If you have Edwin in your final save of Bg1, I am guessing he will be in the starting dungeon of SoD with the spellbook he had the end of bg1... Then you did not make a mistake with the scrolls. If he is not with you starting SoD, well then that is different than most other npcs
I sure hope so. I took xzar into SoD and he had all his spells. I expect it works the same for the other npcs... minus the obvious exception of course.
I have done a search to try and find what spells Edwin has in Dragonspear. Does he have the same as he had upon finishing BG1? Or does he lose them as per Neera? I've done a google search but couldn't find the answer. If anyone knows what is in his spell book in Dragonspear, please let me know.
I have recently realised that I probably made a mistake in having him learn every available spell in BG1.
All SoD NPCs you ever took to your party in BG1 will be the same as you left them. If you had Edwin in BG1 at the moment you defeated Sarevok, he'll be exactly the same Edwin in SoD when you meet him, with all the spells/tomes you gave him. If it doesn't happen, then it's a bug. Mind you, if you had Edwin only in chapter 3 of BG1, low level and with few known spells, and then sent him from your party, when you meet him in SoD you will see he hasn't changed.
I have done a search to try and find what spells Edwin has in Dragonspear. Does he have the same as he had upon finishing BG1? Or does he lose them as per Neera? I've done a google search but couldn't find the answer. If anyone knows what is in his spell book in Dragonspear, please let me know.
I have recently realised that I probably made a mistake in having him learn every available spell in BG1.
All SoD NPCs you ever took to your party in BG1 will be the same as you left them. If you had Edwin in BG1 at the moment you defeated Sarevok, he'll be exactly the same Edwin in SoD when you meet him, with all the spells/tomes you gave him. If it doesn't happen, then it's a bug. Mind you, if you had Edwin only in chapter 3 of BG1, low level and with few known spells, and then sent him from your party, when you meet him in SoD you will see he hasn't changed.
That sounds both good and bad for my current game. It means that Edwin will be great, but that Xzar and Montaron, if they are available will be rubbish since they have virtually no experience. I don’t even know if they are available. In the two runs that I have done, I haven’t met them. It looks particularly bad for Khaled and Jaheira. The only reason that I picked them up was to avoid a bug in my set-up which means that if I don’t pick them up, the game crashes whenever I enter the FAI. The good thing is that with my current characters, I wouldn't even consider such pathetically good people as cohorts.
We're hitting the road again and this time you might expect fireworks with a wild mage. As Corey mentioned recently I don't tend to cast many spells with wild mages in BG1 in single player, but I tend to be a bit more ambitious in multi-player. However, despite using numerous CLWs on Beark (and a handful of other spells) thus far Lessa has had a grand total of 0 surges - must try harder .
Progress to date followed a pretty typical start from Shoal, via Beregost & Nashkel and on to the basilisks - Beark one-shotting one of those with a 62 HP critical backstab. Kirian's party were left briefly while Beark went to get a better sword from Greywolf,
but soon became targets. Beark was hit by rigid thinking from Peter, but had managed to get out of sight of anything first and he was soon tidying up with Kirian (proper screenshot missed as Lessa was in her inventory ).
Meilum provided a further equipment upgrade before various reputation quests. The Doomsayer was tackled during those and brought to near death by wand damage before Beark finished off in close combat.
The Nashkel Mine didn't take long, though there was an oddity with Mulahey - he attempted to surrender repeatedly, but only managed to surrender his life. Outside the mine the amazons could have been a problem for Beark after he was hit again with rigid thinking, but Lessa managed to intervene with a rare use of the only combat spell she currently knows.
Back in Nashkel Beark was determined to ensure Rasaad wasn't going to steal the XP for Nimbul this time!
Heading north to maximise reputation Beark decided to try his luck at tanking ankhegs. The first few failed to hit him, but after being badly hurt here
he decided enough was enough and led the way for a shopping spree at Ulgoth's Beard.
The final action of the session was beating up some sirines using the potion of clarity for protection. Inside the pirate cave Beark tried out his backstabbing skills on some golems - that proved surprisingly successful (the client player being able to ignore golems' normal defences against backstabs).
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer trilogy attempt 119 - (update 1) Lessa, elf wild mage (Grond0) & Beark, human stalker (Gate70) thus far Lessa has had a grand total of 0 surges - must try harder .
I'll be brief about SoD. We explored wilderness areas, took care of the dwarf-lich with a help from a neat little item (I'd love to carry that gem to BG2...beats Stat Tomes anyway...); killed the dragon, hacked our way in Underground river....not much danger anywhere; used a total of two Pro Poison scrolls on my protagonist (one vs dragon, the other one in some kind of temple- one of the cleric-monster type enemies has an awfully powerful poison breath attack which needed to be negated; attack on the castle was done a bit differently this time (I feel as if every time I play through SoD I find something new; that's nice) - we were asked to kill some archers so dwarves can blow up the gate, then we released the trolls, then we killed everyting, my protagonist got challenged to a duel which he, for some reason, *lost* in two seconds (I feel this is bugged somehow), but whatever. In Hell, we killed both Argent and the Devil under massive potion/scroll buffs (I can't take these to BG2 anyway, so...). A good day's work, and now it's done.
Some screenies from the expansion:
Arkhaim Grey and his party are now entering BG2 part of the challenge, at approx. 420K XP.
I used Dungeon-b-gone to quickly exit the dungeon, bought some cheap stuff, used wands from Irenici dungeon to kill Mencar/pooky & co. This was quite risky (my thief/illusionist doesn't have stonskin nor Mirror image and is wielding a ranged weapon + no critical hit protection - he's a viable target for a chinking backstab). Worked fine however... We used Web, Wand of Monster summoning + Wand of Cloudkill. Next, Spell Thrust so mages loose their protections. That ugly thief tried something, but failed.
This is done so I can get a full plate mail, mostly. But we also found a scroll of Chaos (SR's substitute for Sphere of Chaos) so, we travel to temple sewers asap (I didn't even finish circus yet). There we pick a fight, loot there is really nice (Full Plate +1 is the best armor for my protagonist for a long while, Charm protection for my archer etc.) so it was worth the risk - for as long their mage doesn't have Globe in his buffs.
Little did Tarnor know that my sorceress is casting Chaos while my illusionist is casting an Ice Storm. Neat combo to keep them in place.
Things go bad for our enemies from the start. Chaos is level 7 disable, punching through any spell protection available to Gaius. He summons Otyughs, but that's irrelevant - Chaos makes enemies suffer from various debilitating effects while hailing storms of ice loom over their heads.
Those that manage to escape the blighted area, are greeted with arrows. There's nowhere to run.
I decide to play it safe, keeping my protagonist a bit back from the frontline; I didn't know what happened to Gaius (turns out he was already dead, but I didn't know that at the time) and I was afraid of Disintegrate and similar spells. The rest of the group did their jobs well, keeping the enemies at distance and slaying them with arrows and magic attacks.
And that was kinda it. Unfortunately, Gaius seems to have died of ice damage so all his loot (with IR, he has a bunch of lovely scrolls) was lost. Ah well, all others died to other damage sources so at least armor is there. Next we'll do some light stuff to get some more XP under the belt, then the real game starts.
Legacy of Bhaal Genocide Run: Carl the Llama in BG2 (first post here)
The same tactics we used against the Beholders will simply not work against the Mind Flayers. They can see through invisibility and teleport all the way across the map to strike at any vulnerable party members; running is not an option. On top of that, they have 90% magic resistance and their own attacks bypass spell protections and magic resistance. And unlike the Beholder hive, we can neither flee the area nor rest inside if things go bad and we need to recover.
One of the nice things about the Seducer kit is that we can charm Mind Flayers with a little luck. At Flowey's level, he no longer suffers any penalty for trying to charm non-humanoid targets. This means we can avoid using any Control Circlets on the Mind Flayers, saving them for guaranteed charms elsewhere, and just walk the Mind Flayers over to the doors we can't unlock on our own.
We can always use Slayer form, but we only get one use per day, and there are two places where we'd need it.
I want Wish-rests to help us keep up a small army of celestials (who unfortunately are still highly vulnerable to Psionic Blast), but Wish is terribly unreliable on its own. To ensure we have a strong supply of level 9 spell slots, Edwin hits Carl with Bigby's Crushing Hand while Carl is casting Spell Trap.
Each strike of Bigby's Crushing Hand counts as a level 9 mage spell, which means that if the first strike hits before Spell Trap goes up, each subsequent strike will fill in another level 9 spell slot, restoring 4 spell slots for the target while only expending one for the caster. It's a slow, aura-intensive process, however, and is not safe to do under enemy pressure.
If done in between battles, it lets us keep the party in top condition for each fight.
Still, I neglect to keep the party's buffs comprehensive. Sometimes, that's not even fully possible, as not everyone has Stoneskins.
We use clones to put more celestials on the map, but there's no way of knowing when Simulacrum can be re-cast, as you have to wait for the duration to run out even after your clone dies.
Our Planetars are immune to INT drain, but not to the Mind Flayers' other attacks. And Break Enchantment doesn't seem to cure Psionic Blast.
Only Remove Paralysis seems to work.
We proceed to the Master Brain. Stan fails to re-cast Stoneskin and suffers accordingly, while the Master Brain lands a unique debuffer on Flowey.
Once again, the enemy avoids trying to debuff our mages. Without enough pressure to force the party to focus on its defenses, the enemy cannot hold us off for long.
In a final act of cowardice, the Mind Flayers send their human thralls after us. We dispatch the traitorous humans in short order.
We were too smart to believe their lies about trying to escape from their enslavement. We knew where their loyalties truly lay.
Time to begin the Ust Natha questline, which will set us on a strict timer. Any small mistake could start the final battle early, when we are not ready. We begin by saving Imrae or Phaere (I forget who) from the Mind Flayers. For the first time ever, N'ashtar interrupts the battle. But with only Prismatic Mantle to defend himself, he is perfectly vulnerable to Energy Blades.
Our celestials clean up the rest of the enemies.
We need to take down the monster fights in the tavern before the siege begins. I get lazy and go for traps to deal with the Beholder.
I forget to do the other fights on the west side of the tavern, which I've been forgetting to do for as long as I can remember. And the guy with the golden rope never shows up, so Deirex is also not an option.
I do some testing and discover that I made a mistake with how I set up the Seducer's Charm ability. It leaves the target hostile afterwards instead of neutral. Further testing confirms that hostility is contagious: turning one neutral character hostile and bringing him over to other neutral characters will convert them, but keeping the red ones separate from the rest will halt the spread of hostility.
I correct the bug and reload.
Phaere asks us to wipe out a den of evil gnomes who were threatening the drow's peaceful ways. Always eager to stand up for the downtrodden, we slay the sinister svirfneblin, as well as some shouty Githyanki on the way home.
I get interrupted by the Aboleth. Since I want to get as much XP as possible before the siege begins, I talk my way out of his quest... only to find that that locks me out of Qilue's home.
We can't go inside. Since the no-reload aspect of this run is more important than the genocide aspect, we will have to proceed without killing Qilue or her friends.
Phaere suggests we do some target practice at the Male Fighter's Society to compensate. We return to boast of our success, and she rewards us by showing Carl her long-running affection for drow llamas.
Matron Mother Ardulace, unfortunately, does not share her tastes.
I have avoided Taso Kala (invisibility+talk-blocking is my normal method) and therefore the fight with the Ghaunadaur priests. Again, the no-reload aspect must take precedence over the genocide aspect, and completing the fight in 1 hour is simply not realistic in LoB mode with the party we have. Instead, we proceed to the Egg Guards, who only have 90 HP in LoB mode (though their AC is -8 not counting armor modifiers and drow plate also gives them 30% damage resistance). That's actually a lot considering we only have seconds to kill them before the city goes hostile, but by this point in the game, we can handle it.
