@UnderstandMouseMagic I've never gone above Core Rules and don't usually use mods, so I'm not used to the Nashkel Mines being particularly difficult (you get a free invis potion from picking up Jaheira, which theoretically makes the 3rd level a cakewalk to disarm). What difficulty and mods are you using?
Froy and Wymp reached level 3 after picking on a group of gnolls.
With their spellcasting boosted, their combined Magic Missiles almost dealt with a Doomsayer, Froy adding two Magic Missile wand shots to finish the job.
Hitching a lift back to town with Captain Brage was a handy time-saver, but an assassin called Neira tried to take advantage of a session drop to kill Froy. No such luck, Froy stepping outside the inn and waiting patiently for Wymp to reconnect. Neira had her next couple of spells disrupted, and then a guard killed her.
The reputation hunt then began in earnest. Saving Melicamp, slaying Caldo and Krumm for a dryad, wringing out a drowned cat, fattening Hulrik's cow up on rendered xvart, and digging up farmer Brun's son. Probably some more too as reputation reached 20 even with Joia's Flamedance ring still in our gem bag. Wymp added her charisma to our reputation and we purchased a few items (greenstone amulet, cloak of displacement, Aule's staff +3, robe of the Good Archmagi) plus some spells. Froy failed to learn Emotion but got Greater Malison and Improved Invisibility plus protection from fire, and cold. She'd already learnt Chromatic Orb and Cloudkill from stumbling across them earlier and has several other spells looted from corpses or purchased from High Hedge.
At some point in the deeds of good, a bush fire caught a polar bear off guard.
With both casters gaining knowledge of Skull Trap it seemed only fair to whip around the basilisk area. Once the basilisks had been killed it was on to Mutamin and then Kirian and co. Korax wasn't recruited so he's still alive, or undead.
Durlags Tower was briefly raided and a few outdoor vacancies created for basilisks, battle horrors and doppelgangers. Froy identified a tome of wisdom, her lore could benefit from it but instead she passed it to Wymp in case some sorcerous wishing ever comes to pass.
Finally, a trip to the coast. Sirine song can be heard on the wind so Froy memorises Stinking Cloud, Detect Invisibility, Skull Trap and Magic Missile at Wymp's suggestion. Wymp has a more restricted set of spells available but Magic Missile, Web and Skull Trap means the sirines may be in for a rough ride next session.
@UnderstandMouseMagic I've never gone above Core Rules and don't usually use mods, so I'm not used to the Nashkel Mines being particularly difficult (you get a free invis potion from picking up Jaheira, which theoretically makes the 3rd level a cakewalk to disarm). What difficulty and mods are you using?
@UnderstandMouseMagic had mentioned SCS - SCS greatly increases the kobolds in the mines. In addition, there are kobold shaman which also add to the difficulty. Certainly non-trivial at low levels.
We loot the first room of Watcher's Keep, but go no further to avoid wrestling with Vampiric Wraiths. Instead, we head to Trademeet. Spell Revisions removes Protection from Petrification, but Chara has huge bonuses to save vs. petrification from their Alchemist kit and Bitter Tonic.
It proves unnecessary, as the djinn have poor defenses and an Elf Tendon Wand managed to paralyze Khan Zahraa.
We get no Efreeti Bottle; just an incredibly lousy scimitar.
At the Druid Grove, I discover that I have Tactics-style Spirit Trolls with their awful Unholy Blight, Flame Strike, and Greater Command spells. But Yasraena takes them down extremely fast with her +2 short sword, Fireflower, and her magic resistance and Xan's fire resistance from his moonblade keep them relatively safe from the enemy spells.
Notice the magic damage from Yasraena; it comes from a bottle of Plasma, which improves weapon damage by 15% and inflicts magic damage on melee hits. It also grants +1 APR, but only to Alchemists.
We finally find the Metaspell Influence Amulet and the Efreeti Bottle in the Troll Mound, and the mage before Kyland Lind drops a Dispelling Screen scroll.
Kyland Lind is really dangerous, so I decide to focus most of my attention on him. Yasraena and Xan high high APR put together, so Kyland Lind's Stoneskins don't last long.
We kill the Maggot Golem (gross) with fire damage when slashing damage proves ineffective for some reason, use Yasraena to tank the Myconids using Lilarcor, and find no trace of Belm at the ogre mage tower.
Jan foolishly reveals Adratha's illusions and turns her hostile when all I wanted was to buy some potions. Rakshasas are really dangerous, but Xan manages to stun her using his mod-introduced longbow, which has a 30% chance of applying a PW: Stun effect.
Fighting off the other two rakshasas is far more difficult, but Chara's potions help us survive their spell damage, and when the rakshasas group together and resort to melee combat, Frisk and Jan hold them in place using Hypnosis and flashers.
Dalok loses his first spell to an Elf Tendon Wand, and his defenses don't last much longer after that.
Cernd is supposed to be able to beat Faldorn without fail, but I've seen a bug where he doesn't change in werewolf form. There's a simple fix for this problem.
After reporting our success to Lord Logan Coinpurse, I start the Trademeet tomb quest. But when I see that one of my mods adds a new friend to the tomb...
...I decide to bolt.
Back to Athkatla, where things aren't so scary. My mods add some merchants to the temple district, and after shelling out a small fortune to one of the local peddlers, Chara gets a really excellent boost to their defenses.
The robe cost 15,000 gold, but the circlet was less than 1,000. The prices here are really wonky.
Anyway, Xan meets a little girl nearby who asks us to save her father. We prepare ourselves for a fight, forgetting that we're not allowed to.
The quest leads us to the Copper Coronet, where we have to fight an enemy party when there are innocent people all around--a very dangerous situation. Most of the enemies prove easy to handle, but the mage survives longer, and we have to chase him down.
He bombs us, but by sheer luck, he doesn't fry any of the locals, like Joluv.
He keeps his Stoneskins up, but we manage to burn through his defenses by using a lot of charges from our Elf Tendon Wands.
It's the weirdest thing--there are so few single-target damage spells that can get past MGOI. Elf Tendon Wands don't even do much damage, but they're one of the few means of dealing party-friendly spell damage through MGOI.
Jan gains a level and figures out how to make a new kind of ammunition only he can use.
The Swarmer Mates are practical, but they suffer from the same problems flashers do: only Jan can use them, and he has poor THAC0 and APR. Normally we could solve these problems using Firetooth +4 or the Army Scythe, but neither are available due to Item Randomizer.
We save the little girl's father, but Xan still feels bad.
Anyway, we stop by the Promenade, which also has some mod-introduced merchants. One of them sells one of the most ridiculously overpowered weapons I've ever seen--for only 787 gold.
Notice the DEX drain, which is just as strong as Haer'dalis' Chaos Blade. Only evil characters can use Bertoxxulous, but Chara, as an Alchemist, can get Use Any Item as an HLA, and Jan can already use it thanks to the Loremaster kit.
Jan has poor APR, so he can't make much use of it, but once Chara hits level 18 and gets UAI, they can boost their APR using Tenser's Transformation (+1 APR in Spell Revisions) and a bottle of Plasma.
Plus, Chara can create, Black Mania, a potion that doubles the user's attack rate for 3 rounds. Killing endgame enemies using DEX drain is a genuine possibility later on.
I discover that a dwarven merchant at the Adventurer Mart offers unusually high prices when you sell stuff to him, so I sell him much of the contents of our Bag of Holding.
For some reason, he can't buy ammunition (the "Sell" button goes gray whenever I try), but whatever.
I buy the Ring of Human Influence from Ribald and test out the Rod of Terror trick. You used to be able to drain your Charisma down below 0 and get it to wrap around to 25 by using the Ring of Human Influence to survive the stat drain, but testing found that it was no longer possible. This means Chara's Charisma will remain at a base value of 3, which could prove fatal if I accidentally equip the wrong item.
There are lots of items in my install which impose Charisma penalties. I decide to keep the Ring of Human Influence on Chara at all times. It prevents Chara from using better rings, but I think it's safer this way.
Knowing me, I'm more likely to accidentally kill Chara by equipping the wrong item and draining their CHA to 0 than I am to let Chara die in combat. I am actually a bigger threat to Chara than any one monster in this game.
We kill Ray-Ray almost by accident. Turns out using multiple Elf Tendon Wands before his pre-buffs activate is enough to put him down.
There's yet another mod store in the Shadow Thief headquarters, where we buy some more overpowered equipment.
In Item Revisions, Arrows of Dispelling offer a save vs. spell, but I don't have IR installed.
Mavis also dies unusually fast, as I have Yasraena attack him while invisible. He goes down before his pre-buffs activate.
It isn't just thieves who can benefit from backstabbing.
Curiously, one of my mods allows Jan to take over the thief stronghold instead of me. But I don't know what the effects might be, and I think it's more important to keep my party intact and stable rather than squeeze a bit more gold and XP out of the Shadow Thieves.
We stop by the Graveyard. And then something hideous happens.
The party is completely unbuffed. No bonuses to our saving throws; no immunities; nothing. Wail of the Banshee hasn't hit yet and thankfully I paused, but that only buys us enough time to drink a single potion apiece.
I can keep going if one of the other party members dies, but Chara is another story. I need to be absolutely sure that Chara makes their save.
Problem is, I don't know if this spell is going to demand a save vs. spell or a save vs. death. Because in the original game, a lot of death spells actually required a save vs. spell, but in Spell Revisions, instant death effects require a save vs. death. And in SR, the save is at -2.
Which version of Wail of the Banshee is it? Because this Ghost doesn't look like a wizard, and this WotB spell cast instantly.
I go through my inventory. We have zero Potions of Magic Shielding and zero Potions of Stone Form, which means Chara cannot improve both saving throws with the same potion. They have to choose between a Bitter Tonic, which will bring their save vs. death down to 0, or a Brine Solution, which will bring their save vs. spell down to 1.
I have to guess. Not knowing which potion to drink, I take a gamble and have Chara down a Bitter Tonic.
The spell hits.
Survival! Only Frisk died! It was a save vs. death, and Chara rolled an 8. Xan and Yasraena hurry and banish the Ghost before it can pull any more tricks.
I rest the party, have everyone drink a Bitter Tonic, and go ghost hunting.
We clear out all the ghosts, as well as some mummies and skeletons in the tombs nearby. No more Wail of the Banshee spells to worry about.
Betting the fate of the run on a single dice roll fills us with determination.
What does your Weidu log look like, anyhow? I recognize Rogue Rebalancing from the bonus store in the Shadow Thief's Guild, but the majority of those items and extra quests are completely foreign to me.
@UnderstandMouseMagic I've never gone above Core Rules and don't usually use mods, so I'm not used to the Nashkel Mines being particularly difficult (you get a free invis potion from picking up Jaheira, which theoretically makes the 3rd level a cakewalk to disarm). What difficulty and mods are you using?
SCS, hard not core.
But I've always found the Nashkel Mines hard, long before I used SCS. Just something about them.
Can do them solo, it's the keeping everybody alive where I fail.
I think it's because I usually play insane, the increased damage means that the more squishy members can only take one hit and if it's a critical, they're toast. So the Mulahey fight was easier in comparison to going through the mines because nobody was firing bloody fire arrows at Edwin.
Under the Graveyard! We find a Spell Shield scroll as well as a scroll of Protection from Elemental Energy, which can grant immunity to any one form of elemental damage. Or, well, all of them, with the Wand of Lightning trick.
We also find another overpowered mod item...
...and an overpowered mod enemy.
I do not like Medusas. I do not like them very much at all. But with better missile weapons and stronger summons...
Chara hits level 13 and can finally cast level 6 spells, meaning they can cast my favorite contingency.
Closer to the Nether Scrolls, we run into some Burning Dead Archers like the ones beneath Ulcaster. They even drop Arrows of Detonation.
Xan talks to us about his fears. Apparently vampires are at the top of the list.
So, rather than fight vampires, I decide to all myself with them.
Notice the German dialogue strings.
Yasraena gets kidnapped by some elven weirdos. All you need to do to get her back is talk to her brother or boyfriend or whoever "Divalir" is and then go pick her up.
We go looking for more mod-introduced merchants. Not all of the items are exactly useful, but some of them are certainly interesting.
We find a Girdle of Fortitude for Yasraena in the skinner quest and Belmin Gergas, the elf hater from the Promenade, picks a fight with a far superior being.
We scribe a bunch of scrolls, Yasraena gains a level, find a weird set of Boots of Speed somewhere, and give a figurine to some clerics in exchange for a dumb-looking elephant figurine.
Elephants are cool.
While switching around equipment, I notice something terrifying.
How did Chara get 1 Charisma? Equipping one single piece of Charisma-draining equipment would have been instantly fatal.
Apparently they got diseased somehow. I have them drink a Sweet Elixir to cure the disease.
The Charisma drain is cured, but Chara still has the disease icon. I could probably remove it using CTRL-R, but that would erase Chara's contingencies. I dismiss the icon as a cosmetic bug and move on.
We buy some more stuff at the Temple District, and though we run low on cash...
...those potions from SCS are really profitable with the Alchemist kit.
We stomp on a small enemy party in the sewers, including a dwarf named Kiel the Hero Killer, and find a duplicate of the blood potion from Durlag's Tower.
The item name says it came from Quallo's friend, so... that's weird.
I test out Yasraena's MR against some Beholders. With MR-boosting potions from Chara, Yasraena can hit over 100 MR.
We tackle Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers. Gaius has some really strong defenses and some really dangerous spells, but with three mages in the party, we can remove his buffs and strike him with a Flame Arrow to get through his Stoneskins fast.
We get some high-end gear, including a sword that will obviate the need for a cleric's Magic Circle Against Evil spell.
I head upstairs to Mekrath's lair and send Yasraena after the Coiled Cabal to the east. With undispellable 87% MR, or over 100% if I give her a Burning Syrup (which unfortunately dispels magic on self), she is basically untouchable. And with her high APR, STR, and grandmastery, the Yuan-ti fighters are no threat, either.
Frisk pitches in with Hypnosis, which can be cast through walls and around corners, but Yasraena turns out to not be truly safe: the Coiled Cabal is smart enough to throw summoned monsters at her.
Yasraena alternates between Vials of Scales to grant Stoneskins and Sour Draughts to heal herself, and chops up the summoned monsters while the mages struggle to disable her.
When the Coiled Cabal's defenses wear off, Yasraena drinks a vial of Black Mania to grant Improved Haste for 3 rounds, cranking her APR up to 9 and allowing her to reliably stun-lock almost any enemy.
How does she stun-lock people? Well, she could use Electric Gel, which lasts for 2 rounds and deals electrical damage and 6 seconds of stun with every hit on a failed save vs. spell...
...but she actually just uses a scimitar. We bought a +4 wakizashi called "Divine Wind" from a merchant at the Promenade. The description just says it has a 20% chance of stunning the target, but actually, it has a 30% chance of stunning the target for 20 seconds, without a saving throw.
So it has roughly a 1/3 chance of stunning an enemy for 3 rounds. Which, on average, amounts to a 100% chance of stunning an enemy for 1 round.
At 9 attacks per round, Yasraena has a 96% chance of stunning an enemy within a single round. It's about as strong as Celestial Fury and only cost a few thousand gold right out of Chateau Irenicus.
Anyhoo, Yasraena butchers the Yuan-ti. A single Yuan-ti Mage wanders into the other room and confronts the rest of the party, but without its best defenses, it's helpless. We kill Mekrath and nab a Rod of Resurrection, a Necklace of Form Stability, and a Periapt of Life Protection.
Before we accept Bodhi's second task, I want to clear out the enemies from the Shadow Thief headquarters, as I've had trouble with them in the past. On the way, Xan finally hits 1.5 million XP.
I talk to Xan and suggest upgrading his Moonblade. Xan succeeds despite his low expectations...
...and we get an even powerful version of his sword.
It is now a speed weapon, and takes its place in Xan's off hand so he can put the vampire slayer longsword in the other hand.
Before we go any further, I head to the Bridge District and ransom Lady Elgea. We lose a couple points of reputation for the deed, but we get an extremely important item.
Prancing around in glossy pants fills us with determination.
Here resumes the record of Lady Pella Ardinay of Candlekeep, Ward of Gorion
Bounty representative mistook me for Greywolf. I can't be Greywolf, I'm not a guy. Ignored an addled-looking Rashemen strongman with a rat on his shoulder - he had a big sword, and I didn't want any piece of that. Met a wizard on the bridge out of town; he gave me the creeps but he said something about slaying a witch named Dynaheir. He would not reveal the reason for the execution when pressed, so I refused. Probably for the best if I seek out this Dynaheir and get her side of the story, given the impression that wizard gave me. Chatted with Noober for a while - might someday poke Dilby for throwing rocks at him. He eventually "ran out of things to say" and left.
Left Nashkel overnight; riskier but easier to hide according to Imoen and Montaron. Not that it helped - we got waylaid in a canyon on the way to the mines.
Somehow that creepy half-orc from the Friendly Arm Inn saved us from certain humiliation at the hands of Senjak and Dorotea. He... knew them, it seemed. I was getting bad vibes from everybody here except Imoen and the Harpers. Still, in this case I owed the Half-Orc a debt for saving us from bandits. I went to aid him in his fight - we handled the bandits and Senjak while he stalled their priest. Apparently I can heal people now?
It turns out the Half-Orc's name is Dorn Il-Khan, and he'd been hunting those two in particular for a couple years. It sounded like they betrayed him in Luskan. I hate to say it but I can understand being driven by vengeance. He knew my name somehow. He asked me to help him in his quest for vengeance. In this matter, I'm torn. On the one hand, I still want to keep an eye on these Zhents to make sure that they don't cause trouble. On the other hand, I really want this guy on my side and I think leaving this guy to his own devices would cause more harm than letting Xzar and Montaron run wild - Xz&M at least are going to be working to clear the Zhentarim of association with the Iron Crisis (if they're telling the truth, that is).
I told Dorn that if he wants us to help him, he first has to help us examine what's going on in the Nashkel Mines, and he agreed. Imoen and the Harpers voiced their annoyance with taking Dorn, and I can see their point - he's really not a good guy - but I persuaded them that directing his power towards good ends and keeping him out of trouble will be worth it. This placated Jaheira, but Imoen kept grumbling. I can't understand why I'm making such an effort to keep him around.
