I think I'm going to give up on using an EET instance for my next No Reload run - as it turns out, EET is what's breaking low-level kits, not BWS. Wasn't there an EET component at some point that fixed that issue?
So far I've tested thieves and found that traps set by level 1 thieves and level 1 bounty hunters don't exist - the game doesn't actually set a trap when I try to set the trap (though the game is detecting that a spell was cast).
Top picture is a level 1, bottom picture is the SoA pregen thief. Same EET instance for both images.
Started on the long trek back "oop north" picking up the injured man, Samuel, on the way, well why not?
Arrived at the FAI to find my former companions missing. Was told two had left but the other two were around somewhere but hadn't been seen much. Later that evening a very sleepy Branwyn and Kivan made their way down to the bar........oh.....
"Hi guys, did you miss me?" "You've been somewhere" "didn't you get my letter?" "We've been very busy....." "Sure"
According to Kivan, "Viconia was holed up in a cave where she belongs with the crawling beasts and sun hating monsters" "You know Kivan, you really need to stop this racial stereotyping and prejudice". "But that's what she said" "Oh....that's OK then" "So where's Edwin?" "Gone back to Nashkel" "Why?" "Cheaper whores" So once again we set off, this time to pick up our errant companions.
Found Viconia in her cave and she greeted us with about as much enthusiasm as expected. "So the jaluk and the dathir have come to ask for my help" "Viconia, what does "jaluk and "dathir" mean?" "I have no idea but they sound suitably dismissive, I'm Drow if you haven't noticed"
Found Edwin in the Nashkel jail, been charged with sexual harrassment. "Who has he harrassed?" "Everybody, including Noober who filed the complaint"
The FF chief allowed us to take him if we agreed to find his former boss who had murdered his family. So headed west, got an idol, killed an avatar of a long dead God, found the murderer, answered his question (wrongly as it happens, "the circus", was not the answer), explained Edwin was only being sarcastic, gave the right answer, escorted him back to Nashkel.
Traveled north up the coast. Met a tramp, (no scratch that, too bitchy), Met a very attractive thief who asked us to help her get treasure. She was so obvious for the first time ever even Edwin didn't bite, we declined but got the treasure anyway for ourselves. Killed some more Sirens, killed some worgs, saved a child, killed a fortune teller (bit of an accident that one, didn't realise she was unstable), killed hobgoblins Basically slaughtered towards the FAI ready to head of for the cloakwood and the hidden mines.
Current stats.
Ayla/Alan and Edwin level 8 Viconia, Branwyn, Kivan level 7
Alan/Ayla Shadow Armour+3, Dales Protector, Katana, Batalista's Branwyn, Pratical Defense, +1 medium shield, Ashidena, Legacy of the Masters, ring of sune Kivan, Full Plate, Dead Shot, Varscona, RofP Viconia Ankheg, +1 small shield, the Stupifyer, Legacy of the Masters, RofP Edwin, RoftheEA, Brawling Hands, Boomarang Dagger, Evermemory, RofP
I know people usually put the Brawling Hands on the fighters but Edwin's dex is so bad, Also need Branwyn (16dex) to wear the LotM as she and Viconia are my front line.
(BTW would love some feedback if anyone could)
Also I have no idea how to do screen shots so script only I'm afraid.
Shyffunee started the Great Troll Massacre. Normal Trolls were disposed of with one single Death Spell, while Spirit Trolls required a couple of Sunfires after a hasty retreat because I got hit by two Flame Strikes after casting Death Spell.
The second floor was cleared with ease as well, again, using Sunfire and Death Spell, besides a couple of Fire Hands and at least twenty rounds of melee combat (for just one silly Spirit Troll... Tsk). A bunch of Skull Traps were enough to kill the Yuan-Ti Mage. The basement was no problem, a couple of charges of the Wand of Cold took care of the Umber Hulks, because I again forgot how that I have to place the Dog Stew in there... No matter. We found the last head of the flail right before Tor'Gal's room, assembled the Flail of Ages +3 and saved there. I'm not sure how to take on this fight. I think the smartest choice would be dropping several Cloudkills to kill his minions, and take care of him in melee, but I'm scared the Mages move out of the cloud and dispel my buffs...
Tor'Gal and his group all died to a nice combination of four Ice Storms, four Cloudkills and three Skull Traps. We looted the place and left. Most notable loot is the Shield of Harmony +2, the Belt of Inertial Barrier and the Flail of Ages.
On Trademeet, I recruited Cernd, who's a Totemic Druid in my install. I used his summons to deal with the trolls and other enemies outside the Grove, Shyffunee took care of the Rashakas even after having killed the Genies as well (I forgot they attack you if you have the Flail of Ages... Anyway, it was a bad choice, because I thought the Rashakas would be too much but actually their were pretty easy due to my high MR.
Cernd's summons and several Sunfires took care of almost everything, except the Myconids which were disposed of with several charges from the Wand of Cold. We got Flametongue, which is nice because it hits as +4, and killed Faldorn because Cernd got his Creeping Doom one second before her (and got to summon a Snake to finish her off)... Honestly I had my doubts on Cernd, because he usually wins this fight because he's a Shapeshifter.
After that we completed the other Trademeet quests, sold a lot of stuff, now we have ~83k gold, and went to Athkatla, were Mencar and his party were burned to death, after being softened by a bunch of Skull Traps, and later completed the kidnappers quest and got the Silver Pantaloons to forge the BMU once the time comes. We dropped like 1k gold at a Temple to get our Reputation back.
Currently, Shyffunee is level 13/13, sitting around 2.65M XP, which means, we're just one level away of level 7 spells and HLAs. We're probably gonna do some of the quests in the Docks now, before we tackle any bigger objectives.
I know people usually put the Brawling Hands on the fighters but Edwin's dex is so bad, Also need Branwyn (16dex) to wear the LotM as she and Viconia are my front line.
(BTW would love some feedback if anyone could)
I'd put the 18 DEX gauntlets on someone who's purposely going to draw enemy fire. Leave Edwin behind, micromanage his position so that he doesn't get targeted by ranged enemies. Also, add a couple of Mirror Images to your buffing routine and you shouldn't have any problems. If an enemy tries to chase him, send a good melee attacker to rescue him.
Also, give the Legacy of the Masters to Kivan or someone who isn't capped at one ApR like Viconia. Same for Branwen if there's anyone who can use them better. Edit: I'm saying this because the biggest advantage these gauntlets give you is the +2 damage. THAC0 bonuses are subject to what you end up rolling, while a damage bonus is always applied (if you hit...). And given Kivan has a higher ApR and isn't a spellcaster, he can make better use of them, since he'll deal far more damage with them than what Branwen or Viconia are capable of.
I know people usually put the Brawling Hands on the fighters but Edwin's dex is so bad, Also need Branwyn (16dex) to wear the LotM as she and Viconia are my front line.
(BTW would love some feedback if anyone could)
I'd put the 18 DEX gauntlets on someone who's purposely going to draw enemy fire. Leave Edwin behind, micromanage his position so that he doesn't get targeted by ranged enemies. Also, add a couple of Mirror Images to your buffing routine and you shouldn't have any problems. If an enemy tries to chase him, send a good melee attacker to rescue him.
Also, give the Legacy of the Masters to Kivan or someone who isn't capped at one ApR like Viconia. Same for Branwen if there's anyone who can use them better. Edit: I'm saying this because the biggest advantage these gauntlets give you is the +2 damage. THAC0 bonuses are subject to what you end up rolling, while a damage bonus is always applied (if you hit...). And given Kivan has a higher ApR and isn't a spellcaster, he can make better use of them, since he'll deal far more damage with them than what Branwen or Viconia are capable of.
Thanks.
Playing this party, I find Kivan deals so much damage with the bow I don't use him in melee much at all. And because doing the whole no reload thing, keeping my charname very much at the back as well. So the pressure is all on Vic and Bran.
I tend to send Edwin all over the place throwing out AOE spells, so he does get targeted. I think my tactics are usually stop the enemy in it's tracks, use missliles until the last minute and only then melee. And in BG you can do that a lot because it's so open. I really ought to stop the AOE spells because it is cheesy but it's too tempting.
I tried to finish SoD, but had an ugly CTD (the one where Windows gives you a blue screen with "physical memory dump") so it was done this morning. Not much trouble, apart one battle that could have ended the run due to a combination of factors, my own fatigue probably being the worst of them. I skipped through most optional quests since I was eager to get to BG2, only doing the most rewarding stuff, like killing lot of spiders. This is my DD's 4th level pick, Vitriolic Sphere. It's similar to Acid Arrow due to damage type and lingering effect (3 rounds), but it has a small AoE (not party friendly) and more importantly it bypasses MGoI. The bad thing about it is that it's projectile moves at snail's pace. When it finally connects, it covers everything in acid. It's a cool spell to have.
