal traps, unlike Varen's, will deal a lot of nonmagical fire damage all at once, instead of lingering poison damage spread out over time. I also fully buff everyone in the party and have three of our frontliners drink Potions of Heroism for a slight damage boost. Horun gives Sanchuudoku to Maeruo, since Maeruo has twice Horun's APR.
I position the party so we have three party members to each Egg Guard, with Varen and Ivinhale posed to backstab. But Varen's target turns around, and Ivinhale misses. We lose a lot of damage that way. The traps do a lot to harm the Egg Guards, but the guards drink potions. Meanwhile, the other guards are within visual range and still won't notice the battle going on right next to them.
To my surprise, we actually manage to kill them before they turn the city hostile.
We complete the Ust Natha quests without trouble, and sneak out to the surface under the effects of Invisibility Sphere, though when the drow block the way, Varen has to disperse them with Teleport Field while Ivinhale restores her invisibility.
We gain Drizzt's aid and purchase some scrolls from Ribald, which cost tens of thousands of gold. Varen manages to scribe Time Stop and Spell Strike, but fails on Spell Trigger, despite her 20 INT. I am very disappointed. I haven't been able to use Spell Trigger in ages. I really miss that spell, and I won't get another chance (and it is just a chance) to learn it until ToB.
I am not yet ready to take on Bodhi, however. Our lack of Spell Immunity--SR's Dispelling Screen takes its place--means we can't block Bodhi's most dangerous spells. We may do better by gaining some levels first.
To do that, we return to Watcher's Keep and awaken the many Statues guarding the portal to the next level. Our traps absolutely trash the nearby fighters. The mages aren't affected, of course, but our summons absorb their initial spell damage.
The game crashes for some reason, so I start over. It plays out fairly similarly the second time around, with the first fighter Statues arriving in poor shape and the mages occupied with our summons.
That divination spell of Horun's is Farsight, not True Seeing. I wanted to be able to monitor the situation from afar.
We split up to take on the enemy mages. Ivinhale dispels the illusions on both, then the female mage heads north, so I have Maeruo run over to attack her with Sanchuudoku. Varen, tucked away in a corner to the north, is in place to take the mage's Globe of Invulnerability--which Ivinhale cannot do, as she only has Spell Thrust, which last I tested was blocked by GOI, and cannot dispel defenses greater than 5th level anyway, according to the SR description.
Maeruo can hit her with Nature's Vengeance through her GOI, but it's not reliable. Varen takes down the GOI, allowing a feedback loop with Acidic Backlash. Meanwhile, our other fighters and Ivinhale, having already torn down the other statues, break through the male mage's Stoneskins.
The first floor is cleared, and it was a breeze. What a difference high levels make. I've gotten rather accustomed to fighting with low levels, since my last several runs failed in Chapter 2 and featured many multi-classed characters.
Maeruo triggers a feedback loop with one of the Fire Giants on the next level, and I realize that he's going to die.
With his items and buffs, he has immunity to fire damage, but the Fire Giants lowered it to -50 and dropped Maeruo to 24 HP by the time I even noticed Maeruo had gotten hurt. He's doomed, but I have him drink a potion in the hopes that he'll be able to deal some more acid damage before he goes out.
The Fire Giant gets down to Badly Injured, but our party has to flee--we're just too vulnerable to fight the giants, when they can decrease our fire resistance to the negatives and flood the map with Firestorms and Fireballs. Even MR isn't enough, as Firestorm bypasses it. We cast Invisibility Sphere, have Horun pick up Maeruo's stuff, and leave the dungeon.
I check the files, as is my wont. The Fire Giants cast Lower Fire Resistance whenever they hit you or you hit them. It can be blocked by MR and offers a save vs. spell at -3, but those things are meaningless, really. The Fire Giants have over 150 HP, regenerate 5 HP per second, and have extremely low THAC0 with multiple--there are going to be dozens of Lower Fire Resistance spells triggered before we even get close to killing the giants, and each such spell lowers your fire resistance by 50%. Unless you have subzero saves across the board, you will have -128% fire resistance within a few rounds.
I consider my options. Without Spell Immunity, I can't get immunity to Evocation, which would block the Fireballs and Firestorms. And the Fire Giants have an illegal, undispellable immunity to disablers--as Berserkers, they're supposed to have Enrage to give them immunities, but it turns out their weapons give them constant effect immunity to all disablers, plus the normal Enrage bonuses to HP and damage. Which means that even after their Enrage wears off, they'll be immune to disablers. Which strikes me as ridiculously unfair. But that's sort of what the Tactics mod is about.
