It's been so long since I last updated I can't actually find my last post: Rondo has finished BG1 with his small squad, but not before everyone besides Rondo has died several times. Of note:
All 4 died in the Bandit camp trying to take a straight fight. Not even an effective -10 (?) AC vs missiles was enough to save Truth from the barrage of missiles. After losing the initial fight, Rondo, Truth, and one other retreated to a tent where the two non-Bhaalspawns died. But the Wand of Monster Summoning allowed Rondo to finish off the fight, still kill-less.
Two more deaths vs Centeol due to forgetting that the Giant Spiders have Web Tangle courtesy of SCS.
Ran through the mines without resting, a Dimension Door from Davaeorn putting himself in the midst of my forces. Quinn's Detect Illusions fixes Truth's lack of True Seeing, removing Davaeorn's defenses, and he falls soon after.
Against the people fighting against Gorpel Hind, Quinn dies to a single backstab from full health.
Against the Paladin in north-west Baldur's Gate, Grant dies as the strength potion is too much damage to ignore.
Against the Iron Throne Truth is the one to fall to a point-blank Fireball during the cleanup. The setup was Grant disrupting with the Wand of Fire, Quinn with the Amulet of Missiles while Truth sets up her True Seeing to attempt to protect the squishies from backstabs, and Maple attempts to setup her Spirit Animals. Grant manages to disrupt almost every spell while Quinn has to Potion of Invisibility after taking a backstab. But Truth failed to disrupt a spell on the left side, fails her save, and is burnt to a crisp. One Raise Dead later...
Last Tomes: DEX and STR are given to Quinn, INT to Rondo, and all 3 WIS tomes to Maple to 21.
Ogres are fought off without a hitch. Candlekeep's fairly easy, with Pratt's group fought off by another bombing of fire. No deaths here. Maple's leveled to 9 sometime around here, so she can now Pixie Dust for group invisibility for ease of travel.
Slythe's backstabs are baited by summons, and Krystin doesn't fare too well against all the boosted APR from the group. Doppelgangers in the ducal palace are actually crushed hard, as Hasted Spirit Animals added onto the Skald's song ridiculousness as well as Quinn's first point in Two Weapon Fighting allowing his new 19 STR to come into play. The mage and shaman can't complete a spell as True Seeing strip illusions and elemental damage stopping the spells through their protections.
One death to the Undercellar party, as Quinn is 100-0 by a single Unholy Blight.
Temple battle: Quinn's Dispelling arrows are on point, and Slythe's sword is allowing him to output some pretty good damage. Grant and Truth split off a mage, while Grant's constantly distracting opponents with the Wand of Monster Summoning. Eventually two potions of magic blocking have to be used to block a Chaos effect aimed at Rondo and Maple, but the end is inevitable: Sarevok dies, and the kill-less Skald is on the way to Amn. Currently finishing a fresh install of BG2 (not EE), so I'll check on stats when I get it finished.
I can't express my delight enough when I read about Corey's and Dogdancing's joint adventures.
@Blackraven To me, the main factor is my own pleasure. As soon as something stops to feel fun, I, of course, can make myself continue a bit, but in the end I will always stop. I think the fact you stopped eventually with a Skald shows it as well. But it was in the Underdark, while right now you're much earlier in the game. It's just that a cleric is not your cup of tea right now, it's fine. I remember you intended all that run to provide a full SoD adventure, with all the banters and romances. If the cleric is not your choice, then you have to change the character. Also, you can use the EE-Keeper and (yes, it won't be easy, but still it may take less time than replaying all your progress) change the class manually.
Just a quick note about the Zaxxon/Tcos multi-player duo. Corey_Russell misread the stats - I thought Tcos save vs. death was -3 and so didn't have her use her shield of harmony in the Umar Temple area - but it was FIVE (e.g. she gets +3 bonus from her base stats) - unfortunately Zaxxon was wearing armor so could not invis her and she was wearing the RoAC so couldn't use that either. So he used RoR, but eventually the minions we summoned died then they all converged on her and killed her instantly.
RIP Tcos the gnomish fighter/thief. Zaxxon will miss you.
"Charge right in there and beat them up." shouted Zaxxon, "they can't hold you!"
I adjust my armor and grip my weapons tightly. I nod and grunt over my shoulder to Berserker Bob and Genie Gene. With a battle cry we scurry over the worn stones and crash into the shadow fiends, hacking and slashing.
"Wait a minute" I hear Zaxxon comment, "what is going on here?"
I try to turn to see, but I find only my eyes turning...the rest of me held firmly.
"oh ha." says the gnome with a curt laugh. "Your held. My bad."
...my bad...wha???
I jerk and twist in a futile attempt to free my self from the impending doom. I feel the refreshing breeze of the RoR rise up from my feet and cloak me in light. Many small hands, made of cold darkness, claw it to shreds...
...I twist and turn thrashing against the weight of the darkness....
"Tcos?" I hear in my ears as I gasp once and find there to be no more air. "Tcos?"
A gentle hand on my forehead helps me to open my eyes.
Gorion's bearded face looks concernedly back at me. "It's time to go, it's not safe here any more." I stiffly sit up and glance around. The warm heavily scented air of Candlekeep wafts past me washing the touch of the dreams from my skin.
I slid from the bed and start the adventure again.
Sorry to see Tcos has joined the undead hordes - on the positive side though a new beginning offers almost unlimited opportunities for your new characters
I did a run with a cleric once, when the EE came out, so I could have all new NPCs in the same group. Found it very underwhelming for the same reasons. I didn't feel Charname was as powerful as the rest, except at epic levels when facing undead. Maybe Fighter/ranger dualled to cleric could be an answer? Anomen is quite a competent character, for example.
I did a run once where everyone was a cleric of some kind. Fighter/cleric, cleric/illusionist, cleric/thief etc. I quite enjoyed it. It was modded so there was Gavin and Finch a well as the vanilla characters.