While looking for the mines, we found an artist with a bounty on his head - Prism, who stole two emeralds such that he could finish building a sculpture of... someone. He thought we were sent by Greywolf (just who is that guy, anyway?). He just wanted to finish his sculpture, what harm is there in that? I even planned to guard him myself and pay for the loss of the emeralds when he mentioned that he'd been using potions of speed to aid in his work, and that he hasn't slept for days. Poor guy's body is about to give out on him. Some bounty hunter claiming to be Greywolf showed up and tried to interrupt his work. He's about to die anyway, what harm is there in letting him finish?
Unfortunately, Greywolf didn't see things my way and took offense at our presence.
META:
Because Greywolf walks right up to CHARNAME in the Enhanced Editions instead of talking to the nearest party member, this fight is hella risky without a tanky CHARNAME as Greywolf will now always start by attacking you directly. It was a strategic error to come here at level one (or, indeed, straight from Senjak and Dorotea - I think not having Entangle made a major difference in my battle plan). I should have moved Pella back when Greywolf landed his first hit (it dealt 7 out of 14 damage).
On the plus side, now that I'm out from under the No-Reload conditions I can complete this save file at my leisure - it's an interesting idea that ended due to poor decisions on my part. Thanks for read.
Hard luck @Pokota. There's time to pause the game and run away after Greywolf's had his conversation, but doing that does rather imply using meta-game knowledge, so I can understand that an RP character would tend to be too slow to escape .
Current thread title is set in a location 15-20 miles from me (and a bit further from Grond0): "Maybe this time" [NO-RELOAD THREAD]: "Partridge, Alan Partridge of the Norfolk Partridges"
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer trilogy attempt 125 (Part 12 3) Last time, there was talk of Sirines. After two lots of the below, we headed north and repeated at the location of the Surgeon.
Mulahey got more of the same.
The bandit camp got yet more of the same, outside and inside.
A mustard jelly was treated to a more direct approach, Froy borrowing a staff +3 while Wymp uses Melf's Minute Meteors.
Back to the tried and tested approach for Drasus and co, their only redeeming feature being that they evaded a screen capture (started the capture on wrong window). The way down to Davaeorn saw a few early fights before turning invisible and running past the guards closest to Hareishan. Davaeorn's Battle Horrors were activated late so we had to Magic Missile them instead of the intended Skull Traps, which meant Davaeorn's buffs ran out and he found out that three heads are not better than one.
The city of Baldur's Gate beckoned and after various quests it was soon time to visit the Iron Throne. Zhalimar Cloudewulfe survived an initial attack due to being positioned by a pillar and getting Wymp entangled twice. He failed to spot he was alone, and attacked - only to fall to Magic Missiles and Melf's Minute Meteors. His call to arms did cause a small upset though, a doppelganger rising from the slain corpse of Emissary Tar. It didn't last long though.
Froy has 112 kills, Wymp 156. Both failed to put anything tougher than a greater basilisk on their kilboard.
That fight usually goes better for me, but then again I'm usually packing some arcane heat and at least one Entangle. I won't be making the same mistake in my next No-Reload attempt, I assure you - if only because I'll be gunning for a F>C Charname and won't need to sacrifice Neera to get Dorn.
As I have survived Nashkell and am making progress, thought I'd better give this a title (and inspired by the Thread Title honour), I present the the next episode of,
The Partridge Family.
Leaving the "fart" village behind us we trudged on and on and on. We fought together, ate together, slept together......no we didn't sleep together however much Edwin suggested we should huddle together for warmth. "It's early summer Edwin, it's not cold" "I heard there was a hurrican on the way" "We're not in the tropics, I just saw a polar bear".
We killed things, lots and lots of things. Branwyn got poisoned, quick potion, she got poisoned again, quick potion, not enough time to use her cleric skills. We ran away from ogres when we didn't have enough time/room to web/grease/horror/colour spray them but ended up killing them in the end all the same. We met a woman who asked us to commit genocide on the gibberlings, we happily complied, why not? We were a walking, talking, fighting, ecological disaster.
"Are we nearly there yet" "For the tenth time, no" "Are we nearly there yet" "(One day, one day,) for the eleventh time, no"
We followed the river, and there on a high cliff we saw the fortress. Undaunted (who am I kidding, I was severely daunted, so daunted I suggested we leave the witch to her fate, she was out of the way, her "evil" was contained, who's going to come all the way out here to find out if she was alive?) we pressed on.
Over a rope bridge, stopped by ogres, killed ogres, they dropped gauntlets. And we stood around looking at the gauntlets wondering what the hell was special about them, they looked special, they felt special, why can none of us recognise anything? Must be some kind of enchantment placed on all these objects to stop them getting nicked (at least that's the excuse Edwin came up with). Kivan just dismissed them as not being "elvish", nice bloke but really has this racial superiority thing going on. Branwyn prayed to Tempus to tell her what they were but the hotline was engaged so she left a message.
We decided a full frontal attack was suicidal so crept around the edge, killing anything that crossed us (as usual) and found that only a full frontal assault was possible. So up the steps we went, bows, spells and Branwyn and Me up front holding them off so Kivan/Edwin could shoot (what ever took their fancy in Edwins case). Up and up, it's just as well Gnolls don't know the first thing about defending a well built, heavily defensible fort. Don't mill around aimlessly, guard the narrow staircase so a mage can't sneak up and cast some debilitating spell or the other as you chase them down, so that you are caught and become arrow fodder, Jeez, gnolls are dumb and they smell really bad.
Found the witch "Dynaheir" in a pit, she didn't seem that "evil" but she didn't like Edwin much which doesn't prove anything either way. Edwin had already clocked her chest as she wore a low cut dress so became somewhat ambivalent and agreed to traveling together. Kivan helped her out of the pit and got an eyeful from above and went into a frenzy of muttering Deheirianananana, Deheirianananana, over and over again. Branwyn was delighted there would be another woman travelling with us which made me jealous. I would have killed the witch right there had I had backup from the others especially when the first thing she did was ask us to look for her journal. Rescuing you from certain death not enough witch?
So headed back to Nashkel, through empty, devestated countryside denuded of wildlife. Decided to take a break and bathe/clean clothes at the river. Inadvertantly tried to follow B and D to where they were bathing, got told off by D, laughed at by B, kindly understood by K along the lines of "I was young once", and propositioned by E. Which left me having to bathe with K and E. Actually this trip is looking up, it's been a loooong time since Candlekeep...and the readers....and the guards........and the monks........and the bored visitors.......... Late afternoon sunlight glistening off of taut, honed bodies as they frolick in the shallows and........ oh my, I need to get into deep cold, very cold water fast, (very fast).
Trio No Reload, Gate70 / Grond0 / Corey_Russell (Part 12345 6) Session 6 started a few minutes late, due to the initial load being that of session 5. We realised before doing anything though.
First up, we headed to Aran Linvail and picked up the Amulet of Power and Ring of Protection +2. The amulet gave Dreen enough confidence to meet Mook at the docks, where we scared Lassal off. Then we remembered to hand a necklace to Mae'Var and were invited to kill Rayic Gethras for Edwin. Dreen was held, while Grond0 dropped out briefly. Nugget decided to not cast Dispel Magic and Dreen was targeted with a Finger of Death, against which Death Ward worked. Nugget then cast Dispel Magic and Dreen made Rayic pay dearly.
We whipped through returning to Edwin (Nugget), picking up some documents (Dreen), speaking to Edwin (Nugget), speaking to Mae'Var (Nerd), picking up Embarl's dagger (Dreen), speaking to Mae'Var (Nerd), speaking to Edwin (Nugget) and looting Mae'Var's safe (Nugget) in about a minute.
With the evidence of treachery returned to Renal Bloodscalp it was time to deal with Mae'Var. Fun.
Next, the Government District to learn about Umar Hills then the Copper Coronet to speak to Firkraag and Nalia. Dreen fancied lurking in the sewers so we set Hendak free and once we'd picked up a talking sword for Dreen went on to deal with Captain Haegan.
We set off for Trademeet, only to be ambushed by Suna Seni. Then again, rescuing Renfeld so Trademeet would have to wait. Returning the poisoned man to his Harper friends earnt us an audience with Xzar. His apprentices were rather outclassed, so Nerd gamely decided to switch sides in the confusion.
On our way back, Sansuki had introduced us to vampires resulting in Nugget being drained back to level 10 and Nerd drained back to levels 5 / 8.
Nugget had a plan though, don't pay for a restoration when we can go visit Sir Sarles, then a duergar, and Neb so the child spirits can cast restoration for free. All went to plan until we found we needed a strength of 22 and Dreen could only get to 21 with a potion. After 2-3 minutes bickering we went to a temple and were restored, so we could go get drained and restored... Masterplan
First, without any means of escape, we cannot retreat and recover if things go wrong.
Second, because we entered this area with our buffs already active, it means we're short on our best defensive spell slots. And because this is a very large area that takes a long time to cover, we will only have our buffs for the first few skirmishes. When we fight Aran Linvail, we will be drained and weakened and vulnerable.
Third, that message indicates that this area has experienced some mod-related changes. There may be tough new enemies around here, and other things I don't know about. It's going to be far tougher than it was in the original game, and I'm not going to know what's coming.
Fourth, I can't rest in this area.
And when I attack the nearby thieves, I run over some traps that were not there before. This whole place could be covered in new traps; I don't know.
Most of the initial thieves go down fast, but a Priestess of Mask hides with Sanctuary and takes a long time to hunt down, which takes away precious duration from our buffs.
Then I see more bad news.
In my install, Clay Golems have a curse effect on hit that prevents you from healing yourself. There is no save. This means that our healing potions will be useless unless I cast Break Enchantment on anyone who gets cursed. And we only have so many Break Enchantment spells memorized.
The archer on the nearby ledge fires an Arrow of Detonation at us. We distract the golem with an Efreeti, hoping to keep Xan safe for a moment.
Xan does have one means of protecting himself from Cursed Wound. He casts Protection from Magical Weapons.
But the golem lands a critical hit right before Xan finishes casting the spell.
The worst of luck. The absolute worst.
Xan switches to the Rod of Smiting, which does extra damage to golems and forces a save vs. death to avoid being instantly killed. Xan has no proficiencies in staffs, but the staff still hits really hard.
Another golem appears, but Xan takes it down before his PFMW expires.
Xan fails a save against Stinking Cloud... and triggers a contingency!
Xan is cured, without having to use one of our Break Enchantment spells. I forgot all about that contingency.
The archers here give us grief. Frisk hastens the last one's demise using some Poisoned Throwing Daggers.
Knowing that this area has more traps than in the original, I have Jan turn invisible and start scouting for traps. But it seems traps are the least of our worries.
This place is absolutely infested with Clay Golems. How are we going to reach Aran Linvail without Cursed Wound active?
We tackle Dedral, and Xan and Yasraena tear him up fast, but it seems that my mods have made the enemies much more dangerous than I remembered.
Xan might have died if he had failed his save against Poison Weapon, but because he did not, he can drink a Potion of Invisibility and make his escape instead. He flees to the north.
Meanwhile, down south, Frisk manages to charm one of the enemy fighters, a Kensai.
Frisk charms another thief and the two charmed enemies and Yasraena push the fight further south while Xan heals himself.
Once Xan is in good shape, he hurries down south, though he has to drink a Vial of Scales to make sure he doesn't get backstabbed to death.
Another Priestess of Mask proves evasive, but an Elf Tendon Wand helps bring her down.
We find something very special on her body.
Jan takes the rod and approaches one of the golems. It seems he cannot deactivate it invisibly.
I'm a little worried that the rod won't function properly. Mods don't always work properly, and if it doesn't, Jan is going to get cursed and die.
He breaks invisibility and approaches the golem.
Perfect! I do the same thing for the golems next to Haz.
But it seems it doesn't work on them.
Jan needs to escape, but his aura is not yet clear. I decide to send Yasraena forward to distract the golems.
How do I make sure Yasraena doesn't get cursed when she can't cast PFMW? I have her drink a Potion of Absorption. Since I don't have Item Revisions, it grants +10 to her AC vs. crushing weapons. She hurries over to bail out Jan.
But Jan is too slow, and the golems are too fast for him.
And when Haz senses Jan's weakness, he finishes him off before he can recover.
Yasraena switches to an APR-boosting flail, drinks some Black Mania to double her APR to 9, and rushes the golems while the rest of the party retreats. The golems fail to roll a critical hit before Yasraena slays them.
Yasraena engages Haz, but they're locked in a stalemate, with PFMW protecting Haz and MR protecting Yasraena.
We grab a nonmagical scimitar from one of the fallen enemies and pass it to Yasraena. She applies some Electric Golem and lands a hit on Haz, stunning him just long enough for Xan to help put him down.
We resurrect Jan with a Moldy Poultice and use Break Enchantment to remove the curse so he can heal himself with some potions. After collecting his equipment, we send Jan into the next hall. A whole line of golems awaits, but thankfully, the rod works this time.
But the golems are still there, and they will go hostile if we try to kill them. And I'm afraid that Aran Linvail is going to activate them when the final fight begins.
If those golems flank us during the fight with Aran Linvail, I don't know how we're going to survive it. We only have two more Potions of Absorption, and they are no guarantee of survival.
We cast what little buffs we have and drink some more of Chara's potions, including Vials of Scales to ward off enemy backstabs.
Notice the Giant Snake, summoned by Frisk using a mod-introduced short sword. We don't have a whole lot of summons, but hopefully they'll give us some space during the first few rounds of combat.
We use the door as a choke point and throw out Pressurized Gas to poison Aran Linvail and his mage friend from afar.
Our summons do not last, and enemies slip outside to attack us. We already have Kensais attacking our frontline, Xan and Yasraena, and a couple thieves trying to backstab our support characters, Chara, Frisk, and Jan. Xan loses his Stoneskins fast.
Xan drinks a Vial of Scales to restore his defenses, because re-casting Stoneskin could get interrupted, and Chara takes down one of the backstabbers using an Elf Tendon Wand.
Yasraena's Vial of Scales blocks a backstab, but those Kensais have high APR, and she loses her Stoneskins fast. Frisk pitches in by using Detect Illusions.
With multiple enemies constantly vanishing, it's difficult to focus on one. We apply pressure, but it's not concentrated enough to thin the herd.
Xan and Yasraena lose their Stoneskins. They need to drink Sweet Elixirs to cure the Assassins' poison, they need to drink Sour Draughts to restore their lost HP, and they need to drink Vials of Scales to block further attacks, but the enemies attack too fast.
Stoneskin can block those backstabs, but the Kensais excel at breaking them down, opening a path for the backstabbers.
I don't think I can handle this. I need to retreat and take some time to heal the party.
But we don't have a choice.
They blocked off the only exit. We can't get away until the fight is over.
Chara finishes casting Gyrmlain's Lightbend, a overpowered Blur spell from that wild mage clown guy Rhialto. And with 21 Dexterity thanks to a WoL Dexterity Tome from BG1, they can hit some very low AC values.
But Chara doesn't have that 5 APR dagger from BG1 anymore; their damage output is terrible. And most of their spell slots are geared towards bolstering their defenses, when what we really need is to get rid of those Kensais.
Xan casts Stoneskins while Chara distracts the enemies. Frisk tries using Hypnosis and manages to Feeblemind some of the enemies, but it does leave Frisk vulnerable to attack. They lose their last Stoneskin to a backstab from Aran Linvail.
Chara's only offensive option is an Elf Tendon Wand. It lets us bring down one enemy.
We're still at a huge disadvantage. A Kensai slashes Frisk, but Frisk's aura clears, allowing them to drink another Vial of Scales to get another 1d3 Stoneskins.
Then Aran Linvail and one of the thieves strike in unison. Aran Linvail removes our Stoneskins while a thief's Horror scroll sends Jan running.
Without his Stoneskins, Xan is a dead man.
Why is he trying to drink a Potion of Magic Shielding when what he really needs are Stoneskins?
Well, he only has enough time to drink a potion, and a Vial of Scales will only keep him alive for another round at best if he stays in melee combat. I cannot save him.
Instead, I need to sacrifice him.
Remember those Arrows of Detonation we found beneath the Graveyard District? Buried deep in our Bag of Holding, we have a Shortbow +1 for Frisk, on the off chance they might ever use it. Frisk equips them both and drinks some Black Mania for 3 rounds of Improved Haste.
Black Mania imposes huge penalties to missile THAC0, and an Obscuring Cloud spell imposes even more penalties, but Arrows of Detonation strike automatically. Frisk starts bombing Xan with Arrows of Detonation. With his Moonblade and Potion of Magic Shielding put together, Xan has 100% MR.
Xan runs around, trying to avoid the final blow that will take him down, but Jan is not so lucky.
We keep at it, but now the Kensais are chasing Xan, who is one hit away from death.
I could heal him for 40 HP using a Potion of Superior Healing, but he'll survive for another 2 hits if I use the WoL trick to drink some Sour Draughts.
The enemy switches gears and tries to put down Frisk. Frustrated by their high APR and damage, I have Frisk use the WoL trick for another extra 20 HP.
Then Aran Linvail hauls a Horrid Wilting spell.
But Xan can survive. He already has 50% resistance to magic damage thanks to his Potion of Magic Shielding, and a Radiant Philter can give him another 25%.
But it proves irrelevant. Xan has a spell deflection effect active!
Frisk has time to drink another Vial of Scales, but Xan does not. He suffers a backstab that would have just barely killed him if he hadn't use the WoL trick.
I am sick of this nonsense. I don't like using the WoL trick in-combat, but I have little choice.
Frisk keeps launching those Arrows of Detonation.
But it makes little difference. Xan has no Stoneskins, and I discover that those Kensais are actually Kensai/Thieves.
Frisk keeps firing those arrows, even though they cannot defend themselves at the same time.
Frisk will not last long.
I consider my options. If I keep Chara on the move, I might just be able to survive. The enemy has no missile weapons and Aran Linvail probably has few spells left, so I could kite them, using Elf Tendon Wands and Burning Oils to finish off the enemy.
But I don't know for certain. And this is very much like the Grey Clan episode back in my first BG1 run. We entered a modded area without warning, were forbidden to rest, and had to fight our way through multiple waves of overpowered enemies with little or no buffs. The only reason I survived back then was because I didn't hold back; I pushed my resources to their limit.
The Shadow Thieves have pushed me to the breaking point, and now I will show no mercy. I use the WoL trick on an Elf Tendon Wand and waste Aran Linvail in a single shot.
Aran Linvail's friends respond with a fatal backstab on Frisk, chunking them.