I had a small bug (?) when meeting Khalid. The commander calls him, and, in normal circumstances, Khalid would answer that call. Unfortunately, Khalid's dead. I CTRL-Yed both him and Jaheira (doing this to Jaheria results in Voglin being hostile, so he died as well).
My Shaman's first level 5 pick are Insects, naturally. With that spell, we fear nothing and proceeded to whack through the game.
First death of SoD - confused illusionst finds spiders.
Golem Construction mod adds a few enemies here and there - we met our first Maggot Golem when fighting the druid. It's not too dangerous however.
As for the battle that nearly ended the run - Cabal. I made few horrible mistakes here. One, PfM scroll on kensai. This prohibited Pro Fear from working. 2nd, my DD got held and killed quickly. 3rd, enemies had Deflections active (or Fireshields), both of which prevent Insects from working. When the undead dragon approached, what was to be a battle became a massacre.
Things start to look bad as the enemy kills our Water elementals and approaches. Bertha quaffs Magic Shielding potion, but in only lasts for 60 seconds, and is dispellable.
Kensai runs in fear, and dies. I've lost all my melee dps. Bertha has only 3/2 apr unbuffed.
DD follows to die. We're all locked in by summoned undead, can't get spells off and the damn dragon is on our tail. Bad, bad, bad.
Bertha, for the first time in the game, starts Turn Undead. It won't kill them, but they scatter - otherwise she might get boxed in.
RUN Bertha RUN...
Not much later, Bertha is the sole survivor of my group. What now? I have 4-5 mages vs me, a retinue of undead, and a level-draining dragon. Stiff up and take it, that's what.
Bertha runs away to a better position, enemies cover her with Obscuring Mist, she Turns undead not to get boxed in and uses the room to drink another Magic Shielding potion.
The battle lasts on and on; she loots the corpses of her fallen comrades for healing potions. That leaves her open for other attacks, she fails a save vs Horror...craaaaaaaap.
At least the summoned undead are gone.
She runs around in fear, but doesn't get boxed in. Sheer luck here, the fact she drank Regen potion just before Horror hit and the absence of enemy summons worked for her. Her sanity gets restored, and she goes to work with her hammer. Hammer time!
Unfortunately, my troubles do not end here. She starts to suffer from some fatigue effect. I don't know the source of it, but it makes her virtually unable to hit anything (fatigue imposes THAC0 penalty, but it's not shown on character sheet). She summons skeletons and blesses them.
They last for 2 rounds total. Bertha did manage to throw a potion of explosions at the enemies at least. Sigh...never ends.
IR makes Potions of Genius into potions of Restoration, so level drain can be countered by that. That still leaves open the question of how to actually kill these two left. More Explosion potions, I guess. Bertha takes damage as well, but at this point I was both annoyed, desperate and I kinda gave up hope.
Look at the attack rolls. 16 is a miss. Hell, even 19 is a miss. This goes on an on. No more Restoration potions left. Level drain now becomes a big issue.
Finally, two critical hits connect on the stupid dragon.
After the damn Cabal stuff, we had no more problems in the game. Tbh, I didn't leave enemies much chance. In between Cloudkills, Insects, Vitriolic Spheres and lighting attacks, it's smooth sailing. Bertha finally replaces her full plate from Beregost with something more appropriate for a character of her stature.
Yes, I joined Caelar in the final battle. Bad, bad - I still wonder where karma will get me.
Why a wild mage? Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is broken in its current form - it ignores your aura being unclear! Once you get Evermemory, this thing gets very fun.
Why a No-Reload? I want to see this explode in my face.
First battle: Carbos. NRD Sleep became Hiccups curse twice in a row. Apparently your Wild Surge is only rolled once per round, so getting an unfavorable Wild Surge on NRD compensates somewhat for the aura trick.
Second battle: Shank. NRD Sleep fizzled because reasons. Afterward, did NRD Armor to compensate for only getting one cast during Shank battle...
I did find a safe place to "watch" the carnage, at least.
With that, it's time to leave Candlekeep. Preferably before Gorion learns what we did. Except, uh...
And with that, the Twisted World of Midge Sempsin came to an early, if amusing, end.
Quick question for anybody who can answer. Keep reading about "aura being cleansed" or even just mentions of "aura". What's that all about?
Under normal circumstances, you can only cast one spell (or use one innate, or drink one potion) per round except if you cast Improved Alacrity beforehand. What Improved Alacrity does is give you the status effect of "Aura Cleansing" which basically means "you aren't limited in how many spells you can cast or potions/innates you can use" - instead of five uses of Magic Missile across five rounds, you can dump them all out in one round. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is not at present constrained by your Aura status, but always invokes a Wild Surge.
I once made a ridiculously overpowered item that gave you permanent Aura Cleansing. That was literally all it did. Kinda broke everything. I might remake it as Plate Mail armor to keep it incompatible with arcane casting (cleric casting isn't as easily exploited under IA, and pure druids can't wear plate anyway)
So it's just a way of saying "have to wait for the next round" or "the next round has started" or am I missing something? It's not mentioned in game at all is it?
It's mentioned in passing in the Rules section of the manuals in the form of "you can only cast one spell per round" and doesn't cover potions or innates at all - the Aura term we use is just because of how Improved Alacrity's effect is named internally and in the combat log. I'm sure there's an official reason for calling it Aura but I never had 2E sourcebooks.
In short, for me it's a fancy way of saying "you can cast/drink/innate again"
Trio No Reload, Gate70 / Grond0 / Corey_Russell (Part 123456 7) Session 7 was meant to be all about Trademeet.
First though, a quick trip to the Graveyard as Dreen was fed up of lugging illithium around. There was nothing much to write home about in the vampires nest, other than Nerd getting Held by a Greater Ghoul. We rapidly decided Dreen should use his Inquisitor Dispel but realised Nerd had Iron Skins active so we may as well melee it. The skins lasted longer than the rotting flesh, so Nerd emerged none the worse for wear.
Lassal thought he had the better of a Fire Elemental but Azuredge's Destroy Undead finally landed.
With the vampires defeated, the surface of the graveyard fully explored and the Improved Mace of Disruption forged, we moved on to the Bridge District to deal with traitorous thieves followed by Am-Si's premature burial gang. Nugget was by this time irritated with his non-magical bullets failing to make an impression against the recent enemies so we went to Watchers Keep and swore at a chest that refused to open with Strength -> DUHM. A return to the Copper Coronet confirmed Joluv the bonus merchant did not frequent our BGT install (with his magical sling), so Roger the Fence secured a sale of potions of Storm Giant strength, plus some Cloud Giant ones for other tricky containers. Off to Watchers Keep again...
Nerd glugged a Cloud Giant potion to force the container despite being told it was insufficient, so Dreen also partook and proved his point. Nugget didn't mind though, a gleaming Crimson Dart now in his hand.
Back to the Bridge District, with Smugglers and Fallen Paladins making their final appearances. With 3/4 of our session gone we remembered we were meant to be in Trademeet. Sigh, we'd better make our way there now. Although, we'll just collect a pantaloon ransom, pick up a stuffed bear and hand in Neb's head "on the way".
So Trademeet. Dreen's question about protection from petrification was met with blank looks. We're druids, well two of us, and who needs such concoctions when you can throw up a wall of snarling summons?
We purchased a cloak of displacement (Dreen) and Belt of Inertial Barrier (Nugget) as they complemented the Shield of Harmony Nerd was given in return for culling the Djinn. On to a Druid Grove, without Cernd (is it just me or do all these druids look the same).
Nugget looked at some Bracers of Archery. No good to him and unlikely to be much use to his two melee-oriented companions. Still, the Spear of the Unicorn was a nifty looking weapon so he decided to ditch his cheap dagger +1 and plain old buckler.
Nugget, Totemic Druid 13. 86 kills (+6)
Nerd, Fighter 9 / Druid 12. 242 kills (+25)
Dreen, Inquisitor 11. 347 kills (+37)
Next time? Back to Trademeet if we restore the Druid Grove.
Quite a bit of ground covered. We did stuff in the following order - Mencar, Circus, travel to Temple district, accept all quests, wait for night, open the chests in Talos Temple, go to sewers - kill the party there. Buff up (all we got, these can be ugly tackled this early, we also have 4 summoned skeletons) approach, slam Insect Plague, Cloudkill and a Fireball (via Wand).
Next round - Spell Thrust to remove Gaius' MGoI, shaman casts Spike Growth (level 3, Entangle-like spell which slows movement and does tiny bit of damage as well), illusionist casts Slow. Enemies charge towars us, but damage over time is getting them.