Nothing has happened recently of great note. We did a lot of quests in Baldur's Gate that were not at all dangerous. On a visit to Berergost we met Neera and eventually did all that we could to help her, eventually linking her up with another wild mage. She was then replaced by Rasaad.
Near a halfling village, imoen discovered a suspicious party so I webbed them. branwen then investigated them by casting Holy Smite.
Since they were hurt by it, we realised that they were evil and so we launched a concerted attack against them. They died even before being released from the web spell.
We hope to be having more interesting encounters in the near future.
@RelSundan A lot of people here are from the old Bioware forums and have never stopped playing the original Baldur's Gate games. I didn't even own the EE versions until last week.
Lirilis, lawful good female elven dragon disciple with a randomized spellbook, update 2
I started exploring multiple wilderness areas, defeating Teyngan's party and Zordral first. Next was the xvart village, where I remembered Lirilis' new breath weapon power and used it for the first time:
I have to say, it is pretty awesome - though I constantly underestimated the size of the cone, sometimes hitting my own party:
As you can see in this screenshot, by that point, Lirilis had reached level 4 - and her first level 2 spell was randomized to be "luck" - not great, because the extremely short duration makes this spell almost unusable as a combat buff.
Lirilis explored the Cloudpeak Mountains next (she first acquired the boots of the north, though), helping Drienne and Albert. Fourth level also meant that chromatic orbs now have the chance to blind an opponent, successfully used here against Vax:
Sendai's party was next:
I decided to travel north for a while, in order to get another ankheg armor. An ankheg was found and killed, I also once again accidentally killed Tenya, though it had nothing to do with dealing too much damage this time (by now, I'm prepared for that) - she managed to command Imoen, and after the duration of command ended - she was allied once again at this point - Imoen just got up and attacked Tenya again before I could stop her, thus turning her hostile and forcing me to kill her. It seems like the command spell has stopped her from receiving new orders and instead forced her to continue with her old ones. Anyway, not a tragedy.
Next, the 20 zombies had to die and I bought some new items (cloak of displacement, greenstone amulet).
Northeast of Nashkell, the party defeated Arghain, saved Hulrik's cow and I learned something else about the dragon disciple's breath weapon: After using it, there's a short period of time where you can't move. This almost ended my run when I positioned Lirilis in such a way as to hit the maximum number of Sarhedra's ogres - multiple ogres were able to attack her, though thankfully, only two of them managed to hit. She had to run away:
In the southwestern part of the map, I helped Charleston and Laurel. Tired as I was, I should have stopped playing at this point, but instead I decided to go for the Nashkell mines. Everything went fine until the battle with Mulahey, where a couple of mistakes caused a very messy fight. I started off by recruiting Xan and decided to try something different and fight in his part of the cave, luring Mulahey there. I didn't realize some creatures would also spawn in there, directly next to my vulnerable main character and Imoen. I panicked, which resulted in me not being able to disrupt Mulahey's rigid thinking, and Khalid's attempt to activate the greenstone amulet was a moment too late - it still activated, but only after he was already affected.
Having to run around with Lirilis so she wouldn't get killed, I once again couldn't interrupt Mulahey, and Jaheira was held. At this point, I was forced to use my breath weapon to both disrupt the next hold person and kill the minions who were about to kill Jaheira and were getting very dangerous for Lirilis herself:
However, because there were still two skeletons left, Mulahey managed to cast another hold spell, this time affecting Imoen. In the meantime, Lirilis killed the two undead, but the evil cleric summoned a spiritual hammer and started attacking the dragon disciple (who has no defensive spells). I had to use Xan, who was completely useless without any spells or items, to distract Mulahey. He was killed in one hit:
My only choice left was using the wand of frost to kill my opponent, thus losing all of his items, most importantly the ring of holiness. Well, it worked, but I wasn't happy with myself or the result.
At least I got another level up for Lirilis - two new spellpicks. The new level 1 spell is - blindness! Quite good, though it would have been much more useful for the earlier parts of the game. The second level spell is deafness, not exactly great, though I'm certainly going to try it out (since luck isn't much better anyway).
After returning to Nashkell, I discovered that resting in towns with the pause function being activated is no longer a thing in EE. Also, it seems like you don't get an automatic successful rest in order to get your bhaalspawn power (or was that a feature of BGT? I haven't played Baldur's Gate without BGT in 6 years, and it is weird to see how weak the random monster spawns are in EE when compared to BGT, and how strange it is that they actually randomly drop scrolls sometimes (which never happens in BGT)).
Since I didn't want to go back to another area to rest, I had to face Nimbul with low hp and not a lot of spells, but he failed to kill another party member. Sadly, Rasaad stole any experience points with an impressive crit:
I used the find familiar scroll and killed Tranzig before quitting for today.
Current level: 5 Current randomized spellpicks: First level spells: Chill touch, shocking grasp, chromatic orb, blindness Second level spells: Luck, deafness
Steinarr raged into Trademeet, finally arriving without being ambushed by slavers. He quickly realized that the place had problems. Animal attacks and Djinn holding the town hostage.
He got the lowdown from Cernd, then joined him on a trip out to the druid grove. The place was full of spirit trolls. Annoying, difficult to kill, spellcasting spirit trolls. Stronger than Cernd's werewolf form. Poor Cernd.
We had to rest after each major encounter because these terrible trolls did so much damage. Unfortunately, some slavers decided to attack us while we were napping. Again. But luck was on our side: Aerie had a hold person/horror sequencer prepared, and it was brutally effective.
Eventually, we made our way to the shadow druid cave. There Cernd challenged Faldorn. With a full set of buffs pre-cast, he turned into a greater werewolf and beat her down, needing only one healing potion.