I hate when this happens, but my policy is to treat chunking like a normal death unless it involves petrification. I could replace Frisk with a much stronger character--they've always been my weakest party member--but I want to keep them around.
The Kensai/Thieves keeps vanishing. Rather than wait for them to appear so I can use an Elf Tendon Wand on him, I bomb the area with a Burning Oil.
But it's not over. The enemies cling to life and take down Chara's last Stoneskin with a lucky critical hit. But with a pair of mod-introduced bracers, Chara can cast Stoneskin instantly.
Notice the Moment of Prescience spell from the Priestess of Mask. She finally enters combat, but even guaranteed saving throws won't save her from Chara's Burning Oil.
The fight is over. We loot the place and bring back Frisk by transferring our save to the multiplayer folder and then importing their character file from the last save before we entered the Shadow Thief headquarters. We lost a little XP, but the important thing is that Frisk is back.
We head to the Copper Coronet and create some scrolls to fill in Xan's spellbook. One of my mods--I forget which--lets you spend some gold to create your own scrolls.
We head to Cromwell to forge some items. Then this happens.
Mummy rot? Seriously?
I exit out of the game and poke around the game files. Contrary to my hopes, it seems that mummy rot was behaving as it was supposed to. It gives you a message 24 hours in advance warning you that you're about to die, but it seems the message got lost somewhere in the fight wit the Shadow Thieves, and resting at Cromwell's finally triggered it. So I did get the warning I was supposed to--I just didn't see it amongst all the other information.
You're also supposed to get a warning when you try to rest under the effects of mummy rot: whenever you cast healing spells on a rotting character, it tells you that mummy rot is preventing them from working.
But because Chara didn't take a single point of damage since they contracted the disease, they never got that message. So I can't blame the death on a bug.
I do remember drinking a Sweet Elixir at the Copper Coronet when I noticed that Charisma penalty on Chara, but I'm not sure if Sweet Elixirs are supposed to cure mummy rot. I thought you need a Remove Curse/Break Enchantment spell combined with Cure Disease in order to cure it. I check the spell, and apparently mummy rot can only be removed with a Cure Disease spell.
See, mummy rot uses the vorpal strike opcode, opcode 13, which instantly kills the character after a set period of time. It uses a unique secondary type, so the only way to get rid of it is to use a Cure Disease spell, since the Cure Disease spell is patched so it removes that unique secondary type. Chara's Sweet Elixirs didn't have that opcode, and I'm not sure if they should have. They're available really early and at a very low cost to cure such a dangerous, high-end affliction.
If they were supposed to cure it, a reload would be justified per my normal rules. If they weren't, then it was just my own ignorance that caused the death.
I start thinking about how to restart the run. I don't want to spend all those hours running through BG1 and SoD again, so I plot out some strategies for how to get through them quick. It should be possible to breeze through both games by killing some Ankhegs to hit level 3 or 4 and sneaking around the tombs beneath Ulcaster and nabbing the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning before starting any major quests. Mur'Neth could disarm the traps and brew us some Potions of Invisibility, allowing us to walk right past all of those scary enemies like Arch Mage Natas and Anton Valor. Assuming they can't see through invisibility or whatever.
Then we could just cruise on the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning until the final battle of SoD, which Corwin could probably handle on her own. It would be pretty boring, but it would be a safe and fast way of getting back to BG2.
But...
Out of curiosity, I run a search in Near Infinity. I search for all the spells and all of the items that use opcode 79, the Cure Disease opcode. I look through every single example in the entire game.
And every single one of them removes mummy rot's unique secondary type. Even low-end spells like my modded version of the Bhaalspawn Slow Poison spell could cure mummy rot. The patch was universal; even spells that the player couldn't get were rigged to cure mummy rot.
There's no such thing as a spell or item that can cure disease, but which cannot cure mummy rot. Whoever created that mod made all sources of cure disease cure mummy rot.
Mummy rot was supposed to be curable by any form of cure disease! I don't have to wade through BG1 and SoD again! I can keep going!
I go back, fix up Chara with CTRL-R, and resolve to never let Chara ever get anywhere near any Greater Mummies ever again, ever.
We just barely avoided starting over at Candlekeep, and now we are free to continue our journey. It fills us with determination.
Alternate BG Universe Version of Rescuing Dynaheir.
The (alternate universe) Partridge Family
Up and up we travelled, fighting for every inch of ground gained. Sweat dripping from our brows. The gory evidence of a hundred Gnolls meeting their deaths on our swords, dripping from our armour.
At last we stood before the great doors, this was it, our chance to save the innocent and bring peace and harmony to the land. With a look to each other that contained the knowledge that each of us had stared into the Abyss and the Abyss had stared back with a cheerful wave and a promise to call later, we pushed them open.
There at the end of a long passage sat our goal.....on a throne......surrounded by adoring gnolls. "Why hast thou disturbed our peaceful home?" she asked as she rose gracefully with a miasma of purple silk floating delicately around her perfect form. She sauntered towards us, and we caught the scent of her exotic perfume. We have come to rescue you" answered Kivan and Branwyn in harmony. "I have come to kill you" answered Edwin before I could kick him.
"Do I look like I needed rescue" she asked focusing her deep brown eyes framed by long lashes on my two companions who shuffled nervously as she addressed them. "But you're a woman captured by gnolls and the memory of what happened to my beloved Deheirianananana haunts me when I sleep" "Then don't sleep, thou art an elf art thou not?"
"Women must support each other" stated Branwyn, "Tempus tells me this" "Do I look like I need support?" she answered glancing down at her slashed to the waist gown (tape, has to be toupee tape, I know these things).
She turned her attention to Edwin, "So a Red Wizard of Thay has come all this way to kill me, how quaint" "Ehh what?" he answered stuggling to drag his eyes away from her plunging neckline, "what was that?" "You want to kill me?" "No need to be hasty, we need to explore all the options before taking such drastic actions (explore, yes explore, minutely and thoroughly)"
"Hmm, perhaps having a RWofT as a personal slave would increase my standing back in Rashemen" "How personal?" "Very" she purred. "Will there be leather" "And whips" she murmured. "Sold, And my companions?" "The gnolls need feeding" "Can't be helped, these things happen to adventurers, it's probably expected"
"Edwin" I shouted grabbing his shoulder and forcing him to look away from the bewitching, smooth skinned vision standing before us, "how could you?" "Wake up from this self induced enchantment of believing your every erotic fantasy was about to come true". "Bah, you think this is the only erotic fantasy I can come up with, you insult me" he retorted as the fog cleared from his eyes.
"No matter, it's time the witch died" And with that, she did.
Well, Shyffunee took care of the Shadow Dungeon. Our primary strategy choice was retreat (I started on the same fights at least 10 times each, except the Shadow Dragon and the Shade Lord which were completely cheesed). Greater Mummies are too powerful for us yet (anyway, two of them perished to Fireshield, but I'd rather not mess with the other two), same for the Tactics Liches. We killed every single Shadow there was, and the Bone Golem as well as a couple of Skeleton Warriors, but that's it.
The fight against the Shadow Dragon was... Peculiar. I decided to test @semiticgod's WoL trick, which doesn't even spend charges. It's beyond broken when you pair it with Sunfire. Two of those and a nice stack of Skull Traps were enough to deal with Mr. Thaxxyimpossi'blename'ah'fuckit. One single WoL Sunfire from while Invisible took care of the Shade Lord and the Shadow Altar.
We got Namarra as loot, although it's the worse of all of the SoA longswords. I don't say it's bad, but it could have been better (Peridian/Dragonslayer+2 would come in SUPER handy, since we have no way to protect ourselves against Fear. Also, regen). We got our gold up to 50k by selling all of our loot, and since I can already cast Death Spell we're off to clean Nalia's Keep.
I had found a scroll of Ruby Ray of Reversal but somehow I failed to learn it... My character has 19 INT which means a base 95% chance of learning a spell, without taking into account the 15% bonus since the spell is an Alteration spell and I'm a Transmuter... Anyway, I also found Tenser's, which is super good since now we can stop memorizing Disintegrate which is completely useless (I play with the rule that I have to memorize at least one spell from my main school per level, or leave one slot free, which is what I'm doing with my level 5 spells).
Off to the Windspear Hills! Plath Rededge has a habit of opening with Symbol of Death, so I take her out early.
Notice Chara lingering in the lower left. This is because I was trying to keep them out of the range of a Symbol of Death spell, even though they had 122 HP anyway.
There's another enemy party in front of Firkraag's dungeon. They're easy to kill...
...and drop some ridiculous loot.
Yasraena can use all of them to great effect.
The Ruhk Transmuter is pretty tough, but Yasraena can resist its spells, and Xan can stun-lock it with his bow.
It has a 30% chance of imposing a PW: Stun effect, ignoring MR and offering no save.
Yasraena's wakizashi, Divine Wind, also has a 30% chance of stunning enemies, but for 20 seconds. Stun-locking golems is easy.
Yasraena tests out the Sunray power of her new two-handed sword, and Hypnosis and magic attacks trivialize the Samia encounter.
We find a really interesting club after defeating the Guardian.
But the Free Action opcode on that club is just that--the Free Action opcode. It doesn't actually grant any immunities whatsoever. Yet another mod item that doesn't work properly.
Yasraena can stun-lock almost anything with that wakizashi. Greater Wolfweres and golems are helpless.
We get an Iron Golem tome and leave the dungeon without fighting Tazok or Conster. Why?
Well, the last time I played BG2 with my BWS install, entering Firkraag's lair led to a much bigger and nastier fight than in the original, and I'm not willing to tackle it just yet. Instead, we finish the first level of Watcher's Keep aside from fighting the Statues (we use a mod-introduced dagger to cast Negative Plane Protection for the Vampiric Wraiths), find a Wand of Spell Striking, and grab Rasaad from Trademeet.
We start Rasaad's questline in hopes of finding Wilson. Unlike last time, I refuse to pay the woodsman for advice. He doesn't take it well.
He leaves a rather interesting note.
Get it? Dog-eared?
We solve the Sixscar encounter nonviolently and purchase a bear who immediately runs away from us.
I choose a different set of dialogue options from my previous BG2 run and manage to get into the monastic order of heretics or whatever their real name is. I try to have Xan undergo the challenges, but they'll only accept Chara.
I don't know what these challenges are, so I'm a little nervous about the dangers. One of them is essentially just you getting beaten up while people tell you to renounce the faith.
But Chara has Stoneskins and Mirror Images...
...so they never take a single point of damage from the beatings.
In the end, we have to defend the temple from an invasion. Xan doesn't have a good start; he needs to cast Mage Armor to boost his AC before he can cast Stoneskin. Frisk uses Hypnotize to try to lessen the pressure on our squishy elf.
But once we make it past a few rounds, the enemy herd grows thin. The enemy monks just aren't that sturdy.
We convince Rasaad to lead the new monastic order and move on.
For some reason, Wilson will not appear at the start of the area. I thought he was supposed to show up there after you released him. In the end, I decide to bring him in using the console.
Why Wilson? Well, I've never had him before, and the Animal Growth spell from Spell Revisions can give him some crazy bonuses, including an extra 50% bonus to their HP. Wilson has over 200 HP when buffed with Animal Growth.
But we would need Cernd or Jaheira in the party. I decide to bring in Cernd, displacing Jan. I like Jan, but after reviewing his performance, I noticed that he had not been contributing very much to the party's success.
With Wilson giving us a major boost to our damage output, I decide to tackle the De'Arnise Hold. There is nothing interesting about most of the fights, but we do find a Wand of Wonder in a chest before TorGal.
Wands of Wonder can be very powerful, but they're not reliable enough to be very useful in a no-reload context. I'll probably never use it.
Right before fighting TorGal, Wilson decides to interrupt and ask me about my past. He seems a little upset to hear that Chara is a Bhaalspawn.
These dialogues are kind of awesome.
I send out our tanks while Cernd, Frisk, and Chara throw canisters of Pressurized Gas to poison the enemy mages. Yasraena gets hit by two Remove Magic spells, apparently, but holds on to most of her buffs.
The Pressurized Gas doesn't seem to be disrupting many spells, so I switch to Burning Oil. Up north, Xan casts PFMW to avoid STR drain. The Burning Oil makes short work of some of the enemies.
Frisk reveals two members of the Coiled Cabal skulking around, Xan slays TorGal, and we nail the Yuan-ti with some magic attacks.
I really should use Burning Oil more often. It's expensive, but it's worth it to end these fights early.
Xan gets a Girdle of Stone Giant Strength, we bring Nalia into the party and then ditch her immediately, and we head back to the Government District to purchase a very, very excellent dart.
Yes, that paralysis effect offers no save. And it does bypass magic resistance and spell protections.
But we have a problem. Cernd needs to rescue his child from Deril. And Deril...
...well, we've never fought a mage that high-level before.
Yasraena summons a Bone Golem (which has all of the normal spell level immunities) using her Green Dragon Plate, Cernd starts summoning a Fire Elemental, Wilson uses the Efreeti Bottle, Xan hurries forward to absorb a Dispel Magic, and Frisk fails to hypnotize Deril on the first round.
It's important to establish a presence early on in combat. But since we can't get through Deril's defenses on the first round, we cannot stop him from casting Time Stop.
Unless, of course, we used Burning Oil. Which would turn the nearby lich hostile. Not a good plan.
Before Deril can finish casting Time Stop, I scatter the party across multiple rooms, preventing him from affecting us all at once.
Deril casts Moment of Prescience to replace PFMW, granting him guaranteed saving throws as well as +20 AC. I know I can't get past his Spell Trap, so we'll just have to tough out his spells. Yasraena stays close; her MR will protect her.
Frisk dispels Deril's illusions, allowing Yasraena to attempt to land a hit. The odds aren't great, but she just might be able to stun him.
Yasraena has to put up with his Mestil's Acid Sheathe spells, but against the odds, she manages to land a hit and stun-lock him. Deril goes down!
Chara hits level 15, the last major milestone for Alchemists. Once we ditch Cernd's child at the druid grove to be raised by smelly hippie treehuggers, Chara opens up the Alchemist lab and brews us some new potions--including two types of potions that can grant permanent stat bonuses.
I go over everybody's stats and decide who does and does not need each potion before having the party drink up.
With the party a little bit stronger, I decide to pay a visit to the Guarded Compound. We enter the second floor while invisible and Yasraena tromps all over an acid trap.
Jan could have disarmed it, but he honestly wasn't worth keeping in the party anyway.
Yasraena heals herself up and stun-locks Koshi right off the bat, but against the odds, Sion gets past her massive MR.
Koshi goes down, and then I see...
...two Greater Basilisks. Sion summoned them as a pre-buff. I rush to take them out before they can cause any trouble.
Sion has cast Wish, but chooses a rather inoffensive option.
Who cares if his allies get double APR? What they really need are better defenses.
With concentrated pressure, we manage to break down Sion's spell protections, partly thanks to Frisk's Detect Illusions skill.
Chara disrupts one of Sion's spells, but not all of them.
We're basically immune to fire, though, so we shrug off the spell with little difficulty. Sion tries Comet, but it's still erroneously party-unfriendly. He kills two of his friends instantly.
Sion has re-cast PFMW, but he doesn't make much progress before it runs out. He doesn't last long after that.
We get a lot of great items, but only two are useful to us: the Helm of Defense and Firetooth +3, the throwing dagger.
We're awfully short of speed weapons, so this is a big deal for Chara, who will have very high damage output later on. We stop by the Sea's Bounty Tavern for a reason I forget, only to discover that a Cowled Wizard I had talk-blocked earlier...
...was waiting for us this whole time. I flee the tavern and run home to Bodhi.
We are finally ready to leave for Spellhold. But talking to Bodhi proves difficult.
Choosing dialogue options at random fills us with entschlossenheit.
@Pokota: I'm not sure what's going on. I noticed the same thing happening to @Gate70's posts; I only saw the links instead of the actual pictures.
I've been attaching images the same way I normally do, by dragging and dropping them from my Downloads folder. When I just went back to check my old posts, the spoilers just showed the link; no images.
But when I edited my old post, but didn't actually change anything in it, the images started showing up properly. Then, when I refreshed the page, @Gate70's images showed up properly, but mine no longer did.
If you can see the images properly now, I can delete your post; I'm a mod.
As of right now, they're broken in your most recent post but not in this older one, just a little further up the page. I'm going to make a formal forum bug report since this is happening on more than one computer (and is happening to you as well).
Need to carry on as I want to play but getting ahead of the recounting.
The Partridge Family
Finally arrived back in Nashkel to be greeted by the sight of the huge ranger we had killed hanging up in a gibbet, with the rodent pinned to it's head. (artistic license, dead Minsc turned up in my party, what, how)?.
(Also little known fact when it comes to Hollywood, people weren't put alive in gibbets, they were used to display the bodies as warning and to stop families giving them a proper burial. And they were made to measure. Info bought to you courtesy of Winchester Westgate Museum, where they have one on display made to measure for John Aitkin's corpse (which isn't on display). And no they wouldn't let me borrow it for Halloween..... spoilsports)
Dynaheir set to weeping, wailing and gnashing teeth vowing revenge on those who had killed him. Kivan, Edwin and myself, mumbled something about needing a beer, made our excuses and left leaving Branwyn to attend the distraught witch. Refreshed, rested and with newly identified equipment, we all set off for Beregost the next day.
Arrived in Beregost with little incident, accosted by an old man so gave him a few coppers for a cup of tea, and met Officer Vai who employed us to kill bandits and offered us money for any scalps we took. Kivan already had a few with him, what???, how did I not notice this when traveling with him on my own?
Killed some spiders. Some spiders killed Dynaheir so Edwin pledged his services for a year. Hang on, back up a bit. Maybe it was her recent captivity, maybe it was the devestating loss of her protector, maybe it was because I didn't do quite enough to stop her wandering into some random house, could have been any of those factors. Ask yourselves, are you so free of sin that you can point the finger of blame? Either way, Edwin was so delighted (she had slapped him when she found him trying on her underwear after all) he pledged his services for a year. Why? didn't like to ask as it might hurt his feelings, perhaps he hasn't got anywhere else to go.
Found Tranzig, killed Tranzig (strictly speaking Branwyn killed him while he groveled at her feet begging for mercy with her new +1 flail, messy, very messy). Got map showing us where the bandit camp is. Kivan actually smiled!!
We needed to drop off some iron poisoning stuff we found in the mines to the chicken killing mage so decided to take a trip to the seaside afterwards. Take some sandwiches, make a day of it. Lovely weather sun shining, blue skies and then disaster. Some naked nymph on the road asking for help.