Because we killed Solaufein and plan on killing Adalon as well, we don't need to fuss with the eggs too much beyond betraying Phaere. I've never done this before, so it takes me by surprise when the Lesser Demon Lord turns on me.
He reveals us as the surfacers we are. Phaere and the demon lord both go hostile.
Mini update on Keen the FMT. Due to rl I've barely played an hour or two since last time..
Apparently Minsc is of the opinion that resting is for the weak. So no resting once we got to the fortress of the twilight cult. All the tests went well, the last fight brilliant except that Nalia, Aerie and Keen were out of stoneskins since a few days back and Nalia was first hit by an arrow taking her to 66 health and then backstabbed to death in one hit, luckily not chunked though.
After this a bit of running around for Neera up to the point that we need to charge the red wizards in waukeens.
Was going to get my spells back from making improved MoD, but no luck, a day or so went by crafting it but nobody in the party saw fit to rest for 8 hours to get some spells back.
Strangely enough we were now at day 15 having rested twice and neither Keen, Jaheira nor Minsc were fatigued.. This last run had us clearing De'Arnise, Trademeet, Rasaads quests and Neeras up til the last part so several days of running around and quite a bit of fighting. Is this a bug?
Ah well, we had 3 webs a few wands and 3 decent damage dealers so figured we could clear out Mencar and his gang before resting. Maybe should have waited til after resting in retrospect... dwarf saves vs all 3 webs, berserker comes to join him two rounds later and one mr Riesling also walks through the webs to backstab Minsc for 60 dmg and killing him, again no chunking though! After a bit of juggling and about 6 casts of fear through wand and scary helm from Rasaads quest we're all good. Thief naturally gets away in spite of 100 detect illusion and active true sight from gem.. Rezzing Minsc with a wand and then finally taking a nap to prepare for Lanneth and co.
Update on Corwild the Fighter/Thief and his group of 4 wild mages and berserker:
Not a lot of time to play yesterday. Wife had a bad day and needed me to listen (a lot). Managed to pick up Joia's ring for her. Turned in Landarin's things for her.
Joshua (he's the berserker) has AC -4 - we intend to do Bjorin's quest soon, so we can get Joshua a +1 shield. Still don't have level 2 mage spells yet but we need it to expand our activities (because then we could use resist fear, and being immune to horror makes a number of encounters safer).
No interesting surges of note (mostly just spell caster level up/down, which for most of the spells we have been casting has no effect).
Update on Corwild the Fighter/Thief and his group of 4 wild mages and berserker:
Not a lot of time to play yesterday. Wife had a bad day and needed me to listen (a lot). Managed to pick up Joia's ring for her. Turned in Landarin's things for her.
Sorry to hear that. Glad that she has someone to listen. Not everyone does.
Just wondering if killing Ulraunt on returning to Candlekeep is like watching paint dry with no significant reward, as in earlier versions of the game.
Just wondering if killing Ulraunt on returning to Candlekeep is like watching paint dry with no significant reward, as in earlier versions of the game.
Isn't there an Ulraunt Doppleganger in the crypts? He might have a gem. But as for the real one, as far as I can determine, don't think they intended for him to be killed. They often put no rewards in characters like that.
@Corey_Russell I have just checked. 4000 experience, robe of fire resistance and a wand of sleep. Tethoril 5000 experience and an identify scroll. For the two of them reputation dropped 14. Not worth the time and effort. Won't bother again. No doubt @semiticgod will have killed them. I shouldn't think that the Gatekeeper is killable.
EDIT
I have just checked what happens subsequent to talking to the Gatewarden. No, you don't get Biff the Understudy, you get Ulraunt and Tethoril. Presumably somebody has resurrected them, perhaps the cleric at the Candlekeep Shrine.
I am glad that they allow you to kill them. I hate it when characters are made unkillable, or like Tazok at the Bandit Camp, the game crashes.
So, I was listening to Mogwai yesterday and randomly decided to play some BGT, so I created another character, dunno why. Meet Vishnaera, the Avenger. She's a Druid and uses staves. And darts. Except I ran out of darts and forgot to buy more.
I did most of the Beregost/FAI quests for easy XP by aiding myself with Tiax's Ghast (not with Tiax, only with his Ghast, cheese^3). I bought a Prot. from Petrification scroll in the Nashkel Carnival (after dealing with Zordal in a rather and killed all the Basilisks, had to melee some of them because I ran out of darts and Mutamin had killed Korax (luckily, it happened off-screen and I killed all the Basilisks without having to deal with Mutamin). It's pretty easy to melee basilisks with a staff, because they have to use their gaze attack which I'm immune to, since their melee attack is super short-ranged.
Barcers, +1 Staff and the unidentified potions (except Heroism) are courtesy of Silke, who got cheesed^4 since I attacked her with Tiax's Ghast out of blue, just for her staff, but found out she had even better loot (the bracers!). I spent most of my gold on the wand, dunno why because I have Web. I need to get the Ring of Energy/Necklace of Missiles ASAP.
Legacy of Bhaal Genocide Run: Carl the Llama in BG2 (first post here)
SIEGE OF UST NATHA
I've been dreading this battle for quite some time. Designed to be impossible to beat without exploits, the siege of Ust Natha in SCS was made before Legacy of Bhaal mode came into existence. It is the single longest fight in any of the Infinity Engine games, by far. And we only have 5 party members, none of which has the fighter levels that are standard fare for LoB mode. We are playing with Spell Revisions and Item Revisions, which weaken many of the typical options in SCS while strengthening others.
We have:
Carl, level 30+ Sorcerer Stan, level 30+ Totemic Druid using the Fire Elemental Token Flowey, level 48-49 Seducer using the Earth Elemental Token Viconia, level ~40 Edwin, level ~25
There are several exploits/unorthodox tactics we have on our side:
1. The Wand of Lightning trick. Nerfed heavily by IR, this will let us get three Wishes for every casting of Wish. 2. Summoning multiple celestials. This is erroneously possible via simulacrum in my install. 3. Wish Hardiness stacking. A bug allows the Hardiness spell from Wish to stack on everyone except for the caster. 4. The Seducer kit. Flowey, our Seducer, can charm enemies despite their MR, spell protections, and immunities. This, however, prevents Flowey from attacking, and it is rather unreliable. 5. Use Any Item. This allows Flowey to equip the Earth Elemental form and gain +50% physical damage resistance, which stacks with the IR Fortress Shield (10%) and the IR drow plate (30%, description says 25%), granting him 90% base resistance. Only spell damage can truly threaten him. 6. The Bigby's Hand+Spell Trap trick, which @Demivrgvs intends on closing in the next version of Spell Revisions. It grants Carl and Edwin unlimited spells, but is extremely time-consuming to perform and leaves both of them vulnerable. 7. This party was imported, and three party members therefore have an extra 1.5 million XP.
But if we were to avoid using exploits, the following options could mitigate the loss:
1. Putting an additional sorcerer in the party and/or using Project Image would allow us to cast Wish even more often than the Wand of Lightning trick, but not as quickly. If we also refrained from Wish-resting, we still have numerous other powerful level 9 spells at our disposal, though not quite as useful as Wish in this fight. 2. With the right setup in SCS, Project Image clones can summon celestials. They can also bypass the summoning cap (last I checked, anyway). There's also a mod that removes the summoning cap. 3. If Wish Hardiness did not stack, we'd simply use other Wish options. 4. The Seducer kit is actually rather well-balanced despite its many powers, as it suffers a host of crippling drawbacks. Replacing Flowey with a proper LoB-oriented build would strengthen, not weaken, the party. 5. If Flowey could not use the Earth Elemental Token, Stan would be using it, and Flowey would stick with Carsomyr, another strong option. A Skald, Blade, Fighter/Mage, Barbarian, Fighter/Mage/Cleric, Cleric/Mage, or Dwarven Defender would also make excellent tanks. 6. As in number 1, different party composition could make Spell Trap unnecessary. 7. This party never went past the first level of Watcher's Keep, which could fill in the XP gap. You can have a level 30-50 party by this point in LoB mode without importing characters if you make sure to do Watcher's Keep before leaving for Spellhold.
I mention these issues to stress that exploits are NOT the only way to fight this battle. I will discuss all of this in greater detail later. Much, much later, because this is the longest fight I've ever had, and I want to explain every detail of this ridiculously massive gantlet.
It begins.
The Lesser Demon Lord proves vulnerable to +3 and +4 weapons; we don't need +5 weapons to harm it. We start bringing in our summons--it won't be long before the real fight begins.
We grab the eggs from the demon's corpse. As is only fitting for a genocide run, even Adalon's eggs are dead.
I send Stan, Flowey, and Viconia out into the main room to engage the enemy. Edwin and Carl use the Bigby's Crushing Hand+Spell Trap trick to get Carl started on Wish-resting. We need as many Wishes as we can get, because there's always a chance of not getting that all-important rest option.
I hate that Wish is so unreliable--it's actually rather overrated in a no-reload context--but the WoL trick compensates for the luck factor. We get two of our most important options right off the bat.
All of these drow have 70+ magic resistance, 30% physical damage resistance, and -8 AC, on top of the LoB bonuses that give them near-zero saving throws, high damage output, and 300+ HP. Worse yet, they have spellcasters. Flowey uses Detect Illusions to take down some of their defenses.
Notice the fatigue on Edwin's clone. That comes from Waves of Fatigue, the SR version of Chaos, which imposes -2 to AC, THAC0, damage, and casting speed, with no saving throw. It can still be blocked by Chaotic Commands in SR, but I didn't know that at the time.
Bigby's Crushing Hand quickly fills up Carl's Spell Trap, requiring another casting. If Carl doesn't keep Spell Trap up, those Crushing Hand strikes will break down his Stoneskins instead of filling his spell slots.
The drow foolishly attack Edwin, who is under the effects of Prismatic Mantle. One of them gets Mazed due to a failed save at -4, and none of them make any progress.
The next version of SR is expected to have Prismatic Mantle only block +2 weapons, which means it can no longer ward off drow attacks (though it will still trigger those hideous Prismatic Spray backlashes).
Carl focuses on Wish-resting and keeping his defenses strong, allowing the rest of the party to stay on the offense and keep making progress against the enemy.
That enemy mage is no longer invisible thanks to Flowey, which means Edwin can land Pierce Shield without using the Book of Daily Spell to cast True Seeing (I used the Wand of Lightning trick to duplicate the book, but only plan on using one copy). Meanwhile, the drow grind down our summons, Stan and Viconia use their HLAs in anticipation of further Wish-rests, and Flowey eschews his Seducer abilities in favor of direct attacks.
Carl keeps casting Wish. When he lands a rest, we take the opportunity to use our best HLAs.
It's a pity that both our backup mage, Edwin, and our Totemic Druid, Stan, are evil, because good-aligned celestials get healing spells that are much more valuable than their fallen counterparts' offensive spells. This party is strong and it uses exploits, but it is definitely not optimized.
It's very difficult to keep track of all the actors on the map, and we suffer a hostile Remove Magic spell that takes down our Dispelling Screen--a very disturbing sign. Carl stops casting Wish to restore our Dispelling Screen while Stan and Edwin take a moment to protect themselves.
Notice another Maze effect on a drow attack Edwin. Prismatic Mantle backlashes bypass magic resistance just like Fire Shield, so they work quite nicely against these drow. Also notice the tiny damage from those Storms of Vengeance. Storm of Vengeance isn't very impressive considering its level, but as an area-effect spell that bypasses magic resistance, it's marginally more useful than having Stan and Viconia use physical attacks.
By chance, I notice that one of the enemies down south has a unique name--a sure sign that she is more dangerous than her comrades. Flowey charms her from all the way across the map; a Seducer's Charm is not restricted by visual range and can reach very far at high levels. She fails her save.