Taking on the bounty hunting job from the Djinn, we went back to the grove to seek out Ihtafeer. (And to confirm that Item Randomizer had moved Belm out of its usual resting place in the haystack... yep, gone!)
The Rakshasa were extremely dangerous with SCS spells and scripts. This fight was probably a few notches above what Steinarr should have been safely taking on at this stage. But I don't remember what I'm doing all that well, so, we found ourselves in a cloudkill telly field with fireballs going off in all directions.
Jaheira summoned a fire elemental, but died before she could bring a second into play. Minsc went down soon after, because he had not buffed with protection against fire. Steinarr bit down on some magic missiles and needed healing potions. Aerie got out of the way and buffed up with spell protections, summoning skelly fodder and trying to hurt the Rakshasa with spells (without success). When she ran out of useful spells, she ran outside.
Steinarr was taking too much damage going toe-to-toe with the beasts. So he guzzled an invisibility potion and let the fire elemental do the work. By this point, it was almost dead from skull trap damage. But the Rakshasa were also out of spells and they couldn't hit it without magical weapons, which they did not have. The elemental slowly wore them down. Then Steinarr stepped in and took Ihtafeer's head.
Now there's a cute statue of him flexing his barbarian muscles in the middle of Trademeet.
Back in Waukeen's Promenade, Minsc was playing around with a piece of loot he picked up after one of these fights. It was a silver horn. He blew it, and it silenced a nobleman and his wife, cutting their conversation off right in the middle of a sentence. They freaked out. Soon the whole bar was running away from Minsc, convinced that he was about to unleash his berserker rage. Steinarr quickly hustled everyone out before there was trouble. Now the team needs to find a new place to sleep.
Next up in Barbarian News: Playing Games with Trademeet Nobles
@RelSundan In my case, because I swapped from Mac to PC and my version of the EEs were through the Mac App Store. Also, there are a few mods that were only for the originals I'm trying now... Running with Virtue right now.
Oh, modlist: Virtue, Imoen Romance, BG2Tweaks, BG2Fixes, SCS (no short prebuffs), Rogue Rebalancing, summon cap remover.
Rules: Rondo can't himself kill anything. Areas where this might be problematic: Dream state against the Bhaal-apparition thing, and the Slayer transformation.
Irenicus' dungeon is a quick run-through, Maple's multiple summons of Nymphs keeping us all healthy. Very few potions were consumed. Mephits were stealthed through to talk to the genie, and sword of chaos obtained for another 900 gold (no one can use it until UAI anyways...) Ulvaryl is killed by an assassin's critical hit while I engage, so that's a missed 8k experience, but flawless besides that. Rest in Frennedan's room to trigger Imoen's dialogue, and escaped...
I want to see Imoen's romance as much as possible, so I'm going for a rush to Spellhold. Things I need to obtain first: Enough summons or scrolls to overwhelm the dream sequence, 15k gold of course, +3 weapons for Maple, Grant, and Quinn for the Balor. Due to Rogue Rebalancing, I can get a +3 dagger fairly easily for free, and I'll have the Impaler for Maple, so the last one is mostly moot.
15k gold was scrounged up merely by the circus + slavers series. Only mishap was Grant getting Confused and summarily executed against the two mages in the slaver boat. Rondo started chapter 3 almost instantly.
Summons: The horn of Valhalla and the Spider Figurine are the two main ones, and I'll be heading to Trademeet to obtain a genie bottle. Trademeet's going to be the single main quest before I try to rescue Imoen, though dealing with the Spirit Trolls is such a pain in the neck.
Oh, and both ambushes were dealt with handily. Spirit animals soak up so many attacks, and Thieves are rather weak with a high score in Detect Illusions from Quinn and the innate True Sight from Truth. Harper's hold is also easy to run through.
Stats: Rondo, 11 Skald. 0 kills, 78 HP (12 from familiar) Truth, 9 Cleric of Helm. 16 kills, 63 HP (5 from helm) Grant, 9 Monk. 1 death. 53 kills, 47 HP. Quinn, 11 Swashbuckler. 44 kills, 55 HP Maple, 12 Totemic Druid. 23 kills, 67 HP
My HP rolls have been utterly pathetic, by the way. 8d8 + 16 + 10 ought to be averaging 62, and Truth is 4 below that and Grant is all of 15 below that.
Multi-player Trilogy No Reload Wrex the half-elf fighter/druid (protagonist, controlled by Corey_Russell) Tcos the gnomish thief/illusionist (controlled by Dogdancing) EasyTutu, no mods Core rules at all times, including level ups and spell scribing.
Well we rolled our new characters and made it out of Candlekeep. We recruited some NPCs briefly on the first map, just to relieve them of some possessions so their travel is easier with less weight, then booted them out of the party. Dogdancing was hurting in real life (not hands), so we took care of that, but that meant putting the game on hold. We will probably continue tomorrow.
How come such a few users here play on the vanilla EE version of Baldur's gate?
Many of us were posting in the BioWare forums. But they closed down. The Beamdog regulars of this thread invited us to join their no-reload thread, and many of us decided to accept their invitation. Hence, posting of non-EE runs.
Tcos the gnomish fighter/illusionist (controlled by Dogdancing)
By character sheet screenshot she is Illusionist/Thief... Anyway, all the best and safe travels for your duo as well as for all current active challengers.
@RelSundan A lot of people here are from the old Bioware forums and have never stopped playing the original Baldur's Gate games.
This. And also in my case is that a number of mods crucial for me aren't compatible with EE (mainly I mean the 'Restored BG1 character animations' by Infinity Animations). And UI - nothing could beat the old good vanilla BG1 'stone' one for me... I know there are mods WIP on this forums that implements both BG1 animations and 'stone' look so for now I would rather wait for them finished and stick with vanilla games.
How come such a few users here play on the vanilla EE version of Baldur's gate?