Well, Edwin has his faults, but trying to shove your tongue down a naked nymphs throat after they had insisted on a kiss is not IMO death penalty deserving. So we threatened her, she resurrected him, he asked if he could do it again, Kivan had to drag him away. Then the husband turned up, an ogre mage. Big fight, arrows of biting.
Got to the seaside to find it infested with Sirenes. Sent Branwyn's skeletons in, blindfolded Edwin (they were naked) and pelted them with missiles and MM from afar. The others ran away when I got dominated, waited for a bit to see what would happen next (thanks guys), and when it wore off we finished them. Had our picnic and fought our way home through the hoards of assorted monsters who walk straight into webs and grease.
As night fell we bumped into a very strange sea creature woman a Malenti, who asked for help to rescue a sea elf from some Sauhagin (reeling off these names like I know what the hell any of these creatures are). Kivan of course leapt to the rescue, an elf in peril, Branwyn just likes to fight and is good natured enough to go with the flow. Upshot, a very useful boomarang dagger that Edwin might actually hit something with.
(As an aside, I love this part of the NPC mod, fits so well in BG, dialog, backstory, atmosphere, everything)
So back to the chicken killing mage to sell our goodies, and find out what they are of course, (that sure is some powerful anti theft enchantment they carry). Overnight in Beregost then North to try and pick up the path to the bandit camp.
Miraculously, we reach Spellhold without the ship capsizing. We pay a visit to Perth the Adept and disrupt his first spell with some Pressurized Gas.
We launch three magic attacks in succession: one to take down Spell Shield, one to take down Dispelling Screen, and one to take down Spell Trap.
But we're not fast enough to land a Breach. Perth stops time and basically goes all-out in attempting to remove our defenses.
Only Frisk and Chara escape with their buffs intact, but it doesn't matter.
Yasraena lands a hit with Divine Wind despite Perth's Moment of Prescience and stun-locks him. He's gone.
We don't get the Book of Daily Spell, but we do get the Gauntlets of Ogre Power and...
...Tragla's Doom. Just look at that! A +5 bonus to casting speed? It even works properly; the item works as the description says.
I don't give it to Chara, however. If I accidentally take off the Ring of Human Influence while they're holding Tragla's Doom, the Charisma drain will kill them instantly.
I could use Perth's ward stone to get into Spellhold myself, but it gives us more XP if we go with Desharik's approval. With Wilson in the party, you don't need high Charisma to convince him.
That last line is just... awesome.
Jon-bon kidnaps us, says he's going to take our soul, blah blah blah. More importantly, Chara has to sacrifice one of their ability scores.
It was a hard decision. It's not like Chara can afford to suffer much stat drain. Their ability scores are only so high.
But I guess we can make do.
Bhaal won't follow us into Candlekeep, a long-running bug, but all you have to do is summon him with the console.
Cernd hits level 14, Bodhi drops us in the maze, we bring Imoen into the party, and then we boot her, as she's the weakest party member. She doesn't complain.
We basically just stomp the Coiled Cabal. They're not the threat they once were.
Then I notice something new in my inventory.
Cool! It'll be great for Chara once they get Use Any Item.
Ho hum, time to answer the riddles. But they're different this time! Some of them are kind of interesting.
I rest up to prepare for the fight at the monster altar... and recognize a mod I haven't played in years.
Uh-oh.
Xan and Chara have PFMW, and Yasraena is already immune to level drain thanks to the Green Dragon Plate, but the rest of the party isn't so lucky. Frisk and Cernd drink Potions of Invisibility to make their escape, while Wilson shows me that his Animal Rage does not grant immunity to level drain.
That magic damage comes from Sunray, courtesy of Yasraena's two-handed sword whose name I can't remember. It can dispel magic on hit with a 100% chance of success, but I basically only ever used it for the Sunray.
It takes a few rounds, but we manage to scare off Bodhi.
Yes, I remember this mod very well. I remember not liking it. Not being able to rest safely is going to make things much more complicated in this dungeon.
But that's not even the worst part.
High-level spellcasters flanking us right off the bat. Plus liches who are already spawned and pre-buffing. I do not like this. I decide to bail out before I get crushed.
I take a moment to think, then head back in. Somehow, the nearest mages already ran out of one of their buffs, but it's a meaningless one.
Especially since I have no intention of wrangling with their defenses. Half the party throws out bottles of Burning Oil. But the enemy hits hard, too. Xan walks right into a Horrid Wilting spell. Or maybe two of them.
Plus, there's a Balor. Because of course there is.
I pull back Xan before the Balor sees us and throw more Burning Oil at the enemy. Maybe I used the WoL trick; I don't know. But it worked.
We turn our attention to the Umber Hulks. Cernd throws out a handful of summons; I can't use Burning Oil on the Umber Hulks without risking hurting my own party.
One of the mages apparently survived the last volley of Burning Oil, and casts Wail of the Banshee before I can see it coming. But we make our saves, and the enemy is weak enough for Chara to push him over the brink.
We march out to engage the Balor and resist a Symbol of Stunning. We break out some potions to improve our chances of surviving another spell--which proves quite wise, as we find another Balor just as we kill the first one.
We slay the second one and keep moving. Hopefully we won't have to deal with any other overpowered mod-related nonsense.
Oh look, it's Breudayael.
Casting Spell Trap, Protection from Fire, Protection from Cold, and Protection from Evil every second, infinitely.
I've only seen this guy and his party once before, and I hated them. For some reason, they won't talk to us, but I remember the dialogue from the first time I saw them.
Basically, this is the most overpowered group of enemies in the entire saga, by far. They have immunities to basically everything. Breudayael himself is invisible and cannot be revealed by any means. Ever. And if you kill Breudayael's wife before him, he instantly casts Imprisonment over and over at everyone in the party, and SI: Abjuration can't block it.
And he, this invincible spellcaster, got caught by Irenicus, whom Breudayael could smash like a bug. Only critters like Melissan or Demogorgon could take down Breudayael.
And he mocks you, saying he's not interested in a fight but he'd probably destroy you anyway. The mod creator invites you to attack him by making Breudayael scoff at your abilities, but Breudayael is basically unkillable. It can't be done.
I don't like him. But I'm not stupid enough to try to take him down.
We have some trouble with a Crazy Mage at the monster altar, but I don't have screenshots for how I beat him or her. Maybe the Crazy Mage's PFMW ran out or something; I don't know.
I have a problem. I can avoid Breudayael entirely, but I've still got that Spellhold lich to worry about. How am I going to tackle that thing safely?
Then I realize.
I can charm Breudayael's companions using Frisk's Seducer abilities.
I send Thordek the dwarf out to fight the lich.
The fight inches by. I pause incessantly to see what's going on in the dialogue box, because if the fight reaches the party, things could get really ugly really fast. I make sure to buff the party against fear; I've seen liches cast Dragon Fear as a constant effect aura.
I don't know if Thordek makes any meaningful progress, but he certainly doesn't win.
No sign of Breudayael coming after us. We didn't get blamed for Thordek's death! We get his equipment for free! I hope I'll actually be able to use it.
The Fallen Planetar comes out to fight. It doesn't look good; Xan's saves aren't good enough to block a vorpal strike.
For the first time ever, I use Know Opponent on an enemy, lowering its AC by 2 and its damage resistance by 10% (Know Opponent bypasses magic resistance). Better still, Frisk manages to disable it using Hypnosis, allowing Xan and Yasraena to hit it without worrying about vorpal retaliation.
Yasraena stuns it with Divine Wind! It goes down!
But...
Pit Fiend.
The Pit Fiend is stuck behind the lich's other summoned critters, but those skeletons will open up a space for the Pit Fiend to escape when our own wall of summons breaks down. I don't think we can handle a Pit Fiend; only Chara retains all their buffs. And Frisk fails to hypnotize the Pit Fiend.
The lich approaches and attacks our wall with Energy Blades.
Chara nails the lich with Pierce Shield, rendering it vulnerable to Chara's darts. The lich wastes a critical Wish spell and Chara gets past its Stoneskins.
Those Stoneskins are trouble. But then I realize that, without PFMW, the lich is helpless to an Arrow of Dispelling from Xan.
The Greater Mummies paralyze Yasraena and Cernd, but Xan and Chara have the ranged power to slay the lich.
What about the other undead? Rather than pick them off using weapon damage, we use Burning Oil again.
Suddenly, I remember that those undead were the only thing keeping the Pit Fiend at bay.
Xan has a Potion of Invulnerability active, to boost his saves and AC, but I'm not sure he can tackle a Pit Fiend. We can always run away, but going northeast would bring us close to Breudayael, who might well be hostile due to Thordek's death, and escaping to the northwest would bring Chara within the Pit Fiend's striking distance.
Instead, I have Xan try to take down a Greater Mummy. But stat drain and the Cornugon's poison are a heavy burden to bear.
The Cornugon finishes off Xan, and the Pit Fiend targets the rest of the party.
And teleports right next to the most important character we have.
Time to go. We dash up the northwest hallway to escape the area.
A Moldy Poultice lets us bring back Xan. I use CTRL-T to hasten up the waiting time and go back when the demons are gone.
We collect Thordek's equipment as well as Xan's. We can't use his helmet or his armor without Use Any Item, but we can use his axe and his shield.
And they are a prize indeed.
Awesome! This will... wait, what?
There are more of these things? No!
I send in Yasraena equipped with Thordek's shield and axe. I also have her drinking a potion of Burning Syrup (not to be confused with Burning Oil), which cranks her MR up to 160 or something.
But things won't be that easy for us.
Yasraena approaches death. But unfortunately for us, she refuses to die.
Which means that when one of the liches chases after us...
...we cannot escape. Not when one of our party members is so far away.
Wilson gets disabled. We send an Efreeti after him, hoping that it will keep the enemy horde away from Chara. But things are looking worse and worse.
But finally, Yasraena dies, and Wilson follows soon after.
We're free! We run outside and bring them back to life with more Moldy Poultices. They start healing themselves up.
I use CTRL-T to wait another hour. But there are side effects. It seems Bodhi doesn't just appear when you rest--she appears on a timer.
I am in no condition to fight Bodhi. We need to make our escape, but Wilson does not make it.
If I had waited normally instead of using CTRL-R, Wilson would have lived; he only died because his aura wasn't clear.
Whatever. We run from Bodhi and enter the lich area from another hallway. The liches have their old spells back.
We, however, are unrested. I go to investigate the situation, but there is no way we can take down those liches. Not like this.
We flee the area and sneak past Bodhi while under the effects of Potions of Invisibility. We make our way to the other hallway, the one we ran from not long ago.
I use a Protection from Undead scroll, and just for the hell of it, I use the WoL trick to make it cover the whole party. But I only really need it for Xan. I send him out to gather Wilson and Yasraena's equipment.
We're not quite done. We need to get Dace's hand. But Xan's Protection from Undead scroll and his Vampire Hunter longsword make the fight a cakewalk.
Xan bolsters his defenses so he can run past the lich's summons without getting killed.
We make it outside, and while Xan foolishly drinks a Burning Syrup that dispels his invisibility to undead, his longsword still lets him take down the vampires.
Chara's been burning a lot of money on potions to keep this party afloat. But selling another 60 out of 82 Potions of Extra Healing earns us 24,300 gold, enough to fund our potionmaking for a while longer.
We clear out some trolls and minotaurs on the next level, but the Yuan-ti I was expecting are not there.
The drow kill him in one hit; we had virtually no chance of saving him. Yasraena butchers the drow fighters and relies on her MR to keep the mage off her back, but the mage just barely manages to get past her MR and disable her using the IWD version (not the SR version) of Hopelessness.
An Arrow of Dispelling fails to cure Yasraena, but Break Enchantment works fine.
The mage evades Yasraena's grasp and wanders perilously close to the party. Xan drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to improve his saves and tries to paralyze her with Chara's dart, but all he does is get zapped.
I use the WoL trick to heal him, but it isn't necessary. With the mage fully visible, Xan and Yasraena can chop her up before she can restore her defenses.
There are new golems in the golem room, and they're already hostile, but... choke points.
That's the PW: Stun bow. Chara pitches in with their dart and Yasraena demolishes the Clay Golems with her war hammer.
The rest of the dungeon is little trouble. The next time we rest, Bodhi kills Xan, but we bounce back, heal him up, and are back up to speed. I originally planned on avoiding the Ulitharid and so forth, but now that we've got a handle on the environment, I think we can handle everything short of Breudayael--including those liches.
I go back and bait the liches with an Efreeti. Yasraena stays at a safe distance and one of the liches stops time.
The liches remove her buffs, which is little loss; her main defense is her MR, which cannot be dispelled. Yasraena flees, only waiting long enough to stun a Cornugon. Chara has to cast Resist Fear on her to make sure she sticks around to finish her work, but a Dark Planetar interrupts. Xan has to help her out with the Cornugon to minimize the amount of time she spends close to that Planetar.
Another Cornugon takes its place while Yasraena and Xan concentrate on the Planetar, struggling to stun it.
Only when Yasraena is badly wounded do they succeed.
Xan can finish off the Planetar on his own, so Yasraena flees to buy time to drink a potion.
But it's not enough. A lich stops time and weakens her enough for its allies to bring her down.
Xan gets swarmed, but we resurrect Yasraena and she slashes a lich apart while its defenses are low.
The other follows soon after; it has no PFMW spells left.
I'm still not nearly strong enough to tackle Breudayael, but his companions are still beatable. But how do we kill them safely without any liches left for us to send them after?
Easy. Even after Chara scared off Bodhi in Slayer form, Bodhi still spawns when we rest. Frisk charms Drusilia and hauls them over to the far entrance, where we spawn in Bodhi. Xan hides the party using Invisibility Sphere so we don't get crushed.
Why bring her to that corner? Because I don't know if she's Breudayael's wife, and if she is, then her death could mean party-wide Imprisonment spells. We need to escape before that can happen.
For some reason I break invisibility to fight the vampires, but Drusilia is still there to fight. A Chain Contingency keeps her safe, however.
Notice the illegal level 9 spell in that contingency. But with Drusilia still under our control, we can force her to stay still until the enemies finally take her down.
Just like Thordek, her equipment is far more overpowered than basically any other set of items in the game. Breudayael and his gang are better equipped than ANYONE.
Breudayael himself, of course, has the best equipment. But he's also the most ludicrously overpowered of them all--he's even immune to Time Stop. We'd have a better chance of fighting Melissan; at least Yasraena could stun-lock her with Divine Wind.
I rearrange some items and nearly kill Chara by equipping the wrong item.
For the third and final time, I decide to never, EVER remove that Ring of Human Influence. Because even with Purified Ichor, the Hell bonus, and the Machine of Lum the Mad, Chara's base Charisma will still only be 6, enough for two Charisma-draining items to kill them.
I put the ring in the left slot, since switching out rings by clicking on the paper doll icon uses the right slot by default. Much safer this way.
I am satisfied. Frisk's Charm spell has gotten us some of the best gear in the game at no cost. This dungeon was a nightmare, but we've finally come out on top. In fact, we're far stronger than I had expected. Pulling every dirty trick we can think of and grabbing overpowered mod items fills us with determination.
Time to tackle Irenicus! With our new tools, he probably won't be much trouble at all.
@CrevsDaak you say Namaraa is the worst long sword, except it does 1D8+4 dmg instead of 1D8+2 like a normal +2 long sword. As a result, it makes for a nice 1-hand backstab weapon for thieves. Also the silence ability is always useful in a party that doesn't have a cleric (which I run into a lot when I play my themed groups like all warriors, paladins, etc.)
After a fairly long hiatus, Teyl and his evil crew are back with some action.
They first decided to return to Mutamin's garden. Earlier Teyl had spared Mutamin and one last basilisk, wary of the Gnome's arcane tricks. Korax and Vicky's skeletons took care of this bit of unfinished business. The company also ran into a hunting party led by one Kirian, whose insults they took very seriously. Battle ensued. Viconia's skeleton warriors and an impressive arcane show from Edwin and Baeloth (involving Webs and Fireballs) ensured victory.
Hungry for riches and XP, the crew then paid a first visit to Durlag's Tower. Baeloth's wand scorchers took care of two battle horrors, and Teyl finished some basilisks with backstabs. This resulted in level-ups for Teyl (7), Edwin (6), and Dorn (6). The latter specialized in crossbows at this point. Even in full plate, with a ring of the princes, and with the Claw of Kazgaroth the Half-Orc's really too squishy (AC -3) for the frontline in LoB mode. Viconia (with almost as many HPs, much better AC, and her Drow MR) and Kagain (with his Dwarven Defender HPs, and Dwarven saves) are much tankier. The party dealt with some Ghasts and left the remainder of the tower for later.
In the Red Canyons, they found a new, challenging, foe to vanquish: Bassilus. Vicky was good for a snicker,
before battle commenced in a promising way: Viconia Silenced the priest and Teyl Charmed him a moment later, hoping to use his foe against three hobgoblins nearby. But then a friendly missile launched before Teyl's charm made Bassilus go hostile again. When the escape route was barred by three wolves, the party had to look for another way to retreat. Bassilus seized the momentum, caught up, and with his mighty hammer he struck poor Baeloth down in one hit.
(I usually solo, and I find t very hard to keep six characters moving the way I want them to.) The party traveled to Beregost for Keldath to bring the sorcerer back, and then returned to the Red Canyons. A second attempt at dispatching Bassilus was aborted when the priest's Physical Mirror strongly reduced the party's possibilities of hurting him. And a third attempt saw the priest save against Baeloth's Webs and cast a Hold Person at Teyl. The latter failed his save but was rescued by Edwin who quickly cast an Invisibility.
The fourth attempt did succeed. Bassilus got caught in a multitude of Webs, was poisoned by Dorn, Held by Viconia and subjected to a barrage of spells and missiles.
The companions finished Zargal and co and Melicamp's wolf without much difficulty and traveled to the northwest in good spirits, entertaining me with some more fine banter such as this exchange between Kagain and Edwin.
Against his better judgment, Edwin allowed Shoal to kiss him, but the nereid raised him and she and Droth couldn't handle Vicky's skeletons. The Nightcloak of Shar took Droth's helm as a reward.
Teyl pretty much soloed the sirines, relying on ranged attacks and HiPS. Vicky's Skeletons destroyed a skeleton and Thalantyr restored Melicamp. In the Nashkel Mines Teyl's companions formed an invisible wall to prevent the Halfling from being swarmed by enemies as he took down Mulahey with HiPS backstabs.