A Seducer at Flowey's level (approaching 50) has an especially powerful Charm ability. The target needs a save vs. spell at a -12 penalty to resist the effect. But with LoB granting enemies +5 save bonuses, and with LoB battles lasting far, far longer than a single use of Charm does (3 rounds), Charm is not as powerful as that -12 figure makes it seem.
We have to wait a round before the charm kicks in. In the meantime, Carl gets more Wishes. Another rest!
For some reason, the Breach effect doesn't work. I wouldn't understand why until much later--I thought it was just a fluke, and paid it little mind.
But that fluke would prove to be the most important factor in the outcome of this battle.
With the party rested once more, Edwin prepares Improved Alacrity so he can throw out Dragon's Breath and some other spells in short order (we only get so many rounds, and IA buys us precious in-combat buffing time). Down south, Flowey's Charm takes effect, but the Handmaiden of Llolth has a disappointing spell selection.
Those spells are designed to fight the player's party, not her fellow drow.
After throwing out Dragon's Breath, Edwin uses Improved Alacrity to restore his defenses, knowing they'll run out if we get sloppy. At the same time, Stan casts Mass Raise Dead to help Viconia, whose AC and resistances aren't enough to compensate for her pitifully low HP. The current group of drow is suffering, but bad news runs in from the west.
We're not done with the current group yet, and we already have another one on the way. Viconia struggles to survive under heavy pressure while Carl uses Improved Alacrity to bring in more Wishes.
Notice the camera is far from the action. That helps reduce lag, which can add minutes to the fight in a long battle like this one. Also notice that Viconia only resisted 2 of that 20 damage despite wearing IR's drow armor with its high resistances. That's because LoB mode deals double damage, and the dialog box mentions the bonus.
More enemies go down, and Flowey gains his final level, reaching 50 with almost 9 million XP.
His Charm now has a -13 save penalty. This version of the Seducer kit finally scales with level, and it scales quite dramatically, since a level 1 Seducer's Charm has a +5 bonus.
Carl wishes for Hardiness, bumping Viconia's resistances up to 100 and buying enough time for her to heal herself.
We use up more HLAs, expecting more Wish-rests in the future to restore them. Those HLAs are terribly important for countering the enemy tide.
More bad news comes in. This time from the south.
Three well-buffed drow mages are on the way. Never a good sign.
I spot a familiar Wish option that I seldom use. This could be very helpful.
That spell grants 100 intoxication for 200 rounds. That means -12 luck for everyone the map, except for those with MGOI or SI: Enchantment (which does not exist in SR). In SR, only Heal or Dispel Magic can cure it, but for everyone who gets hit, their damage output is crippled. With the right preparation, it amounts to a +12 bonus to the party's AC that bypasses the AC cap. It's probably the third-strongest Wish option in LoB mode after Wish-resting and the bugged stacking Hardiness spell.
But our party is not optimized for that Wish option: (1) only Edwin can block the spell, (2) only Viconia can cure it, and (3) Viconia doesn't have the defensive options to avoid disruption when casting Heal, unlike a Cleric/Mage or FMC with a Heal Spell Trigger on hand. So Wish intoxication isn't nearly as useful for my party as it could be for another.
Viconia starts casting Heal on herself, while Edwin uses the Book of Daily Spell to cast True Seeing so he can debuff the mages from the south. But they're too fast for him.
Viconia cures the intoxication on herself, but Edwin loses all of his defenses--but not the intoxication and its -12 luck penalty that would spell instant death if he gets hit by any significant spell damage. Edwin uses up one of his many level 7 spell slots to keep off the drow swords and halberds.
Edwin still suffers 50 damage from a Magic Missile due to the luck penalty and LoB damage bonuses, but he's alive for now. Carl blinds a drow that was threatening his clone and restores his old Spell Trap.
Flowey tries an Elixir of Health just to see what happens, but as I suspected, it fails to cure his intoxication.
That should actually work if you don't have Item Revisions installed (same goes for Neutral Poison and maybe Slow Poison), so Wish intoxication is rather easy to remove if you don't have IR.
Carl's clone also blinds an Efreeti, which could easily kill Edwin with a single spell. Blindness is a fabulous way to keep Efreet from torching the party.
Not knowing what spells the enemy might use against him, Edwin uses Protection from Energy, which in SR grants 100% resistance to fire, cold, electricity, acid, and magic damage for 2 rounds per level (Protection from the Elements, the 7th level version lasts 10 rounds per level in SR but grants no magic damage resistance).
Viconia is already highly resistant... which is incredibly important considering how poor a cleric's defenses are.
Those 25 stats across the board come from Wish. The primary use of that Wish option is scroll scribing but it also confers a negligible benefit in combat (4 rounds isn't much in LoB mode).
The enemy drow have strong MR as well, but when our celestials' Holy Smites/Unholy Blights get through, the luck penalty from Wish intoxication forces maximum damage.
I decide to keep Carl off of Wish duty and direct him to debuffing those mages before they start throwing out debuffers that could leave us vulnerable. These mages will survive a while even without buffs, but thankfully Carl's role in weakening them only takes a single spell.
I can't stress how important a single round can be in a massive fight like this. Carl is insulated given his many protections, but his teammates are less secure. If we suffer any setback, we'd have to dedicate a whole round or even two rounds to keep them afloat. If the pressure doesn't subside, we'd need to dedicate even more resources to save the endangered character, and two rounds of endangerment can mean two things: 1. We don't spend our rounds to keep them safe, and they die. 2. We do spend our rounds to keep them safe, and therefore fail to keep up the pressure on the enemy, allowing them to endanger other characters or tactics we needed to succeed.
The single most important tool is not any spell or item or class. It is the round. We just don't notice because it doesn't come up during character creation. But maximizing the use of our rounds is more important than any other choice we make. Micromanagement is fundamentally identical to Time Stop and Improved Alacrity.
I switch Carl back to Wish duty, and we get our three most important Wish options, restoring our spells and improving both offense and defense.
SR Improved Haste works like normal Haste (area-effect, +1 APR) but with an extra +2 to AC and save vs. breath, but the Improved Haste from Wish works as it did in vanilla, doubling APR for everyone. It's a convenient workaround to the APR limitation in SR's haste, and a major boost for our lousy damage output.
The party is fully rested and at full power. And we will need all of it, if we hope to survive.
Apparently, before now I had played Corewild so infrequently I apparently have misspelled Corewild's name last two posts - sorry about that Corewild!
In any case, made much more progress this session:
1) We get in a big gnoll ambush - but the party's spells (and wand) handle it well.
2) In the Beregost Temple area, huge number of hobgolbins attack - but sleep and magic missiles see us through the encounter OK.
3) Poor Zordral has no chance with massive number of magic missiles headed his way. In addition, we remembered to use the dialog that gets both mages killed (so we can get two robes). All mages have some kind of robe now, even though some aren't all that great.
4) Stinking cloud is key to victory over Kirian's group in the Basilisks' area. We cleared rest of the area as well, with help of the green scroll vs. petrification.
5) Vax and Zal have no chance thanks to blind mostly (and Joshua's huge AC).
6) We also deal with the Sirines on the pirate cave map (clarity potion) and the cave golems (magical ammo).
Party doesn't quite have level 3 spells yet but it's not far I don't think.
Legacy of Bhaal Genocide Run: Carl the Llama in BG2 (first post here)
SIEGE OF UST NATHA: PART 2
The party is still intoxicated aside from Viconia, the area is flooded with drow warriors, and we now have three drow mages to handle, and there are still many waves to go even if we kill all the drow currently on the map. But currently we are fully-rested and our buffs remain solid.
The XP is pouring in. Viconia has almost gained another level.
Carl tries to get more Wishes, but fails.
The Wand of Lightning trick isn't much use if you forget to cast your spell after using the wand. Otherwise you just hit yourself with 6d6 damage, or 18d6 on a failed save (or 6d6/9d6 with a save at -3 if you have Item Revisions).
EE now has concentration checks, but even 0-damage hits can still disrupt spells. Viconia's immunity to physical damage does not mean her spellcasting is guaranteed.
Stan is almost as resilient, taking only scratch damage. Carl keeps asking for more Wishes, and the party is restored once again.
But Wish-resting is not normally this easy. We are getting lucky, and luck runs out.
Carl runs back to the northwest room to find safety. Chan, one of Stan's summoned elementals, crumples under heavy pressure, Carl casts Improved Alacrity, and Edwin casts Vocalize when I realize he got hit by PW: Silence.
A priestess appears in Carl's room as Edwin joins him--a minor concern, for now. Down south, another Efreeti, besides the one I blinded, manages to spot Edwin's clone, and incinerates him.
Notice again the maximum damage on each hit. That -12 luck from Wish intoxication is quite dangerous.
We get two failed spells in a row. Carl's Simulacrum does nothing, because the duration of his previous Simulacrum still hasn't run out. Edwin's spell failure confuses me until I realize that the icon on his screen was not silence, but deafness.
We pester the nearby cleric with Energy Blades, but Edwin's spellcasting is still neutered.
Somehow I fail to consider curing the deafness with Viconia's Cure Disease, instead opting for a Break Enchantment, which removes most disablers but not this one. Stan stays behind in the main room.
I still don't think to try Cure Disease, so I send Viconia back down to the main room, thinking Edwin's deafness is uncurable.
Flowey is still holding the fort with his 100% damage resistance. But I notice he's taking fire damage--his immunity to fire has been dispelled. The solution is clear.
Potions in Item Revisions cannot be dispelled. Flowey is safe once more.
As tough as Flowey is, I can't overestimate his abilities. Spell damage is still a genuine threat to his survival. Especially now that there's an un-blinded Efreeti on the loose.
Notice Viconia trying to cast Globe of Blades. That's because it grants +4 AC in Spell Revisions, and she really needs it, because she only has one Wish Hardiness spell is active, and that just won't be enough to keep her afloat.
She doesn't get disrupted, but that's not good enough. These drow have excellent THAC0 thanks to both LoB and IR (which grants extra bonuses to drow equipment, including weapons), and she cannot hold them off on her own.
Stan gets Summon Fallen Deva off the ground, but the drow's scratch damage is building up on him, forcing him to use a potion. Up north, Edwin is trying to give Carl some more level 9 spell slots using Bigby's Crushing Hand, but his deafness interferes.
More bad news for Stan. His acid resistance is below 100% and he's still intoxicated, without Viconia to cure it with Heal. He takes high damage from a hostile Acid Arrow.
Carl Wishes Viconia back and rests the party. The cleric up north wastes her time trying to get past Edwin's Prismatic Mantle.
Stan is not the only one in trouble. Flowey also takes maximum damage from spells due to his luck penalties, and he has no defense against magic damage. Magic Missile does 50 damage to him, just like it did to Edwin.
Flowey uses the Wand of Lightning to heal 90 HP instead of 30 (I normally don't use the WoL for this purpose), Carl Wish-rests the party, Viconia casts Heal to prepare to re-enter the battle, and Stan gets blinded, putting much of the battle in darkness.
This isn't going like I had hoped. Carl tries a new Wish option.
Carl can't do much from here, and the way out of his current room is blocked, but SR's Dimension Jump lets him teleport basically anywhere with little delay.
He restores Stan's Dispelling Screen so Stan can cast Protection from Acid later. Acid Arrow continues to deal damage during Time Stop.
I discover that I can move a Potion of Magic Shielding directly into Flowey's quick item slot even during Time Stop, as well as a scroll of Dimension Jump.
This will help him deal with energy damage (his one weakness) and also escape being boxed in.
Carl casts Dragon's Breath to give Flowey a brief respite, protects himself from acid just in case (he too is still intoxicated and has -12 luck), and jumps away to make more wishes.
The party gets back up to speed, though Carl still hasn't cast most of his wishes, as he left the genies behind in the main room.
Dragon's Breath does horrible things to the drow, but I don't see maximum damage values--not all of these drow were around when we chose the Wish intoxication option.
Carl returns to the main room to speak with the genies, resting the party and casting Magic Resistance on everyone on the map.