Those that approach, are slain in melee. I want to keep my casters' aura clear - Gaius can be rather dangerous. The only one who did cast is Shaman - more Insect Plagues.
All apart Gaius die.
I cast ZoSA to get rid of the Cloudkill, and Gaius teleports to us. He's almost unbuffed, relying on stoneskins, Acid Sheath and Mirror images alone.
I blast him with Vitriolic Sphere. It's damage will be reduced to half due to Acid Sheath which offers 50% Acid resistance, but whatever - the lingering damage alone might kill him. Shaman blasts him with a Call lighting spell. Vitriolic failed to disrupt his casting (I use that concentration tweak), but lighting does.
As his last move, he releases a Cone of Cold. Big damage, but not enough. I cast another Vitriolic at him, but he dies to ongoing damage of the first one before the 2nd one even hits. Yes, it moves *slowly*.
With that done, Docks; take quest to kill Mae'var, give the amulet to him, agree to kill Rayic for Edwin, give Edwin what he deserves, take the letter back to guild, kill Mae'var - no problems there, with 3 people under stoneskin effect and the others too tanky to take down quickly, thieves had no chance vs us.
Next, the two ambushes. Dispel from my DD worked, and made short work out of them. They come with Golems! Baby Golems!
I return the poisoned man, finish the harper quest (killing the harper ghosts while at it, total 27K XP is no small reward), then proceed to do what Edwin asked me to. Rayic got debuffed with Spell Thrust, his illusions dispelled by Shaman, hit by Vitriolic Sphere and his morale broke when he got struck by Wand of Lighting.
To end the session, I payed 15K to Shadow Thieves. A good day.
A bit more work today saw this duo into position for the end game in the next session.
The session started in the Cloakwood where Jubb was contemptuous about the possibility spiders could hurt him. There was a moment of concern when he was stuck in a web and offering tasty bites to all comers, but Nock was able to shoot down the spiders before Jubb was too badly poisoned.
We did pick up Spider's Bane, though it's unlikely to see any significant use.
There was no further action on the way to the Cloakwood Mine. A quick debate there about tactics resulted in a frontal assault by Jubb while Nock sent arrows of biting into the mages' backs. That successfully prevented them doing much and the fighters were out-classed on their own.
Jubb took the boots of speed and quickly put those to good use by regularly cutting down opponents before Nock could catch up. Davaeorn might have been expected to be a challenge - but there's a multi-player glitch in that area that sometimes allows opponents to be attacked from a distance and this time it was Davaeorn's turn to play helpless target (you can't see him on the screenshot as only the client computer has him visible).
In the City the tomes were recovered. The only significant fight in doing that was with Larze when there was a bit of confusion as to whether Nock was meleeing or shooting. For a moment it looked like Jubb was going to have to retreat from the hard-hitting ogre, but Larze rolled a critical miss and didn't get the opportunity to try again.
There was another moment of concern when attempting to get the Helm of Glory: - Drelik managed to get a horror spell off and cause Nock to run, but Jubb stuck to his task.
At the Iron Throne Jubb made use of a scroll of PfM to act as a target while Nock tried to bring down the casters with arrows. However, Nock was himself targeted as a result of an inconveniently placed pillar and had to down a swift potion to ensure Jubb wasn't left alone in an awkward situation.
The final action was back in Candlekeep where the tombs were robbed before fighting through some dopplegangers. Jubb decided that true sight would allow him to take Prat down without using any protection of his own (other than the ring of free action to prevent being stunned by Bor). He duly lived up to his prediction and the others didn't fare too much better.
After paying my hard earned gold, we cleared out CC of slaver, Lirarcor, Slaver's boat. DD and shaman now have access to level 6 spells (Imp.haste and Wonder Recall were 1st picks). Not much interesting happened in any pf these places.
We also did cpt.Dennis. I usually avoid this battle; but my AI is set to attack and if casters don't have a ranged weapon they'll wade in melee; and that +2 throwing dagger would fit nicely for now. Too bad for Dennis.
Following that, Fallen Paladins and skinner quest, pay 5K to cast magic in city, do thieves' quests for Linvail (not Bodhi yet). Now it was time to get out of the city; we met some brigands, but they let us go.
Did small quests in Umar Hills, then to WK. No Vampiric Wraiths spawns, so the 1st floor was ours for looting freely.
I did get quite cocky so decided to loot the 2nd floor as well. Years of playing BG give you huge insight in this game. Example; here the game lagged for a split second. I know the reason for it (enemies spawn); but if golems spawn there is no lag...this is next level powergaming at it's finest!
Yup, it's Kuo-Toa - but our defences online, they were killed.
The run got close to end here, in the Ice room. All was fine untill Bertha got under some kind of panic effect. Remove Fear couldn't counter it. This wouldn't be dangerous per se, but the room was filled with acid; I barely managed to close the door of the acid room as I killed the last Mist there. One more damage tick would kill Bertha.
Ofc, when it rains, it pours. Spiders didn't spawn 1st time we entered the south room. Neither did Wraiths. It's just natural they'll spawn at the worst possible time when I was drawing Fire Elementals to Ice room. My caster trio was completely exposed.
I summon some Ogres via Wand I had from Irenicus' jail, but it was in vain - spiders killed all three of my casters in one round. They can't really hurt my kensai and Bertha, but still, bleh...
I think this was the highest critical hit from kensai I witnessed.
I exited this place by placing scepter keys in place and running away. Chromatic hit us with his fireball attack, but we managed to exit before he does more harm.
This is Bertha's inventory now. Not too shabby - but she's not immune to critical hits.
With kid away, I had plently of time today. First we ran into a rather ugly ambush, loosing 3 people. We still pulled through.
Following that, it was nigh time to get Ages for Bertha. Torgal has a wonderful portrait in my setup Nalia is with us, but only since we get 10K gold this way. She won't be doing anything.
I hit the mages with a Spell Thrust and a Dispel - one mage is debuffed; insects fly.
Torgal is set on killing my illusionist, which gives me plenty of time to kill the trolls and Umber hulk.
Torgal is berserking like a madman, trying to focus on my casters...failing over and over again.
I kill the debuffed mage, and my shaman decides it was time to use some of his new spells. I remember one of @Grond0 's solo shaman attempts ended when casting a spell onto himself (maze-like) - I wanted to use this to protect my Shaman for a while. I tought it was the 6th level new one, but this one works as Feeblemind I guess. If enemies can't disable you, you oughta do it yourself, hehe... Mind Locked away...
It made no difference in the end.
The mage got stuck in his own web...
Happy and equipped with +3 weapons, we go on to pay Shade lord a visit, get ambushed by Rakshasa, nearly die (if Web projectile moved faster, we'd probably all die)
Bertha gets her rest-of-the-game-'till-WKlevel4 sling.
The selling point of this weapon is massive Breath save bonus, which Bertha has an awful score in - neither cleric nor fighter have good breath saves with SR, and the importance of reducing energy attacks is huge. Major battle here is Thaxy, but he's a walkover. Debuffed, MR lowered
...even spell disrupted, which was (accoridng to SCS) impossible to do...
..all lead to a quick demise.
Shade Lord was awfully long - I couldn't break his Deflection (Spell Thrust won't remove over lvl5), so I had to rely on survival and waiting for his PfMW to expire to get some blows in. He even managed to "reset" his buffs (this is on a 90-or-so second timer so that + 1 PfMW is the total battle duration). First we focused on Patrick, altar and shadows, then finally Shade.
We did all stuff (Firkraag, Trademeet, Planar Prison, vampires) we could before setting sail to Spellhold. All but one thing - Planar Sphere. And there Bertha met her doom. I wanted to kill Tolgerias with 3xVitriolic Sphere sequencer, to make the battle short. After 3 ticks, it brought him near death, but he was still alive. He buffed with Spell Trap, Apsolute Immunity, and proceeded to cast Time Stop, in which he gated 3 (or 4, can't remember) Cornugons + Efreet, and to make things interesting, a Planetar. Planetar proceeded to feast on the poor mages as Tolgerias debuffed them under Alacrity. I tought he ran out of nasty spells, but had a Symbol or Hold that struck Bertha. She failed to save, and Cornugons feasted on her black soul. kensai ran away in fear. GG.
Shit @Aasim, you're such a good player and it was great to read your posts. Hopefully you have time for another run. RIP Bertha. May the Gods watch over her black soul.
So fully stocked and raring to go (yeah sure) we headed into the Cloakwood. First business, killing the Talsoi and retrieving the cloak for the grumpy dwarf in Beregost. Then ever onwards.