When Mulahey was at the brink of death, begging for mercy, Teyl followed Viconia's advice:
The Revenant was another of Teyl's backstab victims, but Nimbul was slain by the Nashkel military. A battle with the wolves east of the Temple of Lathander saw Baeloth and Dorn held by smart targeting vampiric wolves. Baeloth fell a second time, but Edwin saved Dorn with another invisibility.
It was unfortunate that no one had Edwin's back, when he was the one in need. Molkar's ambush inspired the Red Wizard to summon some monsters with his wand, but the enemy was hasted and struck Edwin down before he could retreat. Another invisible wall was formed to deal with the warriors. Vicky revealed herself behind it, drawing and holding the aggro. She also managed to Hold Morvin. Teyl backstabbed the enemies from the other side.
It was fortunate the ambush took place at night time, so hiding was actually an option for Teyl. I'm not fond of the invisible wall strategy, but it will only work until mages start casting detection spells, and in an ambush situation like this one, the enemy with SCS prebuffs has such a headstart, that it's either cheesing, dying or fleeing.
In Nashkel, Viconia Held Neira, and in Beregost she Silenced Silke so both were easy pickings. Vicky is a valuable companion.
Killling Meilum resulted in Baeloth leveling up to level 7 (and picking Invisibility 10' Radius as a new spell), and clearing out the Ankhegs helped Viconia reach the same level (and thus level 4 spells and stronger skeleton warriors).
Dorn's quest, that I'm not familiar with, almost ended the run when Kryll first Horrored Teyl and then took 50 HPs with a Vampiric Touch. Again Edwin acted as Teyl's guardian angel.
Edwin, now without any castings of Invisibility for himself, ran off, cast a Mirror Image, and lured Kryll's skeletons along. He met Baeloth, whose Invisibility 10' Radius helped Edwin get away fom the skeletons.
Baeloth proceed to Web Kryll, Kagain attacked (he had Dushai's ring of free action), and Viconia Held the mage for good measure. Teyl and company lived another day.
The party traveled to the bandit camp with Raiken. After Teyl was done with looting the place, the companions entered Tazok's tent. Edwin opened with some wand summons to engage Hakt and Britik, and Baeloth risked his own skin, forgoing MI and Blur in order to cast lots of Webs. That strategy almost failed when a black talon arrow left the Drow with 4 HPs,
but the Sorcerer survived and managed to drop more Webs toward the entrance of the tent. Dorn poisoned Venkt early on, using his innate poison weapon ability in conjunction with bolts of biting. The wizard nevertheless managed to cast a Glitterdust, which blinded most summons and Viconia as she was just casting a Hold Person. She moved into the Web and got caught. It meant her death. Edwin's casting of Stinking Cloud was interrupted by a well-placed and well-timed black talon arrow. And Venkt's next spell by Dorn's poison. While Baeloth and Kagain and the summons dealt with Hakt and Britik, Dorn and Teyl focused on Raemon and Venkt.
When Edwin and Baeloth became the target of bandit archers, they both went Invisible. Teyl (arrows of biting), Dorn, Kagain, and the summons cleaned up the place.
Outside, Teyl's backstabs earned the party another suit of full plate mail.
The companions are currently readying themselves for an expedition to the Cloakwood forest.
Comments
Froy and Wymp reached level 3 after picking on a group of gnolls.
With their spellcasting boosted, their combined Magic Missiles almost dealt with a Doomsayer, Froy adding two Magic Missile wand shots to finish the job.
Hitching a lift back to town with Captain Brage was a handy time-saver, but an assassin called Neira tried to take advantage of a session drop to kill Froy. No such luck, Froy stepping outside the inn and waiting patiently for Wymp to reconnect. Neira had her next couple of spells disrupted, and then a guard killed her.
The reputation hunt then began in earnest. Saving Melicamp, slaying Caldo and Krumm for a dryad, wringing out a drowned cat, fattening Hulrik's cow up on rendered xvart, and digging up farmer Brun's son. Probably some more too as reputation reached 20 even with Joia's Flamedance ring still in our gem bag. Wymp added her charisma to our reputation and we purchased a few items (greenstone amulet, cloak of displacement, Aule's staff +3, robe of the Good Archmagi) plus some spells. Froy failed to learn Emotion but got Greater Malison and Improved Invisibility plus protection from fire, and cold. She'd already learnt Chromatic Orb and Cloudkill from stumbling across them earlier and has several other spells looted from corpses or purchased from High Hedge.
At some point in the deeds of good, a bush fire caught a polar bear off guard.
With both casters gaining knowledge of Skull Trap it seemed only fair to whip around the basilisk area. Once the basilisks had been killed it was on to Mutamin and then Kirian and co. Korax wasn't recruited so he's still alive, or undead.
Durlags Tower was briefly raided and a few outdoor vacancies created for basilisks, battle horrors and doppelgangers. Froy identified a tome of wisdom, her lore could benefit from it but instead she passed it to Wymp in case some sorcerous wishing ever comes to pass.
Finally, a trip to the coast. Sirine song can be heard on the wind so Froy memorises Stinking Cloud, Detect Invisibility, Skull Trap and Magic Missile at Wymp's suggestion. Wymp has a more restricted set of spells available but Magic Missile, Web and Skull Trap means the sirines may be in for a rough ride next session.
Gate70: Froy, Diviner 6. 33hp. 69 kills, Greater Basilisk.
Grond0: Wymp, Dragon Disciple 6. 32hp. 78 kills, Greater Basilisk.
Undershadow: Chara and Frisk in Shadows of Amn
Part 2
(BG1 run begins here and ends here)(SoD run begins here and ends here)
Previous posts here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872325/#Comment_872325
We loot the first room of Watcher's Keep, but go no further to avoid wrestling with Vampiric Wraiths. Instead, we head to Trademeet. Spell Revisions removes Protection from Petrification, but Chara has huge bonuses to save vs. petrification from their Alchemist kit and Bitter Tonic.
It proves unnecessary, as the djinn have poor defenses and an Elf Tendon Wand managed to paralyze Khan Zahraa.
We get no Efreeti Bottle; just an incredibly lousy scimitar.
At the Druid Grove, I discover that I have Tactics-style Spirit Trolls with their awful Unholy Blight, Flame Strike, and Greater Command spells. But Yasraena takes them down extremely fast with her +2 short sword, Fireflower, and her magic resistance and Xan's fire resistance from his moonblade keep them relatively safe from the enemy spells.
Notice the magic damage from Yasraena; it comes from a bottle of Plasma, which improves weapon damage by 15% and inflicts magic damage on melee hits. It also grants +1 APR, but only to Alchemists.
We finally find the Metaspell Influence Amulet and the Efreeti Bottle in the Troll Mound, and the mage before Kyland Lind drops a Dispelling Screen scroll.
Kyland Lind is really dangerous, so I decide to focus most of my attention on him. Yasraena and Xan high high APR put together, so Kyland Lind's Stoneskins don't last long.
We kill the Maggot Golem (gross) with fire damage when slashing damage proves ineffective for some reason, use Yasraena to tank the Myconids using Lilarcor, and find no trace of Belm at the ogre mage tower.
Jan foolishly reveals Adratha's illusions and turns her hostile when all I wanted was to buy some potions. Rakshasas are really dangerous, but Xan manages to stun her using his mod-introduced longbow, which has a 30% chance of applying a PW: Stun effect.
Fighting off the other two rakshasas is far more difficult, but Chara's potions help us survive their spell damage, and when the rakshasas group together and resort to melee combat, Frisk and Jan hold them in place using Hypnosis and flashers.
Dalok loses his first spell to an Elf Tendon Wand, and his defenses don't last much longer after that.
Cernd is supposed to be able to beat Faldorn without fail, but I've seen a bug where he doesn't change in werewolf form. There's a simple fix for this problem.
After reporting our success to Lord Logan Coinpurse, I start the Trademeet tomb quest. But when I see that one of my mods adds a new friend to the tomb...
...I decide to bolt.
Back to Athkatla, where things aren't so scary. My mods add some merchants to the temple district, and after shelling out a small fortune to one of the local peddlers, Chara gets a really excellent boost to their defenses.
The robe cost 15,000 gold, but the circlet was less than 1,000. The prices here are really wonky.
Anyway, Xan meets a little girl nearby who asks us to save her father. We prepare ourselves for a fight, forgetting that we're not allowed to.
The quest leads us to the Copper Coronet, where we have to fight an enemy party when there are innocent people all around--a very dangerous situation. Most of the enemies prove easy to handle, but the mage survives longer, and we have to chase him down.
He bombs us, but by sheer luck, he doesn't fry any of the locals, like Joluv.
He keeps his Stoneskins up, but we manage to burn through his defenses by using a lot of charges from our Elf Tendon Wands.
It's the weirdest thing--there are so few single-target damage spells that can get past MGOI. Elf Tendon Wands don't even do much damage, but they're one of the few means of dealing party-friendly spell damage through MGOI.
Jan gains a level and figures out how to make a new kind of ammunition only he can use.
The Swarmer Mates are practical, but they suffer from the same problems flashers do: only Jan can use them, and he has poor THAC0 and APR. Normally we could solve these problems using Firetooth +4 or the Army Scythe, but neither are available due to Item Randomizer.
We save the little girl's father, but Xan still feels bad.
Anyway, we stop by the Promenade, which also has some mod-introduced merchants. One of them sells one of the most ridiculously overpowered weapons I've ever seen--for only 787 gold.
Notice the DEX drain, which is just as strong as Haer'dalis' Chaos Blade. Only evil characters can use Bertoxxulous, but Chara, as an Alchemist, can get Use Any Item as an HLA, and Jan can already use it thanks to the Loremaster kit.
Jan has poor APR, so he can't make much use of it, but once Chara hits level 18 and gets UAI, they can boost their APR using Tenser's Transformation (+1 APR in Spell Revisions) and a bottle of Plasma.
Plus, Chara can create, Black Mania, a potion that doubles the user's attack rate for 3 rounds. Killing endgame enemies using DEX drain is a genuine possibility later on.
I discover that a dwarven merchant at the Adventurer Mart offers unusually high prices when you sell stuff to him, so I sell him much of the contents of our Bag of Holding.
For some reason, he can't buy ammunition (the "Sell" button goes gray whenever I try), but whatever.
I buy the Ring of Human Influence from Ribald and test out the Rod of Terror trick. You used to be able to drain your Charisma down below 0 and get it to wrap around to 25 by using the Ring of Human Influence to survive the stat drain, but testing found that it was no longer possible. This means Chara's Charisma will remain at a base value of 3, which could prove fatal if I accidentally equip the wrong item.
There are lots of items in my install which impose Charisma penalties. I decide to keep the Ring of Human Influence on Chara at all times. It prevents Chara from using better rings, but I think it's safer this way.
Knowing me, I'm more likely to accidentally kill Chara by equipping the wrong item and draining their CHA to 0 than I am to let Chara die in combat. I am actually a bigger threat to Chara than any one monster in this game.
We kill Ray-Ray almost by accident. Turns out using multiple Elf Tendon Wands before his pre-buffs activate is enough to put him down.
There's yet another mod store in the Shadow Thief headquarters, where we buy some more overpowered equipment.
In Item Revisions, Arrows of Dispelling offer a save vs. spell, but I don't have IR installed.
Mavis also dies unusually fast, as I have Yasraena attack him while invisible. He goes down before his pre-buffs activate.
It isn't just thieves who can benefit from backstabbing.
Curiously, one of my mods allows Jan to take over the thief stronghold instead of me. But I don't know what the effects might be, and I think it's more important to keep my party intact and stable rather than squeeze a bit more gold and XP out of the Shadow Thieves.
We stop by the Graveyard. And then something hideous happens.
The party is completely unbuffed. No bonuses to our saving throws; no immunities; nothing. Wail of the Banshee hasn't hit yet and thankfully I paused, but that only buys us enough time to drink a single potion apiece.
I can keep going if one of the other party members dies, but Chara is another story. I need to be absolutely sure that Chara makes their save.
Problem is, I don't know if this spell is going to demand a save vs. spell or a save vs. death. Because in the original game, a lot of death spells actually required a save vs. spell, but in Spell Revisions, instant death effects require a save vs. death. And in SR, the save is at -2.
Which version of Wail of the Banshee is it? Because this Ghost doesn't look like a wizard, and this WotB spell cast instantly.
I go through my inventory. We have zero Potions of Magic Shielding and zero Potions of Stone Form, which means Chara cannot improve both saving throws with the same potion. They have to choose between a Bitter Tonic, which will bring their save vs. death down to 0, or a Brine Solution, which will bring their save vs. spell down to 1.
I have to guess. Not knowing which potion to drink, I take a gamble and have Chara down a Bitter Tonic.
The spell hits.
Survival! Only Frisk died! It was a save vs. death, and Chara rolled an 8. Xan and Yasraena hurry and banish the Ghost before it can pull any more tricks.
I rest the party, have everyone drink a Bitter Tonic, and go ghost hunting.
We clear out all the ghosts, as well as some mummies and skeletons in the tombs nearby. No more Wail of the Banshee spells to worry about.
Betting the fate of the run on a single dice roll fills us with determination.
But I've always found the Nashkel Mines hard, long before I used SCS.
Just something about them.
Can do them solo, it's the keeping everybody alive where I fail.
I think it's because I usually play insane, the increased damage means that the more squishy members can only take one hit and if it's a critical, they're toast.
So the Mulahey fight was easier in comparison to going through the mines because nobody was firing bloody fire arrows at Edwin.
Undershadow: Chara and Frisk in Shadows of Amn
Part 3
(BG1 run begins here and ends here)(SoD run begins here and ends here)
Previous posts here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872325/#Comment_872325
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872551/#Comment_872551
Under the Graveyard! We find a Spell Shield scroll as well as a scroll of Protection from Elemental Energy, which can grant immunity to any one form of elemental damage. Or, well, all of them, with the Wand of Lightning trick.
We also find another overpowered mod item...
...and an overpowered mod enemy.
I do not like Medusas. I do not like them very much at all. But with better missile weapons and stronger summons...
Chara hits level 13 and can finally cast level 6 spells, meaning they can cast my favorite contingency.
Closer to the Nether Scrolls, we run into some Burning Dead Archers like the ones beneath Ulcaster. They even drop Arrows of Detonation.
Xan talks to us about his fears. Apparently vampires are at the top of the list.
So, rather than fight vampires, I decide to all myself with them.
Notice the German dialogue strings.
Yasraena gets kidnapped by some elven weirdos. All you need to do to get her back is talk to her brother or boyfriend or whoever "Divalir" is and then go pick her up.
We go looking for more mod-introduced merchants. Not all of the items are exactly useful, but some of them are certainly interesting.
We find a Girdle of Fortitude for Yasraena in the skinner quest and Belmin Gergas, the elf hater from the Promenade, picks a fight with a far superior being.
We scribe a bunch of scrolls, Yasraena gains a level, find a weird set of Boots of Speed somewhere, and give a figurine to some clerics in exchange for a dumb-looking elephant figurine.
Elephants are cool.
While switching around equipment, I notice something terrifying.
How did Chara get 1 Charisma? Equipping one single piece of Charisma-draining equipment would have been instantly fatal.
Apparently they got diseased somehow. I have them drink a Sweet Elixir to cure the disease.
The Charisma drain is cured, but Chara still has the disease icon. I could probably remove it using CTRL-R, but that would erase Chara's contingencies. I dismiss the icon as a cosmetic bug and move on.
We buy some more stuff at the Temple District, and though we run low on cash...
...those potions from SCS are really profitable with the Alchemist kit.
We stomp on a small enemy party in the sewers, including a dwarf named Kiel the Hero Killer, and find a duplicate of the blood potion from Durlag's Tower.
The item name says it came from Quallo's friend, so... that's weird.
I test out Yasraena's MR against some Beholders. With MR-boosting potions from Chara, Yasraena can hit over 100 MR.
We tackle Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers. Gaius has some really strong defenses and some really dangerous spells, but with three mages in the party, we can remove his buffs and strike him with a Flame Arrow to get through his Stoneskins fast.
We get some high-end gear, including a sword that will obviate the need for a cleric's Magic Circle Against Evil spell.
I head upstairs to Mekrath's lair and send Yasraena after the Coiled Cabal to the east. With undispellable 87% MR, or over 100% if I give her a Burning Syrup (which unfortunately dispels magic on self), she is basically untouchable. And with her high APR, STR, and grandmastery, the Yuan-ti fighters are no threat, either.
Frisk pitches in with Hypnosis, which can be cast through walls and around corners, but Yasraena turns out to not be truly safe: the Coiled Cabal is smart enough to throw summoned monsters at her.
Yasraena alternates between Vials of Scales to grant Stoneskins and Sour Draughts to heal herself, and chops up the summoned monsters while the mages struggle to disable her.
When the Coiled Cabal's defenses wear off, Yasraena drinks a vial of Black Mania to grant Improved Haste for 3 rounds, cranking her APR up to 9 and allowing her to reliably stun-lock almost any enemy.
How does she stun-lock people? Well, she could use Electric Gel, which lasts for 2 rounds and deals electrical damage and 6 seconds of stun with every hit on a failed save vs. spell...
...but she actually just uses a scimitar. We bought a +4 wakizashi called "Divine Wind" from a merchant at the Promenade. The description just says it has a 20% chance of stunning the target, but actually, it has a 30% chance of stunning the target for 20 seconds, without a saving throw.
So it has roughly a 1/3 chance of stunning an enemy for 3 rounds. Which, on average, amounts to a 100% chance of stunning an enemy for 1 round.
At 9 attacks per round, Yasraena has a 96% chance of stunning an enemy within a single round. It's about as strong as Celestial Fury and only cost a few thousand gold right out of Chateau Irenicus.
Anyhoo, Yasraena butchers the Yuan-ti. A single Yuan-ti Mage wanders into the other room and confronts the rest of the party, but without its best defenses, it's helpless. We kill Mekrath and nab a Rod of Resurrection, a Necklace of Form Stability, and a Periapt of Life Protection.
Before we accept Bodhi's second task, I want to clear out the enemies from the Shadow Thief headquarters, as I've had trouble with them in the past. On the way, Xan finally hits 1.5 million XP.
I talk to Xan and suggest upgrading his Moonblade. Xan succeeds despite his low expectations...
...and we get an even powerful version of his sword.