I come up with a solution. It's pretty simple, actually. We re-enter Watcher's Keep while invisible and move out of the nearest Fire Giant's line of sight to get ready for the fight. Maeruo casts Farsight on the Fire Giants' room while Varen casts Project Image. Varen's clone turns invisible, runs over to the Fire Giants, casts PFMW to ward off the Fire Giants' weapons (which is how they cast their fire spells), and then nails one of them with Finger of Death.
Notice she gets hurt through PFMW. Apparently they can do that with +3 war hammers.
No matter. Though Varen's clone fails to kill the other Fire Giant, we can rest outside and try again. This time, her clone buffs with Stoneskin and Mirror Image as well, plus Protection from Fire, which, as I eventually realize, gives the caster immunity to Fireball and Firestorm in Spell Revisions. This prevents her Finger of Death spells from getting dispelled. She can't disintegrate the surviving Fire Giant, but she eventually does him in with a Finger of Death spell. The rest of the party rushes in, fully buffed, to kill the remaining Fire Elementals.
Maeruo kills the Guardian of Air on his own, since he's the only one with immunity to the electricity damage that the air room constantly fires off. We also break down some golems in the northeast room.
I'm not sure how much further we'll go in Watcher's Keep. The Chromatic Demon is doable, but the third level can be very trying, with the wild magic and dead magic zones, and the many, many, MANY demons with all their nasty disablers and so forth. That's probably doable as well, but it carries greater risk. The fourth level is even worse, since we'd have to fight lots of Mind Flayers, and one of them in SCS2 carries a wand that can dispel your defenses--including Chaotic Commands, meaning almost guaranteed death. I have ways of dealing with this, but again, lots of stuff could go wrong.
I'm also not sure about Kangaxx. The Shade Lich and Elemental Lich would probably be fairly simple, considering our access to Earthquake and Sunray and False Dawn... and traps. But Kangaxx's Tactics guardians are another story. They have two Liches guarding his tomb (though the Liches appear to have pretty poor AI, oddly enough), plus a dwarf with a vorpal sword. Death Ward in Spell Revisions blocks vorpal strikes, but we might get that buff dispelled.
But I think I will go after Kangaxx. We can probably take down the dwarf in a few rounds, wear down the other enemy fighters with traps when we retreat outside, and outrun the Liches until their buffs wear off, or try and trigger a feedback loop using Yamato. Kangaxx himself would be pretty tough, but his demi-lich form shouldn't be too complicated. Horun can block the maze/imprisonment effect with Enrage and possibly trigger a few feedback loops with Yamato, as Kangaxx uses Fire Shield in his demi-lich form in SCS2.
We'll just have to see.
- PRISMATIC MANTLE still last only few rounds and it's very expensive. The idea behind it was to make it a superior PfMW (it was silly that the lesser spell was actually performing better) leaving its immunity to +2 weapons untouched. Mind you, I do prefer what I did with its 8th lvl improved version that got replaced with MOMENT OF PRESCIENCE (divination school was in dire need of cool stuff), but I couldn't find any better way to handle the 7th lvl Mantle.
- is that silly amount of +3 spears added by some mod, or was that always like that in vanilla? If the latter, I need to do something about it.
- UD's Demon Knights loot was partially changed within Store Revision because I felt such encounter should not be done by non-evil parties considering the pre-requisite for it is a sacrifice to the altar of Demogorgon. That's why you get only evil oriented loot there.
- I'm glad you discovered SR's ProElement spells can actually perform better than SI:Evo did, I was about to write you about them when I read you had problems because of the apparent lack of SI (you actually have all SI variants within SR, but "merged" into proper PnP spells
- what do you think about the current CONE OF COLD? I thought faster casting time was needed to allow proper targeting but I didn't know how players could react to the small pause and the spell is now extremely powerful imo.
Just wondering whether to save that HLA for the big fight...
Prepped for the Samia fight with some minor buffs as well as Protection from Normal Weapons. Given the positions of the opponents I started the fight with a blast from a Wand of Frost.
Killed Samia and Legdoril before the mage hit me with Remove Magic.
Went invisible to cast more buffs before re-commencing the fight with a backstab for the thief.
Then finished off the mage with Arrows of Dispelling + backstab, and then Akae and Chak.
Killed the greater wolfweres and then all the genies in the King Strohm quest. Got rewarded with 2 wonderful rings at the end of the quest...Fire Control (very apt) and Regeneration!
Dealt with the golems and the remaining wolfweres, using Tansheron's Bow to grind down the (stuck) Adamantite Golem.