Magic Resistance in SR adds to the target's MR rather than setting it, but the Wish version acts like it does in vanilla, and therefore reduces Viconia and the drow's resistance to 40, cutting it almost in half for the enemy, and more than half for our cleric.
Flowey's potion-drinking has restored his invulnerability. Edwin is casting Summon Fallen Planetar while the drow keep throwing themselves against his Prismatic Mantle.
Flowey is blind, which is crippling to his THAC0, especially since he already has -12 luck against him. And a Breach takes down the resistances he got from his potions.
Carl keeps casting Wish. Viconia can't equip her armor, but a Hardiness spell will help her out, Improved Haste will partly compensate for our awful luck penalties, and another Wish-rest will give us back our HLAs.
The enemy is weaker, but our defenses are beginning to disintegrate.
We're not up to an all-out assault on Ust Natha just yet, but in our own quiet way there was some gentle progress today. The action started with Beark back-stabbing his way through the Cloud Peaks to get the charisma tome for Lessa. The first wild surge of the run occurred when fighting a polar bear, but no harm was done.
Moving on to the Bandit Camp Beark as usual led from the front - until retreating smartly as Taurgosz attempted to attack. Lessa managed to horrify him, but his wanderings led to various other enemies joining in and after dealing with those the duo had to be content with shooting Taurgosz down.
A visit to Durlag's Tower provided another tome, along with a decent amount of XP thanks to Beark using potions to protect against the basilisks on the roof.
After the normal quick trip through the Cloakwood Beark tried to get some value out of his charm animal ability by setting a squirrel up as a target. However, it moved at the wrong time, resulting in Drasus going active earlier than planned. Lessa used the wand of fire to kill him, though she had to time that well after being chased for quite some distance by the fast-moving berserker.
Soon after that we had a crash resulting in the loss of the boots of speed, but didn't worry unduly about that. With Lessa still knowing virtually no spells we had to fight our way through the third level of the mine - Lessa once more doing a good job on entering there with a horror spell.
On going down to the final level our job became easier than expected - this time Beark couldn't see the mustard jelly from the entrance, but Davaeorn was there, just begging to be hit!
On exiting the mine and healing up Lessa finally had a wild surge while casting CLW - she'd been remarkably lucky up to then, though there were rather more surges after that.
In Baldur's Gate Lessa used some potions to boost intelligence and learned lots of spells. The tomes and the Helm of Balduran were acquired without problems, but we didn't bother with anything else. There was another amusing multi-player incident though when Gate70 asked "you ready" prior to an attack on Jalantha. Since Beark was nowhere near her that seemed a bit strange, but I went along with it - and Beark again proved to have a very long reach indeed!
After just sneaking into the Iron Throne we were sent to Candlekeep. Mage buffs allowed the tombs there to be robbed. The assault on dopplegangers had to be postponed briefly while a nabassu was around,
but there were no problems with dealing with Prat and his gang.
Back in the City Lessa provided Beark with spirit armour, but Slythe still took some large chunks out of him before falling.
Moving on to the palace hasted summons provided a first line of defence before Lessa used a chaos scroll to get the upper hand
- and this time we successfully lured Belt into a side room away from any danger from Sarevok.
The maze didn't take long with potion buffs from the palace still operating. However, the Undercity party did pose an obstacle. First Beark got confused when the hide in shadows shown as operating when entering the Undercity proved to be ineffective and he came under attack. He then retreated a long way before a hold person caught up and immobilised him. That shouldn't have been a problem as only Gorf was following and Lessa had plenty of time to deal with him. Unfortunately though on my screen Beark was totally invisible (other than an icon for the hold effect) and I thought that Gorf wouldn't be able to target him - that cost some time going back to the temple!
In the final battle Sarevok and all his minions were activated. Semaj though was hit by a dispelling arrow and didn't last long after that. Angelo held on to his bow too long and quickly fell under Beark's melee assault, while Tazok took some damage from summons and was finished off by a cloudkill Semaj had left around. On his own, Sarevok then failed to survive against a mixture of magical and mundane missiles.
Lessa, wild mage 9, 56 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 73 kills Beark, stalker 8, 108 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 277 kills, 1 death
Got level 7 off random creeps, I cleaned the Nashkel Mines and the eastern Cloudpeaks by using Web+Sword Spider shapeshift, got level 8 from Lamahla and her amazons (the fight was pretty hard, and I used almost all of my healing potions to survive), bought the returning dart, other items are courtesy of Nimbul and Mulahey's Chest. Tranzig dropped a cursed ring which thanks to the Randomiser looked like a Ring of Protection +2 (500 gone to waste for a Remove Curse), killed a bunch of Wyverns that ambushed me when I was going for Gurke's Cloak (which I accidentally sold before talking to him) and farmed around 15k XP and 2k gp from Ankhegs to get level 9. I bought the BoH and the Wand of Fear from Talanthyr, next objectives are Shoal (I'll recruit Tiax for this I think), the Bandit Camp (although I'd like to get the Necklace of Missiles first, or just any way of dealing massive AoE damage) and Mutamin himself/the adventurers in that area.
Andur, lawful good half-elven cleric/ranger (solo), update 6
Starting out in ToB, Andur killed Illasera and explored Saradush. I ignored most sidequests (though I got the spellbook for Lazarus) and fought my way through the prison to Gromnir (turn undead or iMoD +2 for vampires, and I just used sanctuary to skip the various mercenaries).
I actually found myself subject to a timestop spell in the area below Gromnir's room due to sloppy play - if the enemy mage went for a maze here, It could've ended my run - luckily, he didn't, and I was protected from all other kinds of magic. I didn't repeat my mistakes upstairs and instantly took out both mages (starting from invisibilty, while they were trying to cast true sight):
After Gromnir's death, I made my way to the temple of bhaal. The master wraith's minions were all killed via turn undead, the master wraith himself was slain by a deva thanks to her iMoD:
For fighting fire giants, I mostly used 2 tactics: First, GWWs with a sling while staying at range - Second, making myself almost immune to their damage (with hardiness, my offhand flail, Gromnir's helm and a protection from fire spell plus armor of faith):
Elite Fire Giants seem to deal some amount of slashing damage, though - no complete immunity for me, but enough to fight group after group until I obtained both hearts of Yaga-Shura. I returned to Nyalee, but didn't kill her summons (a waste of time, really).
Yaga-Shura himself didn't really do anything - after he returned with his officers, 1,5 GWWs were enough to kill him:
I plan to skip the Oasis and any Amkethran sidequests (except for helping the Smugglers), so Sendai's Enclave will be next!
Btw, I'm starting to notice that my HLA distribution was completely off - I invested too many points in cleric spells I'm never going to use anyway and not enough points in GWWs. This might come back to haunt me against tougher enemies, especially if I make it to Amelyssan. I'm also seriously starting to miss the Ironskins I thought I would have when starting this run
We did most of the minor stuff in Alkathla; including Mae'var, Slaver's ship etc. Then we set out to clear level 1 WK. Unfortunately, I forgot that "always spawn toughest" includes that two cleric statues will join the battle the moment you touch the altar. Both had Physical Mirror active, and we had no Breach memorized to get rid of it. With my two archers innefective, we were lambs to the slaughter to them - Hold, Commands, Flamestrikes + summons were too much to deal with. We won the battle with many casualties, including a chunked sorceress. W/o her, the run is doomed. If anybody else got chunked, I'd continue, but sorceress is too important to loose. The good thing I found out is that "improved trolls" don't need fire/acid to be killed.
Red wizard enclave in waukeens went well enough. Bought a wand of spell striking, freed the slaves and got the mercenaries drunk. First fight against the 4 wizards was made trivial with Jaheiras insects and a slow spell. Funnily enough both Nalia and Keen failed their saves vs chromatic orbs in the second fight and were stunned. Lanneth and co went down with no problem a lot thanks to detect illusion from Keen. He missed a backstab on a wizard though which was also kind of fun. RNG was not really with us vs the red wizards.
Next up was Umar hills. Not one single lich! But greater mummies proved that they can also be kind of scary, that poison ability of theirs is wicked. We had a few potions for that and after gulping down a potion of invulnerability Jaheira didn't fail her save again. Bone golems are just big piles of free exp though.
Although everyone were fatigued the merry halfling we just saved urged us to kill a dragon. Buffed up with improved haste on Keen, a few potions, bless, chant and prot evil. Improved dragons are kind of tough though and although we did make some progress we just couldn't hurt him fast enough and his breath attacks are really nasty! Needed to make a tactical retreat and rest to lick our wounds and prepare better.
Next time we buffed up and then had Nalia cast improved haste on both our new archer (9 apr, 7-12 dmg and around 1 THAC0) and Keen (6 APR, 20-26 dmg and around 2 THAC0). This time it went a lot better with 3 x lower resist and quite a few magic missiles to help with that huge healthpool of his. Minsc and Jaheira didn't really manage to hurt him much due to getting dispelled and thrown around a lot. We finally managed to slay the dragon and felt like true heroes, at least Minsc did.
The shade lord was kind of easy. Dispelled him with detect illusion, pierce magic from wand and tried a breach which did nothing, tried a breach from the wand which removed his PfMW. Had Minsc engage in melee and kite around after he summoned his BBoD. He didn't have very impressive AC or health so there wasn't much more to it than to continue to remove his buffs and flail away with ranged weapons. Kind of a disappointment after the dragon.
After the shade lord was defeated a harper appeared out of thin air to summon Jaheira. Kind of funny how did she found us there..
Improved SCS dragons are really fun fights! Definately the most satisfying fight so far.
Designed to be impossible to beat without exploits, the siege of Ust Natha in SCS was made before Legacy of Bhaal mode came into existence. It is the single longest fight in any of the Infinity Engine games, by far.
It's not exactly designed to be impossible; it's more that it's not designed to be possible (if that distinction makes sense). It's intentionally way more enemies than is reasonable at that level. The fact that it's become an "ultimate challenge" was unintended, if perhaps not surprising!
Andur, lawful good half-elven cleric/ranger (solo), update 7
I entered Sendai's Enclave after fighting the disguised drow captain. A couple of enemy hordes later and after stealthing through the slave tunnels, Odamaron was killed by a deva and a couple of sling attacks:
Ogremoch was defeated with the help of various summons to distract him and hardiness to resist his devastating attacks.
Diaytha was the next to fall, and soon Sendai's mind flayers were taken out as well.
For the Sendai battle, I revised most of my spellbook, greatly increasing the number of summoning spells and buffs in order to be prepared for a prolonged fight. I always kept a deva around, used my simulacrum to deal with some of the clones while Andur was busy defeating the summoned guards. Eventually, the real Sendai appeared, and I started using my GWWs:
While Sendai managed to heal herself up multiple times, she wasn't able do deal any damage to Andur. However, right when I started my final assault, she started to cast harm - her spell resolved at the exact time of her death, which is why Andur is exactly at 1 hp in this screenshot:
That was somewhat close (though I would argue that I could've healed up before another damage source would have hit me). Anyway, a victory is a victory
FINAL Trio Update! (Corey_Russell, Grond0, Gate70)
When we last heard of the Trio, they were about to enter Mekrath's lair. The thieves did lot of backstabs and traps in this area and did well in that respect, Vorgan taking a punishment but doing a good job of it nevertheless. No enemies here could do much.
Corsen wanted the haste boots from the planar prison. So the trio head to Five Flagons and goes to the prison. A Corsen backstab, combined with Vorgan's true sight, insured the mage would be unable to cast disintegrate.
Corsen gleefully put on the haste boots and proceeded to do quite a few backstabs, with the thieves once again doing traps when available. This worked great to clear out the wyvern, umber hulks and thralls. The master of thralls died to traps and the elementals were badly damaged by traps.
Almost done! Time for the Warden! But we came unstuck because our tank (Vorgan) got stunned and killed! And just as bad, lots of umber hulks were nearby.