Came across an extensive hunting lodge with a group posing in their Tweeds standing around outside. They were having problems with Druids and asked for help. The druids showed up accused them of hunting in the forest. "That's really bad I said" quickly hiding my rabbit fur lined gloves, "Terrible" said Branwyn tucking her necklace of bear claws inside her jacket, "Outrageous" said Kivan pulling his hood up covering his exotic bird feathered headress, "Dreadful" said Viconia holding her shield in front of her sable boots, "Barbaric" said Edwin casually beginning to cast as he eyed his ermine trimmed robe. "What will you do?" "Kill them of course and you too if you interfere" "Not today"
Nasty fight, lots of lightning, summoned bears and insects, but skellies can't be bitten and are not really friends of the earth as more likely buried in it. Upshot, we got a reward and the promise of aid when we hit Baldur's Gate and the use of the hunting lodge for the night. The summoned bears were delicious.
Met an elf on a bridge, asked us to go wyvern hunting, it's on the way and the reward is good. So welcome aboard Coran. What can I say about Coran? Well, rather glad I was currently "Alan", as it was Viconia who had to deal with the endless chat up lines. Kivan had warned him off Branwyn. Does he ever stop? Well after a day or so, obviously not, even Edwin was impressed and started taking notes.
Crossed another river, met a young man looking for his brother who had gone missing days previously after heading off into the giant spider infested woods!!! (I think it's inbreeding caused by being stuck out in the wilds). Viconia sent Coran ahead to fetch her some food, but he confounded her plan by being able to see the traps I'd warned her about. Good try Viconia.
We found the giant spider nest where the giant spiders came from, and the giant insane cursed woman who lived there. "Kill it with fire" was unanimously voted for without much debate. Returned the drained husk of a body to the brother, got to keep the magic sword, so good result all round. That level of stupidity shouldn't really be allowed to breed.
Moving on, (actually roaming around in circles bickering about which side the moss grows on trees), we met more Druids who thankfully hadn't been in recent contact with the last lot, and they pointed us in the right direction. Found the Wyvern nest, killed the wyvern parents, the wyvern grandparents and the wyvern babies (and the Druids were worried about the Tweed clad city folk?) and let Coran go to pick up the reward, arranging to meet him later. It was for his own good, Viconia had suddenly taken a great interest in foraging fungi and offering to cook.
And finally arrived at the mine, it was huge, how it was a secret was anybody's guess. A welcoming commitee was there to greet us, we said hello friendly like, then we killed them friendly like. All very civilised. Thing is, they had letters warning we were on our way, and this was the best they could do? Stand around in the open waiting for us to show up? No snipers concealed on the walls, no traps? Amateur.
Into the mine, ineffective guards, enslaved miners, dirt, grime, darkness, the usual. We went down floor by floor, met a miner who had some very complicated plan to flood the place if we found a key. Met a dwarf who claimed to be one of the original clan of dwarves who built the mine, before it was flooded last time. So really this mine is a bit of a disaster waiting to happen regardless. Did the heroics, they wanted money to bribe the guards so they could escape. What guards? There's nobody left upstairs. But it was only 100 gp and I admire any entrepeneur looking to make a quick buck when they can.
Lots of hobgoblins waiting around to shoot us, a couple of mages flinging spells, an ogre mage. So we crept around, while Edwin buzzed around like a demented ladybird flinging spells. (just a hint for any evil mastermind reading this, if you are going to use idiot henchmen like the lot waiting for us outside, don't allow them to have a really, really, game changing piece of equipment on them so that when your nemisis inevitably turns up and kills said henchmen, they don't get the game changing, likely to mean success item, when they inevitably kill them. I'm talking Boots of Speed here). And now finally I have a +1 katana.
So bottem floor and the face off with Davaeorn. Now he at least had made some preparations, traps, a couple of battle horrors(?), contingencies, sequencers. It makes you feel appreciated. Didn't do him any good but it showed he cared.
And yet another fight where I wasn't really that sure why, but Davaeorn died really quickly and I found the battle horrors dead without knowing what had killed them (I presume skellies). Or did they just die when Davaeorn died? Davaeorn never seems to run/teleport to the right anymore, so you have to play cat and mouse with him. Instead he comes up the main passage straight to where you are round the corner, so then he's facing everybody at once. The fight used to be harder I'm sure.
So Davaeorn dead, found the key, let his acolyte go, looted the place, jumped on the lift, dropped off the key and emerged into the fresh air. Was thanked by the (now ex) slaves and commenced the long trek back to civilisation.
It was something of a 'dies horribilis' today for us. Things started going wrong when we undertook encounters we don't normally do. The first problem was when we decided to pick up the 3 Necklaces of Missiles available. While taking on the daughters of Shandalar, Nock was in the process of warning Jubb not to kill any of the guards, but one of those was almost killed by a stray lightning bolt and Jubb's love-tap finished him off, to cause reputation to plummet.
The next problem was when we decided to relieve Drizzt of his scimitars - I think for the first time in our multi-player attempts. The fight went according to plan - but the aftermath included another reputation drop which was not good news for a ranger/paladin combination.
Pushing on regardless, Slythe was neutered by a dispelling arrow and more of those featured at the Palace where both dukes were saved. Jubb though was almost killed in the maze after triggering two traps,
while Nock had a stumble of his own by showing himself to the skeleton warriors before Jubb could finish them off using his PfU scroll.
After leaving the Undercity party, Sarevok was dispelled from long range and he was unable to move quickly enough to save Semaj. Jubb tried to finish Sarevok in melee, but was forced to retreat and shoot him up.
SoD
The initial dungeon was done reasonably comfortably, with Necklace blasts cutting a number of groups down to size. Korlasz refused to give in immediately, but a fireball or two later and she bowed to the inevitable.
We seem to struggle with the encounter at the bridge in the initial area after Baldur's Gate and that was once more the case. One of the clerics noted that Jubb had a free action ring on and sent a hold person winging its way to the rear to freeze Nock. Meanwhile a mage disabled Jubb with an emotion and the run would have ended there if Caelar hadn't turned up to negotiate - her superpowers forcing the held Nock to walk up to confront her.
Moving on to the Temple area that saw the end of our last run, there was an early mistake when Nock healed Jubb while passing through a dragon's lair - and waking it up. Ignoring that though, the duo pushed on and killed some cult guards to prevent them responding to Ziatar's calls for help. Ziatar retreated into sanctuary to try and buff up and repair damage taken, but volleys of fiery potions prevented that tactic and she died as she came into the attack.
Nearby the Neothelid waited and Jubb was immediately rued his state as a fallen inquisitor when he was charmed on entering the room. Nock meanwhile was prudently staying out of trouble - or at least that was the case until a magical sword appeared next to him and the Neotholid stunned him without ever showing itself ...
MP127 Gate70 was the protagonist for this, but I don't know if he'll find too much to say about the run . His dragon disciple was supported by a fighter, but not long after leaving Candlekeep the duo were ambushed by gibberlings during an area transition. Gate70 was taking a sip of water at the time (remember kids don't drink and drive) and was just too slow to react as 2 of the creatures took chunks out of him as he passed between them ...
MP128 Never daunted we immediately rolled up a third pair for the day. For the first time in our MP runs this included a shaman and he was soon summoning spirits to help devour enemies.
Unfortunately our lack of experience with those showed up when pre-summoned spirits to deal with Silke decided to disappear at the end of her conversation.
That resulted in a lightning blast killing the shaman.
My avenger immediately went to the nearby temple to get him raised before coming back to see if Silke could do that again. She seemed to be dismayed by the shaman's reappearance and immediately started running away - unfortunately that resulted in her running closer to the avenger and a volley of magic missiles clocked up another death scene for the record.
MP129 Our new random pairing sees Gate70 with a shadowdancer for the PC, while support will be provided by a druid. After generating those two, however, we agreed that even our capacity for punishment was exhausted for the day .
Shit @Aasim, you're such a good player and it was great to read your posts. Hopefully you have time for another run. RIP Bertha. May the Gods watch over her black soul.
@Aasim: Condolences... Tolgerias is a nightmare in SCS.
As for disrupting Thaxll'ssillyia: SCS gives dragons immunity to the casting failure opcode and +10 to casting time, making all spells instant. But even a casting time of 0 isn't actually instantaneous. There is a single frame during which you can still get disrupted.
Those of you who play with auto-pause enabled might have noticed one of your characters failing a Stoneskin or PFMW with a casting time of 0 when you tried to cast the spell right after your spellcaster got down to Badly Injured. That's because your spellcaster began casting at the same frame he or she got hit.
BG runs at 30 frames per second, so it's very rare to land a hit on that frame. But it's possible.