My current game is not only EE, but vanilla EE. That's not going to last. I love the mods too much to play vanilla though I will continue to play EE as I think that sooner or later most of the best mods will be in EE format.
Wren the dwarven fighter/cleric - FINAL Update! Groupmate: Jaheira Game: BG 2
I could mention all the things Wren did - but all that really matters is the end of the session - I wasn't concentrating fully and faced the Shade Lord unbuffed - and death ward was NOT available! (had used it for some Watcher's Keep traps).
I thought Jaheiras insect plague might be our only hope - but the Shade Lord was brilliant this time - he stunned BOTH Jaheira and Wren 1st thing (yeah, slow druid spell casting times hurt) - nothing I could do as Wren's health dissipated to nothing - RIP Wren.
What's next:
I don't have a Wizard Slayer trilogy success. I don't have the masochism of Grond0 for solo Wizard Slayer though, so instead will do a group of fighters. Time to get rolling! Be a while...
I don't have a Wizard Slayer trilogy success. I don't have the masochism of Grond0 for solo Wizard Slayer though, so instead will do a group of fighters.
Who are you calling a masochist - ooh that makes me so angry I could hit myself
I don't have a Wizard Slayer trilogy success. I don't have the masochism of Grond0 for solo Wizard Slayer though, so instead will do a group of fighters.
Who are you calling a masochist - ooh that makes me so angry I could hit myself
A short session smuggled in between work today saw a bit more untroubled progress for this dual-wielding duo.
The action started with a trip to the FAI, where no-one heard Tarnesh scream (as he couldn't).
Meilum and Greywolf
were soon cut down before the Nashkel Mine was conquered - Mulahey was another there to accept his fate in silence.
Outside the mine the Amazons found a cat had got the tongues of their spell casters and their archers proved woefully inadequate to deal with a melee assault.
Nimbul and Tranzig both avoided being silenced - lucky them, eh.
Heading north again the ankhegs' nest was quickly cleared - Gorn only needing a 2 to hit those with his backstabs . The only slight problem there was against the first one that persistently refused to emerge from the ground on Gate70's screen while being walloped on mine - moving away slightly to cause the ankheg to submerge and surface again allowed Gorn to join in the fun.
There was a quick bit of shopping in Ulgoth's Beard (couldn't quite afford the invisibility ring, but this pair don't really need that anyway) before finishing the session with an assault on the Bandit Camp. Taugosz was held before the duo sneaked into the tent to set up a couple of skeletons and issue one last noise abatement enforcement notice.
I encountered a quirk of the Wings mod that at first looked like an irreversible loss of an NPC. I felt like I had to replay the encounter to understand what happened. I'm going to count this as a mulligan and continue Steinarr's run, since it had nothing to do with losing in combat, I can go back to my most recent save now that I get it, and there's no RP reason to stop.
Here's what happened: (In spoiler tags in case anyone wants to play Wings without knowing anything.)
I encountered an avariel posing as a deva and bilking citizens of money in Imnesvale. Aerie reacted to the encounter. But at the end of the dialog, after she said "OOOH" in frustration, she apparently disappeared from the party. No exit dialog. No combat. Just gone as if she were chunked.
I couldn't fathom why this would have happened. So I replayed the encounter to see if it would happen again (which goes against my nature as a no-reload player). I discovered that the problem was that I had most of my party invisible. (Abundance of caution while traveling = no-reloader lives to see another day). So when Aerie left the party, she was still invisible. And I couldn't tell where she had gone.
Replaying the encounter with her visible made it obvious that she had just walked away for a few meters and was pouting.
So I'm going to go back to my most recent save, where she is gone and I don't know where she is, and rest for 24 hours to see if she decides to pout as a visible elf. Then take it from there.
Neera enlisted my help and we successfully helped her. I then had to drop her in order to accept Rasaad into my party and help him. I'm not sure if I helped that much as he ended up having to kill his own brother. The battles were exceedingly easy as the party could have won without buffing. These battles were blind so in future I probably won't bother with them. If they are easy blind, they will be ridiculously easy with foreknowledge. It is now time for Candlekeep once Imoen has sneaked into the Iron Throne. The spells that made it so easy were web, silence, strength of one, DUHM, and Holy Smite. I didn't need a single wand charge, neither did I need any scrolls or potions other than healing potions, nor even slow poison.
EDIT
The only real thing that didn't go according to plan was that Imoen tried to pick-pocket Aldeth to supplement the reward that he had given us. She failed and we were forced to kill him. That was NOT our intention and we are feeling a bit guilty ablout it.
@Blind_Visionary Do you like the mod? The majority of comments that I have seen have been quite negative.
I can understand why. The winged elves are supposed to be quite rare. I can understand having a mod that gives Aerie her wings, but not for generic elves.
@Blind_Visionary Do you like the mod? The majority of comments that I have seen have been quite negative.
I can understand why. The winged elves are supposed to be quite rare. I can understand having a mod that gives Aerie her wings, but not for generic elves.
I have only encountered one avariel so far besides Aerie. And I have no idea what other changes it might have made. So far though, it is integrated well into the canon content, and the dialog writing is good, which I'm happy about. I'll give a more detailed report should Steinarr survive the challenges ahead... and that is by no means certain. he's at 20k gold - 80k gold to go before he can head to spellhold. So far the chapter 2 quests under SCS have been worryingly hard... Its only a matter of time before someone gets chunked for real.
Naxel the halfling Wizard Slayer and his band of fighters - Update 2 Traveling with: Joshua the gnomish berserker Hanna the dwarven berserker Forrest the half-orc Kensai Misty the dwarven fighter Paja the elven fighter/thief
Party has made really good progress - most of the party is level 5 - Forrest isn't because he got killed by a vampiric wolf.