Corsen probably should have talked more with the group to see what the best approach would be. He foolishly tried a backstab, but either the Warden had true sight running or can see thru invis so it didn't work. Corsen runs a huge distance, but that is no defense to Finger of Death and Corsen's human saves catch up to him in the end.
Surges of Note: 1) party slowed when casting armor when entering sirines area (not in combat) 2) Forrest polymorphed into wolf when trying to skull trap the kobold commandos guarding the entrance to level 4 of the Nashkel Mines
Now that the party has access to level 3 mage spells, we are definitely feeling stronger. We don't know fireball yet, and two skull trap scrolls were flubbed, so only Forrest knows skull trap but its a start.
After a lot of work, we finally got our reputation to 20. Nashkel mines was pretty safe, with Joshua being the target while the rest of the party ranged. As for Mulahey and his minions, a single skull trap by Forrest was pretty devastating.
When we got back to Nashkel and reported our success, we slew Nimbul and Tranzig in short order. This in turn allowed us buy the robe of Good Arch Magi for Misty. Paja is #2 position, but she'll have to wait for Davaeorn's robe. Forrest is neutral so if we ever get a lot of cash, will buy him the robe of the neutral arch magi.
We are aware of the surge that destroys gold, so any high value item we are holding onto until we are ready to sell and make a purchase.
After getting the robe, we though might be nice to get Feldeposte's bracers, but we needed more gold. So we engaged Bassilus. What's funny is the mages thought they were going to be the MVPs of the fight, but no - a Joshua critical and an arrow from Corsen slew Bassilus before a single mage spell could hit Bassilus.
Xvart village was cleared - with our many sleeps, the xvarts weren't too much trouble. Single target damage spells were used for the bears of the area. We just used direct attack on Borda (the guy that sells cursed potions/scrolls). Borda was frustrated by Joshua being protected by his enrage and the shield amulet.
We need experience, and now that we have have 3 magic missile orbs, might memorize a bunch of those and go for the doomsayer. Probably can do the battle horrors of Durlag's too with all those. Will try that next session.
Trio run - revenge of the wimps (update 1) Friendly, sorcerer (Grond0); Ijut, halfling assassin (Gate70) & Hanna, gnome illusionist (Corey_Russell)
After a quick end to the previous run we had time left in the session to make a decent start on a new one. Once again we chose characters without any consultation and this time (for the first time in a trio run) we're lacking any big, beefy fighter types.
An XP boost from Shoal and a couple of ghasts attempting ambushes got early levels under way. Sleep from Friendly, blindness from Hanna and poison from Ijut made a number of encounters around Beregost easy before the trio moved down through Nashkel and on into the Cloud Peak Mountains. Finding a lost dog there was enough for another level each before progressing smoothly on to the Gnoll Stronghold.
The tome there was quickly recovered and there didn't seem much danger as we wandered north in search of the next area. However, Ijut was some way in the lead and the gap allowed a group of gnolls to spawn behind him and attack the 2 mage-types. Friendly used his last sleep to disable those, but before they could be dispatched Ijut encountered another gnoll group further up the path. In an attempt to delay those he stood and fought for a bit. He'd got away with that a few times before, but there's always a danger from a critical hit ...
Some running and shooting dealt with the remaining gnolls and Ijut was carried back to the Nashkel temple to be patched up. The trio are ready to go and get Greywolf's sword at the start of the next session to give Ijut's backstabs a bit more punch.
Nice with so much activity here Just popped in to say that Adamant's run is on hiatus for.. probably a few months due to RL concerns. I don't want to play while tired/distracted, but I will get back to him eventually.
Comments
Lessa, elf wild mage (Grond0) & Beark, human stalker (Gate70)
We're hitting the road again and this time you might expect fireworks with a wild mage. As Corey mentioned recently I don't tend to cast many spells with wild mages in BG1 in single player, but I tend to be a bit more ambitious in multi-player. However, despite using numerous CLWs on Beark (and a handful of other spells) thus far Lessa has had a grand total of 0 surges - must try harder
Progress to date followed a pretty typical start from Shoal, via Beregost & Nashkel and on to the basilisks - Beark one-shotting one of those with a 62 HP critical backstab. Kirian's party were left briefly while Beark went to get a better sword from Greywolf,
Meilum provided a further equipment upgrade before various reputation quests. The Doomsayer was tackled during those and brought to near death by wand damage before Beark finished off in close combat.
The Nashkel Mine didn't take long, though there was an oddity with Mulahey - he attempted to surrender repeatedly, but only managed to surrender his life. Outside the mine the amazons could have been a problem for Beark after he was hit again with rigid thinking, but Lessa managed to intervene with a rare use of the only combat spell she currently knows.
Back in Nashkel Beark was determined to ensure Rasaad wasn't going to steal the XP for Nimbul this time!
Heading north to maximise reputation Beark decided to try his luck at tanking ankhegs. The first few failed to hit him, but after being badly hurt here
The final action of the session was beating up some sirines using the potion of clarity for protection. Inside the pirate cave Beark tried out his backstabbing skills on some golems - that proved surprisingly successful (the client player being able to ignore golems' normal defences against backstabs).
Lessa, wild mage 6, 40 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 45 kills
Beark, stalker 6, 76 HPs, 141 kills, 0 deaths
Some screenies from the expansion:
Arkhaim Grey and his party are now entering BG2 part of the challenge, at approx. 420K XP.
I used Dungeon-b-gone to quickly exit the dungeon, bought some cheap stuff, used wands from Irenici dungeon to kill Mencar/pooky & co. This was quite risky (my thief/illusionist doesn't have stonskin nor Mirror image and is wielding a ranged weapon + no critical hit protection - he's a viable target for a chinking backstab). Worked fine however...
We used Web, Wand of Monster summoning + Wand of Cloudkill. Next, Spell Thrust so mages loose their protections. That ugly thief tried something, but failed.
This is done so I can get a full plate mail, mostly. But we also found a scroll of Chaos (SR's substitute for Sphere of Chaos) so, we travel to temple sewers asap (I didn't even finish circus yet).
There we pick a fight, loot there is really nice (Full Plate +1 is the best armor for my protagonist for a long while, Charm protection for my archer etc.) so it was worth the risk - for as long their mage doesn't have Globe in his buffs.
Little did Tarnor know that my sorceress is casting Chaos while my illusionist is casting an Ice Storm. Neat combo to keep them in place.
Things go bad for our enemies from the start. Chaos is level 7 disable, punching through any spell protection available to Gaius. He summons Otyughs, but that's irrelevant - Chaos makes enemies suffer from various debilitating effects while hailing storms of ice loom over their heads.
Those that manage to escape the blighted area, are greeted with arrows. There's nowhere to run.
I decide to play it safe, keeping my protagonist a bit back from the frontline; I didn't know what happened to Gaius (turns out he was already dead, but I didn't know that at the time) and I was afraid of Disintegrate and similar spells.
The rest of the group did their jobs well, keeping the enemies at distance and slaying them with arrows and magic attacks.
And that was kinda it. Unfortunately, Gaius seems to have died of ice damage so all his loot (with IR, he has a bunch of lovely scrolls) was lost. Ah well, all others died to other damage sources so at least armor is there. Next we'll do some light stuff to get some more XP under the belt, then the real game starts.
(first post here)
The same tactics we used against the Beholders will simply not work against the Mind Flayers. They can see through invisibility and teleport all the way across the map to strike at any vulnerable party members; running is not an option. On top of that, they have 90% magic resistance and their own attacks bypass spell protections and magic resistance. And unlike the Beholder hive, we can neither flee the area nor rest inside if things go bad and we need to recover.
One of the nice things about the Seducer kit is that we can charm Mind Flayers with a little luck. At Flowey's level, he no longer suffers any penalty for trying to charm non-humanoid targets. This means we can avoid using any Control Circlets on the Mind Flayers, saving them for guaranteed charms elsewhere, and just walk the Mind Flayers over to the doors we can't unlock on our own.
We can always use Slayer form, but we only get one use per day, and there are two places where we'd need it.
I want Wish-rests to help us keep up a small army of celestials (who unfortunately are still highly vulnerable to Psionic Blast), but Wish is terribly unreliable on its own. To ensure we have a strong supply of level 9 spell slots, Edwin hits Carl with Bigby's Crushing Hand while Carl is casting Spell Trap.
Each strike of Bigby's Crushing Hand counts as a level 9 mage spell, which means that if the first strike hits before Spell Trap goes up, each subsequent strike will fill in another level 9 spell slot, restoring 4 spell slots for the target while only expending one for the caster. It's a slow, aura-intensive process, however, and is not safe to do under enemy pressure.
If done in between battles, it lets us keep the party in top condition for each fight.
Still, I neglect to keep the party's buffs comprehensive. Sometimes, that's not even fully possible, as not everyone has Stoneskins.
We use clones to put more celestials on the map, but there's no way of knowing when Simulacrum can be re-cast, as you have to wait for the duration to run out even after your clone dies.
Our Planetars are immune to INT drain, but not to the Mind Flayers' other attacks. And Break Enchantment doesn't seem to cure Psionic Blast.
Only Remove Paralysis seems to work.
We proceed to the Master Brain. Stan fails to re-cast Stoneskin and suffers accordingly, while the Master Brain lands a unique debuffer on Flowey.
Once again, the enemy avoids trying to debuff our mages. Without enough pressure to force the party to focus on its defenses, the enemy cannot hold us off for long.
In a final act of cowardice, the Mind Flayers send their human thralls after us. We dispatch the traitorous humans in short order.
We were too smart to believe their lies about trying to escape from their enslavement. We knew where their loyalties truly lay.
Time to begin the Ust Natha questline, which will set us on a strict timer. Any small mistake could start the final battle early, when we are not ready. We begin by saving Imrae or Phaere (I forget who) from the Mind Flayers. For the first time ever, N'ashtar interrupts the battle. But with only Prismatic Mantle to defend himself, he is perfectly vulnerable to Energy Blades.
Our celestials clean up the rest of the enemies.
We need to take down the monster fights in the tavern before the siege begins. I get lazy and go for traps to deal with the Beholder.
I forget to do the other fights on the west side of the tavern, which I've been forgetting to do for as long as I can remember. And the guy with the golden rope never shows up, so Deirex is also not an option.
I do some testing and discover that I made a mistake with how I set up the Seducer's Charm ability. It leaves the target hostile afterwards instead of neutral. Further testing confirms that hostility is contagious: turning one neutral character hostile and bringing him over to other neutral characters will convert them, but keeping the red ones separate from the rest will halt the spread of hostility.
I correct the bug and reload.
Phaere asks us to wipe out a den of evil gnomes who were threatening the drow's peaceful ways. Always eager to stand up for the downtrodden, we slay the sinister svirfneblin, as well as some shouty Githyanki on the way home.
I get interrupted by the Aboleth. Since I want to get as much XP as possible before the siege begins, I talk my way out of his quest... only to find that that locks me out of Qilue's home.
We can't go inside. Since the no-reload aspect of this run is more important than the genocide aspect, we will have to proceed without killing Qilue or her friends.
Phaere suggests we do some target practice at the Male Fighter's Society to compensate. We return to boast of our success, and she rewards us by showing Carl her long-running affection for drow llamas.
Matron Mother Ardulace, unfortunately, does not share her tastes.
I have avoided Taso Kala (invisibility+talk-blocking is my normal method) and therefore the fight with the Ghaunadaur priests. Again, the no-reload aspect must take precedence over the genocide aspect, and completing the fight in 1 hour is simply not realistic in LoB mode with the party we have. Instead, we proceed to the Egg Guards, who only have 90 HP in LoB mode (though their AC is -8 not counting armor modifiers and drow plate also gives them 30% damage resistance). That's actually a lot considering we only have seconds to kill them before the city goes hostile, but by this point in the game, we can handle it.
