First of all welcome back. @Alesia_B_H When you go to India I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved my six years in Nepal. The people of Nepal were so welcoming and I still miss them despite being able to communicate via Facebook. What I particularly liked was the fact that the churches there were how they are supposed to be. It's no wonder that the church there has grown from twelve to a million in just sixty years. Also having a view of the Annapurna Range from our balcony for our last three years made our stay particularly enjoyable.
We joined up with Xzar and Montaron and after leaving Xzar in a house in Beregost, Montaron proceeded to "acquire" a cloak. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard where he "found" a lot of scrolls. Whilst there we were approached by a dwarf called Thorin who almost forced himself into the party. (I was intending him to join later, but had forgotten about him and when he seemed so eager to join, it would have been churlish to refuse) We left Montaron in Beregost. We were sent by someone from Kara-Tur in search of more sirine. Killing them was easy enough but some ogres and ogrillon hurt us baadly.
We then went to an area full of ankheg and killed more than two dozen.
Having sold a lot of shells, we were able to upgrade Tenya's belt so that she now has a decent strength. We took on Tristan and Isolde using my berserker rage and Thorin's defensive stance. It was sufficient.
In transit we fought and killed a winter wolf the belt that I found with Gorion's possessions being most useful.
The battle against the dark Horizon assassins at the Gnoll Encampment was touch and go. but we eventually prevailed though I had to consume no fewer than three potions of extra healing to survive. They used their invisibility potions very wisely with the result that their backstabs were horrendous. Both Tenya and I both nearly died on a number of occasions.
However the rest of the fortress was without problems.
The fight against Morentherene is pretty rough. And it seems that Insane mod adds some baby dragons to the fight alongside the wyverns. Our cat soaks up the first two attacks.
Protection from Poison scrolls don't block poison damage itself, but they do block the poison opcode, which means our cat won't take any lingering damage from Morentherene's breath weapon. Schlumpsa and the wight, fortunately, are immune to all forms of poison, though only the cat can tank the dragon.
The bat gets caught in the crossfire, but a Protection from Poison scroll keeps it relatively safe. One of the wyverns attacks Schlumpsa, but it's 75% resistant to piercing damage and immune to poison, so it's not a big worry for us.
But Schlumpsa can't take on four at once. We resort to some damage spells, wands, and summons to ease the pressure on it.
I say "it" because Schlumpsa has no gender according to the Record screen.
We take down a single wyvern, but our bat suffers from Morentherene's breath weapon. We're have trouble making progress against the enemy.
This isn't going well. I spend multiple Wand of Fire charges to speed things up.
Mollyboo charms Morentherene and gets her to smash the last wyvern.
Now only Morentherene is left, and without her allies to apply pressure, we can take her down with little trouble.
But we're not going to do that.
Mollyboo needs stronger companions if she is to survive in Siege of Dragonspear. Wands will get us through most of the game, but they will not be enough for the final battle. We need stronger melee power, and our underleveled fighters with poor stats are not going to suffice.
So we're going to bring Morentherene into the party.
Unfortunately, Morentherene is a staggering level 14 dragon. Mollyboo would have to be level 28 in order for Seduction to work, and even if we removed the XP cap, there's no way Mollyboo could ever have reached over 3 million XP by this point, even with the basilisk XP loop.
That's where our wight comes in.
The wight might be a lousy fighter in every dimension, but its natural weapon drains 1 level with every hit, and unlike a Totemic Druid's level 10 Spirit Wolf, the level drain offers no saving throw. If I can drain 9 levels from Morentherene, then Mollyboo will be able to bring her into the party with Seduction.
But that's easier said than done. First, we need to get our extremely fragile wight to land 9 hits on Morentherene without Morentherene smashing it in a single round. To keep our wight safe, Mollyboo has to chain-cast Domination so we can stop Morentherene from attacking us.
Dragons get a +2 bonus to saves vs. Domination and Charm, but with Greater Malison active, Mollyboo has a 50% chance of charming her for 1d3 rounds. On average, that will keep Morentherene under our control every round, but even a slight change in our luck could have the green dragon attacking us round after round after round. That's why our cat needs to be in position to keep Morentherene distracted, lest she tear apart our poor wight.
The wight has poor THAC0, so it really needs a potion of giant strength to hit Morentherene reliably. We land our first hit and drain her to level 13.
I have to keep track of the levels I drain. If I drain too few, then Mollyboo could spend many rounds trying to use Seduction, allowing Morentherene time to break free of Domination and attack our party. If I drain too many, I risk killing Morentherene, and that would be a huge loss for a no-reload run.
This will be a long process and luck can drag it out even further. When Morentherene makes her save vs. spell, she gets a chance to fight back. Fortunately, our cat takes most of her blows.
The wight just landed a hit with a roll of 13, but at some point, something changes about its THAC0 or Morentherene's AC.
The blip vanishes for some reason, and after a lot of failed tries, the wight manages to keep draining levels.
The problem with level drain is that it decreases Morenthere's maximum HP. Her Stoneskins provide a buffer, but once they run out, the wight is dealing far too much damage. The same potion that improved its THAC0 also boosted its damage.
I think we can keep Morentherene afloat using Mollyboo's Healing Touch spells (modded Bhaalspawn powers; not Seducer abilities), but I'm not positive. To make sure Morentherene survives the process, we take a break and let her heal up.
Level drain, thankfully, is permanent until death. Theoretically we could drag this out over many days, but draining a powerful enemy's levels until it's weak enough to seduce is already a very lengthy and dangerous process.
Feeblemind actually works great for this purpose, but I didn't consider using it at the time. You just need to dispel the Feeblemind effect after Seduction works; otherwise the seduced critter's script won't make it join the party.
We return to Morentherene's lair and resume our work.
Finally, our labors bear fruit, and we finish our work by using a Restoration scroll on the dragon to reverse the level drain. Morentherene the green dragon has joined the party!
Due to being charmed when she was down to level 5, she only has as much XP as a normal level 5 seduced critter would have (Seduction sets the target's XP to a certain amount based on the target's level). She won't gain a single level until midway through Shadows of Amn, and even then, she'll only have a single proficiency point.
But she doesn't need proficiency points. She has incredible stats across the board, with 4 attacks per round at 20 STR and over 150 HP, on top of having subzero base AC and extremely low THAC0. She deals almost as much damage as a well-built Kensai, Barbarian, or Berserker, and is almost as hard to kill as our cat. A min-maxed fighter/mage would still be stronger than her, actually, but she's far stronger than Schlumpsa, whom she replaced.
Besides, she's a freaking dragon. How often do you get to play as a freaking dragon?
She doesn't have her breath weapon or Stoneskin anymore (seduced critters very rarely retain their spells), but she still has immunity to poison and 15% MR. Her wide circle will prove a problem in close quarters, and she'll need to use Relair's Mistake to switch to wolf form to navigate in many areas, but she's awfully good with a throwing axe and can still fight from afar when she needs to.
Morentherene's sister, the half-dragon Ziatar, awaits us in the level below. In my previous, failed run as a solo Seducer, I killed Ziatar, but that doesn't make much sense RP-wise. This time, we're going to bring Ziatar into the party alongside her sister.