Because Naxel is evil, he did something a bit unusual for my parties - we killed Droth, then killed Shoal to get a boost to our level progression.
I wanted to deal with the three tombs area, but not everyone had magical melee weapons (for Narcillicus mustard jellies). Fortunately remembered there's a magical flail for Naxel at the Xvart Village. Only other party member without a magical melee weapon was Misty, but we soon encountered Argain and took his +1 magical two-hand sword. The mass of enemies at the xvart village did not help them - the party members were dropping them like flies.
Nashkel Mine problem was easily solved. Since entire party (except Forrest) had plate mail or better, the kobolds were of little threat. Mulahey died so fast he couldn't even cast a spell.
In our search for the piercing belt, ran across a large group of xvarts and bandits - but they could do little to the party.
We have sold/bought back the shield amulet and normally Forrest uses this a lot - he gets -3 AC with it, that plus the piercing belt and he's not gulping masses of heal potions like my kensai characters usually do.
Misty said she would like a better bow - so party will be working their way to the bandit camp next.
Party Stats: Joshua, 42 HP, 104 kills, Mustard Jelly Hanna, 55 HP, 79 kills, Revenant Forrest, 51 HP, 111 kills, Greywolf (1 death - vampiric wolf) Misty, 55 HP, 83 kills, Vampiric Wolf Naxel, 57 HP, 59 kills, Winter Wolf Paja, 28 HP, 138 kills, Shoal the Nereid
Analysis: It's no surprise that Naxel is last in kills - sling not exactly known for rapid fire. It's also no surprise that Misty is leading in kills with using her composite bow. Joshua is starting to pull ahead from Hanna because he recently started to dual wield.
Comments
It's been so long since I last updated I can't actually find my last post: Rondo has finished BG1 with his small squad, but not before everyone besides Rondo has died several times. Of note:
All 4 died in the Bandit camp trying to take a straight fight. Not even an effective -10 (?) AC vs missiles was enough to save Truth from the barrage of missiles. After losing the initial fight, Rondo, Truth, and one other retreated to a tent where the two non-Bhaalspawns died. But the Wand of Monster Summoning allowed Rondo to finish off the fight, still kill-less.
Two more deaths vs Centeol due to forgetting that the Giant Spiders have Web Tangle courtesy of SCS.
Ran through the mines without resting, a Dimension Door from Davaeorn putting himself in the midst of my forces. Quinn's Detect Illusions fixes Truth's lack of True Seeing, removing Davaeorn's defenses, and he falls soon after.
Against the people fighting against Gorpel Hind, Quinn dies to a single backstab from full health.
Against the Paladin in north-west Baldur's Gate, Grant dies as the strength potion is too much damage to ignore.
Against the Iron Throne Truth is the one to fall to a point-blank Fireball during the cleanup. The setup was Grant disrupting with the Wand of Fire, Quinn with the Amulet of Missiles while Truth sets up her True Seeing to attempt to protect the squishies from backstabs, and Maple attempts to setup her Spirit Animals. Grant manages to disrupt almost every spell while Quinn has to Potion of Invisibility after taking a backstab. But Truth failed to disrupt a spell on the left side, fails her save, and is burnt to a crisp. One Raise Dead later...
Last Tomes: DEX and STR are given to Quinn, INT to Rondo, and all 3 WIS tomes to Maple to 21.
Ogres are fought off without a hitch. Candlekeep's fairly easy, with Pratt's group fought off by another bombing of fire. No deaths here. Maple's leveled to 9 sometime around here, so she can now Pixie Dust for group invisibility for ease of travel.
Slythe's backstabs are baited by summons, and Krystin doesn't fare too well against all the boosted APR from the group.
Doppelgangers in the ducal palace are actually crushed hard, as Hasted Spirit Animals added onto the Skald's song ridiculousness as well as Quinn's first point in Two Weapon Fighting allowing his new 19 STR to come into play. The mage and shaman can't complete a spell as True Seeing strip illusions and elemental damage stopping the spells through their protections.
One death to the Undercellar party, as Quinn is 100-0 by a single Unholy Blight.
Temple battle: Quinn's Dispelling arrows are on point, and Slythe's sword is allowing him to output some pretty good damage. Grant and Truth split off a mage, while Grant's constantly distracting opponents with the Wand of Monster Summoning. Eventually two potions of magic blocking have to be used to block a Chaos effect aimed at Rondo and Maple, but the end is inevitable: Sarevok dies, and the kill-less Skald is on the way to Amn. Currently finishing a fresh install of BG2 (not EE), so I'll check on stats when I get it finished.
@Blackraven To me, the main factor is my own pleasure. As soon as something stops to feel fun, I, of course, can make myself continue a bit, but in the end I will always stop. I think the fact you stopped eventually with a Skald shows it as well. But it was in the Underdark, while right now you're much earlier in the game. It's just that a cleric is not your cup of tea right now, it's fine. I remember you intended all that run to provide a full SoD adventure, with all the banters and romances. If the cleric is not your choice, then you have to change the character. Also, you can use the EE-Keeper and (yes, it won't be easy, but still it may take less time than replaying all your progress) change the class manually.
RIP Tcos the gnomish fighter/thief. Zaxxon will miss you.
I adjust my armor and grip my weapons tightly. I nod and grunt over my shoulder to Berserker Bob and Genie Gene. With a battle cry we scurry over the worn stones and crash into the shadow fiends, hacking and slashing.
"Wait a minute" I hear Zaxxon comment, "what is going on here?"
I try to turn to see, but I find only my eyes turning...the rest of me held firmly.
"oh ha." says the gnome with a curt laugh. "Your held. My bad."
...my bad...wha???
I jerk and twist in a futile attempt to free my self from the impending doom. I feel the refreshing breeze of the RoR rise up from my feet and cloak me in light. Many small hands, made of cold darkness, claw it to shreds...