Because we killed Solaufein and plan on killing Adalon as well, we don't need to fuss with the eggs too much beyond betraying Phaere. I've never done this before, so it takes me by surprise when the Lesser Demon Lord turns on me.
He reveals us as the surfacers we are. Phaere and the demon lord both go hostile.
The siege of Ust Natha has begun.
Apparently Minsc is of the opinion that resting is for the weak. So no resting once we got to the fortress of the twilight cult. All the tests went well, the last fight brilliant except that Nalia, Aerie and Keen were out of stoneskins since a few days back and Nalia was first hit by an arrow taking her to 66 health and then backstabbed to death in one hit, luckily not chunked though.
After this a bit of running around for Neera up to the point that we need to charge the red wizards in waukeens.
Was going to get my spells back from making improved MoD, but no luck, a day or so went by crafting it but nobody in the party saw fit to rest for 8 hours to get some spells back.
Strangely enough we were now at day 15 having rested twice and neither Keen, Jaheira nor Minsc were fatigued.. This last run had us clearing De'Arnise, Trademeet, Rasaads quests and Neeras up til the last part so several days of running around and quite a bit of fighting. Is this a bug?
Ah well, we had 3 webs a few wands and 3 decent damage dealers so figured we could clear out Mencar and his gang before resting. Maybe should have waited til after resting in retrospect... dwarf saves vs all 3 webs, berserker comes to join him two rounds later and one mr Riesling also walks through the webs to backstab Minsc for 60 dmg and killing him, again no chunking though! After a bit of juggling and about 6 casts of fear through wand and scary helm from Rasaads quest we're all good. Thief naturally gets away in spite of 100 detect illusion and active true sight from gem.. Rezzing Minsc with a wand and then finally taking a nap to prepare for Lanneth and co.
Not a lot of time to play yesterday. Wife had a bad day and needed me to listen (a lot). Managed to pick up Joia's ring for her. Turned in Landarin's things for her.
Joshua (he's the berserker) has AC -4 - we intend to do Bjorin's quest soon, so we can get Joshua a +1 shield. Still don't have level 2 mage spells yet but we need it to expand our activities (because then we could use resist fear, and being immune to horror makes a number of encounters safer).
No interesting surges of note (mostly just spell caster level up/down, which for most of the spells we have been casting has no effect).
Tethoril 5000 experience and an identify scroll.
For the two of them reputation dropped 14.
Not worth the time and effort. Won't bother again. No doubt @semiticgod will have killed them. I shouldn't think that the Gatekeeper is killable.
EDIT
I have just checked what happens subsequent to talking to the Gatewarden. No, you don't get Biff the Understudy, you get Ulraunt and Tethoril. Presumably somebody has resurrected them, perhaps the cleric at the Candlekeep Shrine.I am glad that they allow you to kill them. I hate it when characters are made unkillable, or like Tazok at the Bandit Camp, the game crashes.
I did most of the Beregost/FAI quests for easy XP by aiding myself with Tiax's Ghast (not with Tiax, only with his Ghast, cheese^3). I bought a Prot. from Petrification scroll in the Nashkel Carnival (after dealing with Zordal in a rather and killed all the Basilisks, had to melee some of them because I ran out of darts and Mutamin had killed Korax (luckily, it happened off-screen and I killed all the Basilisks without having to deal with Mutamin). It's pretty easy to melee basilisks with a staff, because they have to use their gaze attack which I'm immune to, since their melee attack is super short-ranged.
(first post here)
SIEGE OF UST NATHA
I've been dreading this battle for quite some time. Designed to be impossible to beat without exploits, the siege of Ust Natha in SCS was made before Legacy of Bhaal mode came into existence. It is the single longest fight in any of the Infinity Engine games, by far. And we only have 5 party members, none of which has the fighter levels that are standard fare for LoB mode. We are playing with Spell Revisions and Item Revisions, which weaken many of the typical options in SCS while strengthening others.
We have:
Carl, level 30+ Sorcerer
Stan, level 30+ Totemic Druid using the Fire Elemental Token
Flowey, level 48-49 Seducer using the Earth Elemental Token
Viconia, level ~40
Edwin, level ~25
There are several exploits/unorthodox tactics we have on our side:
1. The Wand of Lightning trick. Nerfed heavily by IR, this will let us get three Wishes for every casting of Wish.
2. Summoning multiple celestials. This is erroneously possible via simulacrum in my install.
3. Wish Hardiness stacking. A bug allows the Hardiness spell from Wish to stack on everyone except for the caster.
4. The Seducer kit. Flowey, our Seducer, can charm enemies despite their MR, spell protections, and immunities. This, however, prevents Flowey from attacking, and it is rather unreliable.
5. Use Any Item. This allows Flowey to equip the Earth Elemental form and gain +50% physical damage resistance, which stacks with the IR Fortress Shield (10%) and the IR drow plate (30%, description says 25%), granting him 90% base resistance. Only spell damage can truly threaten him.
6. The Bigby's Hand+Spell Trap trick, which @Demivrgvs intends on closing in the next version of Spell Revisions. It grants Carl and Edwin unlimited spells, but is extremely time-consuming to perform and leaves both of them vulnerable.
7. This party was imported, and three party members therefore have an extra 1.5 million XP.
But if we were to avoid using exploits, the following options could mitigate the loss:
1. Putting an additional sorcerer in the party and/or using Project Image would allow us to cast Wish even more often than the Wand of Lightning trick, but not as quickly. If we also refrained from Wish-resting, we still have numerous other powerful level 9 spells at our disposal, though not quite as useful as Wish in this fight.
2. With the right setup in SCS, Project Image clones can summon celestials. They can also bypass the summoning cap (last I checked, anyway). There's also a mod that removes the summoning cap.
3. If Wish Hardiness did not stack, we'd simply use other Wish options.
4. The Seducer kit is actually rather well-balanced despite its many powers, as it suffers a host of crippling drawbacks. Replacing Flowey with a proper LoB-oriented build would strengthen, not weaken, the party.
5. If Flowey could not use the Earth Elemental Token, Stan would be using it, and Flowey would stick with Carsomyr, another strong option. A Skald, Blade, Fighter/Mage, Barbarian, Fighter/Mage/Cleric, Cleric/Mage, or Dwarven Defender would also make excellent tanks.
6. As in number 1, different party composition could make Spell Trap unnecessary.
7. This party never went past the first level of Watcher's Keep, which could fill in the XP gap. You can have a level 30-50 party by this point in LoB mode without importing characters if you make sure to do Watcher's Keep before leaving for Spellhold.
I mention these issues to stress that exploits are NOT the only way to fight this battle. I will discuss all of this in greater detail later. Much, much later, because this is the longest fight I've ever had, and I want to explain every detail of this ridiculously massive gantlet.
It begins.
The Lesser Demon Lord proves vulnerable to +3 and +4 weapons; we don't need +5 weapons to harm it. We start bringing in our summons--it won't be long before the real fight begins.
We grab the eggs from the demon's corpse. As is only fitting for a genocide run, even Adalon's eggs are dead.
I send Stan, Flowey, and Viconia out into the main room to engage the enemy. Edwin and Carl use the Bigby's Crushing Hand+Spell Trap trick to get Carl started on Wish-resting. We need as many Wishes as we can get, because there's always a chance of not getting that all-important rest option.
I hate that Wish is so unreliable--it's actually rather overrated in a no-reload context--but the WoL trick compensates for the luck factor. We get two of our most important options right off the bat.
All of these drow have 70+ magic resistance, 30% physical damage resistance, and -8 AC, on top of the LoB bonuses that give them near-zero saving throws, high damage output, and 300+ HP. Worse yet, they have spellcasters. Flowey uses Detect Illusions to take down some of their defenses.
Notice the fatigue on Edwin's clone. That comes from Waves of Fatigue, the SR version of Chaos, which imposes -2 to AC, THAC0, damage, and casting speed, with no saving throw. It can still be blocked by Chaotic Commands in SR, but I didn't know that at the time.
Bigby's Crushing Hand quickly fills up Carl's Spell Trap, requiring another casting. If Carl doesn't keep Spell Trap up, those Crushing Hand strikes will break down his Stoneskins instead of filling his spell slots.
The drow foolishly attack Edwin, who is under the effects of Prismatic Mantle. One of them gets Mazed due to a failed save at -4, and none of them make any progress.
The next version of SR is expected to have Prismatic Mantle only block +2 weapons, which means it can no longer ward off drow attacks (though it will still trigger those hideous Prismatic Spray backlashes).
Carl focuses on Wish-resting and keeping his defenses strong, allowing the rest of the party to stay on the offense and keep making progress against the enemy.
That enemy mage is no longer invisible thanks to Flowey, which means Edwin can land Pierce Shield without using the Book of Daily Spell to cast True Seeing (I used the Wand of Lightning trick to duplicate the book, but only plan on using one copy). Meanwhile, the drow grind down our summons, Stan and Viconia use their HLAs in anticipation of further Wish-rests, and Flowey eschews his Seducer abilities in favor of direct attacks.
Carl keeps casting Wish. When he lands a rest, we take the opportunity to use our best HLAs.
It's a pity that both our backup mage, Edwin, and our Totemic Druid, Stan, are evil, because good-aligned celestials get healing spells that are much more valuable than their fallen counterparts' offensive spells. This party is strong and it uses exploits, but it is definitely not optimized.
It's very difficult to keep track of all the actors on the map, and we suffer a hostile Remove Magic spell that takes down our Dispelling Screen--a very disturbing sign. Carl stops casting Wish to restore our Dispelling Screen while Stan and Edwin take a moment to protect themselves.
Notice another Maze effect on a drow attack Edwin. Prismatic Mantle backlashes bypass magic resistance just like Fire Shield, so they work quite nicely against these drow. Also notice the tiny damage from those Storms of Vengeance. Storm of Vengeance isn't very impressive considering its level, but as an area-effect spell that bypasses magic resistance, it's marginally more useful than having Stan and Viconia use physical attacks.
By chance, I notice that one of the enemies down south has a unique name--a sure sign that she is more dangerous than her comrades. Flowey charms her from all the way across the map; a Seducer's Charm is not restricted by visual range and can reach very far at high levels. She fails her save.
A Seducer at Flowey's level (approaching 50) has an especially powerful Charm ability. The target needs a save vs. spell at a -12 penalty to resist the effect. But with LoB granting enemies +5 save bonuses, and with LoB battles lasting far, far longer than a single use of Charm does (3 rounds), Charm is not as powerful as that -12 figure makes it seem.
We have to wait a round before the charm kicks in. In the meantime, Carl gets more Wishes. Another rest!
For some reason, the Breach effect doesn't work. I wouldn't understand why until much later--I thought it was just a fluke, and paid it little mind.
But that fluke would prove to be the most important factor in the outcome of this battle.
With the party rested once more, Edwin prepares Improved Alacrity so he can throw out Dragon's Breath and some other spells in short order (we only get so many rounds, and IA buys us precious in-combat buffing time). Down south, Flowey's Charm takes effect, but the Handmaiden of Llolth has a disappointing spell selection.
Those spells are designed to fight the player's party, not her fellow drow.
After throwing out Dragon's Breath, Edwin uses Improved Alacrity to restore his defenses, knowing they'll run out if we get sloppy. At the same time, Stan casts Mass Raise Dead to help Viconia, whose AC and resistances aren't enough to compensate for her pitifully low HP. The current group of drow is suffering, but bad news runs in from the west.
We're not done with the current group yet, and we already have another one on the way. Viconia struggles to survive under heavy pressure while Carl uses Improved Alacrity to bring in more Wishes.
Notice the camera is far from the action. That helps reduce lag, which can add minutes to the fight in a long battle like this one. Also notice that Viconia only resisted 2 of that 20 damage despite wearing IR's drow armor with its high resistances. That's because LoB mode deals double damage, and the dialog box mentions the bonus.