She comes bolstered by two mages in Insane mode, but a Chaos spell and concentrated melee pressure render them a non-issue.
Ziatar fights back, but like Morentherene, she has no defense against level drain besides her low AC. She's easy to persuade than her big sister.
Ziatar is a level 9 fighter/cleric who wields (and has proficiencies for) a two-handed sword she can't legally use. She's pretty weak offensively since she has no pips in cleric weapons, but for the first time, we have a priest in the party.
Unfortunately, she comes with a set list of spells, and it's not possible to change her spell choices.
Testing finds that she can eventually get all of her normal cleric spells if she hits level 10 in Shadows of Amn, but that's a long way away. I'm not really sure she's any stronger than the cat she replaced (in fact, I rather doubt it), but it would be weird to bring only one of the two green dragon sisters along with us.
Besides, with Morentherene, having a cat for a tank isn't quite as necessary.
But we're still not quite done with this dungeon. The last fight awaits us.
Darskhelin comes with a diverse party to defend him, but most of them have little defense against a Wand of Fire. We bomb the enemy while Morentherene sneaks past them in wolf form.
She switches to natural form and hurls her throwing axe at the enemy, finishing off two of them in short order.
Our twin mages, the bat and the Skeletal Mage, use Lower Resistance to weaken Darskhelin while Morentherene slays the last mage.
Why Lower Resistance? Well, for those of you who haven't played Siege of Dragonspear, Darskhelin happens to be a mind flayer. And once we've softened him up...
...we nail him with the Wand of Paralyzation, giving us 10 rounds of freedom to work him over without worrying about his deadly INT drain attack.
We'll need those 10 rounds, because seducing Darskhelin is going to be much tougher than seducing Morentherene, who was hard enough as it is. Although he's only level 8 and we only need to drain 3 levels (which warrants a healing spell, lest we kill him by accident)...
...he also has a save vs. spell of 5. Greater Malison bumps that up to 9, but as an "alien" mind, he gets a +3 bonus to his save vs. Domination. That amounts to a 25% chance to land Domination, which we can only count on lasting for a single round. In that single round, Mollyboo has to land Seduction, which has a 20% chance of working. That means it will take 20 rounds on average to seduce Darskhelin, and bad luck can prolong it much further.
But after several charges from the Wand of Paralyzation and many rounds of trying, we finally bring him into the party. And he is very impressive indeed.
He has no psionic abilities anymore, but he does still have his natural weapon, which drains 5 Intelligence per hit for 30 seconds with no save. It strikes as a +2 weapon, but Enchanted Weapon will make it strike as +3, enough to hit the final boss of SoD in case my other tactics fail.
Darskhelin replaces our wight, because we will not need level drain in SoD anymore. This is the strongest party we can create until we reach BG2.
But even this doesn't mean we're invincible. I'm too lazy to post the full fight with the Shadow Aspect in the same area, but even our party isn't immune to everything. Two party members die and two others get very close before we finally kill the last shadows.
And I've already died once in SoD with nearly the same party, because I let my old Seducer's guard down. The enemy, after all, doesn't need to kill Morentherene in order to end this run.
They just need to kill Mollyboo.
Current party: Mollyboo, Seducer Morentherene, Green Dragon Fighter Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter Ziatar, Half-dragon Fighter/Cleric Bat, Mage Skeletal Mage, Mage
FYI, these last few posts happened a little while ago. That's why they came in so fast; they were already done as of this writing.
On to the spiders! Four of our party members are immune to poison, so this area is pretty simple. I speed things up with area-effect stuffs.
Bridgefort is a bigger danger; the Crusaders aren't so reliant on a single source of damage. They've got mages and clerics as well as fighters and archers. We send out a few cheap summons via the Wand of Monster Summoning, giving Morentherene time to slip past the ranks in wolf form and switch to dragon form, which otherwise would not really fit through the gate.
But when we layer multiple area-effect spells at once, the enemy clears up surprisingly quickly.
With our sky-high APR thanks to Darskhelin and Morentherene, any mage without PFMW will struggle to survive while still visible.
The Barghest is a major threat in this fight with his strong attacks, but he fails a lucky save, and one of his mage friends gets caught without MGOI.
Overwhelming force is proving quite effective. The enemy can't catch Mollyboo by surprise if Morentherene and Darskhelin obliterate them within a few rounds.
I don't know if it's possible to fail the fight on the bridge itself, but an Arrow of Dispelling and a Wand of Fire ensure we do not.
We use the Spectacles of Spectacle on Nazramu, the djinni at the Coalition Camp, to buy a bunch of powerful SoD-exclusive items and sell off some loose equipment (Nazramu buys stuff at much higher prices than other vendors; it's good to save some stuff to sell to him). We stop by one of the few remaining side areas to pick up an antidote that will win us the Martyr's Morningstar back at the camp, and on the way, we tackle the only basilisk that a Seducer can bring into the party in the entire trilogy without using mods. It's a level 10 critter, while BG1 Lesser Basilisks are level 6, so it still requires a wight's level drain.
Wait, why didn't I bring the wight out here so I could use Seduction on the basilisk?
That's the weird thing. The Greater Basilisk has 0 attacks per round. Even if you use Seduction on it and convert it to a level 10 fighter, it still cannot attack. Since I've always approached it with Protection from Petrification active, I'm not sure it can attack at all. Maybe if we brought it into BG2 and gave it Belm or used some other means of boosting its APR, it could petrify stuff.
But it's more or less useless as a companion in SoD. It might have 1 APR in LoB mode, but it's not possible to seduce it in LoB mode unless one of your party members is a Totemic Druid, because wights will get +12 levels in LoB mode and cannot be level drained to make them vulnerable to Seduction.
Anyway, we buy a bunch of Greater Restoration scrolls, run away from the dead magic encounter (I nearly died there on my first playthrough, and I didn't find anything valuable in it during my second playthrough), get the Martyr's Morningstar, and have a brief scare with Ziatar and a trap.
We smash our way through to the Underground River thingy, but since I'm still worried about reputation for some reason, I charm Rigah the Rasheman warrior into fighting the local ogres, which means me a very special sword.
It's my understanding that the Dragon Blade can be found in BG2 if you continue from SoD, and I've been very interested to see how it works with Critical Strike, which ostensibly would make it automatically slow every target it hit for 6 seconds, without any saving throw.
Brute force wins us a lot of fights in the tunnels, and the only characters who get killed are my mages, who have mostly just been spending their time watching our dragon and mind flayer kill everything.
Finally we arrive at Halathlaer's lair. This is where my last Seducer died when she failed a saving throw against the dragon's fear. This time, I keep Mollyboo well out of the way, and push her saves below 0 with potions.
It's hardly even necessary. Morentherene is immune to most mage disablers and Darskhelin has 90% magic resistance and immunity to elemental damage, so they can just up and break down the mages' Stoneskins without worrying about retaliation.
I use the Spectacles of Spectacle to pull Zadroth into the Material Plane, but this time, I directly provoke him in dialogue.
But we still have two charges from the Secret Revealed, the perfect anti-lich tool which offers no saving throw. It nets us a nice robe...
...but I feel bad for unleashing the lich. Nobody ever criticizes you for freeing Kangaxx, but here, an Endless Watcher attacks you after you free Zadroth, and he accuses you of endangering millions of lives or something. The robe isn't worth the guilt, but it's too late to reload.