...I twist and turn thrashing against the weight of the darkness....
"Tcos?" I hear in my ears as I gasp once and find there to be no more air. "Tcos?"
A gentle hand on my forehead helps me to open my eyes.
Gorion's bearded face looks concernedly back at me. "It's time to go, it's not safe here any more."
I stiffly sit up and glance around. The warm heavily scented air of Candlekeep wafts past me washing the touch of the dreams from my skin.
I slid from the bed and start the adventure again.
Journal of Spugnor
Nothing has happened recently of great note. We did a lot of quests in Baldur's Gate that were not at all dangerous.On a visit to Berergost we met Neera and eventually did all that we could to help her, eventually linking her up with another wild mage. She was then replaced by Rasaad.
Near a halfling village, imoen discovered a suspicious party so I webbed them. branwen then investigated them by casting Holy Smite.
Since they were hurt by it, we realised that they were evil and so we launched a concerted attack against them. They died even before being released from the web spell.
We hope to be having more interesting encounters in the near future.
Lirilis, lawful good female elven dragon disciple with a randomized spellbook, update 2
Continued from https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/825129/#Comment_825129
I started exploring multiple wilderness areas, defeating Teyngan's party and Zordral first. Next was the xvart village, where I remembered Lirilis' new breath weapon power and used it for the first time:
I have to say, it is pretty awesome - though I constantly underestimated the size of the cone, sometimes hitting my own party:
As you can see in this screenshot, by that point, Lirilis had reached level 4 - and her first level 2 spell was randomized to be "luck" - not great, because the extremely short duration makes this spell almost unusable as a combat buff.
Lirilis explored the Cloudpeak Mountains next (she first acquired the boots of the north, though), helping Drienne and Albert. Fourth level also meant that chromatic orbs now have the chance to blind an opponent, successfully used here against Vax:
Sendai's party was next:
I decided to travel north for a while, in order to get another ankheg armor. An ankheg was found and killed, I also once again accidentally killed Tenya, though it had nothing to do with dealing too much damage this time (by now, I'm prepared for that) - she managed to command Imoen, and after the duration of command ended - she was allied once again at this point - Imoen just got up and attacked Tenya again before I could stop her, thus turning her hostile and forcing me to kill her. It seems like the command spell has stopped her from receiving new orders and instead forced her to continue with her old ones. Anyway, not a tragedy.
Next, the 20 zombies had to die and I bought some new items (cloak of displacement, greenstone amulet).
Northeast of Nashkell, the party defeated Arghain, saved Hulrik's cow and I learned something else about the dragon disciple's breath weapon: After using it, there's a short period of time where you can't move. This almost ended my run when I positioned Lirilis in such a way as to hit the maximum number of Sarhedra's ogres - multiple ogres were able to attack her, though thankfully, only two of them managed to hit. She had to run away:
In the southwestern part of the map, I helped Charleston and Laurel. Tired as I was, I should have stopped playing at this point, but instead I decided to go for the Nashkell mines. Everything went fine until the battle with Mulahey, where a couple of mistakes caused a very messy fight. I started off by recruiting Xan and decided to try something different and fight in his part of the cave, luring Mulahey there. I didn't realize some creatures would also spawn in there, directly next to my vulnerable main character and Imoen. I panicked, which resulted in me not being able to disrupt Mulahey's rigid thinking, and Khalid's attempt to activate the greenstone amulet was a moment too late - it still activated, but only after he was already affected.
Having to run around with Lirilis so she wouldn't get killed, I once again couldn't interrupt Mulahey, and Jaheira was held. At this point, I was forced to use my breath weapon to both disrupt the next hold person and kill the minions who were about to kill Jaheira and were getting very dangerous for Lirilis herself:
However, because there were still two skeletons left, Mulahey managed to cast another hold spell, this time affecting Imoen. In the meantime, Lirilis killed the two undead, but the evil cleric summoned a spiritual hammer and started attacking the dragon disciple (who has no defensive spells). I had to use Xan, who was completely useless without any spells or items, to distract Mulahey. He was killed in one hit:
My only choice left was using the wand of frost to kill my opponent, thus losing all of his items, most importantly the ring of holiness. Well, it worked, but I wasn't happy with myself or the result.
At least I got another level up for Lirilis - two new spellpicks. The new level 1 spell is - blindness! Quite good, though it would have been much more useful for the earlier parts of the game. The second level spell is deafness, not exactly great, though I'm certainly going to try it out (since luck isn't much better anyway).
After returning to Nashkell, I discovered that resting in towns with the pause function being activated is no longer a thing in EE. Also, it seems like you don't get an automatic successful rest in order to get your bhaalspawn power (or was that a feature of BGT? I haven't played Baldur's Gate without BGT in 6 years, and it is weird to see how weak the random monster spawns are in EE when compared to BGT, and how strange it is that they actually randomly drop scrolls sometimes (which never happens in BGT)).
Since I didn't want to go back to another area to rest, I had to face Nimbul with low hp and not a lot of spells, but he failed to kill another party member. Sadly, Rasaad stole any experience points with an impressive crit:
I used the find familiar scroll and killed Tranzig before quitting for today.
Current level: 5
Current randomized spellpicks:
First level spells: Chill touch, shocking grasp, chromatic orb, blindness
Second level spells: Luck, deafness
Enuhal
Leaving Candlekeep
Striking down Sarevok
Cleaning up after the Shining Lady
Most recent post
Steinarr raged into Trademeet, finally arriving without being ambushed by slavers. He quickly realized that the place had problems. Animal attacks and Djinn holding the town hostage.
He got the lowdown from Cernd, then joined him on a trip out to the druid grove. The place was full of spirit trolls. Annoying, difficult to kill, spellcasting spirit trolls. Stronger than Cernd's werewolf form. Poor Cernd.