More enemies go down, and Flowey gains his final level, reaching 50 with almost 9 million XP.
His Charm now has a -13 save penalty. This version of the Seducer kit finally scales with level, and it scales quite dramatically, since a level 1 Seducer's Charm has a +5 bonus.
Carl wishes for Hardiness, bumping Viconia's resistances up to 100 and buying enough time for her to heal herself.
We use up more HLAs, expecting more Wish-rests in the future to restore them. Those HLAs are terribly important for countering the enemy tide.
More bad news comes in. This time from the south.
Three well-buffed drow mages are on the way. Never a good sign.
I spot a familiar Wish option that I seldom use. This could be very helpful.
That spell grants 100 intoxication for 200 rounds. That means -12 luck for everyone the map, except for those with MGOI or SI: Enchantment (which does not exist in SR). In SR, only Heal or Dispel Magic can cure it, but for everyone who gets hit, their damage output is crippled. With the right preparation, it amounts to a +12 bonus to the party's AC that bypasses the AC cap. It's probably the third-strongest Wish option in LoB mode after Wish-resting and the bugged stacking Hardiness spell.
But our party is not optimized for that Wish option: (1) only Edwin can block the spell, (2) only Viconia can cure it, and (3) Viconia doesn't have the defensive options to avoid disruption when casting Heal, unlike a Cleric/Mage or FMC with a Heal Spell Trigger on hand. So Wish intoxication isn't nearly as useful for my party as it could be for another.
Viconia starts casting Heal on herself, while Edwin uses the Book of Daily Spell to cast True Seeing so he can debuff the mages from the south. But they're too fast for him.
Viconia cures the intoxication on herself, but Edwin loses all of his defenses--but not the intoxication and its -12 luck penalty that would spell instant death if he gets hit by any significant spell damage. Edwin uses up one of his many level 7 spell slots to keep off the drow swords and halberds.
Edwin still suffers 50 damage from a Magic Missile due to the luck penalty and LoB damage bonuses, but he's alive for now. Carl blinds a drow that was threatening his clone and restores his old Spell Trap.
Flowey tries an Elixir of Health just to see what happens, but as I suspected, it fails to cure his intoxication.
That should actually work if you don't have Item Revisions installed (same goes for Neutral Poison and maybe Slow Poison), so Wish intoxication is rather easy to remove if you don't have IR.
Carl's clone also blinds an Efreeti, which could easily kill Edwin with a single spell. Blindness is a fabulous way to keep Efreet from torching the party.
Not knowing what spells the enemy might use against him, Edwin uses Protection from Energy, which in SR grants 100% resistance to fire, cold, electricity, acid, and magic damage for 2 rounds per level (Protection from the Elements, the 7th level version lasts 10 rounds per level in SR but grants no magic damage resistance).
Viconia is already highly resistant... which is incredibly important considering how poor a cleric's defenses are.
Those 25 stats across the board come from Wish. The primary use of that Wish option is scroll scribing but it also confers a negligible benefit in combat (4 rounds isn't much in LoB mode).
The enemy drow have strong MR as well, but when our celestials' Holy Smites/Unholy Blights get through, the luck penalty from Wish intoxication forces maximum damage.
I decide to keep Carl off of Wish duty and direct him to debuffing those mages before they start throwing out debuffers that could leave us vulnerable. These mages will survive a while even without buffs, but thankfully Carl's role in weakening them only takes a single spell.
I can't stress how important a single round can be in a massive fight like this. Carl is insulated given his many protections, but his teammates are less secure. If we suffer any setback, we'd have to dedicate a whole round or even two rounds to keep them afloat. If the pressure doesn't subside, we'd need to dedicate even more resources to save the endangered character, and two rounds of endangerment can mean two things:
1. We don't spend our rounds to keep them safe, and they die.
2. We do spend our rounds to keep them safe, and therefore fail to keep up the pressure on the enemy, allowing them to endanger other characters or tactics we needed to succeed.
The single most important tool is not any spell or item or class. It is the round. We just don't notice because it doesn't come up during character creation. But maximizing the use of our rounds is more important than any other choice we make. Micromanagement is fundamentally identical to Time Stop and Improved Alacrity.
I switch Carl back to Wish duty, and we get our three most important Wish options, restoring our spells and improving both offense and defense.
SR Improved Haste works like normal Haste (area-effect, +1 APR) but with an extra +2 to AC and save vs. breath, but the Improved Haste from Wish works as it did in vanilla, doubling APR for everyone. It's a convenient workaround to the APR limitation in SR's haste, and a major boost for our lousy damage output.
The party is fully rested and at full power. And we will need all of it, if we hope to survive.
CorwildCorewild UpdateLast post
Apparently, before now I had played Corewild so infrequently I apparently have misspelled Corewild's name last two posts - sorry about that Corewild!
In any case, made much more progress this session:
1) We get in a big gnoll ambush - but the party's spells (and wand) handle it well.
2) In the Beregost Temple area, huge number of hobgolbins attack - but sleep and magic missiles see us through the encounter OK.
3) Poor Zordral has no chance with massive number of magic missiles headed his way. In addition, we remembered to use the dialog that gets both mages killed (so we can get two robes). All mages have some kind of robe now, even though some aren't all that great.
4) Stinking cloud is key to victory over Kirian's group in the Basilisks' area. We cleared rest of the area as well, with help of the green scroll vs. petrification.
5) Vax and Zal have no chance thanks to blind mostly (and Joshua's huge AC).
6) We also deal with the Sirines on the pirate cave map (clarity potion) and the cave golems (magical ammo).
Party doesn't quite have level 3 spells yet but it's not far I don't think.
(first post here)
SIEGE OF UST NATHA: PART 2
The party is still intoxicated aside from Viconia, the area is flooded with drow warriors, and we now have three drow mages to handle, and there are still many waves to go even if we kill all the drow currently on the map. But currently we are fully-rested and our buffs remain solid.
The XP is pouring in. Viconia has almost gained another level.
Carl tries to get more Wishes, but fails.
The Wand of Lightning trick isn't much use if you forget to cast your spell after using the wand. Otherwise you just hit yourself with 6d6 damage, or 18d6 on a failed save (or 6d6/9d6 with a save at -3 if you have Item Revisions).
EE now has concentration checks, but even 0-damage hits can still disrupt spells. Viconia's immunity to physical damage does not mean her spellcasting is guaranteed.
Stan is almost as resilient, taking only scratch damage. Carl keeps asking for more Wishes, and the party is restored once again.
But Wish-resting is not normally this easy. We are getting lucky, and luck runs out.
Carl runs back to the northwest room to find safety. Chan, one of Stan's summoned elementals, crumples under heavy pressure, Carl casts Improved Alacrity, and Edwin casts Vocalize when I realize he got hit by PW: Silence.
A priestess appears in Carl's room as Edwin joins him--a minor concern, for now. Down south, another Efreeti, besides the one I blinded, manages to spot Edwin's clone, and incinerates him.
Notice again the maximum damage on each hit. That -12 luck from Wish intoxication is quite dangerous.
We get two failed spells in a row. Carl's Simulacrum does nothing, because the duration of his previous Simulacrum still hasn't run out. Edwin's spell failure confuses me until I realize that the icon on his screen was not silence, but deafness.
We pester the nearby cleric with Energy Blades, but Edwin's spellcasting is still neutered.
Somehow I fail to consider curing the deafness with Viconia's Cure Disease, instead opting for a Break Enchantment, which removes most disablers but not this one. Stan stays behind in the main room.
I still don't think to try Cure Disease, so I send Viconia back down to the main room, thinking Edwin's deafness is uncurable.
Flowey is still holding the fort with his 100% damage resistance. But I notice he's taking fire damage--his immunity to fire has been dispelled. The solution is clear.
Potions in Item Revisions cannot be dispelled. Flowey is safe once more.
As tough as Flowey is, I can't overestimate his abilities. Spell damage is still a genuine threat to his survival. Especially now that there's an un-blinded Efreeti on the loose.
Notice Viconia trying to cast Globe of Blades. That's because it grants +4 AC in Spell Revisions, and she really needs it, because she only has one Wish Hardiness spell is active, and that just won't be enough to keep her afloat.
She doesn't get disrupted, but that's not good enough. These drow have excellent THAC0 thanks to both LoB and IR (which grants extra bonuses to drow equipment, including weapons), and she cannot hold them off on her own.
Stan gets Summon Fallen Deva off the ground, but the drow's scratch damage is building up on him, forcing him to use a potion. Up north, Edwin is trying to give Carl some more level 9 spell slots using Bigby's Crushing Hand, but his deafness interferes.
More bad news for Stan. His acid resistance is below 100% and he's still intoxicated, without Viconia to cure it with Heal. He takes high damage from a hostile Acid Arrow.
Carl Wishes Viconia back and rests the party. The cleric up north wastes her time trying to get past Edwin's Prismatic Mantle.
Stan is not the only one in trouble. Flowey also takes maximum damage from spells due to his luck penalties, and he has no defense against magic damage. Magic Missile does 50 damage to him, just like it did to Edwin.
Flowey uses the Wand of Lightning to heal 90 HP instead of 30 (I normally don't use the WoL for this purpose), Carl Wish-rests the party, Viconia casts Heal to prepare to re-enter the battle, and Stan gets blinded, putting much of the battle in darkness.
This isn't going like I had hoped. Carl tries a new Wish option.
Carl can't do much from here, and the way out of his current room is blocked, but SR's Dimension Jump lets him teleport basically anywhere with little delay.
He restores Stan's Dispelling Screen so Stan can cast Protection from Acid later. Acid Arrow continues to deal damage during Time Stop.
I discover that I can move a Potion of Magic Shielding directly into Flowey's quick item slot even during Time Stop, as well as a scroll of Dimension Jump.
This will help him deal with energy damage (his one weakness) and also escape being boxed in.
Carl casts Dragon's Breath to give Flowey a brief respite, protects himself from acid just in case (he too is still intoxicated and has -12 luck), and jumps away to make more wishes.
The party gets back up to speed, though Carl still hasn't cast most of his wishes, as he left the genies behind in the main room.
Dragon's Breath does horrible things to the drow, but I don't see maximum damage values--not all of these drow were around when we chose the Wish intoxication option.
Carl returns to the main room to speak with the genies, resting the party and casting Magic Resistance on everyone on the map.
Magic Resistance in SR adds to the target's MR rather than setting it, but the Wish version acts like it does in vanilla, and therefore reduces Viconia and the drow's resistance to 40, cutting it almost in half for the enemy, and more than half for our cleric.
Flowey's potion-drinking has restored his invulnerability. Edwin is casting Summon Fallen Planetar while the drow keep throwing themselves against his Prismatic Mantle.
Flowey is blind, which is crippling to his THAC0, especially since he already has -12 luck against him. And a Breach takes down the resistances he got from his potions.
Carl keeps casting Wish. Viconia can't equip her armor, but a Hardiness spell will help her out, Improved Haste will partly compensate for our awful luck penalties, and another Wish-rest will give us back our HLAs.
The enemy is weaker, but our defenses are beginning to disintegrate.
Lessa, elf wild mage (Grond0) & Beark, human stalker (Gate70)
Previous update at:
We're not up to an all-out assault on Ust Natha just yet, but in our own quiet way there was some gentle progress today. The action started with Beark back-stabbing his way through the Cloud Peaks to get the charisma tome for Lessa. The first wild surge of the run occurred when fighting a polar bear, but no harm was done.
Moving on to the Bandit Camp Beark as usual led from the front - until retreating smartly as Taurgosz attempted to attack. Lessa managed to horrify him, but his wanderings led to various other enemies joining in and after dealing with those the duo had to be content with shooting Taurgosz down.
After the normal quick trip through the Cloakwood Beark tried to get some value out of his charm animal ability by setting a squirrel up as a target. However, it moved at the wrong time, resulting in Drasus going active earlier than planned. Lessa used the wand of fire to kill him, though she had to time that well after being chased for quite some distance by the fast-moving berserker.