We hurry through the tunnels and make our way to Hephernaan. I let Darskhelin tackle Heifer and his mage friend while Morentherene throws her axe from the doorway. Darskhelin's 90% magic resistance will keep him safe, and his INT drain attack, which I normally don't use, gets us an early kill on a well-defended mage.
Which I guess could have just as easily come from an Arrow of Dispelling, because items dominate BG1 and SoD gameplay. There are other enemies coming in from the south and east, but monsters and disablers are keeping them at bay.
Back in Heifer's room, I foolishly order Darskhelin to launch an Arrow of Dispelling at Heifer, only for him to remind me that Heifer comes pre-buffed with Physical Mirror, bouncing the arrow right back at our mind flayer.
I'm worried that killing Heifer with INT drain could cause a bug, so I have Darskhelin switch to the Fractal Blade instead, which can remove Heifer's illusory defenses. Down south, our own mages thin the enemy herd to make sure we'll have a clear path to the exit when Heifer goes down.
Another enemy mage appears, but Darskhelin is ready and kills him with INT drain.
We use the Wand of Monster Summoning to help break down Heifer's Stoneskins and a Wand of Fire to torch some Crusaders who might get in our way when we try to escape.
Heifer teleports away, giving us our cue to exit. We grab some items and flee before we get boxed in by the incoming Crusaders. Morentherene has to switch to wolf form to slip past the enemies, and miraculously, her 15% magic resistance wards off a Feeblemind spell that could otherwise have spelled her death.
I pack the party together to turn them invisible, only to see Ziatar fail a save against Chaos.
I already know what I have to do. I send the rest of the party south towards the exit and make no attempt whatsoever to save Ziatar's life. Unless I'm willing to reveal the entire party and spend the next ~10 rounds fighting an increasingly powerful horde of Crusaders, Ziatar is doomed. I let them take her.
EE's quick-loot feature lets us grab her equipment from afar and continue our escape without losing our invisibility.
In retrospect, I probably could have saved Ziatar with an Arrow of Dispelling. But the cost of raising her is minimal at this stage; it makes little difference.
We hurry through the tunnels while invisible, but it seems the Crusaders are smarter than I thought.
We have plenty of Potions of Invisibility, but the enemy has more than one divination spell. Morentherene lags behind and is exposed while still in wolf form.
But this isn't Ziatar; this is Morentherene. And these Crusaders are much more limited in number. A green dragon is more than capable of tackling these guys on her own.
But I'm impatient to leave; I'm not fully sure that there aren't more Crusaders on the way, waiting for some script or timer to activate them. I break invisibility to speed things up.
Notice the blinding fog effects. Once the way is clear, Morentherene switches to wolf form and we scurry outside. But we're not done yet with the Crusaders.
Before we lay siege to Dragonspear Castle, the Crusaders will invade the Coalition Camp. We have to fight them off.
Actually, the invasion is less exciting than I remembered. Wands of Fire incinerate much of the opposition.
Even the final wave is boring. Morentherene and Darskhelin just eat everything.
So we march on Dragonspear Castle. Arrows of Detonation are excellent here, and I've saved up plenty.
We've also got plenty of Arrows of Dispelling, and this time I remember to use them when Ziatar gets confused.
I accidentally let Ziatar get too close to the enemy. She doesn't have the stuff to survive under pressure from the archers, but the enemy is already disintegrating because of our Arrows of Detonation and Wands of Fire.
The next wave appears. But our strategy need not change.
It makes perfect sense that fireballs would dominate tactics during a siege, but it does feel less interesting if you've already been through BG2 and no longer find fireballs quite so incredible.
Ashatiel challenges Mollyboo to single combat. Ashatiel proves to be an absolute coward, and cannot tolerate being hit even once.
Aside from a Chaos spell that fails to confuse anyone in the party, the enemy barely does anything to us before we bomb them into oblivion.
The next wave begins! And it plays just the same.
The enemy survives a while longer, but they can't bring anyone down. Morentherene chops Ashatiel in half with a throwing axe.
I fight some optional enemies to the north and one of them kills Ziatar with fire damage, but the details aren't too interesting.
Next stop, Avernus! Illaruel manages to charm Ziatar, but Mollyboo can cure it with Dispel Charm while the rest of the party draw Wands of Frost and put down Illaruel within the round.
We buff the party during the long elevator ride to the final battle. This is what our party looks like at the end of Siege of Dragonspear.
Mollyboo:
The Skeletal Mage:
The Bat:
Darskhelin:
Ziatar:
Morentherene:
We reach the final arena at the strongest this party has ever been. Mollyboo, most importantly, is buffed with a Potion of Magic Shielding and SI: Abjuration from a scroll, ensuring that her defenses will remain strong even if the rest of the party should suffer.
Next stop, Avernus! Illaruel manages to charm Ziatar, but Mollyboo can cure it with Dispel Charm while the rest of the party draw Wands of Frost and put down Illaruel within the round.
What trick are you using to make those wands usable by fighters?
The session started with a lot of micro-managing to kill the half-ogres at the Lake area. The first one to die had lost the bulk of his HPs while charmed, but I couldn't let him die while on my side as that would make Bjornin's quest impossible to achieve (the same principle works with other fights where a group of enemies must die, such as helping Ardrouine and Arabelle). The pseudo-dragon wouldn't last long in melee against even a single half-ogre, but its regeneration and the relatively slow weapon speed of the half-ogres allow it to dart in and out pretty safely if you're careful. Wimp was better able to contribute damage of her own in this fight thanks to now wearing the bracers of dexterity. The necessity to keep a close eye on the fight at all times had the advantage that there was no difficulty in reacting when Wimp ran out of darts and hurled herself at the enemies on a couple of occasions.
After reporting in to Bjornin and stocking up on darts, Wimp returned to the Lake area and activated Drizzt. While the gnolls gently chewed their way through Drizzt, Wimp tried to do the same to them. She only managed to kill 3 of them though, which was rather less than I was hoping for (largely because I forgot to rest on arrival in the area and Wimp became fatigued right at the start of the fight - her miserable constitution means she gets fatigued after most travel). Unwilling to let the gnolls get away with killing poor Drizzt though, Wimp spent a while charming Teyngan and his companions (picking up equipment while resting to ensure it didn't disappear) and using them to kill the gnolls. Teyngan & co were given the usual thanks for their sterling service before Wimp spent the last few minutes of the session lugging all the equipment back to Nashkel to sell or store.
Next stop, Avernus! Illaruel manages to charm Ziatar, but Mollyboo can cure it with Dispel Charm while the rest of the party draw Wands of Frost and put down Illaruel within the round.
What trick are you using to make those wands usable by fighters?
I think it's a mod issue. Either unkitted fighters who aren't created via character creation never receive opcodes that are supposed to forbid wands, or one of my mods allows it if the character has high enough Intelligence. But I think it's just a bug.
Not sure how much difference it makes. The fireball charges of the Wand of Fire could be replicated using Arrows of Detonation, but I often used the scorcher charges because I could control them more easily. The siege of Dragonspear Castle would have been essentially the same, as would most of the fights in the game where I used wand charges, but Davaeorn could have been very ugly--that was the one time where my only mage was dead.