We had to rest after each major encounter because these terrible trolls did so much damage. Unfortunately, some slavers decided to attack us while we were napping. Again. But luck was on our side: Aerie had a hold person/horror sequencer prepared, and it was brutally effective.
Eventually, we made our way to the shadow druid cave. There Cernd challenged Faldorn. With a full set of buffs pre-cast, he turned into a greater werewolf and beat her down, needing only one healing potion.
Taking on the bounty hunting job from the Djinn, we went back to the grove to seek out Ihtafeer. (And to confirm that Item Randomizer had moved Belm out of its usual resting place in the haystack... yep, gone!)
The Rakshasa were extremely dangerous with SCS spells and scripts. This fight was probably a few notches above what Steinarr should have been safely taking on at this stage. But I don't remember what I'm doing all that well, so, we found ourselves in a cloudkill telly field with fireballs going off in all directions.
Jaheira summoned a fire elemental, but died before she could bring a second into play. Minsc went down soon after, because he had not buffed with protection against fire. Steinarr bit down on some magic missiles and needed healing potions. Aerie got out of the way and buffed up with spell protections, summoning skelly fodder and trying to hurt the Rakshasa with spells (without success). When she ran out of useful spells, she ran outside.
Steinarr was taking too much damage going toe-to-toe with the beasts. So he guzzled an invisibility potion and let the fire elemental do the work. By this point, it was almost dead from skull trap damage. But the Rakshasa were also out of spells and they couldn't hit it without magical weapons, which they did not have. The elemental slowly wore them down. Then Steinarr stepped in and took Ihtafeer's head.
Now there's a cute statue of him flexing his barbarian muscles in the middle of Trademeet.
Back in Waukeen's Promenade, Minsc was playing around with a piece of loot he picked up after one of these fights. It was a silver horn. He blew it, and it silenced a nobleman and his wife, cutting their conversation off right in the middle of a sentence. They freaked out. Soon the whole bar was running away from Minsc, convinced that he was about to unleash his berserker rage. Steinarr quickly hustled everyone out before there was trouble. Now the team needs to find a new place to sleep.
Next up in Barbarian News: Playing Games with Trademeet Nobles
Oh, modlist: Virtue, Imoen Romance, BG2Tweaks, BG2Fixes, SCS (no short prebuffs), Rogue Rebalancing, summon cap remover.
Rules: Rondo can't himself kill anything. Areas where this might be problematic: Dream state against the Bhaal-apparition thing, and the Slayer transformation.
Irenicus' dungeon is a quick run-through, Maple's multiple summons of Nymphs keeping us all healthy. Very few potions were consumed. Mephits were stealthed through to talk to the genie, and sword of chaos obtained for another 900 gold (no one can use it until UAI anyways...) Ulvaryl is killed by an assassin's critical hit while I engage, so that's a missed 8k experience, but flawless besides that. Rest in Frennedan's room to trigger Imoen's dialogue, and escaped...
I want to see Imoen's romance as much as possible, so I'm going for a rush to Spellhold. Things I need to obtain first: Enough summons or scrolls to overwhelm the dream sequence, 15k gold of course, +3 weapons for Maple, Grant, and Quinn for the Balor. Due to Rogue Rebalancing, I can get a +3 dagger fairly easily for free, and I'll have the Impaler for Maple, so the last one is mostly moot.
15k gold was scrounged up merely by the circus + slavers series. Only mishap was Grant getting Confused and summarily executed against the two mages in the slaver boat. Rondo started chapter 3 almost instantly.
Summons: The horn of Valhalla and the Spider Figurine are the two main ones, and I'll be heading to Trademeet to obtain a genie bottle. Trademeet's going to be the single main quest before I try to rescue Imoen, though dealing with the Spirit Trolls is such a pain in the neck.
Oh, and both ambushes were dealt with handily. Spirit animals soak up so many attacks, and Thieves are rather weak with a high score in Detect Illusions from Quinn and the innate True Sight from Truth. Harper's hold is also easy to run through.
Stats: Rondo, 11 Skald. 0 kills, 78 HP (12 from familiar)
Truth, 9 Cleric of Helm. 16 kills, 63 HP (5 from helm)
Grant, 9 Monk. 1 death. 53 kills, 47 HP.
Quinn, 11 Swashbuckler. 44 kills, 55 HP
Maple, 12 Totemic Druid. 23 kills, 67 HP
My HP rolls have been utterly pathetic, by the way. 8d8 + 16 + 10 ought to be averaging 62, and Truth is 4 below that and Grant is all of 15 below that.
Wrex the half-elf fighter/druid (protagonist, controlled by Corey_Russell)
Tcos the gnomish thief/illusionist (controlled by Dogdancing)
EasyTutu, no mods
Core rules at all times, including level ups and spell scribing.
Well we rolled our new characters and made it out of Candlekeep. We recruited some NPCs briefly on the first map, just to relieve them of some possessions so their travel is easier with less weight, then booted them out of the party. Dogdancing was hurting in real life (not hands), so we took care of that, but that meant putting the game on hold. We will probably continue tomorrow.
Anyway, all the best and safe travels for your duo as well as for all current active challengers. This. And also in my case is that a number of mods crucial for me aren't compatible with EE (mainly I mean the 'Restored BG1 character animations' by Infinity Animations). And UI - nothing could beat the old good vanilla BG1 'stone' one for me... I know there are mods WIP on this forums that implements both BG1 animations and 'stone' look so for now I would rather wait for them finished and stick with vanilla games.
Groupmate: Jaheira
Game: BG 2
I could mention all the things Wren did - but all that really matters is the end of the session - I wasn't concentrating fully and faced the Shade Lord unbuffed - and death ward was NOT available! (had used it for some Watcher's Keep traps).