It is now a speed weapon, and takes its place in Xan's off hand so he can put the vampire slayer longsword in the other hand.
Before we go any further, I head to the Bridge District and ransom Lady Elgea. We lose a couple points of reputation for the deed, but we get an extremely important item.
Prancing around in glossy pants fills us with determination.
Who did that?
(shhh they have eyes....everywhere)
Very flattered (if it's not random), thankyou.
(The original poster is a lurker in his own thread. Shhh. Keep it quiet. Here is a Gem of Seeing for you.)
Left Nashkel overnight; riskier but easier to hide according to Imoen and Montaron. Not that it helped - we got waylaid in a canyon on the way to the mines.
It turns out the Half-Orc's name is Dorn Il-Khan, and he'd been hunting those two in particular for a couple years. It sounded like they betrayed him in Luskan. I hate to say it but I can understand being driven by vengeance. He knew my name somehow. He asked me to help him in his quest for vengeance. In this matter, I'm torn. On the one hand, I still want to keep an eye on these Zhents to make sure that they don't cause trouble. On the other hand, I really want this guy on my side and I think leaving this guy to his own devices would cause more harm than letting Xzar and Montaron run wild - Xz&M at least are going to be working to clear the Zhentarim of association with the Iron Crisis (if they're telling the truth, that is).
I told Dorn that if he wants us to help him, he first has to help us examine what's going on in the Nashkel Mines, and he agreed. Imoen and the Harpers voiced their annoyance with taking Dorn, and I can see their point - he's really not a good guy - but I persuaded them that directing his power towards good ends and keeping him out of trouble will be worth it. This placated Jaheira, but Imoen kept grumbling. I can't understand why I'm making such an effort to keep him around.
While looking for the mines, we found an artist with a bounty on his head - Prism, who stole two emeralds such that he could finish building a sculpture of... someone. He thought we were sent by Greywolf (just who is that guy, anyway?). He just wanted to finish his sculpture, what harm is there in that? I even planned to guard him myself and pay for the loss of the emeralds when he mentioned that he'd been using potions of speed to aid in his work, and that he hasn't slept for days. Poor guy's body is about to give out on him. Some bounty hunter claiming to be Greywolf showed up and tried to interrupt his work. He's about to die anyway, what harm is there in letting him finish?
Unfortunately, Greywolf didn't see things my way and took offense at our presence.
META:
Because Greywolf walks right up to CHARNAME in the Enhanced Editions instead of talking to the nearest party member, this fight is hella risky without a tanky CHARNAME as Greywolf will now always start by attacking you directly. It was a strategic error to come here at level one (or, indeed, straight from Senjak and Dorotea - I think not having Entangle made a major difference in my battle plan). I should have moved Pella back when Greywolf landed his first hit (it dealt 7 out of 14 damage).
On the plus side, now that I'm out from under the No-Reload conditions I can complete this save file at my leisure - it's an interesting idea that ended due to poor decisions on my part. Thanks for read.
"Maybe this time" [NO-RELOAD THREAD]: "Partridge, Alan Partridge of the Norfolk Partridges"
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer trilogy attempt 125 (Part 1 2 3)
Last time, there was talk of Sirines. After two lots of the below, we headed north and repeated at the location of the Surgeon.
The city of Baldur's Gate beckoned and after various quests it was soon time to visit the Iron Throne. Zhalimar Cloudewulfe survived an initial attack due to being positioned by a pillar and getting Wymp entangled twice. He failed to spot he was alone, and attacked - only to fall to Magic Missiles and Melf's Minute Meteors. His call to arms did cause a small upset though, a doppelganger rising from the slain corpse of Emissary Tar. It didn't last long though.
Froy has 112 kills, Wymp 156. Both failed to put anything tougher than a greater basilisk on their kilboard.
The Partridge Family.
Leaving the "fart" village behind us we trudged on and on and on. We fought together, ate together, slept together......no we didn't sleep together however much Edwin suggested we should huddle together for warmth.
"It's early summer Edwin, it's not cold"
"I heard there was a hurrican on the way"
"We're not in the tropics, I just saw a polar bear".
We killed things, lots and lots of things. Branwyn got poisoned, quick potion, she got poisoned again, quick potion, not enough time to use her cleric skills. We ran away from ogres when we didn't have enough time/room to web/grease/horror/colour spray them but ended up killing them in the end all the same. We met a woman who asked us to commit genocide on the gibberlings, we happily complied, why not?
We were a walking, talking, fighting, ecological disaster.
"Are we nearly there yet"
"For the tenth time, no"
"Are we nearly there yet"
"(One day, one day,) for the eleventh time, no"
We followed the river, and there on a high cliff we saw the fortress. Undaunted (who am I kidding, I was severely daunted, so daunted I suggested we leave the witch to her fate, she was out of the way, her "evil" was contained, who's going to come all the way out here to find out if she was alive?) we pressed on.
Over a rope bridge, stopped by ogres, killed ogres, they dropped gauntlets. And we stood around looking at the gauntlets wondering what the hell was special about them, they looked special, they felt special, why can none of us recognise anything? Must be some kind of enchantment placed on all these objects to stop them getting nicked (at least that's the excuse Edwin came up with). Kivan just dismissed them as not being "elvish", nice bloke but really has this racial superiority thing going on. Branwyn prayed to Tempus to tell her what they were but the hotline was engaged so she left a message.
We decided a full frontal attack was suicidal so crept around the edge, killing anything that crossed us (as usual) and found that only a full frontal assault was possible. So up the steps we went, bows, spells and Branwyn and Me up front holding them off so Kivan/Edwin could shoot (what ever took their fancy in Edwins case).
Up and up, it's just as well Gnolls don't know the first thing about defending a well built, heavily defensible fort. Don't mill around aimlessly, guard the narrow staircase so a mage can't sneak up and cast some debilitating spell or the other as you chase them down, so that you are caught and become arrow fodder, Jeez, gnolls are dumb and they smell really bad.
Found the witch "Dynaheir" in a pit, she didn't seem that "evil" but she didn't like Edwin much which doesn't prove anything either way.
Edwin had already clocked her chest as she wore a low cut dress so became somewhat ambivalent and agreed to traveling together.
Kivan helped her out of the pit and got an eyeful from above and went into a frenzy of muttering Deheirianananana, Deheirianananana, over and over again.
Branwyn was delighted there would be another woman travelling with us which made me jealous.
I would have killed the witch right there had I had backup from the others especially when the first thing she did was ask us to look for her journal.
Rescuing you from certain death not enough witch?
So headed back to Nashkel, through empty, devestated countryside denuded of wildlife. Decided to take a break and bathe/clean clothes at the river. Inadvertantly tried to follow B and D to where they were bathing, got told off by D, laughed at by B, kindly understood by K along the lines of "I was young once", and propositioned by E.
Which left me having to bathe with K and E.
Actually this trip is looking up, it's been a loooong time since Candlekeep...and the readers....and the guards........and the monks........and the bored visitors..........
Late afternoon sunlight glistening off of taut, honed bodies as they frolick in the shallows and........ oh my, I need to get into deep cold, very cold water fast, (very fast).
Session 6 started a few minutes late, due to the initial load being that of session 5.
We realised before doing anything though.
First up, we headed to Aran Linvail and picked up the Amulet of Power and Ring of Protection +2. The amulet gave Dreen enough confidence to meet Mook at the docks, where we scared Lassal off. Then we remembered to hand a necklace to Mae'Var and were invited to kill Rayic Gethras for Edwin. Dreen was held, while Grond0 dropped out briefly. Nugget decided to not cast Dispel Magic and Dreen was targeted with a Finger of Death, against which Death Ward worked. Nugget then cast Dispel Magic and Dreen made Rayic pay dearly.
With the evidence of treachery returned to Renal Bloodscalp it was time to deal with Mae'Var. Fun.
Next session will be Trademeet, hopefully.
Nugget, Totemic Druid 12. 80 kills.
Nerd, Fighter 9 / Druid 12. 217 kills.
Dreen, Inquisitor 10. 307 kills.
The crew:
We're still in Candlekeep trying to get enough funds to actually equip people with stuff.
Undershadow: Chara and Frisk in Shadows of Amn
Part 4
(BG1 run begins here and ends here)(SoD run begins here and ends here)
Previous posts here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872325/#Comment_872325
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872551/#Comment_872551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872662/#Comment_872662
We're off to complete Bodhi's final task.
But we have a slight problem.
Okay. This is horrible, horrible news.
First, without any means of escape, we cannot retreat and recover if things go wrong.
Second, because we entered this area with our buffs already active, it means we're short on our best defensive spell slots. And because this is a very large area that takes a long time to cover, we will only have our buffs for the first few skirmishes. When we fight Aran Linvail, we will be drained and weakened and vulnerable.
Third, that message indicates that this area has experienced some mod-related changes. There may be tough new enemies around here, and other things I don't know about. It's going to be far tougher than it was in the original game, and I'm not going to know what's coming.
Fourth, I can't rest in this area.
And when I attack the nearby thieves, I run over some traps that were not there before. This whole place could be covered in new traps; I don't know.
Most of the initial thieves go down fast, but a Priestess of Mask hides with Sanctuary and takes a long time to hunt down, which takes away precious duration from our buffs.
Then I see more bad news.
In my install, Clay Golems have a curse effect on hit that prevents you from healing yourself. There is no save. This means that our healing potions will be useless unless I cast Break Enchantment on anyone who gets cursed. And we only have so many Break Enchantment spells memorized.
The archer on the nearby ledge fires an Arrow of Detonation at us. We distract the golem with an Efreeti, hoping to keep Xan safe for a moment.
Xan does have one means of protecting himself from Cursed Wound. He casts Protection from Magical Weapons.
But the golem lands a critical hit right before Xan finishes casting the spell.
The worst of luck. The absolute worst.
Xan switches to the Rod of Smiting, which does extra damage to golems and forces a save vs. death to avoid being instantly killed. Xan has no proficiencies in staffs, but the staff still hits really hard.
Another golem appears, but Xan takes it down before his PFMW expires.
Xan fails a save against Stinking Cloud... and triggers a contingency!
Xan is cured, without having to use one of our Break Enchantment spells. I forgot all about that contingency.
The archers here give us grief. Frisk hastens the last one's demise using some Poisoned Throwing Daggers.
Knowing that this area has more traps than in the original, I have Jan turn invisible and start scouting for traps. But it seems traps are the least of our worries.
This place is absolutely infested with Clay Golems. How are we going to reach Aran Linvail without Cursed Wound active?
We tackle Dedral, and Xan and Yasraena tear him up fast, but it seems that my mods have made the enemies much more dangerous than I remembered.
Xan might have died if he had failed his save against Poison Weapon, but because he did not, he can drink a Potion of Invisibility and make his escape instead. He flees to the north.
Meanwhile, down south, Frisk manages to charm one of the enemy fighters, a Kensai.
Frisk charms another thief and the two charmed enemies and Yasraena push the fight further south while Xan heals himself.
Once Xan is in good shape, he hurries down south, though he has to drink a Vial of Scales to make sure he doesn't get backstabbed to death.
Another Priestess of Mask proves evasive, but an Elf Tendon Wand helps bring her down.
We find something very special on her body.
Jan takes the rod and approaches one of the golems. It seems he cannot deactivate it invisibly.
I'm a little worried that the rod won't function properly. Mods don't always work properly, and if it doesn't, Jan is going to get cursed and die.
He breaks invisibility and approaches the golem.
Perfect! I do the same thing for the golems next to Haz.
But it seems it doesn't work on them.
Jan needs to escape, but his aura is not yet clear. I decide to send Yasraena forward to distract the golems.
How do I make sure Yasraena doesn't get cursed when she can't cast PFMW? I have her drink a Potion of Absorption. Since I don't have Item Revisions, it grants +10 to her AC vs. crushing weapons. She hurries over to bail out Jan.
But Jan is too slow, and the golems are too fast for him.
And when Haz senses Jan's weakness, he finishes him off before he can recover.
Yasraena switches to an APR-boosting flail, drinks some Black Mania to double her APR to 9, and rushes the golems while the rest of the party retreats. The golems fail to roll a critical hit before Yasraena slays them.
Yasraena engages Haz, but they're locked in a stalemate, with PFMW protecting Haz and MR protecting Yasraena.
We grab a nonmagical scimitar from one of the fallen enemies and pass it to Yasraena. She applies some Electric Golem and lands a hit on Haz, stunning him just long enough for Xan to help put him down.
We resurrect Jan with a Moldy Poultice and use Break Enchantment to remove the curse so he can heal himself with some potions. After collecting his equipment, we send Jan into the next hall. A whole line of golems awaits, but thankfully, the rod works this time.
But the golems are still there, and they will go hostile if we try to kill them. And I'm afraid that Aran Linvail is going to activate them when the final fight begins.
If those golems flank us during the fight with Aran Linvail, I don't know how we're going to survive it. We only have two more Potions of Absorption, and they are no guarantee of survival.
We cast what little buffs we have and drink some more of Chara's potions, including Vials of Scales to ward off enemy backstabs.
Notice the Giant Snake, summoned by Frisk using a mod-introduced short sword. We don't have a whole lot of summons, but hopefully they'll give us some space during the first few rounds of combat.
We use the door as a choke point and throw out Pressurized Gas to poison Aran Linvail and his mage friend from afar.
Our summons do not last, and enemies slip outside to attack us. We already have Kensais attacking our frontline, Xan and Yasraena, and a couple thieves trying to backstab our support characters, Chara, Frisk, and Jan. Xan loses his Stoneskins fast.
Xan drinks a Vial of Scales to restore his defenses, because re-casting Stoneskin could get interrupted, and Chara takes down one of the backstabbers using an Elf Tendon Wand.
Yasraena's Vial of Scales blocks a backstab, but those Kensais have high APR, and she loses her Stoneskins fast. Frisk pitches in by using Detect Illusions.
With multiple enemies constantly vanishing, it's difficult to focus on one. We apply pressure, but it's not concentrated enough to thin the herd.
Xan and Yasraena lose their Stoneskins. They need to drink Sweet Elixirs to cure the Assassins' poison, they need to drink Sour Draughts to restore their lost HP, and they need to drink Vials of Scales to block further attacks, but the enemies attack too fast.
Stoneskin can block those backstabs, but the Kensais excel at breaking them down, opening a path for the backstabbers.
I don't think I can handle this. I need to retreat and take some time to heal the party.
But we don't have a choice.
They blocked off the only exit. We can't get away until the fight is over.
Chara finishes casting Gyrmlain's Lightbend, a overpowered Blur spell from that wild mage clown guy Rhialto. And with 21 Dexterity thanks to a WoL Dexterity Tome from BG1, they can hit some very low AC values.
But Chara doesn't have that 5 APR dagger from BG1 anymore; their damage output is terrible. And most of their spell slots are geared towards bolstering their defenses, when what we really need is to get rid of those Kensais.
Xan casts Stoneskins while Chara distracts the enemies. Frisk tries using Hypnosis and manages to Feeblemind some of the enemies, but it does leave Frisk vulnerable to attack. They lose their last Stoneskin to a backstab from Aran Linvail.
Chara's only offensive option is an Elf Tendon Wand. It lets us bring down one enemy.
We're still at a huge disadvantage. A Kensai slashes Frisk, but Frisk's aura clears, allowing them to drink another Vial of Scales to get another 1d3 Stoneskins.
Then Aran Linvail and one of the thieves strike in unison. Aran Linvail removes our Stoneskins while a thief's Horror scroll sends Jan running.
Without his Stoneskins, Xan is a dead man.
Why is he trying to drink a Potion of Magic Shielding when what he really needs are Stoneskins?
Well, he only has enough time to drink a potion, and a Vial of Scales will only keep him alive for another round at best if he stays in melee combat. I cannot save him.
Instead, I need to sacrifice him.
Remember those Arrows of Detonation we found beneath the Graveyard District? Buried deep in our Bag of Holding, we have a Shortbow +1 for Frisk, on the off chance they might ever use it. Frisk equips them both and drinks some Black Mania for 3 rounds of Improved Haste.
Black Mania imposes huge penalties to missile THAC0, and an Obscuring Cloud spell imposes even more penalties, but Arrows of Detonation strike automatically. Frisk starts bombing Xan with Arrows of Detonation. With his Moonblade and Potion of Magic Shielding put together, Xan has 100% MR.
Xan runs around, trying to avoid the final blow that will take him down, but Jan is not so lucky.
We keep at it, but now the Kensais are chasing Xan, who is one hit away from death.
I could heal him for 40 HP using a Potion of Superior Healing, but he'll survive for another 2 hits if I use the WoL trick to drink some Sour Draughts.
The enemy switches gears and tries to put down Frisk. Frustrated by their high APR and damage, I have Frisk use the WoL trick for another extra 20 HP.
Then Aran Linvail hauls a Horrid Wilting spell.
But Xan can survive. He already has 50% resistance to magic damage thanks to his Potion of Magic Shielding, and a Radiant Philter can give him another 25%.
But it proves irrelevant. Xan has a spell deflection effect active!
Frisk has time to drink another Vial of Scales, but Xan does not. He suffers a backstab that would have just barely killed him if he hadn't use the WoL trick.
I am sick of this nonsense. I don't like using the WoL trick in-combat, but I have little choice.
Frisk keeps launching those Arrows of Detonation.
But it makes little difference. Xan has no Stoneskins, and I discover that those Kensais are actually Kensai/Thieves.
Frisk keeps firing those arrows, even though they cannot defend themselves at the same time.
Frisk will not last long.
I consider my options. If I keep Chara on the move, I might just be able to survive. The enemy has no missile weapons and Aran Linvail probably has few spells left, so I could kite them, using Elf Tendon Wands and Burning Oils to finish off the enemy.
But I don't know for certain. And this is very much like the Grey Clan episode back in my first BG1 run. We entered a modded area without warning, were forbidden to rest, and had to fight our way through multiple waves of overpowered enemies with little or no buffs. The only reason I survived back then was because I didn't hold back; I pushed my resources to their limit.
The Shadow Thieves have pushed me to the breaking point, and now I will show no mercy. I use the WoL trick on an Elf Tendon Wand and waste Aran Linvail in a single shot.
Aran Linvail's friends respond with a fatal backstab on Frisk, chunking them.
I hate when this happens, but my policy is to treat chunking like a normal death unless it involves petrification. I could replace Frisk with a much stronger character--they've always been my weakest party member--but I want to keep them around.