I started a new Legacy of Bhaal run in BG1 yesterday, but I've already lost interest. I had elaborate plans for our strategy, including using an Alchemist thief kit to create Potions of Invisibility for BG1, and pulling silly tricks with the Dimension Jump and Teleport spells in BG2, but I ran into the same problem I always have with LoB mode.
Summoning spells and missile weapons are just plain better than everything else. By itself, summoning hordes of dogs and wolves with SR summoning spells was enough to take down basilisks while my invisible thief looked on--no Potions of Mirrored Eyes were needed. And when the summons weren't strong enough, the best choice was always to attack with bows and slings from afar rather than rushing in.
When I had my Fighter/Mage attack the Firewine Ogre Mage with her longsword, he chunked her with a critical hit despite her Mirror Images and negative AC. There's no reason to engage in melee combat in a no-reload LoB run without Stoneskin. Missile weapons are just plain better.
And in BG1, the XP rewards from fights are wildly lopsided. We can fight an extremely challenging mage for 3,000 XP, or we can just swarm a gang of kobolds for 5,000 XP in less time with no risk. And if you disable the bonus XP, the game is just going to be painfully slow and unrewarding.
I'm not sure what the next run should be. I've already decided to cut out mod-introduced items (maybe I'll allow one non-weapon item per character, as long as it's not something crazy like the Robe of Mystra or Amulet of Wyvren Summoning), but I'm not sure where that takes me next.
I've considered doing a solo run, but people have already soloed the game with basically every character, and I like to make my runs weird and unorthodox. Hence the Party of Spiders, the Fire Seed run, the LoB genocide run with Carl, the custom kits in Undergate, and whatever else I've done.
I've also considered doing a solo Legacy of Bhaal run, but I'm not sure how to make BG1 fun when the main quest is littered with kobold hordes with 500 collective HP and 15 attacks per round. I can always avoid most encounters, but without that XP, my main character doesn't grow. Plus, I'm not sure how I could tackle the Ducal Palace without just using Resilient Sphere on Belt and/or Liia Jannath. And though a Fighter/Mage/Thief seems like a viable character build, I don't really like FMTs, and choosing them for a solo LoB run seems too obvious, somehow.
Maybe I should just do a no-reload Story mode run or something.
Comments
Top picture is a level 1, bottom picture is the SoA pregen thief. Same EET instance for both images.
Started on the long trek back "oop north" picking up the injured man, Samuel, on the way, well why not?
Arrived at the FAI to find my former companions missing. Was told two had left but the other two were around somewhere but hadn't been seen much. Later that evening a very sleepy Branwyn and Kivan made their way down to the bar........oh.....
"Hi guys, did you miss me?"
"You've been somewhere"
"didn't you get my letter?"
"We've been very busy....."
"Sure"
According to Kivan, "Viconia was holed up in a cave where she belongs with the crawling beasts and sun hating monsters"
"You know Kivan, you really need to stop this racial stereotyping and prejudice".
"But that's what she said"
"Oh....that's OK then"
"So where's Edwin?"
"Gone back to Nashkel"
"Why?"
"Cheaper whores"
So once again we set off, this time to pick up our errant companions.
Found Viconia in her cave and she greeted us with about as much enthusiasm as expected.
"So the jaluk and the dathir have come to ask for my help"
"Viconia, what does "jaluk and "dathir" mean?"
"I have no idea but they sound suitably dismissive, I'm Drow if you haven't noticed"
Found Edwin in the Nashkel jail, been charged with sexual harrassment.
"Who has he harrassed?"
"Everybody, including Noober who filed the complaint"
The FF chief allowed us to take him if we agreed to find his former boss who had murdered his family. So headed west, got an idol, killed an avatar of a long dead God, found the murderer, answered his question (wrongly as it happens, "the circus", was not the answer), explained Edwin was only being sarcastic, gave the right answer, escorted him back to Nashkel.
Traveled north up the coast. Met a tramp, (no scratch that, too bitchy), Met a very attractive thief who asked us to help her get treasure. She was so obvious for the first time ever even Edwin didn't bite, we declined but got the treasure anyway for ourselves. Killed some more Sirens, killed some worgs, saved a child, killed a fortune teller (bit of an accident that one, didn't realise she was unstable), killed hobgoblins
Basically slaughtered towards the FAI ready to head of for the cloakwood and the hidden mines.
Current stats.
Ayla/Alan and Edwin level 8
Viconia, Branwyn, Kivan level 7
Alan/Ayla Shadow Armour+3, Dales Protector, Katana, Batalista's
Branwyn, Pratical Defense, +1 medium shield, Ashidena, Legacy of the Masters, ring of sune
Kivan, Full Plate, Dead Shot, Varscona, RofP
Viconia Ankheg, +1 small shield, the Stupifyer, Legacy of the Masters, RofP
Edwin, RoftheEA, Brawling Hands, Boomarang Dagger, Evermemory, RofP
I know people usually put the Brawling Hands on the fighters but Edwin's dex is so bad, Also need Branwyn (16dex) to wear the LotM as she and Viconia are my front line.
(BTW would love some feedback if anyone could)
Also I have no idea how to do screen shots so script only I'm afraid.
The second floor was cleared with ease as well, again, using Sunfire and Death Spell, besides a couple of Fire Hands and at least twenty rounds of melee combat (for just one silly Spirit Troll... Tsk). A bunch of Skull Traps were enough to kill the Yuan-Ti Mage. The basement was no problem, a couple of charges of the Wand of Cold took care of the Umber Hulks, because I again forgot how that I have to place the Dog Stew in there... No matter. We found the last head of the flail right before Tor'Gal's room, assembled the Flail of Ages +3 and saved there. I'm not sure how to take on this fight. I think the smartest choice would be dropping several Cloudkills to kill his minions, and take care of him in melee, but I'm scared the Mages move out of the cloud and dispel my buffs...
On Trademeet, I recruited Cernd, who's a Totemic Druid in my install. I used his summons to deal with the trolls and other enemies outside the Grove, Shyffunee took care of the Rashakas even after having killed the Genies as well (I forgot they attack you if you have the Flail of Ages... Anyway, it was a bad choice, because I thought the Rashakas would be too much but actually their were pretty easy due to my high MR.
Cernd's summons and several Sunfires took care of almost everything, except the Myconids which were disposed of with several charges from the Wand of Cold. We got Flametongue, which is nice because it hits as +4, and killed Faldorn because Cernd got his Creeping Doom one second before her (and got to summon a Snake to finish her off)... Honestly I had my doubts on Cernd, because he usually wins this fight because he's a Shapeshifter.
After that we completed the other Trademeet quests, sold a lot of stuff, now we have ~83k gold, and went to Athkatla, were Mencar and his party were burned to death, after being softened by a bunch of Skull Traps, and later completed the kidnappers quest and got the Silver Pantaloons to forge the BMU once the time comes. We dropped like 1k gold at a Temple to get our Reputation back.
Currently, Shyffunee is level 13/13, sitting around 2.65M XP, which means, we're just one level away of level 7 spells and HLAs. We're probably gonna do some of the quests in the Docks now, before we tackle any bigger objectives.
Also, give the Legacy of the Masters to Kivan or someone who isn't capped at one ApR like Viconia. Same for Branwen if there's anyone who can use them better. Edit: I'm saying this because the biggest advantage these gauntlets give you is the +2 damage. THAC0 bonuses are subject to what you end up rolling, while a damage bonus is always applied (if you hit...). And given Kivan has a higher ApR and isn't a spellcaster, he can make better use of them, since he'll deal far more damage with them than what Branwen or Viconia are capable of.
Playing this party, I find Kivan deals so much damage with the bow I don't use him in melee much at all. And because doing the whole no reload thing, keeping my charname very much at the back as well. So the pressure is all on Vic and Bran.
I tend to send Edwin all over the place throwing out AOE spells, so he does get targeted. I think my tactics are usually stop the enemy in it's tracks, use missliles until the last minute and only then melee. And in BG you can do that a lot because it's so open.
I really ought to stop the AOE spells because it is cheesy but it's too tempting.
I tried to finish SoD, but had an ugly CTD (the one where Windows gives you a blue screen with "physical memory dump") so it was done this morning. Not much trouble, apart one battle that could have ended the run due to a combination of factors, my own fatigue probably being the worst of them. I skipped through most optional quests since I was eager to get to BG2, only doing the most rewarding stuff, like killing lot of spiders. This is my DD's 4th level pick, Vitriolic Sphere. It's similar to Acid Arrow due to damage type and lingering effect (3 rounds), but it has a small AoE (not party friendly) and more importantly it bypasses MGoI. The bad thing about it is that it's projectile moves at snail's pace. When it finally connects, it covers everything in acid. It's a cool spell to have.