I thought Jaheiras insect plague might be our only hope - but the Shade Lord was brilliant this time - he stunned BOTH Jaheira and Wren 1st thing (yeah, slow druid spell casting times hurt) - nothing I could do as Wren's health dissipated to nothing - RIP Wren.
What's next:
I don't have a Wizard Slayer trilogy success. I don't have the masochism of Grond0 for solo Wizard Slayer though, so instead will do a group of fighters. Time to get rolling! Be a while...
Was away on RealLife issues (including a funeral).
Just added to the original post the links to the old Bioware no-reload threads archived by @Serg_BlackStrider
(I think I had to do another thing or two sometime... Will get around to 'em.)
SETUP:
EasyTutu, no mods
Core Rules at all times
In this install, the same buffing potions do not stack
Rolling took faster than I thought. Naxel the Wizard Slayer is giving it a go with a group of fighters. Here is his stats:
If you want to see his groupmates, see spoiler.
Prit, half-elf cleric/ranger (Grond0) & Gorn, elf stalker (Gate70)
Previous updates here:
A short session smuggled in between work today saw a bit more untroubled progress for this dual-wielding duo.
The action started with a trip to the FAI, where no-one heard Tarnesh scream (as he couldn't).
Meilum and Greywolf
Outside the mine the Amazons found a cat had got the tongues of their spell casters and their archers proved woefully inadequate to deal with a melee assault.
Nimbul and Tranzig both avoided being silenced - lucky them, eh.
Heading north again the ankhegs' nest was quickly cleared - Gorn only needing a 2 to hit those with his backstabs
There was a quick bit of shopping in Ulgoth's Beard (couldn't quite afford the invisibility ring, but this pair don't really need that anyway) before finishing the session with an assault on the Bandit Camp. Taugosz was held before the duo sneaked into the tent to set up a couple of skeletons and issue one last noise abatement enforcement notice.
Prit, cleric 5 / ranger 5, 56 HPs, 102 kills
Gorn, stalker 6, 70 HPs, 98 kills, 0 deaths
Here's what happened: (In spoiler tags in case anyone wants to play Wings without knowing anything.)
I encountered an avariel posing as a deva and bilking citizens of money in Imnesvale. Aerie reacted to the encounter. But at the end of the dialog, after she said "OOOH" in frustration, she apparently disappeared from the party. No exit dialog. No combat. Just gone as if she were chunked.
I couldn't fathom why this would have happened. So I replayed the encounter to see if it would happen again (which goes against my nature as a no-reload player). I discovered that the problem was that I had most of my party invisible. (Abundance of caution while traveling = no-reloader lives to see another day). So when Aerie left the party, she was still invisible. And I couldn't tell where she had gone.
Replaying the encounter with her visible made it obvious that she had just walked away for a few meters and was pouting.
So I'm going to go back to my most recent save, where she is gone and I don't know where she is, and rest for 24 hours to see if she decides to pout as a visible elf. Then take it from there.
Journal of Spugnor
Neera enlisted my help and we successfully helped her. I then had to drop her in order to accept Rasaad into my party and help him. I'm not sure if I helped that much as he ended up having to kill his own brother.The battles were exceedingly easy as the party could have won without buffing.
These battles were blind so in future I probably won't bother with them. If they are easy blind, they will be ridiculously easy with foreknowledge. It is now time for Candlekeep once Imoen has sneaked into the Iron Throne.
The spells that made it so easy were web, silence, strength of one, DUHM, and Holy Smite. I didn't need a single wand charge, neither did I need any scrolls or potions other than healing potions, nor even slow poison.
EDIT
The only real thing that didn't go according to plan was that Imoen tried to pick-pocket Aldeth to supplement the reward that he had given us. She failed and we were forced to kill him. That was NOT our intention and we are feeling a bit guilty ablout it.Fortunately this did not affect our reputation.
I can understand why. The winged elves are supposed to be quite rare. I can understand having a mod that gives Aerie her wings, but not for generic elves.
Traveling with:
Joshua the gnomish berserker
Hanna the dwarven berserker
Forrest the half-orc Kensai
Misty the dwarven fighter
Paja the elven fighter/thief
Previous post
Party has made really good progress - most of the party is level 5 - Forrest isn't because he got killed by a vampiric wolf.
Because Naxel is evil, he did something a bit unusual for my parties - we killed Droth, then killed Shoal to get a boost to our level progression.
I wanted to deal with the three tombs area, but not everyone had magical melee weapons (for Narcillicus mustard jellies). Fortunately remembered there's a magical flail for Naxel at the Xvart Village. Only other party member without a magical melee weapon was Misty, but we soon encountered Argain and took his +1 magical two-hand sword.
The mass of enemies at the xvart village did not help them - the party members were dropping them like flies.
Nashkel Mine problem was easily solved. Since entire party (except Forrest) had plate mail or better, the kobolds were of little threat. Mulahey died so fast he couldn't even cast a spell.
In our search for the piercing belt, ran across a large group of xvarts and bandits - but they could do little to the party.
We have sold/bought back the shield amulet and normally Forrest uses this a lot - he gets -3 AC with it, that plus the piercing belt and he's not gulping masses of heal potions like my kensai characters usually do.
Misty said she would like a better bow - so party will be working their way to the bandit camp next.
Party Stats:
Joshua, 42 HP, 104 kills, Mustard Jelly
Hanna, 55 HP, 79 kills, Revenant
Forrest, 51 HP, 111 kills, Greywolf (1 death - vampiric wolf)
Misty, 55 HP, 83 kills, Vampiric Wolf
Naxel, 57 HP, 59 kills, Winter Wolf
Paja, 28 HP, 138 kills, Shoal the Nereid
Analysis:
It's no surprise that Naxel is last in kills - sling not exactly known for rapid fire. It's also no surprise that Misty is leading in kills with using her composite bow. Joshua is starting to pull ahead from Hanna because he recently started to dual wield.