Although I thought I installed the component that makes wands usable by thieves... and Mollyboo, unlike the other party members, was created normally. So she was supposed to be able to use the wands she used against Davaeorn.
Definitely sped up a lot of fights, though. Wands are crazy.
Next stop, Avernus! Illaruel manages to charm Ziatar, but Mollyboo can cure it with Dispel Charm while the rest of the party draw Wands of Frost and put down Illaruel within the round.
What trick are you using to make those wands usable by fighters?
A Gallant kit fighter can use wands, but can't learn spells. The kit does have restrictions to compensate.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 137 part 12 3 Hyra (Elf Ranger, Gate70); Dave (Half-elf Cleric/Ranger, Grond0) We've made it to the city of Baldur's Gate, only to be poisoned by Marek. Delirious Dave asks a different question instead of how to remove a geas for Lothander. No problem, we'll just rest although the guards make a concerted effort to stop us loitering.
We shop our way round the city, then stop in at the Iron Throne headquarters for an inpromptu BBQ, leaving Gardush to be cleaned up on his own.
Such misdemeanors means we are sent to Candlekeep, only for the same sort of thing to happen down in the catacombs.
Hyra dispels all six greater doppelgangers in the duchal palace before switching to her swords and helping Dave, not that he needed much. Both dukes survived.
Rahvin and his gang were also put to the flame, although Hyra took some heat too.
Things took a turn for the worse in the Temple of Bhaal, when Hyra was caught by web. Fortunately she was still in the shadows and Dave made sure Semaj didn't hang around long enough to cause trouble.
We tried luring Sarevok into the web, but he was joined by Tazok. Flame on (or off).
From there, Sarevok found the bullets and arrows came in quicker than he could clear out Dave's remaining skeletons and he sagged to the ground.
I know you guys can't be bothered with identifying items you used about a million time before, but my OCD just cannot stand to have unidentified items. Even seeing this on someone else's game is bugging me.
I know you guys can't be bothered with identifying items you used about a million time before, but my OCD just cannot stand to have unidentified items. Even seeing this on someone else's game is bugging me.
Sometimes it is the problem of not enough gold. However with arrows/bolts etc, if you id them, then you can't stack them if you find more of the same without identifying the newly found items.
Gate70: Teere, human female Priest of Tyr. Or is she (see end)? Corey Russell: Corarcher, elf male Archer. Grond0: Mis, elf female Archer.
Prat and his gang don't really know what hits them. One of our archers is almost caught up in the conflagration (ran out of arrows = ran into the inferno. Is that my own detonation arrow I'm passing?)
There was little danger fighting the basilisks so Miss upped the ante, her arrow stack running out and auto-selecting the unexpected stack - prematurely detonating Teere to a state of seriously wounded as well as injuring herself.
We are undeterred though and hack down doppelgangers at the duchal palace before racing through the thieves maze.
Rahvin and his undercity party are in our way. Not for long though, with Silence, Command and Hold Person all making successful appearances.
Semaj decides he can be bothered to help out Sarevok. Bad decision.
Sarevok gets another whupping.
Grond0 asks if we are heading Siege-side, Corey_Russell gamely suggests that would be foolhardy so we're off to Amn instead.
There wasn't much trouble in the opening dungeon, but Ulvaryl evades us. The duergar mage with Illyich gets a pyrotechnic display going but we're not sufficiently distracted for it to worry us unduly.
We step outside, sort out the circus and head to Gaelan Bayle. After agreeing to help him... (and a mild side-quest of hunt slot 3 down)
...we turn down Hexxat and add quests for Firkraag and Nalia to our list before heading out in search of trouble. Suna Seni kindly obliges and we head for Watchers Keep (potion case hunting) only to run into Renfeld and his attackers. We backpack him and head back to the Slums so that's enough for one day.
Anyway, Teere spotted a slight issue. She equipped a war hammer at the start then realised she could only select fists. 4 weapon spots, and a class of Cleric. Special abilities have been set as a Boon so fair to say her days as a Priest of Tyr are all Lathandered up.
Speedrun attempt 1. (no pics because I play on my phone and cannot reduce screenshots).
Halfling thief, 17-19-18-8-8-8 all points in hide (75), proficiency bow and short sword. Buy bow, arrows, short sword, studded leather. Run through Candlekeep. Lions way, Gorion dies. Loot imoen for potions and wand. Loot xzar and montaron for potions of healing, oil of speed). Get Diamond. Think about how imoen has a bow and montaron has a short sword... Head East. Coast way, Loot ring of Princes, head north. Friendly arm Inn, Loot ring of wizardry. Sell. Hide. Head inside. Loot jaheira and Khalid (potion of Invisibility, potion of health. Sell wand, diamond. Hide. Head outside. Identify rings in church. Head outside of walls. Head south. Coast way, Kill a bandit. Head south to Beregost. Beregost, Head West to high hedge High hedge, Head to talantyr, sell ring of wizardry. buy 3 potion of explosions, 3 potion of fire resistance. Scroll of magic protection. Discover intelligence is too low to use it (needs 9). Must find potion of mind focusing somewhere... Head West to shipwreck coast Shipwreck coast. Fail hiding and waste 4 potions of healing killing a wolf. try killing shoal the nereid with a backstab. Discover it is too little damage, she talks to me and kisses me to death.
Exact same flow (including too low intelligence because I thought that was a funny mistake).
Shipwreck Cove. No wolf this time. Kill shoal with bow by running around shrubbery. This is not really speedy, but I have a plan to speed up... Level up. Then face mad arcand for his oil of fiery burning. Pelting him with arrows is okay, but he gets off a hold person and then a flamestrike to finish me off. Death.
Always hated Belhifet and probably always will. He's much more interesting in Siege of Dragonspear, where he's not flat-out immune to all spells, but even in SoD, defeating him mostly just means hitting him with weapons until he's dead, much like IWD.
But for once, I have a melee-heavy party. We start out by using a Wand of Frost on Hephernaan and sending Mollyboo south, as her SI: Abjuration scroll ran out during the buildup to the fight. It proves to be a good choice, because our front line, which has no SI: Abjuration buffs and was within range of Bellyfat's opening Dispel Magic spell, loses all of the defenses I gave them before combat.
I don't know how big of a threat Hephernaan is, but I focus on taking him down first. Bellyfat makes some strong progress on Morentherene before Heifer goes down.
My frontline needs a boost, and the bat is there to provide it. The robe from Zadroth gave him a Spell Sequencer, and Emotion: Hope, a spell from IWDification, stacks for +6 to hit, damage, and saving throws.
It doesn't provide any AC bonuses, so our front line is still quite vulnerable, especially Darskhelin with his low CON.
Bellyfat likes to disappear, but his absence just gives us time to take down his allies.
Just in case we need to, we start throwing Lower Resistance spells at Bellyfat, which would allow us to deal damage to him using Wands of Frost. Meanwhile, our fighters and Bellyfat chip away at each other.
The bat and Skeletal Mage use scrolls to try to land a Polymorph Other or Hold Monster on Bellyfat once Greater Malison hits. Ziatar uses Greater Restoration to keep our front line in top condition.