I had a small bug (?) when meeting Khalid. The commander calls him, and, in normal circumstances, Khalid would answer that call. Unfortunately, Khalid's dead. I CTRL-Yed both him and Jaheira (doing this to Jaheria results in Voglin being hostile, so he died as well).
My Shaman's first level 5 pick are Insects, naturally. With that spell, we fear nothing and proceeded to whack through the game.
First death of SoD - confused illusionst finds spiders.
Golem Construction mod adds a few enemies here and there - we met our first Maggot Golem when fighting the druid.
It's not too dangerous however.
As for the battle that nearly ended the run - Cabal.
I made few horrible mistakes here. One, PfM scroll on kensai. This prohibited Pro Fear from working. 2nd, my DD got held and killed quickly. 3rd, enemies had Deflections active (or Fireshields), both of which prevent Insects from working. When the undead dragon approached, what was to be a battle became a massacre.
Things start to look bad as the enemy kills our Water elementals and approaches. Bertha quaffs Magic Shielding potion, but in only lasts for 60 seconds, and is dispellable.
Kensai runs in fear, and dies. I've lost all my melee dps. Bertha has only 3/2 apr unbuffed.
DD follows to die. We're all locked in by summoned undead, can't get spells off and the damn dragon is on our tail. Bad, bad, bad.
Bertha, for the first time in the game, starts Turn Undead. It won't kill them, but they scatter - otherwise she might get boxed in.
RUN Bertha RUN...
Not much later, Bertha is the sole survivor of my group. What now?
I have 4-5 mages vs me, a retinue of undead, and a level-draining dragon.
Stiff up and take it, that's what.
Bertha runs away to a better position, enemies cover her with Obscuring Mist, she Turns undead not to get boxed in and uses the room to drink another Magic Shielding potion.
The battle lasts on and on; she loots the corpses of her fallen comrades for healing potions.
That leaves her open for other attacks, she fails a save vs Horror...craaaaaaaap.
At least the summoned undead are gone.
She runs around in fear, but doesn't get boxed in. Sheer luck here, the fact she drank Regen potion just before Horror hit and the absence of enemy summons worked for her.
Her sanity gets restored, and she goes to work with her hammer. Hammer time!
Unfortunately, my troubles do not end here. She starts to suffer from some fatigue effect. I don't know the source of it, but it makes her virtually unable to hit anything (fatigue imposes THAC0 penalty, but it's not shown on character sheet). She summons skeletons and blesses them.
They last for 2 rounds total. Bertha did manage to throw a potion of explosions at the enemies at least.
Sigh...never ends.
IR makes Potions of Genius into potions of Restoration, so level drain can be countered by that. That still leaves open the question of how to actually kill these two left. More Explosion potions, I guess.
Bertha takes damage as well, but at this point I was both annoyed, desperate and I kinda gave up hope.
Look at the attack rolls. 16 is a miss. Hell, even 19 is a miss. This goes on an on. No more Restoration potions left. Level drain now becomes a big issue.
Finally, two critical hits connect on the stupid dragon.
And what seemed like an eternity later, I'm done.
After the damn Cabal stuff, we had no more problems in the game.
Tbh, I didn't leave enemies much chance. In between Cloudkills, Insects, Vitriolic Spheres and lighting attacks, it's smooth sailing. Bertha finally replaces her full plate from Beregost with something more appropriate for a character of her stature.
Yes, I joined Caelar in the final battle. Bad, bad - I still wonder where karma will get me.
This is the team, straight out of jail.
Done so far - Mencar. Some wands from the dungeon, some summoned skeletons, some melee attacks, a lot of insects proved to be their demise.
Why a wild mage? Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is broken in its current form - it ignores your aura being unclear! Once you get Evermemory, this thing gets very fun.
Why a No-Reload? I want to see this explode in my face.
First battle: Carbos. NRD Sleep became Hiccups curse twice in a row. Apparently your Wild Surge is only rolled once per round, so getting an unfavorable Wild Surge on NRD compensates somewhat for the aura trick.
Second battle: Shank. NRD Sleep fizzled because reasons. Afterward, did NRD Armor to compensate for only getting one cast during Shank battle...
I did find a safe place to "watch" the carnage, at least.
With that, it's time to leave Candlekeep. Preferably before Gorion learns what we did. Except, uh...
And with that, the Twisted World of Midge Sempsin came to an early, if amusing, end.
Keep reading about "aura being cleansed" or even just mentions of "aura".
What's that all about?
Tig-4,
step workout,I agreed to deal with the iron throne for one of the dukes... up the steps, drop some adds then back down the steps and pop up behind them.
· Viconia stepped out of the party once we hit the city... apparently a sociopath and his pet undead are more socially acceptable.
I once made a ridiculously overpowered item that gave you permanent Aura Cleansing. That was literally all it did. Kinda broke everything. I might remake it as Plate Mail armor to keep it incompatible with arcane casting (cleric casting isn't as easily exploited under IA, and pure druids can't wear plate anyway)
So it's just a way of saying "have to wait for the next round" or "the next round has started" or am I missing something?
It's not mentioned in game at all is it?
In short, for me it's a fancy way of saying "you can cast/drink/innate again"
Session 7 was meant to be all about Trademeet.
First though, a quick trip to the Graveyard as Dreen was fed up of lugging illithium around. There was nothing much to write home about in the vampires nest, other than Nerd getting Held by a Greater Ghoul. We rapidly decided Dreen should use his Inquisitor Dispel but realised Nerd had Iron Skins active so we may as well melee it. The skins lasted longer than the rotting flesh, so Nerd emerged none the worse for wear.
Lassal thought he had the better of a Fire Elemental but Azuredge's Destroy Undead finally landed.
With the vampires defeated, the surface of the graveyard fully explored and the Improved Mace of Disruption forged, we moved on to the Bridge District to deal with traitorous thieves followed by Am-Si's premature burial gang. Nugget was by this time irritated with his non-magical bullets failing to make an impression against the recent enemies so we went to Watchers Keep and swore at a chest that refused to open with Strength -> DUHM. A return to the Copper Coronet confirmed Joluv the bonus merchant did not frequent our BGT install (with his magical sling), so Roger the Fence secured a sale of potions of Storm Giant strength, plus some Cloud Giant ones for other tricky containers. Off to Watchers Keep again...
Nerd glugged a Cloud Giant potion to force the container despite being told it was insufficient, so Dreen also partook and proved his point. Nugget didn't mind though, a gleaming Crimson Dart now in his hand.
Back to the Bridge District, with Smugglers and Fallen Paladins making their final appearances. With 3/4 of our session gone we remembered we were meant to be in Trademeet. Sigh, we'd better make our way there now. Although, we'll just collect a pantaloon ransom, pick up a stuffed bear and hand in Neb's head "on the way".
So Trademeet. Dreen's question about protection from petrification was met with blank looks. We're druids, well two of us, and who needs such concoctions when you can throw up a wall of snarling summons?
We purchased a cloak of displacement (Dreen) and Belt of Inertial Barrier (Nugget) as they complemented the Shield of Harmony Nerd was given in return for culling the Djinn. On to a Druid Grove, without Cernd (is it just me or do all these druids look the same).
Nugget looked at some Bracers of Archery. No good to him and unlikely to be much use to his two melee-oriented companions. Still, the Spear of the Unicorn was a nifty looking weapon so he decided to ditch his cheap dagger +1 and plain old buckler.
Nugget, Totemic Druid 13. 86 kills (+6)
Nerd, Fighter 9 / Druid 12. 242 kills (+25)
Dreen, Inquisitor 11. 347 kills (+37)
Next time? Back to Trademeet if we restore the Druid Grove.
Quite a bit of ground covered. We did stuff in the following order - Mencar, Circus, travel to Temple district, accept all quests, wait for night, open the chests in Talos Temple, go to sewers - kill the party there.
Buff up (all we got, these can be ugly tackled this early, we also have 4 summoned skeletons) approach, slam Insect Plague, Cloudkill and a Fireball (via Wand).
Next round - Spell Thrust to remove Gaius' MGoI, shaman casts Spike Growth (level 3, Entangle-like spell which slows movement and does tiny bit of damage as well), illusionist casts Slow.
Enemies charge towars us, but damage over time is getting them.
Those that approach, are slain in melee. I want to keep my casters' aura clear - Gaius can be rather dangerous. The only one who did cast is Shaman - more Insect Plagues.
All apart Gaius die.
I cast ZoSA to get rid of the Cloudkill, and Gaius teleports to us. He's almost unbuffed, relying on stoneskins, Acid Sheath and Mirror images alone.