On exiting the mine and healing up Lessa finally had a wild surge while casting CLW - she'd been remarkably lucky up to then, though there were rather more surges after that.
In Baldur's Gate Lessa used some potions to boost intelligence and learned lots of spells. The tomes and the Helm of Balduran were acquired without problems, but we didn't bother with anything else. There was another amusing multi-player incident though when Gate70 asked "you ready" prior to an attack on Jalantha. Since Beark was nowhere near her that seemed a bit strange, but I went along with it - and Beark again proved to have a very long reach indeed!
After just sneaking into the Iron Throne we were sent to Candlekeep. Mage buffs allowed the tombs there to be robbed. The assault on dopplegangers had to be postponed briefly while a nabassu was around,
Back in the City Lessa provided Beark with spirit armour, but Slythe still took some large chunks out of him before falling.
The maze didn't take long with potion buffs from the palace still operating. However, the Undercity party did pose an obstacle. First Beark got confused when the hide in shadows shown as operating when entering the Undercity proved to be ineffective and he came under attack. He then retreated a long way before a hold person caught up and immobilised him. That shouldn't have been a problem as only Gorf was following and Lessa had plenty of time to deal with him. Unfortunately though on my screen Beark was totally invisible (other than an icon for the hold effect) and I thought that Gorf wouldn't be able to target him - that cost some time going back to the temple!
In the final battle Sarevok and all his minions were activated. Semaj though was hit by a dispelling arrow and didn't last long after that. Angelo held on to his bow too long and quickly fell under Beark's melee assault, while Tazok took some damage from summons and was finished off by a cloudkill Semaj had left around. On his own, Sarevok then failed to survive against a mixture of magical and mundane missiles.
Lessa, wild mage 9, 56 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 73 kills
Beark, stalker 8, 108 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 277 kills, 1 death
Starting out in ToB, Andur killed Illasera and explored Saradush. I ignored most sidequests (though I got the spellbook for Lazarus) and fought my way through the prison to Gromnir (turn undead or iMoD +2 for vampires, and I just used sanctuary to skip the various mercenaries).
I actually found myself subject to a timestop spell in the area below Gromnir's room due to sloppy play - if the enemy mage went for a maze here, It could've ended my run - luckily, he didn't, and I was protected from all other kinds of magic. I didn't repeat my mistakes upstairs and instantly took out both mages (starting from invisibilty, while they were trying to cast true sight):
After Gromnir's death, I made my way to the temple of bhaal. The master wraith's minions were all killed via turn undead, the master wraith himself was slain by a deva thanks to her iMoD:
For fighting fire giants, I mostly used 2 tactics: First, GWWs with a sling while staying at range - Second, making myself almost immune to their damage (with hardiness, my offhand flail, Gromnir's helm and a protection from fire spell plus armor of faith):
Elite Fire Giants seem to deal some amount of slashing damage, though - no complete immunity for me, but enough to fight group after group until I obtained both hearts of Yaga-Shura. I returned to Nyalee, but didn't kill her summons (a waste of time, really).
Yaga-Shura himself didn't really do anything - after he returned with his officers, 1,5 GWWs were enough to kill him:
I plan to skip the Oasis and any Amkethran sidequests (except for helping the Smugglers), so Sendai's Enclave will be next!
Btw, I'm starting to notice that my HLA distribution was completely off - I invested too many points in cleric spells I'm never going to use anyway and not enough points in GWWs. This might come back to haunt me against tougher enemies, especially if I make it to Amelyssan. I'm also seriously starting to miss the Ironskins I thought I would have when starting this run
Enuhal
We did most of the minor stuff in Alkathla; including Mae'var, Slaver's ship etc. Then we set out to clear level 1 WK. Unfortunately, I forgot that "always spawn toughest" includes that two cleric statues will join the battle the moment you touch the altar. Both had Physical Mirror active, and we had no Breach memorized to get rid of it. With my two archers innefective, we were lambs to the slaughter to them - Hold, Commands, Flamestrikes + summons were too much to deal with.
We won the battle with many casualties, including a chunked sorceress. W/o her, the run is doomed. If anybody else got chunked, I'd continue, but sorceress is too important to loose.
The good thing I found out is that "improved trolls" don't need fire/acid to be killed.
Red wizard enclave in waukeens went well enough. Bought a wand of spell striking, freed the slaves and got the mercenaries drunk. First fight against the 4 wizards was made trivial with Jaheiras insects and a slow spell. Funnily enough both Nalia and Keen failed their saves vs chromatic orbs in the second fight and were stunned. Lanneth and co went down with no problem a lot thanks to detect illusion from Keen. He missed a backstab on a wizard though which was also kind of fun. RNG was not really with us vs the red wizards.
Next up was Umar hills. Not one single lich! But greater mummies proved that they can also be kind of scary, that poison ability of theirs is wicked. We had a few potions for that and after gulping down a potion of invulnerability Jaheira didn't fail her save again. Bone golems are just big piles of free exp though.
Although everyone were fatigued the merry halfling we just saved urged us to kill a dragon. Buffed up with improved haste on Keen, a few potions, bless, chant and prot evil. Improved dragons are kind of tough though and although we did make some progress we just couldn't hurt him fast enough and his breath attacks are really nasty! Needed to make a tactical retreat and rest to lick our wounds and prepare better.
Next time we buffed up and then had Nalia cast improved haste on both our new archer (9 apr, 7-12 dmg and around 1 THAC0) and Keen (6 APR, 20-26 dmg and around 2 THAC0). This time it went a lot better with 3 x lower resist and quite a few magic missiles to help with that huge healthpool of his. Minsc and Jaheira didn't really manage to hurt him much due to getting dispelled and thrown around a lot. We finally managed to slay the dragon and felt like true heroes, at least Minsc did.
The shade lord was kind of easy. Dispelled him with detect illusion, pierce magic from wand and tried a breach which did nothing, tried a breach from the wand which removed his PfMW. Had Minsc engage in melee and kite around after he summoned his BBoD. He didn't have very impressive AC or health so there wasn't much more to it than to continue to remove his buffs and flail away with ranged weapons. Kind of a disappointment after the dragon.
After the shade lord was defeated a harper appeared out of thin air to summon Jaheira. Kind of funny how did she found us there..
Improved SCS dragons are really fun fights! Definately the most satisfying fight so far.
I entered Sendai's Enclave after fighting the disguised drow captain. A couple of enemy hordes later and after stealthing through the slave tunnels, Odamaron was killed by a deva and a couple of sling attacks:
Ogremoch was defeated with the help of various summons to distract him and hardiness to resist his devastating attacks.
Diaytha was the next to fall, and soon Sendai's mind flayers were taken out as well.
For the Sendai battle, I revised most of my spellbook, greatly increasing the number of summoning spells and buffs in order to be prepared for a prolonged fight. I always kept a deva around, used my simulacrum to deal with some of the clones while Andur was busy defeating the summoned guards. Eventually, the real Sendai appeared, and I started using my GWWs:
While Sendai managed to heal herself up multiple times, she wasn't able do deal any damage to Andur. However, right when I started my final assault, she started to cast harm - her spell resolved at the exact time of her death, which is why Andur is exactly at 1 hp in this screenshot:
That was somewhat close (though I would argue that I could've healed up before another damage source would have hit me). Anyway, a victory is a victory
Enuhal
When we last heard of the Trio, they were about to enter Mekrath's lair. The thieves did lot of backstabs and traps in this area and did well in that respect, Vorgan taking a punishment but doing a good job of it nevertheless. No enemies here could do much.
Corsen wanted the haste boots from the planar prison. So the trio head to Five Flagons and goes to the prison. A Corsen backstab, combined with Vorgan's true sight, insured the mage would be unable to cast disintegrate.
Corsen gleefully put on the haste boots and proceeded to do quite a few backstabs, with the thieves once again doing traps when available. This worked great to clear out the wyvern, umber hulks and thralls. The master of thralls died to traps and the elementals were badly damaged by traps.
Almost done! Time for the Warden! But we came unstuck because our tank (Vorgan) got stunned and killed! And just as bad, lots of umber hulks were nearby.
Corsen probably should have talked more with the group to see what the best approach would be. He foolishly tried a backstab, but either the Warden had true sight running or can see thru invis so it didn't work. Corsen runs a huge distance, but that is no defense to Finger of Death and Corsen's human saves catch up to him in the end.
RIP Corsen.
SETUP:
Easytutu
Tales of the Sword Coast
official patch
no mods
Core rules at all times
Party:
Joshua - dwarven berserker
Hanna, Forrest, Misty, Paja - human wild mages
Surges of Note:
1) party slowed when casting armor when entering sirines area (not in combat)
2) Forrest polymorphed into wolf when trying to skull trap the kobold commandos guarding the entrance to level 4 of the Nashkel Mines
Now that the party has access to level 3 mage spells, we are definitely feeling stronger. We don't know fireball yet, and two skull trap scrolls were flubbed, so only Forrest knows skull trap but its a start.
After a lot of work, we finally got our reputation to 20. Nashkel mines was pretty safe, with Joshua being the target while the rest of the party ranged. As for Mulahey and his minions, a single skull trap by Forrest was pretty devastating.
When we got back to Nashkel and reported our success, we slew Nimbul and Tranzig in short order. This in turn allowed us buy the robe of Good Arch Magi for Misty. Paja is #2 position, but she'll have to wait for Davaeorn's robe. Forrest is neutral so if we ever get a lot of cash, will buy him the robe of the neutral arch magi.
We are aware of the surge that destroys gold, so any high value item we are holding onto until we are ready to sell and make a purchase.
After getting the robe, we though might be nice to get Feldeposte's bracers, but we needed more gold. So we engaged Bassilus. What's funny is the mages thought they were going to be the MVPs of the fight, but no - a Joshua critical and an arrow from Corsen slew Bassilus before a single mage spell could hit Bassilus.
Xvart village was cleared - with our many sleeps, the xvarts weren't too much trouble. Single target damage spells were used for the bears of the area. We just used direct attack on Borda (the guy that sells cursed potions/scrolls). Borda was frustrated by Joshua being protected by his enrage and the shield amulet.
We need experience, and now that we have have 3 magic missile orbs, might memorize a bunch of those and go for the doomsayer. Probably can do the battle horrors of Durlag's too with all those. Will try that next session.
Friendly, sorcerer (Grond0); Ijut, halfling assassin (Gate70) & Hanna, gnome illusionist (Corey_Russell)
After a quick end to the previous run we had time left in the session to make a decent start on a new one. Once again we chose characters without any consultation and this time (for the first time in a trio run) we're lacking any big, beefy fighter types.
An XP boost from Shoal and a couple of ghasts attempting ambushes got early levels under way. Sleep from Friendly, blindness from Hanna and poison from Ijut made a number of encounters around Beregost easy before the trio moved down through Nashkel and on into the Cloud Peak Mountains. Finding a lost dog there was enough for another level each before progressing smoothly on to the Gnoll Stronghold.
The tome there was quickly recovered and there didn't seem much danger as we wandered north in search of the next area. However, Ijut was some way in the lead and the gap allowed a group of gnolls to spawn behind him and attack the 2 mage-types. Friendly used his last sleep to disable those, but before they could be dispatched Ijut encountered another gnoll group further up the path. In an attempt to delay those he stood and fought for a bit. He'd got away with that a few times before, but there's always a danger from a critical hit ...
Some running and shooting dealt with the remaining gnolls and Ijut was carried back to the Nashkel temple to be patched up. The trio are ready to go and get Greywolf's sword at the start of the next session to give Ijut's backstabs a bit more punch.
Friendly, sorcerer 3, 15 HPs, 22 kills
Ijut, assassin 4, 28 HPs, 26 kills, 1 death
Hanna, illusionist 3, 13 HPs, 14 kills, 0 deaths