Mollyboo reveals Bellyfat when he tries to hide. We buff Darskhelin with Enchanted Weapon, because I want to see if we can kill Bellyfat using INT drain.
Cornugons join the fight. Since I've seen them stun on hit in BG2, I take them out before Bellyfat. Ziatar nearly dies, but a simple Greater Restoration scroll brings her back up to speed.
Darskhelin goes for a stat drain kill, but I'm not even sure he got it. With three Emotion: Hope spells active and our STR well above 19, the damage alone is too much for Bellyfat.
The battle is won! Siege of Dragonspear is over! Now we get to bring a mind flayer fighter and a green dragon into BG2.
This party won't last forever, though. Seduction will net us even stronger critters in BG2, if we can constrain them first.
Current party: Mollyboo, Seducer Morentherene, Green Dragon Fighter Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter Ziatar, Half-dragon Fighter/Cleric Bat, Mage Skeletal Mage, Mage
More of the same. This time shoal and mad arcand bite the dust. Level up and boost find traps to 50 and pick pockets to 55. I get a potion of magic resistance from the surgeon and head south... Only to discover that there is no south possible to the lighthouse map, so I need to go to the high hedge, then south to the red canyons, then West to the lighthouse map. I need to consider whether this layover to shoal is worth it. For sure it is two levels which I think I need for thieving skills. Okay, I go to black alarics cave and disarm the traps and hide well enough to get relairs mistake, the tome of constitution (since I am there anyway), and some other stuff. Leave map south to the archaeological dig site. Archaeological dig. Find captain brage, guess the riddle and get transported to nashkel. Woohoo, i feel smarter than my protagonist. Nashkel. Identify tome and cloak and use them. Then find out the Wolf form from relairs mistake does not give that much faster walking... I thought it always did that! I suppose bg2 walking speed makes you not see much difference now in bgee. Try to steal a potion of Invisibility from the manor only to find out pick locks is too low level... Go to carnival. Nashkel carnival. Go into tent with potion monger and buy both. Try to get potion of Invisibility from chest only to find out pick locks is too low level... Buy necklace of missiles. Head to mines. Mines. Get through all levels in stealth and disarming traps. All up to mulahey. Open chest, no letters!!! Wait, what? It must be on the guy... Another New thing in bgee. Kill him with 3 potions of explosions and 1 oil of fiery burning. (get short sword +1 and potion of absorption). Leave to Valley of tombs. Valley of tombs, try to leave to Beregost... Wait what? Destination unreachable!! That is new in bgee... Fine. Go to nashkel. Go to nashkel Road. Go to Beregost Road. Go to Beregost. Hey, I should have done marl earlier. Steal algernons cloak. Kill tranzig. Go to temple area. Id short sword and cloak. Go to peldvale. Peldvale, talk to teven and join the cause and get teleported to the bandit camp. Bandit camp. Wait, I actually do not get the option to talk my way out of a fight with tazok? Run and bombard with arrows and charges of necklace of missiles. Drink potion of absorption, stealth, head into tent. Open chest, get letters, gauntlets of something, someone gets toasted with lightning. Potion of Invisibility and run run run. Out and back to friendly arm Inn. Hey, here they have potion of genius and mind focusing on the temple. Friendly arm Inn to cloakwood all through to mines. Charm drasus. He kills the others. Disarm drasus and let the guards kill him. Get boots of speed. Just wear them. Run through mines to davaeorn lair. Disarm traps... Figure out that algernons cloak is only 1 charge!!! Use potion of mind focusing, want to use scroll of magic protection on him to disable him that way. Then figure out of is cast on self! Decide not to use it. Try a backstab. Run around having used potions of fire resistance and casting necklace of missiles around myself. Die to combined overlooked ward and lightning bolt from davaeorn. Death.
Same old, same old. Davaeorn now dies to necklace of missiles. Run out of mines. Go all the way up to baldurs gate East. Buy arrows of detonation from sorcerous sundries. Go to baldurs gate center. Baldurs gate south. Step into iron Throne, head out (this triggers having investigated it). Head to baldurs gate south West. Talk to scar. Talk to Duke Eltan. Get quest. Talk to him again. Get book and go to Candlekeep. Nice, making progress. Through library, no guard finds me to accuse me of killing the iron Throne (is that new or did I wait too short?) Kill the iron Throne with necklace of missiles. Get arrested. Run through catacombs back to baldurs gate East. Get tome of dexterity from black lily. Recharge necklace and algernon at the sundries. Head to sewers and get into undercellars. Charm slythe. Have him attack me bare-handed to have him follow me out into the sewers. (still charmed) run him into the ogre and carrion crawlers. Get invitation stealthed and go to baldurs gate north. Head into ducal palace... And i have no idea how to win that.... Stuck for a bit.
I will post pictures later. I ran the last runs on my pc.
Making progress @Iroumen - keep it going . Re Tazok I think you get the option to avoid a fight if you have a higher reaction encounter score. Even if he is hostile though you can retreat quickly out of sight and hide from him - you don't need to complete the fight to progress to the Cloakwood.
Yes, I gimped my character a bit on the mental stats in favour of physical stats... which I think I may not really need. I think I will enlist a mage and plow my way through the Duchal palace using otiluke's resilient sphere. I hope the sundries sells that (may continue tonight after this picture upload).
This it the time statistics by the way. Candlekeep: 2:40 (creation) Lion's Way, Coast Way: 4:30 (looting) FAI: 7:15 (selling) Coast Way, Beregost: 8:15 (skipping) High Hedge: 10:00 (buying) Shipwreck Coast: 17:30 (two battles!) High Hedge, Red Canyons: 18:00 (walk around) Lighthouse Area: 22:30 (cave) Excavation site, Nashkel: 25:30 (Sell) Carnival: 27:30 (buy) Mines: 31:30 (walk) Mulahey, Valley of Tombs: 34:45 (killing) Nashkel, Nashkel Road, Beregost Road, Beregost: 39:45 (Tranzig) Larswood, Camp: 43:00 (Tazok, Tent) Ankheg Farm, FAI, Cloakwood all: 47:45 (sell, Drasus) Mines: 53:45 (down, Davaeorn) FAI, Ankheg Farm, Bridge, BGEast: 55:45 (walk, sundries) BG C, BG S, BG SW, Candlekeep: 57:45 (walk, iron throne, flaming fist) Catacombs, BG E, Sewers, Undercellars, BG N, Duchal: 60:00 (run, Slythe) Duchal Palace........ To be Continued.
Pictures make everything more fun. This run was not super speedy because then I would take blade and offensive spin rest-spam everything and avoid all combat with mirror image and kill all with want of frost, that one would take only about 30-40 minutes. With a thief it is so much more fun to actually use skills, items, run into surprised and everything.
Anyway.
Speedy is born. One of its creations has slightly lower stats that the original, but anyway. Low intelligence remains since I thought that fun.
That realisation when you see that you cannot use the beloved scroll (meant for later in the game to have 'options' open for the final fight).
A wolf decides to join the dance with Shoal. What a problem that was...
Mad Arcand nipping me in my last run when I noticed I did not level up yet. Ouch! So close to another careless run.
Feeling good about being a thief. Adds dimension to the run.