I blast him with Vitriolic Sphere. It's damage will be reduced to half due to Acid Sheath which offers 50% Acid resistance, but whatever - the lingering damage alone might kill him. Shaman blasts him with a Call lighting spell. Vitriolic failed to disrupt his casting (I use that concentration tweak), but lighting does.
As his last move, he releases a Cone of Cold. Big damage, but not enough. I cast another Vitriolic at him, but he dies to ongoing damage of the first one before the 2nd one even hits. Yes, it moves *slowly*.
With that done, Docks; take quest to kill Mae'var, give the amulet to him, agree to kill Rayic for Edwin, give Edwin what he deserves, take the letter back to guild, kill Mae'var - no problems there, with 3 people under stoneskin effect and the others too tanky to take down quickly, thieves had no chance vs us.
Next, the two ambushes. Dispel from my DD worked, and made short work out of them. They come with Golems! Baby Golems!
I return the poisoned man, finish the harper quest (killing the harper ghosts while at it, total 27K XP is no small reward), then proceed to do what Edwin asked me to. Rayic got debuffed with Spell Thrust, his illusions dispelled by Shaman, hit by Vitriolic Sphere and his morale broke when he got struck by Wand of Lighting.
To end the session, I payed 15K to Shadow Thieves. A good day.
Nock, elf ranger (Grond0) & Jubb, human inquisitor (Gate70)
A bit more work today saw this duo into position for the end game in the next session.
The session started in the Cloakwood where Jubb was contemptuous about the possibility spiders could hurt him. There was a moment of concern when he was stuck in a web and offering tasty bites to all comers, but Nock was able to shoot down the spiders before Jubb was too badly poisoned.
There was no further action on the way to the Cloakwood Mine. A quick debate there about tactics resulted in a frontal assault by Jubb while Nock sent arrows of biting into the mages' backs. That successfully prevented them doing much and the fighters were out-classed on their own.
In the City the tomes were recovered. The only significant fight in doing that was with Larze when there was a bit of confusion as to whether Nock was meleeing or shooting. For a moment it looked like Jubb was going to have to retreat from the hard-hitting ogre, but Larze rolled a critical miss and didn't get the opportunity to try again.
At the Iron Throne Jubb made use of a scroll of PfM to act as a target while Nock tried to bring down the casters with arrows. However, Nock was himself targeted as a result of an inconveniently placed pillar and had to down a swift potion to ensure Jubb wasn't left alone in an awkward situation.
The final action was back in Candlekeep where the tombs were robbed before fighting through some dopplegangers. Jubb decided that true sight would allow him to take Prat down without using any protection of his own (other than the ring of free action to prevent being stunned by Bor). He duly lived up to his prediction and the others didn't fare too much better.
Nock, ranger 8, 98 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 211 kills
Jubb, inquisitor 8, 104 HPs, 225 kills, 0 deaths
After paying my hard earned gold, we cleared out CC of slaver, Lirarcor, Slaver's boat. DD and shaman now have access to level 6 spells (Imp.haste and Wonder Recall were 1st picks). Not much interesting happened in any pf these places.
We also did cpt.Dennis. I usually avoid this battle; but my AI is set to attack and if casters don't have a ranged weapon they'll wade in melee; and that +2 throwing dagger would fit nicely for now. Too bad for Dennis.
Following that, Fallen Paladins and skinner quest, pay 5K to cast magic in city, do thieves' quests for Linvail (not Bodhi yet).
Now it was time to get out of the city; we met some brigands, but they let us go.
Did small quests in Umar Hills, then to WK. No Vampiric Wraiths spawns, so the 1st floor was ours for looting freely.
I did get quite cocky so decided to loot the 2nd floor as well. Years of playing BG give you huge insight in this game. Example; here the game lagged for a split second. I know the reason for it (enemies spawn); but if golems spawn there is no lag...this is next level powergaming at it's finest!
Yup, it's Kuo-Toa - but our defences online, they were killed.
The run got close to end here, in the Ice room. All was fine untill Bertha got under some kind of panic effect. Remove Fear couldn't counter it. This wouldn't be dangerous per se, but the room was filled with acid; I barely managed to close the door of the acid room as I killed the last Mist there.
One more damage tick would kill Bertha.
Ofc, when it rains, it pours. Spiders didn't spawn 1st time we entered the south room. Neither did Wraiths. It's just natural they'll spawn at the worst possible time when I was drawing Fire Elementals to Ice room.
My caster trio was completely exposed.
I summon some Ogres via Wand I had from Irenicus' jail, but it was in vain - spiders killed all three of my casters in one round.
They can't really hurt my kensai and Bertha, but still, bleh...
I think this was the highest critical hit from kensai I witnessed.
I exited this place by placing scepter keys in place and running away. Chromatic hit us with his fireball attack, but we managed to exit before he does more harm.
This is Bertha's inventory now. Not too shabby - but she's not immune to critical hits.
With kid away, I had plently of time today. First we ran into a rather ugly ambush, loosing 3 people. We still pulled through.
Following that, it was nigh time to get Ages for Bertha. Torgal has a wonderful portrait in my setup
I hit the mages with a Spell Thrust and a Dispel - one mage is debuffed; insects fly.
Torgal is set on killing my illusionist, which gives me plenty of time to kill the trolls and Umber hulk.
Torgal is berserking like a madman, trying to focus on my casters...failing over and over again.
I kill the debuffed mage, and my shaman decides it was time to use some of his new spells. I remember one of @Grond0 's solo shaman attempts ended when casting a spell onto himself (maze-like) - I wanted to use this to protect my Shaman for a while. I tought it was the 6th level new one, but this one works as Feeblemind I guess. If enemies can't disable you, you oughta do it yourself, hehe...
Mind Locked away...
It made no difference in the end.
The mage got stuck in his own web...
Happy and equipped with +3 weapons, we go on to pay Shade lord a visit, get ambushed by Rakshasa, nearly die (if Web projectile moved faster, we'd probably all die)
Bertha gets her rest-of-the-game-'till-WKlevel4 sling.
The selling point of this weapon is massive Breath save bonus, which Bertha has an awful score in - neither cleric nor fighter have good breath saves with SR, and the importance of reducing energy attacks is huge.
Major battle here is Thaxy, but he's a walkover.
Debuffed, MR lowered
...even spell disrupted, which was (accoridng to SCS) impossible to do...
..all lead to a quick demise.
Shade Lord was awfully long - I couldn't break his Deflection (Spell Thrust won't remove over lvl5), so I had to rely on survival and waiting for his PfMW to expire to get some blows in. He even managed to "reset" his buffs (this is on a 90-or-so second timer so that + 1 PfMW is the total battle duration).
First we focused on Patrick, altar and shadows, then finally Shade.
Save vs Finger of death, yea!
Sucker rebuffs. He also gets all his spells back.
And finally he dies.
Trademeet is next.
We did all stuff (Firkraag, Trademeet, Planar Prison, vampires) we could before setting sail to Spellhold. All but one thing - Planar Sphere. And there Bertha met her doom.
I wanted to kill Tolgerias with 3xVitriolic Sphere sequencer, to make the battle short. After 3 ticks, it brought him near death, but he was still alive.
He buffed with Spell Trap, Apsolute Immunity, and proceeded to cast Time Stop, in which he gated 3 (or 4, can't remember) Cornugons + Efreet, and to make things interesting, a Planetar.
Planetar proceeded to feast on the poor mages as Tolgerias debuffed them under Alacrity.
I tought he ran out of nasty spells, but had a Symbol or Hold that struck Bertha. She failed to save, and Cornugons feasted on her black soul. kensai ran away in fear. GG.
So fully stocked and raring to go (yeah sure) we headed into the Cloakwood. First business, killing the Talsoi and retrieving the cloak for the grumpy dwarf in Beregost. Then ever onwards.
Came across an extensive hunting lodge with a group posing in their Tweeds standing around outside. They were having problems with Druids and asked for help. The druids showed up accused them of hunting in the forest.
"That's really bad I said" quickly hiding my rabbit fur lined gloves, "Terrible" said Branwyn tucking her necklace of bear claws inside her jacket, "Outrageous" said Kivan pulling his hood up covering his exotic bird feathered headress, "Dreadful" said Viconia holding her shield in front of her sable boots, "Barbaric" said Edwin casually beginning to cast as he eyed his ermine trimmed robe.
"What will you do?"
"Kill them of course and you too if you interfere"
"Not today"
Nasty fight, lots of lightning, summoned bears and insects, but skellies can't be bitten and are not really friends of the earth as more likely buried in it. Upshot, we got a reward and the promise of aid when we hit Baldur's Gate and the use of the hunting lodge for the night. The summoned bears were delicious.