The Kensai/Thieves keeps vanishing. Rather than wait for them to appear so I can use an Elf Tendon Wand on him, I bomb the area with a Burning Oil.
But it's not over. The enemies cling to life and take down Chara's last Stoneskin with a lucky critical hit. But with a pair of mod-introduced bracers, Chara can cast Stoneskin instantly.
Notice the Moment of Prescience spell from the Priestess of Mask. She finally enters combat, but even guaranteed saving throws won't save her from Chara's Burning Oil.
The fight is over. We loot the place and bring back Frisk by transferring our save to the multiplayer folder and then importing their character file from the last save before we entered the Shadow Thief headquarters. We lost a little XP, but the important thing is that Frisk is back.
We head to the Copper Coronet and create some scrolls to fill in Xan's spellbook. One of my mods--I forget which--lets you spend some gold to create your own scrolls.
We head to Cromwell to forge some items. Then this happens.
Mummy rot? Seriously?
I exit out of the game and poke around the game files. Contrary to my hopes, it seems that mummy rot was behaving as it was supposed to. It gives you a message 24 hours in advance warning you that you're about to die, but it seems the message got lost somewhere in the fight wit the Shadow Thieves, and resting at Cromwell's finally triggered it. So I did get the warning I was supposed to--I just didn't see it amongst all the other information.
You're also supposed to get a warning when you try to rest under the effects of mummy rot: whenever you cast healing spells on a rotting character, it tells you that mummy rot is preventing them from working.
But because Chara didn't take a single point of damage since they contracted the disease, they never got that message. So I can't blame the death on a bug.
I do remember drinking a Sweet Elixir at the Copper Coronet when I noticed that Charisma penalty on Chara, but I'm not sure if Sweet Elixirs are supposed to cure mummy rot. I thought you need a Remove Curse/Break Enchantment spell combined with Cure Disease in order to cure it. I check the spell, and apparently mummy rot can only be removed with a Cure Disease spell.
See, mummy rot uses the vorpal strike opcode, opcode 13, which instantly kills the character after a set period of time. It uses a unique secondary type, so the only way to get rid of it is to use a Cure Disease spell, since the Cure Disease spell is patched so it removes that unique secondary type. Chara's Sweet Elixirs didn't have that opcode, and I'm not sure if they should have. They're available really early and at a very low cost to cure such a dangerous, high-end affliction.
If they were supposed to cure it, a reload would be justified per my normal rules. If they weren't, then it was just my own ignorance that caused the death.
I start thinking about how to restart the run. I don't want to spend all those hours running through BG1 and SoD again, so I plot out some strategies for how to get through them quick. It should be possible to breeze through both games by killing some Ankhegs to hit level 3 or 4 and sneaking around the tombs beneath Ulcaster and nabbing the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning before starting any major quests. Mur'Neth could disarm the traps and brew us some Potions of Invisibility, allowing us to walk right past all of those scary enemies like Arch Mage Natas and Anton Valor. Assuming they can't see through invisibility or whatever.
Then we could just cruise on the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning until the final battle of SoD, which Corwin could probably handle on her own. It would be pretty boring, but it would be a safe and fast way of getting back to BG2.
But...
Out of curiosity, I run a search in Near Infinity. I search for all the spells and all of the items that use opcode 79, the Cure Disease opcode. I look through every single example in the entire game.
And every single one of them removes mummy rot's unique secondary type. Even low-end spells like my modded version of the Bhaalspawn Slow Poison spell could cure mummy rot. The patch was universal; even spells that the player couldn't get were rigged to cure mummy rot.
There's no such thing as a spell or item that can cure disease, but which cannot cure mummy rot. Whoever created that mod made all sources of cure disease cure mummy rot.
Mummy rot was supposed to be curable by any form of cure disease! I don't have to wade through BG1 and SoD again! I can keep going!
I go back, fix up Chara with CTRL-R, and resolve to never let Chara ever get anywhere near any Greater Mummies ever again, ever.
We just barely avoided starting over at Candlekeep, and now we are free to continue our journey. It fills us with determination.
The (alternate universe) Partridge Family
Up and up we travelled, fighting for every inch of ground gained. Sweat dripping from our brows. The gory evidence of a hundred Gnolls meeting their deaths on our swords, dripping from our armour.
At last we stood before the great doors, this was it, our chance to save the innocent and bring peace and harmony to the land. With a look to each other that contained the knowledge that each of us had stared into the Abyss and the Abyss had stared back with a cheerful wave and a promise to call later, we pushed them open.
There at the end of a long passage sat our goal.....on a throne......surrounded by adoring gnolls.
"Why hast thou disturbed our peaceful home?" she asked as she rose gracefully with a miasma of purple silk floating delicately around her perfect form. She sauntered towards us, and we caught the scent of her exotic perfume.
We have come to rescue you" answered Kivan and Branwyn in harmony.
"I have come to kill you" answered Edwin before I could kick him.
"Do I look like I needed rescue" she asked focusing her deep brown eyes framed by long lashes on my two companions who shuffled nervously as she addressed them.
"But you're a woman captured by gnolls and the memory of what happened to my beloved Deheirianananana haunts me when I sleep"
"Then don't sleep, thou art an elf art thou not?"
"Women must support each other" stated Branwyn, "Tempus tells me this"
"Do I look like I need support?" she answered glancing down at her slashed to the waist gown (tape, has to be toupee tape, I know these things).
She turned her attention to Edwin,
"So a Red Wizard of Thay has come all this way to kill me, how quaint"
"Ehh what?" he answered stuggling to drag his eyes away from her plunging neckline, "what was that?"
"You want to kill me?"
"No need to be hasty, we need to explore all the options before taking such drastic actions (explore, yes explore, minutely and thoroughly)"
"Hmm, perhaps having a RWofT as a personal slave would increase my standing back in Rashemen"
"How personal?"
"Very" she purred.
"Will there be leather"
"And whips" she murmured.
"Sold, And my companions?"
"The gnolls need feeding"
"Can't be helped, these things happen to adventurers, it's probably expected"
"Edwin" I shouted grabbing his shoulder and forcing him to look away from the bewitching, smooth skinned vision standing before us, "how could you?"
"Wake up from this self induced enchantment of believing your every erotic fantasy was about to come true".
"Bah, you think this is the only erotic fantasy I can come up with, you insult me" he retorted as the fog cleared from his eyes.
"No matter, it's time the witch died"
And with that, she did.
The fight against the Shadow Dragon was... Peculiar. I decided to test @semiticgod's WoL trick, which doesn't even spend charges. It's beyond broken when you pair it with Sunfire. Two of those and a nice stack of Skull Traps were enough to deal with Mr. Thaxxyimpossi'blename'ah'fuckit. One single WoL Sunfire from while Invisible took care of the Shade Lord and the Shadow Altar.
We got Namarra as loot, although it's the worse of all of the SoA longswords. I don't say it's bad, but it could have been better (Peridian/Dragonslayer+2 would come in SUPER handy, since we have no way to protect ourselves against Fear. Also, regen). We got our gold up to 50k by selling all of our loot, and since I can already cast Death Spell we're off to clean Nalia's Keep.
I had found a scroll of Ruby Ray of Reversal but somehow I failed to learn it... My character has 19 INT which means a base 95% chance of learning a spell, without taking into account the 15% bonus since the spell is an Alteration spell and I'm a Transmuter... Anyway, I also found Tenser's, which is super good since now we can stop memorizing Disintegrate which is completely useless (I play with the rule that I have to memorize at least one spell from my main school per level, or leave one slot free, which is what I'm doing with my level 5 spells).
Undershadow: Chara and Frisk in Shadows of Amn
Part 5
(BG1 run begins here and ends here)(SoD run begins here and ends here)
Previous posts here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872325/#Comment_872325
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872551/#Comment_872551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872662/#Comment_872662
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872789/#Comment_872789
Off to the Windspear Hills! Plath Rededge has a habit of opening with Symbol of Death, so I take her out early.
Notice Chara lingering in the lower left. This is because I was trying to keep them out of the range of a Symbol of Death spell, even though they had 122 HP anyway.
There's another enemy party in front of Firkraag's dungeon. They're easy to kill...
...and drop some ridiculous loot.
Yasraena can use all of them to great effect.
The Ruhk Transmuter is pretty tough, but Yasraena can resist its spells, and Xan can stun-lock it with his bow.
It has a 30% chance of imposing a PW: Stun effect, ignoring MR and offering no save.
Yasraena's wakizashi, Divine Wind, also has a 30% chance of stunning enemies, but for 20 seconds. Stun-locking golems is easy.
Yasraena tests out the Sunray power of her new two-handed sword, and Hypnosis and magic attacks trivialize the Samia encounter.
We find a really interesting club after defeating the Guardian.
But the Free Action opcode on that club is just that--the Free Action opcode. It doesn't actually grant any immunities whatsoever. Yet another mod item that doesn't work properly.
Yasraena can stun-lock almost anything with that wakizashi. Greater Wolfweres and golems are helpless.
We get an Iron Golem tome and leave the dungeon without fighting Tazok or Conster. Why?
Well, the last time I played BG2 with my BWS install, entering Firkraag's lair led to a much bigger and nastier fight than in the original, and I'm not willing to tackle it just yet. Instead, we finish the first level of Watcher's Keep aside from fighting the Statues (we use a mod-introduced dagger to cast Negative Plane Protection for the Vampiric Wraiths), find a Wand of Spell Striking, and grab Rasaad from Trademeet.
We start Rasaad's questline in hopes of finding Wilson. Unlike last time, I refuse to pay the woodsman for advice. He doesn't take it well.
He leaves a rather interesting note.
Get it? Dog-eared?
We solve the Sixscar encounter nonviolently and purchase a bear who immediately runs away from us.
I choose a different set of dialogue options from my previous BG2 run and manage to get into the monastic order of heretics or whatever their real name is. I try to have Xan undergo the challenges, but they'll only accept Chara.
I don't know what these challenges are, so I'm a little nervous about the dangers. One of them is essentially just you getting beaten up while people tell you to renounce the faith.
But Chara has Stoneskins and Mirror Images...
...so they never take a single point of damage from the beatings.
In the end, we have to defend the temple from an invasion. Xan doesn't have a good start; he needs to cast Mage Armor to boost his AC before he can cast Stoneskin. Frisk uses Hypnotize to try to lessen the pressure on our squishy elf.
But once we make it past a few rounds, the enemy herd grows thin. The enemy monks just aren't that sturdy.
We convince Rasaad to lead the new monastic order and move on.
For some reason, Wilson will not appear at the start of the area. I thought he was supposed to show up there after you released him. In the end, I decide to bring him in using the console.
Why Wilson? Well, I've never had him before, and the Animal Growth spell from Spell Revisions can give him some crazy bonuses, including an extra 50% bonus to their HP. Wilson has over 200 HP when buffed with Animal Growth.
But we would need Cernd or Jaheira in the party. I decide to bring in Cernd, displacing Jan. I like Jan, but after reviewing his performance, I noticed that he had not been contributing very much to the party's success.
With Wilson giving us a major boost to our damage output, I decide to tackle the De'Arnise Hold. There is nothing interesting about most of the fights, but we do find a Wand of Wonder in a chest before TorGal.
Wands of Wonder can be very powerful, but they're not reliable enough to be very useful in a no-reload context. I'll probably never use it.
Right before fighting TorGal, Wilson decides to interrupt and ask me about my past. He seems a little upset to hear that Chara is a Bhaalspawn.
These dialogues are kind of awesome.
I send out our tanks while Cernd, Frisk, and Chara throw canisters of Pressurized Gas to poison the enemy mages. Yasraena gets hit by two Remove Magic spells, apparently, but holds on to most of her buffs.
The Pressurized Gas doesn't seem to be disrupting many spells, so I switch to Burning Oil. Up north, Xan casts PFMW to avoid STR drain. The Burning Oil makes short work of some of the enemies.
Frisk reveals two members of the Coiled Cabal skulking around, Xan slays TorGal, and we nail the Yuan-ti with some magic attacks.
I really should use Burning Oil more often. It's expensive, but it's worth it to end these fights early.
Xan gets a Girdle of Stone Giant Strength, we bring Nalia into the party and then ditch her immediately, and we head back to the Government District to purchase a very, very excellent dart.
Yes, that paralysis effect offers no save. And it does bypass magic resistance and spell protections.
But we have a problem. Cernd needs to rescue his child from Deril. And Deril...
...well, we've never fought a mage that high-level before.
Yasraena summons a Bone Golem (which has all of the normal spell level immunities) using her Green Dragon Plate, Cernd starts summoning a Fire Elemental, Wilson uses the Efreeti Bottle, Xan hurries forward to absorb a Dispel Magic, and Frisk fails to hypnotize Deril on the first round.
It's important to establish a presence early on in combat. But since we can't get through Deril's defenses on the first round, we cannot stop him from casting Time Stop.
Unless, of course, we used Burning Oil. Which would turn the nearby lich hostile. Not a good plan.
Before Deril can finish casting Time Stop, I scatter the party across multiple rooms, preventing him from affecting us all at once.
Deril casts Moment of Prescience to replace PFMW, granting him guaranteed saving throws as well as +20 AC. I know I can't get past his Spell Trap, so we'll just have to tough out his spells. Yasraena stays close; her MR will protect her.
Frisk dispels Deril's illusions, allowing Yasraena to attempt to land a hit. The odds aren't great, but she just might be able to stun him.
Yasraena has to put up with his Mestil's Acid Sheathe spells, but against the odds, she manages to land a hit and stun-lock him. Deril goes down!
Chara hits level 15, the last major milestone for Alchemists. Once we ditch Cernd's child at the druid grove to be raised by smelly hippie treehuggers, Chara opens up the Alchemist lab and brews us some new potions--including two types of potions that can grant permanent stat bonuses.
I go over everybody's stats and decide who does and does not need each potion before having the party drink up.
With the party a little bit stronger, I decide to pay a visit to the Guarded Compound. We enter the second floor while invisible and Yasraena tromps all over an acid trap.
Jan could have disarmed it, but he honestly wasn't worth keeping in the party anyway.
Yasraena heals herself up and stun-locks Koshi right off the bat, but against the odds, Sion gets past her massive MR.
Koshi goes down, and then I see...
...two Greater Basilisks. Sion summoned them as a pre-buff. I rush to take them out before they can cause any trouble.
Sion has cast Wish, but chooses a rather inoffensive option.
Who cares if his allies get double APR? What they really need are better defenses.
With concentrated pressure, we manage to break down Sion's spell protections, partly thanks to Frisk's Detect Illusions skill.
Chara disrupts one of Sion's spells, but not all of them.
We're basically immune to fire, though, so we shrug off the spell with little difficulty. Sion tries Comet, but it's still erroneously party-unfriendly. He kills two of his friends instantly.
Sion has re-cast PFMW, but he doesn't make much progress before it runs out. He doesn't last long after that.
We get a lot of great items, but only two are useful to us: the Helm of Defense and Firetooth +3, the throwing dagger.
We're awfully short of speed weapons, so this is a big deal for Chara, who will have very high damage output later on. We stop by the Sea's Bounty Tavern for a reason I forget, only to discover that a Cowled Wizard I had talk-blocked earlier...
...was waiting for us this whole time. I flee the tavern and run home to Bodhi.
We are finally ready to leave for Spellhold. But talking to Bodhi proves difficult.
Choosing dialogue options at random fills us with entschlossenheit.
I've been attaching images the same way I normally do, by dragging and dropping them from my Downloads folder. When I just went back to check my old posts, the spoilers just showed the link; no images.
But when I edited my old post, but didn't actually change anything in it, the images started showing up properly. Then, when I refreshed the page, @Gate70's images showed up properly, but mine no longer did.
If you can see the images properly now, I can delete your post; I'm a mod.
The Partridge Family
Finally arrived back in Nashkel to be greeted by the sight of the huge ranger we had killed hanging up in a gibbet, with the rodent pinned to it's head. (artistic license, dead Minsc turned up in my party, what, how)?.
(Also little known fact when it comes to Hollywood, people weren't put alive in gibbets, they were used to display the bodies as warning and to stop families giving them a proper burial. And they were made to measure. Info bought to you courtesy of Winchester Westgate Museum, where they have one on display made to measure for John Aitkin's corpse (which isn't on display). And no they wouldn't let me borrow it for Halloween..... spoilsports)
Dynaheir set to weeping, wailing and gnashing teeth vowing revenge on those who had killed him. Kivan, Edwin and myself, mumbled something about needing a beer, made our excuses and left leaving Branwyn to attend the distraught witch.
Refreshed, rested and with newly identified equipment, we all set off for Beregost the next day.
Arrived in Beregost with little incident, accosted by an old man so gave him a few coppers for a cup of tea, and met Officer Vai who employed us to kill bandits and offered us money for any scalps we took. Kivan already had a few with him, what???, how did I not notice this when traveling with him on my own?
Killed some spiders. Some spiders killed Dynaheir so Edwin pledged his services for a year. Hang on, back up a bit. Maybe it was her recent captivity, maybe it was the devestating loss of her protector, maybe it was because I didn't do quite enough to stop her wandering into some random house, could have been any of those factors. Ask yourselves, are you so free of sin that you can point the finger of blame?
Either way, Edwin was so delighted (she had slapped him when she found him trying on her underwear after all) he pledged his services for a year.
Why? didn't like to ask as it might hurt his feelings, perhaps he hasn't got anywhere else to go.
Found Tranzig, killed Tranzig (strictly speaking Branwyn killed him while he groveled at her feet begging for mercy with her new +1 flail, messy, very messy). Got map showing us where the bandit camp is. Kivan actually smiled!!
We needed to drop off some iron poisoning stuff we found in the mines to the chicken killing mage so decided to take a trip to the seaside afterwards. Take some sandwiches, make a day of it. Lovely weather sun shining, blue skies and then disaster. Some naked nymph on the road asking for help.
Well, Edwin has his faults, but trying to shove your tongue down a naked nymphs throat after they had insisted on a kiss is not IMO death penalty deserving. So we threatened her, she resurrected him, he asked if he could do it again, Kivan had to drag him away. Then the husband turned up, an ogre mage. Big fight, arrows of biting.
Got to the seaside to find it infested with Sirenes. Sent Branwyn's skeletons in, blindfolded Edwin (they were naked) and pelted them with missiles and MM from afar. The others ran away when I got dominated, waited for a bit to see what would happen next (thanks guys), and when it wore off we finished them. Had our picnic and fought our way home through the hoards of assorted monsters who walk straight into webs and grease.