Despite not running fast, the cloak does get its uses when stealth fails (at 40/100 move/hide in shadows inside).
Hi Algernon, Hi Tranzig. I am a thief. Feel me!.... I mean. Fear me!
By the way. Saving because taking notes and tracking time.
Stupid Orc. Why can you not trust my lovely face when I say I am of the tough kind?
Having fun with Drasus. His potion of frost giant strength sure sped things up. Tchik tchik, splatter! I have no more use for you, but I take the boots, thanks. Thankfully they are not uggs.
Yep. Thief. Go. Disable.
Ah right, I forgot to mention. The potions of fire merely got rid of his mirror image. Then the necklace was run out of charges (save 1) and I had to run around backstabbing him.
This guy survived for a long time in the game until I thought, why not. I am here anyway...
This one was genius. I charmed Slythe and figured out how to get himself killed without dropping reputation or making the entire undercellars hostile towards me. Awesome! Maybe I should add this trick to the list of @semiticgod. Charmed characters and summons can follow you to other zones by setting them to attack you. Then area transition. When you get to the new place, they stand right next to you.
After some contemplation I decided not to go for otiluke's resilient sphere but instead go for the wand of sleep. It will instead of incapacitate the dukes, incapacitate the dopplegangers. If you approach from the east and stand in the middle, you will attract almost all of them. It is then a matter of gambling that enough charges stick before they kill all the flaming fist.
Seems to work decently. The rest is made to sleep in due time and with a lot of backstabs they are killed one by one (the back is on the side where the head lies on the floor). Yes!
Running through the maze and detrapping it is easy enough. Then I prepare in the temple as planned. Scroll of magic, oil of speed (extra), potion of fire resistance (versus angelo I thought). Then run around the center trying not to die to battle horrors, while trying to get poison to stick or fireballs to damage. In the end the skull traps bring him down.
Speedrun complete! Real life time taken, 1 hour, 12 minutes. In-game time taken, 19 days 12 hours.
I mis-calculated Charleston Nib's desire for help and he told Wimp to be on her way even with a zero reaction adjustment (-2 from charisma, +2 from reputation). She had better luck at the lighthouse where one charmed worg did enough damage to allow Wimp and the pseudo-dragon to finish the others off (the familiar's slightly quicker speed helping with kiting there) and get a reward from Ardrouine.
After getting a lift back to Nashkel with Brage, Wimp travelled up to High Hedge in search of her final reputation increase. On the way, Melicamp's wolf had proved much too strong for the familiar in melee and had to be kited nearly all the time. After resting at High Hedge until a skeleton tried an ambush, the balance of power against that in melee proved much more favorable and the pseudo-dragon eventually gnawed its head off without ever getting past injured status itself (despite its intended blur spell being interrupted). She wasn't able to carry the skull as well as Melicamp though, which meant she needed to use the quick loot feature on the way to Thalantyr's. While doing that she had to dodge a bear, which resulted in activating the gnolls - leading to another lengthy session of kiting to deal with them (once activated they have a follow-me script, so resting or leaving the area won't stop them following). After all that work, Wimp was presented with just a chicken dinner as a reward (and she's a vegetarian) .
With no easy options for gaining reputation left she took a risk by trying to rescue Samuel. She was lucky there in just taking relatively light damage in a hobgoblin ambush, but avoiding encountering what would probably have been a fatal meeting with bandits.
With reputation now up to 20, Wimp will actually be aiming to learn (and even use) a few spells next time .
Two weeks ago, I also started playing again. I was hoping to return to the game with the new SCS version, but there haven't been any news over there for a while, so I'm currently playing modless.
So far, I've failed with two runs, for rather strange reasons:
My first attempt was what I called the "rotating party challenge", which involves taking along 5 randomized official NPC companions and rolling for 5 new ones each time you level up, with the extra twist of every death being permanent, so you can actually run out of NPCs if you aren't careful. This results in some very unusual (and very underleveled) combinations, but it was great fun. I was playing a totemic druid (to always have some fighting abilty thanks to summons, and because of the fast level progression in BG1, allowing for many different party combinations), only lost Minsc, Rasaad and Garrick (to deaths) plus Kivan and Edwin (due to them leaving the party because of their quests), but after I was finshed with the duchal palace
and started to do TotSC content, my entire party suddenly died all at once in Durlag's Tower in what I can only assume was a bug involving the Marek and Lothander questline - I actually completed these quests and got the message that I was cured of the poison, but for some reason, it seems like the cure was never applied. The timeline fits, and it's the only explanation for this kind of random death I can think of:
My next run was an attempt at a self-created party designed to go for my first successful SoD no-reload, but in a house in Beregost, I accidentally triggered this encounter:
- I don't think I've ever seen this happen before, so I was quite surprised. I killed all the guards easily, only to discover my reputation had dropped to 1. This eventually resulted in a bunch of hostile NPCs walking around Beregost and Nashkell, and I lost interested in the run.
Now, on monday I've started to play another character, and I'm planning to document his exploits here.
Meet Nabatil, true neutral halfing shadowdancer. His stats are 17/19/18/14/2/18, he's proficient in quarterstaffs and shortbows, and all of his thief ability points are going into stealth for now:
I'm playing on core rules, and the BG1 part of this run will be mostly solo - though this is not a strict rule: Solo play is simply meant to speed up progress, since I'm mostly interested in getting to SoD and no-reloading it. I will take NPCs along when it's convenient, and in SoD, I plan to play with a full party. I've only ever played through SoD once and don't remember details like trap locations or mage scripts, but since some people here managed to do a no-reload on their very first try, I think there's a good chance for me to make it if I get there.
Since I normally don't like solo play (not because I don't know how to do it, but because I just enjoy group versus group combat more), I decided to go with a shadowdancer because I imagine he will be great at surviving (thanks to his ability to hide everywhere, stop time to run away and his improved saving throws). The ability to stealth and run away at all times will also give me time to figure out new tactics if my initial approach to an encounter isn't working.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 137 part 123 4 Hyra (Elf Ranger, Gate70); Dave (Half-elf Cleric/Ranger, Grond0)
Siege of Dragonspear. The opening dungeon is full of tricky encounters so we detonated our way out. For somne reason the Grand Dukes were a little wary of our uncontrolled firepower so sent us out into the wilderness. Their caution was well justified, Hyra accidentally using the wrong arrows in a troll cave.
With one bridge already blown up (not our fault, but Hyra was sorely tempted to loose a few arrows at Caelar across the chasm) we went in search of another way across and instead ended up in a temple of Bhaal cum Cyric.
A Shadow Aspect used a lethal dose of multiplayer lag to kill Dave - his armour showing where he thought he was, while the Shadow Aspect was next to Hyra at the time.
Well, if the Aspect is going to cheat, we can up the ante. Hyra is blinded and uses this to hide in shadows mere inches away from the Aspect and land an attack, repeating a second time.
On the way back from raising Dave we throw stuff at a sleeping dragon. Hyra misses, and whispers to Dave about why he is casting. Dave shouts back that the dragon must surely be awake - well it is now.
Combat on the run ensues and after two sets of breath weapon Hyra steps outside for some fresh air. She heals partially and goes to return but Dave wants to rest. Later Dave, let's press home our 'advantage'.