Prepared for the Tazok fight by summoning a Berserker from the Iron Horn (which I had just found) and casting Mantle.
The Berserker wasn't much help but I cleared out the riffraff and then tried to disable Tazok with a whole bunch of crowd control spells (don't want to melee, he hits often and very hard). Among many unsuccessful attempts, I did manage to get him with Ray of Enfeeblement and Blindness. I then finished him off with a beautiful backstab.
I prepared for Conster by setting a Time Trap.
Idea was to use the mini Time Stop to backstab Conster before all his defences went up.
The Tiem Stop did indeed fire immediately.
Unfortunately when I backstabbed Conster he wasn't affected as his Stoneskins were already up
Evaded for a bit while his PfMW wore off and after he had cast AoE spells centred on himself (Sphere of Chaos, Teleport Field, Stinking Cloud). Then hit him with a couple of Arrows of Dispelling and finally finished him off in the usual style.
So Firkraag next...and I'm going to have to beat him fair and square in a straight out melee
Assassin vs Red Dragon...who is your money on?
I'm not taking any chances for this fight. I started by donning full plate +1 for the first time (an Assassin in full plate
Potions of Fire Giant Strength, Clarity and Magic Shielding.
Stoneskin
Shield
Blur
Protection From Fire
Mirror Image
Simulacrum
Improved Haste
Improved Invisibility
Spell Immunity Abjuration
I also have several Protection from Magical Weapons scrolls to use in the fight.
I then set a normal snare and a single spike trap.
I have more Spike Traps available but don't want to turn this into trap cheese (in hindsight I should have used the Simulacrum's Spike Trap instead of my PC's but forgot at the time!).
Nadeem and Simulacrum went either side of Firkraag, poisoned their weapons and started the fight.
Nadeem was immune to Firkraag's attempts to lower his fire resistance or dispel his buffs (thanks to SI Abjuration) but in turn he was finding it very difficult to land any hits on the dragon. The Simulacrum even tried the Assassination HLA but as per Gotural's advice, the hits did not count as backstabs.
Firkraag initially concentrated on the Simulacrum and killed it off fairly quickly.
Firkraag then focused on Nadeem himself. It was time for the Protection from Magical Weapons scrolls. That made Firkraag's attacks ineffective and so the dragon tried its breath attack...
...to no avail.
You can see that Nadeem had finally managed to land a few hits and Firkraag was taking some poison damage if nothing else. The dragon now resorted to wing buffets as its attacks were still ineffective. 3 times the dragon flung Nadeem across the cavern, but Nadeem was never knocked unconscious (thanks in part to the Potion of Magic Shielding giving +20 to all saves).
Unfortunately for Firkraag, he had flung Nadeem to near the entrance of the cavern, where Nadeem had some surprises waiting...
...but Firkraag was unaffected by the normal snare!
The spike trap on the other hand...
One red dragon defeated fair and square
The loot was also decent: Red Dragon Scales, Cloak of the Shield with 40 charges, Boneblade +4, Bracers of Blinding Strike and most importantly, Carsomyr \o/
Windspear Hills complete, here's a character update.
The Demon Knights' new loot makes sense. But where do you get the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength? Isn't that still a requirement for forging Crom Faeyr?
You said SI was "merged into proper PnP spells." What does that mean? I've seen at least one enemy mage use SI: Divination, but is there a way I could access SI myself?
The new Cone of Cold is useful. I've actually used it a few times, like Sunfire. The casting time change is worth the pause. The only problem is the loot destroying problem that cold damage has. But it's nice to have a useful alternative to Sunfire.
Spell Immunity doesn't exist within SRV4 but:
- (Otiluke's) Dispelling Screen replaces SI:Abj (this spell is there only because SCS needs it)
- Non-detection has been improved to replace the role of SI:Div
- ProEnergy replaces of SI:Evo (it also partially cover SI:Conj)
- Mind Blank replaces SI:Enchantment
- True Seeing grants immunity to offensive illusions (e.g. Spook, the upcoming Phantasmal Killer, etc.)
I replaced the various SI filenames too, thus SCS should use Non-detection now insteadof SI:Div, can you check if there's a mod-added SI:Div variant on your install?
The Girdle of (Frost) Giant Strength is now a loot for killing the Shadow Dragon. The scroll to forge Crom instead has been moved to UD's beholder lair, the very end of it. Now you do have a reason to clear it.
The "lack of gold" within IR is intended. For example the Greenstone Amulet has to be bought at a really high price now, and limited amount of gold you have force you to make choices (e.g. do I want that uber powerful amulet or should I keep the money for something else?). Tactics mod obviously throw my plan out of the window.