As night fell we bumped into a very strange sea creature woman a Malenti, who asked for help to rescue a sea elf from some Sauhagin (reeling off these names like I know what the hell any of these creatures are). Kivan of course leapt to the rescue, an elf in peril, Branwyn just likes to fight and is good natured enough to go with the flow. Upshot, a very useful boomarang dagger that Edwin might actually hit something with.
(As an aside, I love this part of the NPC mod, fits so well in BG, dialog, backstory, atmosphere, everything)
So back to the chicken killing mage to sell our goodies, and find out what they are of course, (that sure is some powerful anti theft enchantment they carry). Overnight in Beregost then North to try and pick up the path to the bandit camp.
Current levels
Alan 6
Edwin, Branwyn, Kivan 5.
Undershadow: Chara and Frisk in Shadows of Amn
Part 6
(BG1 run begins here and ends here)(SoD run begins here and ends here)
Previous posts here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872325/#Comment_872325
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872551/#Comment_872551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872662/#Comment_872662
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872789/#Comment_872789
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/872830/#Comment_872830
Miraculously, we reach Spellhold without the ship capsizing. We pay a visit to Perth the Adept and disrupt his first spell with some Pressurized Gas.
We launch three magic attacks in succession: one to take down Spell Shield, one to take down Dispelling Screen, and one to take down Spell Trap.
But we're not fast enough to land a Breach. Perth stops time and basically goes all-out in attempting to remove our defenses.
Only Frisk and Chara escape with their buffs intact, but it doesn't matter.
Yasraena lands a hit with Divine Wind despite Perth's Moment of Prescience and stun-locks him. He's gone.
We don't get the Book of Daily Spell, but we do get the Gauntlets of Ogre Power and...
...Tragla's Doom. Just look at that! A +5 bonus to casting speed? It even works properly; the item works as the description says.
I don't give it to Chara, however. If I accidentally take off the Ring of Human Influence while they're holding Tragla's Doom, the Charisma drain will kill them instantly.
I could use Perth's ward stone to get into Spellhold myself, but it gives us more XP if we go with Desharik's approval. With Wilson in the party, you don't need high Charisma to convince him.
That last line is just... awesome.
Jon-bon kidnaps us, says he's going to take our soul, blah blah blah. More importantly, Chara has to sacrifice one of their ability scores.
It was a hard decision. It's not like Chara can afford to suffer much stat drain. Their ability scores are only so high.
But I guess we can make do.
Bhaal won't follow us into Candlekeep, a long-running bug, but all you have to do is summon him with the console.
Cernd hits level 14, Bodhi drops us in the maze, we bring Imoen into the party, and then we boot her, as she's the weakest party member. She doesn't complain.
We basically just stomp the Coiled Cabal. They're not the threat they once were.
Then I notice something new in my inventory.
Cool! It'll be great for Chara once they get Use Any Item.
Ho hum, time to answer the riddles. But they're different this time! Some of them are kind of interesting.
I rest up to prepare for the fight at the monster altar... and recognize a mod I haven't played in years.
Uh-oh.
Xan and Chara have PFMW, and Yasraena is already immune to level drain thanks to the Green Dragon Plate, but the rest of the party isn't so lucky. Frisk and Cernd drink Potions of Invisibility to make their escape, while Wilson shows me that his Animal Rage does not grant immunity to level drain.
That magic damage comes from Sunray, courtesy of Yasraena's two-handed sword whose name I can't remember. It can dispel magic on hit with a 100% chance of success, but I basically only ever used it for the Sunray.
It takes a few rounds, but we manage to scare off Bodhi.
Yes, I remember this mod very well. I remember not liking it. Not being able to rest safely is going to make things much more complicated in this dungeon.
But that's not even the worst part.
High-level spellcasters flanking us right off the bat. Plus liches who are already spawned and pre-buffing. I do not like this. I decide to bail out before I get crushed.
I take a moment to think, then head back in. Somehow, the nearest mages already ran out of one of their buffs, but it's a meaningless one.
Especially since I have no intention of wrangling with their defenses. Half the party throws out bottles of Burning Oil. But the enemy hits hard, too. Xan walks right into a Horrid Wilting spell. Or maybe two of them.
Plus, there's a Balor. Because of course there is.
I pull back Xan before the Balor sees us and throw more Burning Oil at the enemy. Maybe I used the WoL trick; I don't know. But it worked.
We turn our attention to the Umber Hulks. Cernd throws out a handful of summons; I can't use Burning Oil on the Umber Hulks without risking hurting my own party.
One of the mages apparently survived the last volley of Burning Oil, and casts Wail of the Banshee before I can see it coming. But we make our saves, and the enemy is weak enough for Chara to push him over the brink.
We march out to engage the Balor and resist a Symbol of Stunning. We break out some potions to improve our chances of surviving another spell--which proves quite wise, as we find another Balor just as we kill the first one.
We slay the second one and keep moving. Hopefully we won't have to deal with any other overpowered mod-related nonsense.
Oh look, it's Breudayael.
Casting Spell Trap, Protection from Fire, Protection from Cold, and Protection from Evil every second, infinitely.
I've only seen this guy and his party once before, and I hated them. For some reason, they won't talk to us, but I remember the dialogue from the first time I saw them.
Basically, this is the most overpowered group of enemies in the entire saga, by far. They have immunities to basically everything. Breudayael himself is invisible and cannot be revealed by any means. Ever. And if you kill Breudayael's wife before him, he instantly casts Imprisonment over and over at everyone in the party, and SI: Abjuration can't block it.
And he, this invincible spellcaster, got caught by Irenicus, whom Breudayael could smash like a bug. Only critters like Melissan or Demogorgon could take down Breudayael.
And he mocks you, saying he's not interested in a fight but he'd probably destroy you anyway. The mod creator invites you to attack him by making Breudayael scoff at your abilities, but Breudayael is basically unkillable. It can't be done.
I don't like him. But I'm not stupid enough to try to take him down.
We have some trouble with a Crazy Mage at the monster altar, but I don't have screenshots for how I beat him or her. Maybe the Crazy Mage's PFMW ran out or something; I don't know.
I have a problem. I can avoid Breudayael entirely, but I've still got that Spellhold lich to worry about. How am I going to tackle that thing safely?
Then I realize.
I can charm Breudayael's companions using Frisk's Seducer abilities.
I send Thordek the dwarf out to fight the lich.
The fight inches by. I pause incessantly to see what's going on in the dialogue box, because if the fight reaches the party, things could get really ugly really fast. I make sure to buff the party against fear; I've seen liches cast Dragon Fear as a constant effect aura.
I don't know if Thordek makes any meaningful progress, but he certainly doesn't win.
No sign of Breudayael coming after us. We didn't get blamed for Thordek's death! We get his equipment for free! I hope I'll actually be able to use it.
The Fallen Planetar comes out to fight. It doesn't look good; Xan's saves aren't good enough to block a vorpal strike.
For the first time ever, I use Know Opponent on an enemy, lowering its AC by 2 and its damage resistance by 10% (Know Opponent bypasses magic resistance). Better still, Frisk manages to disable it using Hypnosis, allowing Xan and Yasraena to hit it without worrying about vorpal retaliation.
Yasraena stuns it with Divine Wind! It goes down!
But...
Pit Fiend.
The Pit Fiend is stuck behind the lich's other summoned critters, but those skeletons will open up a space for the Pit Fiend to escape when our own wall of summons breaks down. I don't think we can handle a Pit Fiend; only Chara retains all their buffs. And Frisk fails to hypnotize the Pit Fiend.
The lich approaches and attacks our wall with Energy Blades.
Chara nails the lich with Pierce Shield, rendering it vulnerable to Chara's darts. The lich wastes a critical Wish spell and Chara gets past its Stoneskins.
Those Stoneskins are trouble. But then I realize that, without PFMW, the lich is helpless to an Arrow of Dispelling from Xan.
The Greater Mummies paralyze Yasraena and Cernd, but Xan and Chara have the ranged power to slay the lich.
What about the other undead? Rather than pick them off using weapon damage, we use Burning Oil again.
Suddenly, I remember that those undead were the only thing keeping the Pit Fiend at bay.
Xan has a Potion of Invulnerability active, to boost his saves and AC, but I'm not sure he can tackle a Pit Fiend. We can always run away, but going northeast would bring us close to Breudayael, who might well be hostile due to Thordek's death, and escaping to the northwest would bring Chara within the Pit Fiend's striking distance.
Instead, I have Xan try to take down a Greater Mummy. But stat drain and the Cornugon's poison are a heavy burden to bear.
The Cornugon finishes off Xan, and the Pit Fiend targets the rest of the party.
And teleports right next to the most important character we have.
Time to go. We dash up the northwest hallway to escape the area.
A Moldy Poultice lets us bring back Xan. I use CTRL-T to hasten up the waiting time and go back when the demons are gone.
We collect Thordek's equipment as well as Xan's. We can't use his helmet or his armor without Use Any Item, but we can use his axe and his shield.
And they are a prize indeed.
Awesome! This will... wait, what?
There are more of these things? No!
I send in Yasraena equipped with Thordek's shield and axe. I also have her drinking a potion of Burning Syrup (not to be confused with Burning Oil), which cranks her MR up to 160 or something.
But things won't be that easy for us.
Yasraena approaches death. But unfortunately for us, she refuses to die.
Which means that when one of the liches chases after us...
...we cannot escape. Not when one of our party members is so far away.
Wilson gets disabled. We send an Efreeti after him, hoping that it will keep the enemy horde away from Chara. But things are looking worse and worse.
But finally, Yasraena dies, and Wilson follows soon after.
We're free! We run outside and bring them back to life with more Moldy Poultices. They start healing themselves up.
I use CTRL-T to wait another hour. But there are side effects. It seems Bodhi doesn't just appear when you rest--she appears on a timer.
I am in no condition to fight Bodhi. We need to make our escape, but Wilson does not make it.
If I had waited normally instead of using CTRL-R, Wilson would have lived; he only died because his aura wasn't clear.
Whatever. We run from Bodhi and enter the lich area from another hallway. The liches have their old spells back.
We, however, are unrested. I go to investigate the situation, but there is no way we can take down those liches. Not like this.
We flee the area and sneak past Bodhi while under the effects of Potions of Invisibility. We make our way to the other hallway, the one we ran from not long ago.
I use a Protection from Undead scroll, and just for the hell of it, I use the WoL trick to make it cover the whole party. But I only really need it for Xan. I send him out to gather Wilson and Yasraena's equipment.
We're not quite done. We need to get Dace's hand. But Xan's Protection from Undead scroll and his Vampire Hunter longsword make the fight a cakewalk.
Xan bolsters his defenses so he can run past the lich's summons without getting killed.
We make it outside, and while Xan foolishly drinks a Burning Syrup that dispels his invisibility to undead, his longsword still lets him take down the vampires.
Chara's been burning a lot of money on potions to keep this party afloat. But selling another 60 out of 82 Potions of Extra Healing earns us 24,300 gold, enough to fund our potionmaking for a while longer.
We clear out some trolls and minotaurs on the next level, but the Yuan-ti I was expecting are not there.
The drow kill him in one hit; we had virtually no chance of saving him. Yasraena butchers the drow fighters and relies on her MR to keep the mage off her back, but the mage just barely manages to get past her MR and disable her using the IWD version (not the SR version) of Hopelessness.
An Arrow of Dispelling fails to cure Yasraena, but Break Enchantment works fine.
The mage evades Yasraena's grasp and wanders perilously close to the party. Xan drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to improve his saves and tries to paralyze her with Chara's dart, but all he does is get zapped.
I use the WoL trick to heal him, but it isn't necessary. With the mage fully visible, Xan and Yasraena can chop her up before she can restore her defenses.
There are new golems in the golem room, and they're already hostile, but... choke points.
That's the PW: Stun bow. Chara pitches in with their dart and Yasraena demolishes the Clay Golems with her war hammer.
The rest of the dungeon is little trouble. The next time we rest, Bodhi kills Xan, but we bounce back, heal him up, and are back up to speed. I originally planned on avoiding the Ulitharid and so forth, but now that we've got a handle on the environment, I think we can handle everything short of Breudayael--including those liches.
I go back and bait the liches with an Efreeti. Yasraena stays at a safe distance and one of the liches stops time.
The liches remove her buffs, which is little loss; her main defense is her MR, which cannot be dispelled. Yasraena flees, only waiting long enough to stun a Cornugon. Chara has to cast Resist Fear on her to make sure she sticks around to finish her work, but a Dark Planetar interrupts. Xan has to help her out with the Cornugon to minimize the amount of time she spends close to that Planetar.
Another Cornugon takes its place while Yasraena and Xan concentrate on the Planetar, struggling to stun it.
Only when Yasraena is badly wounded do they succeed.
Xan can finish off the Planetar on his own, so Yasraena flees to buy time to drink a potion.
But it's not enough. A lich stops time and weakens her enough for its allies to bring her down.
Xan gets swarmed, but we resurrect Yasraena and she slashes a lich apart while its defenses are low.
The other follows soon after; it has no PFMW spells left.
I'm still not nearly strong enough to tackle Breudayael, but his companions are still beatable. But how do we kill them safely without any liches left for us to send them after?
Easy. Even after Chara scared off Bodhi in Slayer form, Bodhi still spawns when we rest. Frisk charms Drusilia and hauls them over to the far entrance, where we spawn in Bodhi. Xan hides the party using Invisibility Sphere so we don't get crushed.
Why bring her to that corner? Because I don't know if she's Breudayael's wife, and if she is, then her death could mean party-wide Imprisonment spells. We need to escape before that can happen.
For some reason I break invisibility to fight the vampires, but Drusilia is still there to fight. A Chain Contingency keeps her safe, however.
Notice the illegal level 9 spell in that contingency. But with Drusilia still under our control, we can force her to stay still until the enemies finally take her down.
Just like Thordek, her equipment is far more overpowered than basically any other set of items in the game. Breudayael and his gang are better equipped than ANYONE.
Breudayael himself, of course, has the best equipment. But he's also the most ludicrously overpowered of them all--he's even immune to Time Stop. We'd have a better chance of fighting Melissan; at least Yasraena could stun-lock her with Divine Wind.
I rearrange some items and nearly kill Chara by equipping the wrong item.
For the third and final time, I decide to never, EVER remove that Ring of Human Influence. Because even with Purified Ichor, the Hell bonus, and the Machine of Lum the Mad, Chara's base Charisma will still only be 6, enough for two Charisma-draining items to kill them.
I put the ring in the left slot, since switching out rings by clicking on the paper doll icon uses the right slot by default. Much safer this way.
I am satisfied. Frisk's Charm spell has gotten us some of the best gear in the game at no cost. This dungeon was a nightmare, but we've finally come out on top. In fact, we're far stronger than I had expected. Pulling every dirty trick we can think of and grabbing overpowered mod items fills us with determination.
Time to tackle Irenicus! With our new tools, he probably won't be much trouble at all.
Hm.
Actually...
You know what?
Let's try fighting Breudayael.
After a fairly long hiatus, Teyl and his evil crew are back with some action.
They first decided to return to Mutamin's garden. Earlier Teyl had spared Mutamin and one last basilisk, wary of the Gnome's arcane tricks. Korax and Vicky's skeletons took care of this bit of unfinished business. The company also ran into a hunting party led by one Kirian, whose insults they took very seriously. Battle ensued. Viconia's skeleton warriors and an impressive arcane show from Edwin and Baeloth (involving Webs and Fireballs) ensured victory.
Hungry for riches and XP, the crew then paid a first visit to Durlag's Tower. Baeloth's wand scorchers took care of two battle horrors, and Teyl finished some basilisks with backstabs.
This resulted in level-ups for Teyl (7), Edwin (6), and Dorn (6). The latter specialized in crossbows at this point. Even in full plate, with a ring of the princes, and with the Claw of Kazgaroth the Half-Orc's really too squishy (AC -3) for the frontline in LoB mode. Viconia (with almost as many HPs, much better AC, and her Drow MR) and Kagain (with his Dwarven Defender HPs, and Dwarven saves) are much tankier. The party dealt with some Ghasts and left the remainder of the tower for later.
In the Red Canyons, they found a new, challenging, foe to vanquish: Bassilus. Vicky was good for a snicker,
When the escape route was barred by three wolves, the party had to look for another way to retreat. Bassilus seized the momentum, caught up, and with his mighty hammer he struck poor Baeloth down in one hit.
Against his better judgment, Edwin allowed Shoal to kiss him, but the nereid raised him and she and Droth couldn't handle Vicky's skeletons. The Nightcloak of Shar took Droth's helm as a reward.
Teyl pretty much soloed the sirines, relying on ranged attacks and HiPS. Vicky's Skeletons destroyed a skeleton and Thalantyr restored Melicamp. In the Nashkel Mines Teyl's companions formed an invisible wall to prevent the Halfling from being swarmed by enemies as he took down Mulahey with HiPS backstabs.
A battle with the wolves east of the Temple of Lathander saw Baeloth and Dorn held by smart targeting vampiric wolves. Baeloth fell a second time, but Edwin saved Dorn with another invisibility.
It was unfortunate that no one had Edwin's back, when he was the one in need. Molkar's ambush inspired the Red Wizard to summon some monsters with his wand, but the enemy was hasted and struck Edwin down before he could retreat. Another invisible wall was formed to deal with the warriors. Vicky revealed herself behind it, drawing and holding the aggro. She also managed to Hold Morvin. Teyl backstabbed the enemies from the other side.
In Nashkel, Viconia Held Neira, and in Beregost she Silenced Silke so both were easy pickings. Vicky is a valuable companion.
Killling Meilum resulted in Baeloth leveling up to level 7 (and picking Invisibility 10' Radius as a new spell), and clearing out the Ankhegs helped Viconia reach the same level (and thus level 4 spells and stronger skeleton warriors).
Dorn's quest, that I'm not familiar with, almost ended the run when Kryll first Horrored Teyl and then took 50 HPs with a Vampiric Touch. Again Edwin acted as Teyl's guardian angel.
The party traveled to the bandit camp with Raiken. After Teyl was done with looting the place, the companions entered Tazok's tent. Edwin opened with some wand summons to engage Hakt and Britik, and Baeloth risked his own skin, forgoing MI and Blur in order to cast lots of Webs. That strategy almost failed when a black talon arrow left the Drow with 4 HPs,