The session is drawing to a close but Hyra can't resist the temptation for one more deadly encounter. We make short work of them.
As much as I love having Morentherene in the party, she is not going to stick around in BG2. A juvenile green dragon is awfully strong, but we can do better. More importantly, BG2 has a lot of narrow spaces, far more so than BG1 or SoD (or any of the IE games), which means that Morentherene can't actually move around unless we can find Relair's Mistake, the cloak that lets you shapeshift into a wolf.
It's actually not even possible for her to escape Chateau Irenicus without getting killed or polymorphed. Her circle is too big for her to get anywhere, either in the first level or the second.
Without Morentherene to smash everything, I let Mollyboo do some of the work. Seducers are good for more than just bringing weird monsters into the party. They also have some fun charming and backstabbing options. They're lousy backstabbers normally, but if they backstab a character they charm, they can instantly kill the target.
Mollyboo saves the party a lot of HP by turning the enemies against each other and reducing the pressure on us. Seducers do very well, relatively speaking, in low-rest environments due to being able to cast Domination at will.
Right after I kill Morentherene so we can escape the dungeon, I discover, to my delight, that Ziatar now has all her priest spells, without having to hit level 10 first.
In retrospect, I think this is just because I needed to use a workaround to get this party into BG2. Normally, I can't import a whole party into BG2; I can only import Charname.
Outside Chateau Irenicus, we have an awful time against Rhialto, a clown-faced sorcerer from some mod or another. He has a lot of high-level spells, but Darskhelin has 90% MR, buying us enough time to raise Morentherene and outlast Rhialto's PFMW.
Notice I've removed the Skeletal Mage. Since it's immune to INT bonuses from Potions of Genius, I don't think it will work well in the long run due to the risk of scroll scribing failures.
We run into a mod-related bug early after visiting the circus. Aerie wants us to go on a quest to save Quayle or something and since the dialogue options to say "no" sound like you're being a jerk, I say yes. She forcibly joins the party, but this is a solo run and I'm not allowed to accept NPCs, only seduced critters, so I kick her out.
But then she teleports us to some new area based on Kuldahar and I hit a game-breaking bug.
Apparently she's involved in a dialogue here, but since I booted her from the party to abide by the rules of a solo run, I couldn't bring her along. It's impossible to leave the area, rendering the game impossible to continue. I reload and this time I tell her to get lost. She hates us for it, but I'm not willing to break the rules to complete a quest I'm not even interested in.
Our party might be too weak to handle later fights (bear in mind that seduced critters without classes suffer a 50% XP penalty when they get the fighter class, so HLAs are out of the question), but we're still above-average for the early game in Shadows of Amn. This means we can tackle Mencar Pennypincher.
Mollyboo uses Domination to immediately turn the tide in our favor.
But Domination doesn't last forever, and Ziatar has rather lousy defenses due to having poor armor. Darskhelin has the same problem, compounded by poor DEX.
Mollyboo manages to charm Brennan Risling and Pooky, but it doesn't get us much. She runs away from Mencar and Brennan when they target her and avoids a backstab long enough for Morentherene, who can see through invisibility, to smash Brennan. Our dragon also takes down Mencar and Pooky, with a little help from our bat.
It's a pity that we can't use mod items in this run, because enemies drop some pretty awesome items in my install.
We can, however, use Harbinger, a lucky random drop. But when we turn it against a mugger, we accidentally slay a bystander.
It costs a fortune to restore our reputation, but selling off Harbinger offsets the cost.
Ziatar's and Darskhelin's vulnerability resurfaces in a fight with some tourists from Lord of the Rings visiting the Umar Hills and we find, to my delight, a Ring of Spell Turning in the mimic cave. Plus a pair of Boots of Speed at Jermien's house and the wolf shapeshifting cloak in Anath's lair.
That cloak will let Morentherene slip through tight spaces, but I still don't plan on keeping her in the long run.
We stop short of fighting the Shade Lord, because some mod character warns us about the upcoming fight, and I'm worried the Shade Lord is much tougher than I'm expecting. Instead, we head to Trademeet, where to combine the Ring of Spell Turning with a Minor Spell Turning spell to generate a scorcher loop between Darskhelin (who already comes with immunity to fire) and our bat (who needs a Protection from Fire pre-buff). It incinerates Kyland Lind, who otherwise can be a major problem.
Then I stop by the graveyard to pick up an important new NPC. But it seems I forgot that my install has some dangerous new enemies in the cemetery.
By sheer luck, I pre-buffed with Death Ward in case Mollyboo got surprised in a random encounter. I think that spell was the only reason she survived. We buff the whole party with Death Ward before fighting the numerous other ghosts wandering around, all of which instantly cast Wail of the Banshee.
We bust out the scorcher loop to score some easily kills in the sewers, both against some mod enemies and our good friends, Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers.
Gaius is immune thanks to his mage defenses, but he has no tools to get past Darskhelin's sky-high MR, allowing us to wait out his weapon immunities and kill him with stat drain.
It costs us some XP, but most of our power in this run will not come from XP.
Which reminds me: I accidentally installed a mod that cuts both quest and kill XP roughly in half. I compensated for this by removing the XP penalty from our seducer fights and doubling XP for everyone else in the party. This means we'll get the same amount of XP we would in a normal BG2 run.
We encounter a Medusa just outside Pai'Na's lair, but I knew it was coming, so everyone was already immune to petrification, allowing Mollyboo to charm it.
Mollyboo uses Seduction to bring the Medusa into the party, but unfortunately, it only has 1 APR. It can petrify things with its gaze attack, but it really won't be reliable. It probably won't stay in the party for very long.
We also pick up a wight from the chamber across from Pai'Na's lair (I considered seducing Pai'Na to get some druid levels, but decided against it). The wight is very weak, just like our wight from SoD, but its level drain will be even more critical in BG2.
I accidentally arrived in the graveyard at night while having enough gold to side with Bodhi, and since I always side with Bodhi, I lose access to the Mae'Var questline. It's not too big of a loss, however--I've already got the two most important things I need for the next fight.
We're only a level 9 party, but it's time to tackle the Guarded Compound.
Never heard of anybody doing a speed run of SoD. I'd love to see one!
The nature of speedruns seems very different from that of no-reloads, however. A speedrunner will generally use a set of powerful exploits which very seldom fail; a speedrunner will use most any trick or glitch provided that it doesn't require cheat codes or an external editor. And even if you did lose a speedrun, they go by so quick that you could easily restart it from the beginning, making the no-reload aspect irrelevant when it's already redundant.
It appears that one of my mods has edited the fight at the first level of the Guarded Compound.
I don't know what a Wizard Construct is, but it can cast PFMW--a very bad sign. Fortunately, Darskhelin has abnormally high APR even with his bare hands, and can punch his way through Wizard Construct's Stoneskins.
Another Wizard Construct joins the fight, but we disable one of them and dominate the other thanks to some lucky saving throws.
With their spellcasting frustrated, the Wizard Constructs can't do much else to us. Soon the battle is won.
Upstairs is a deadlier party. We enter while invisible and use Darskhelin's immunity to elemental damage to tank an acid trap. Sion or maybe Stalman reveals us just as we make it out of their line of sight.