Met an elf on a bridge, asked us to go wyvern hunting, it's on the way and the reward is good. So welcome aboard Coran.
What can I say about Coran?
Well, rather glad I was currently "Alan", as it was Viconia who had to deal with the endless chat up lines. Kivan had warned him off Branwyn.
Does he ever stop?
Well after a day or so, obviously not, even Edwin was impressed and started taking notes.
Crossed another river, met a young man looking for his brother who had gone missing days previously after heading off into the giant spider infested woods!!! (I think it's inbreeding caused by being stuck out in the wilds).
Viconia sent Coran ahead to fetch her some food, but he confounded her plan by being able to see the traps I'd warned her about. Good try Viconia.
We found the giant spider nest where the giant spiders came from, and the giant insane cursed woman who lived there.
"Kill it with fire" was unanimously voted for without much debate.
Returned the drained husk of a body to the brother, got to keep the magic sword, so good result all round. That level of stupidity shouldn't really be allowed to breed.
Moving on, (actually roaming around in circles bickering about which side the moss grows on trees), we met more Druids who thankfully hadn't been in recent contact with the last lot, and they pointed us in the right direction.
Found the Wyvern nest, killed the wyvern parents, the wyvern grandparents and the wyvern babies (and the Druids were worried about the Tweed clad city folk?) and let Coran go to pick up the reward, arranging to meet him later.
It was for his own good, Viconia had suddenly taken a great interest in foraging fungi and offering to cook.
And finally arrived at the mine, it was huge, how it was a secret was anybody's guess. A welcoming commitee was there to greet us, we said hello friendly like, then we killed them friendly like. All very civilised. Thing is, they had letters warning we were on our way, and this was the best they could do? Stand around in the open waiting for us to show up? No snipers concealed on the walls, no traps? Amateur.
Into the mine, ineffective guards, enslaved miners, dirt, grime, darkness, the usual. We went down floor by floor, met a miner who had some very complicated plan to flood the place if we found a key. Met a dwarf who claimed to be one of the original clan of dwarves who built the mine, before it was flooded last time. So really this mine is a bit of a disaster waiting to happen regardless. Did the heroics, they wanted money to bribe the guards so they could escape. What guards? There's nobody left upstairs. But it was only 100 gp and I admire any entrepeneur looking to make a quick buck when they can.
Lots of hobgoblins waiting around to shoot us, a couple of mages flinging spells, an ogre mage. So we crept around, while Edwin buzzed around like a demented ladybird flinging spells. (just a hint for any evil mastermind reading this, if you are going to use idiot henchmen like the lot waiting for us outside, don't allow them to have a really, really, game changing piece of equipment on them so that when your nemisis inevitably turns up and kills said henchmen, they don't get the game changing, likely to mean success item, when they inevitably kill them. I'm talking Boots of Speed here). And now finally I have a +1 katana.
So bottem floor and the face off with Davaeorn. Now he at least had made some preparations, traps, a couple of battle horrors(?), contingencies, sequencers. It makes you feel appreciated.
Didn't do him any good but it showed he cared.
And yet another fight where I wasn't really that sure why, but Davaeorn died really quickly and I found the battle horrors dead without knowing what had killed them (I presume skellies). Or did they just die when Davaeorn died? Davaeorn never seems to run/teleport to the right anymore, so you have to play cat and mouse with him. Instead he comes up the main passage straight to where you are round the corner, so then he's facing everybody at once. The fight used to be harder I'm sure.
So Davaeorn dead, found the key, let his acolyte go, looted the place, jumped on the lift, dropped off the key and emerged into the fresh air. Was thanked by the (now ex) slaves and commenced the long trek back to civilisation.
Also attempt 127, 128 & 129
It was something of a 'dies horribilis' today for us. Things started going wrong when we undertook encounters we don't normally do. The first problem was when we decided to pick up the 3 Necklaces of Missiles available. While taking on the daughters of Shandalar, Nock was in the process of warning Jubb not to kill any of the guards, but one of those was almost killed by a stray lightning bolt and Jubb's love-tap finished him off, to cause reputation to plummet.
The next problem was when we decided to relieve Drizzt of his scimitars - I think for the first time in our multi-player attempts. The fight went according to plan - but the aftermath included another reputation drop which was not good news for a ranger/paladin combination.
Pushing on regardless, Slythe was neutered by a dispelling arrow and more of those featured at the Palace where both dukes were saved. Jubb though was almost killed in the maze after triggering two traps,
After leaving the Undercity party, Sarevok was dispelled from long range and he was unable to move quickly enough to save Semaj. Jubb tried to finish Sarevok in melee, but was forced to retreat and shoot him up.
SoD
The initial dungeon was done reasonably comfortably, with Necklace blasts cutting a number of groups down to size. Korlasz refused to give in immediately, but a fireball or two later and she bowed to the inevitable.
We seem to struggle with the encounter at the bridge in the initial area after Baldur's Gate and that was once more the case. One of the clerics noted that Jubb had a free action ring on and sent a hold person winging its way to the rear to freeze Nock. Meanwhile a mage disabled Jubb with an emotion and the run would have ended there if Caelar hadn't turned up to negotiate - her superpowers forcing the held Nock to walk up to confront her.
Moving on to the Temple area that saw the end of our last run, there was an early mistake when Nock healed Jubb while passing through a dragon's lair - and waking it up. Ignoring that though, the duo pushed on and killed some cult guards to prevent them responding to Ziatar's calls for help. Ziatar retreated into sanctuary to try and buff up and repair damage taken, but volleys of fiery potions prevented that tactic and she died as she came into the attack.
Nearby the Neothelid waited and Jubb was immediately rued his state as a fallen inquisitor when he was charmed on entering the room. Nock meanwhile was prudently staying out of trouble - or at least that was the case until a magical sword appeared next to him and the Neotholid stunned him without ever showing itself ...
MP127
Gate70 was the protagonist for this, but I don't know if he'll find too much to say about the run
MP128
Never daunted we immediately rolled up a third pair for the day. For the first time in our MP runs this included a shaman and he was soon summoning spirits to help devour enemies.
MP129
Our new random pairing sees Gate70 with a shadowdancer for the PC, while support will be provided by a druid. After generating those two, however, we agreed that even our capacity for punishment was exhausted for the day
As for disrupting Thaxll'ssillyia: SCS gives dragons immunity to the casting failure opcode and +10 to casting time, making all spells instant. But even a casting time of 0 isn't actually instantaneous. There is a single frame during which you can still get disrupted.
Those of you who play with auto-pause enabled might have noticed one of your characters failing a Stoneskin or PFMW with a casting time of 0 when you tried to cast the spell right after your spellcaster got down to Badly Injured. That's because your spellcaster began casting at the same frame he or she got hit.
BG runs at 30 frames per second, so it's very rare to land a hit on that frame. But it's possible.
Summoning spells and missile weapons are just plain better than everything else. By itself, summoning hordes of dogs and wolves with SR summoning spells was enough to take down basilisks while my invisible thief looked on--no Potions of Mirrored Eyes were needed. And when the summons weren't strong enough, the best choice was always to attack with bows and slings from afar rather than rushing in.
When I had my Fighter/Mage attack the Firewine Ogre Mage with her longsword, he chunked her with a critical hit despite her Mirror Images and negative AC. There's no reason to engage in melee combat in a no-reload LoB run without Stoneskin. Missile weapons are just plain better.
And in BG1, the XP rewards from fights are wildly lopsided. We can fight an extremely challenging mage for 3,000 XP, or we can just swarm a gang of kobolds for 5,000 XP in less time with no risk. And if you disable the bonus XP, the game is just going to be painfully slow and unrewarding.
I'm not sure what the next run should be. I've already decided to cut out mod-introduced items (maybe I'll allow one non-weapon item per character, as long as it's not something crazy like the Robe of Mystra or Amulet of Wyvren Summoning), but I'm not sure where that takes me next.
I've considered doing a solo run, but people have already soloed the game with basically every character, and I like to make my runs weird and unorthodox. Hence the Party of Spiders, the Fire Seed run, the LoB genocide run with Carl, the custom kits in Undergate, and whatever else I've done.
I've also considered doing a solo Legacy of Bhaal run, but I'm not sure how to make BG1 fun when the main quest is littered with kobold hordes with 500 collective HP and 15 attacks per round. I can always avoid most encounters, but without that XP, my main character doesn't grow. Plus, I'm not sure how I could tackle the Ducal Palace without just using Resilient Sphere on Belt and/or Liia Jannath. And though a Fighter/Mage/Thief seems like a viable character build, I don't really like FMTs, and choosing them for a solo LoB run seems too obvious, somehow.
Maybe I should just do a no-reload Story mode run or something.