The southeast section of the map is a great hiding place, especially because you can duck into the southernmost room and hide in a secret passageway. It's a great way to wear down the enemy.
But our primary tactic for this fight is more of a blitzkrieg thing. With Darskhelin using the Ring of Spell Turning, our bat starts up a scorcher loop, and we wipe out two important foes before the loop fizzles out.
But Sion is completely unaffected, and Darskhelin still has several other melee bruisers to deal with.
Sion uses Wish to cast Breach on the entire party, but fortunately Darskhelin still has strong MR and immunity to elemental damage to keep him alive.
But the Fallen Planetar manages to get past Darskhelin's 90% magic resistance, and while he still resists the bulk of the damage, his HP pool is pretty shallow to begin with.
Darskhelin stays on the run. I can't possibly handle the enemy as they are now; I need to wait for their defenses to run low. Most importantly, I need the Cornugon and the Fallen Planetar to go away.
The Cornugon has despawned, but the Fallen Planetar remains, and with Darskhelin's low movement rate, our mind flayer cannot avoid every hit.
Chunked by Globe of Blades. Per my normal rules, I can bring back Darskhelin, who is easily our MVP, but I'm not going to. In all honesty, I won't need him.
Ziatar goes out to distract the enemy before that Fallen Planetar wanders around and stumbles across Mollyboo. The enemy approaches the party, forcing us to retreat to the southern room while Ziatar runs around.
Ziatar keeps the Fallen Planetar busy until it vanishes, but Sion catches us by surprise, slaying both our wight and our bat and dealing heavy damage to Ziatar.
But we came prepared for this. Mollyboo brings back our bat using the Rod of Resurrection while Ziatar makes her escape with Sanctuary to regroup with the party.
Our bat renews its defenses and goes out to drain some more spells out of Sion, but there are too many melee enemies to deal with.
The bat begins to panic. Ziatar rushes in with the Wand of Fire, but it's not enough to clear up the room.
Sion nails our bat with Melf's Acid Arrow. Our Medusa comes out to try to petrify one of the enemies, but she's not fast enough to save the bat.
The Medusa's defenses are even weaker, and she dies in moments.
They finish off the bat, and suddenly only a single party member besides Mollyboo remains: Ziatar, who honestly is not much of a tank.
But Mollyboo is in a good position. She's holed up in the secret passageway to the southwest, casting Domination through the wall to help out Ziatar.
It doesn't do much besides get Olaf backstabbed, unfortunately, and with Ketta roaming around with no divination spells to reveal her, we don't know where she is, making it impossible for Ziatar to avoid a backstab.
But Ziatar survives, her resistances block the poison damage, and Mollyboo's charmed golem smashes Ketta, only to see Olaf smash it in turn.
The enemy is disintegrating. Mollyboo charms Olaf again and uses him to take down Maferan.
It takes a few tries, but Ziatar manages to bring down Olaf once he's been wounded.
Finally, we've taken down Sion's friends, and all of his defenses have run out. We prepare to end the battle. Mollyboo uses the Rod of Resurrection on the wight, Sion, and the bat.
Wait, why are we healing Sion?
Well...
Sion is level 20 and has no immunity to level drain. If we drain enough levels, Mollyboo can seduce him. But he has so little HP that we need to heal him and shore up his defenses just to make sure we don't kill him by accident.
I count the levels by arranging potions in Mollyboo's inventory to make sure I don't make any mistakes. We let him go hostile so we hit him with Greater Malison.
It took a lot of work and it got our strongest character chunked, but we bring Sion into the party. He is a level 20 Conjurer with decent stats and some spectacular spell picks.
I give him Darskhelin's old portrait, a shot of Stan from Okage. With him in the party, we no longer need our bat.
Sion will never gain a level in this run, but he won't need to. His Fallen Planetar will pave the way through much of Shadows of Amn, saving us a lot of time and worry.
But this is only the beginning. I have even bigger plans for this party than a single level 20 mage.
Alright, maybe I can run it with another character a few times and then attempt with a speedytoes. I think there are some nice Halfling items around and a lot of detonation arrows left to go some distance.
Comments
The people of Nepal were so welcoming and I still miss them despite being able to communicate via Facebook.
What I particularly liked was the fact that the churches there were how they are supposed to be. It's no wonder that the church there has grown from twelve to a million in just sixty years. Also having a view of the Annapurna Range from our balcony for our last three years made our stay particularly enjoyable.
We joined up with Xzar and Montaron and after leaving Xzar in a house in Beregost, Montaron proceeded to "acquire" a cloak. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard where he "found" a lot of scrolls. Whilst there we were approached by a dwarf called Thorin who almost forced himself into the party. (I was intending him to join later, but had forgotten about him and when he seemed so eager to join, it would have been churlish to refuse) We left Montaron in Beregost.
We were sent by someone from Kara-Tur in search of more sirine. Killing them was easy enough but some ogres and ogrillon hurt us baadly.
We then went to an area full of ankheg and killed more than two dozen.
Having sold a lot of shells, we were able to upgrade Tenya's belt so that she now has a decent strength.
We took on Tristan and Isolde using my berserker rage and Thorin's defensive stance. It was sufficient.
In transit we fought and killed a winter wolf the belt that I found with Gorion's possessions being most useful.
The battle against the dark Horizon assassins at the Gnoll Encampment was touch and go. but we eventually prevailed though I had to consume no fewer than three potions of extra healing to survive. They used their invisibility potions very wisely with the result that their backstabs were horrendous. Both Tenya and I both nearly died on a number of occasions.
However the rest of the fortress was without problems.
Mollyboo: A "Solo" Seducer in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 6
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899249/#Comment_899249
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899476/#Comment_899476
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899528/#Comment_899528
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899532/#Comment_899532
The fight against Morentherene is pretty rough. And it seems that Insane mod adds some baby dragons to the fight alongside the wyverns. Our cat soaks up the first two attacks.
Protection from Poison scrolls don't block poison damage itself, but they do block the poison opcode, which means our cat won't take any lingering damage from Morentherene's breath weapon. Schlumpsa and the wight, fortunately, are immune to all forms of poison, though only the cat can tank the dragon.
The bat gets caught in the crossfire, but a Protection from Poison scroll keeps it relatively safe. One of the wyverns attacks Schlumpsa, but it's 75% resistant to piercing damage and immune to poison, so it's not a big worry for us.
But Schlumpsa can't take on four at once. We resort to some damage spells, wands, and summons to ease the pressure on it.
I say "it" because Schlumpsa has no gender according to the Record screen.
We take down a single wyvern, but our bat suffers from Morentherene's breath weapon. We're have trouble making progress against the enemy.
This isn't going well. I spend multiple Wand of Fire charges to speed things up.
Mollyboo charms Morentherene and gets her to smash the last wyvern.
Now only Morentherene is left, and without her allies to apply pressure, we can take her down with little trouble.
But we're not going to do that.
Mollyboo needs stronger companions if she is to survive in Siege of Dragonspear. Wands will get us through most of the game, but they will not be enough for the final battle. We need stronger melee power, and our underleveled fighters with poor stats are not going to suffice.
So we're going to bring Morentherene into the party.
Unfortunately, Morentherene is a staggering level 14 dragon. Mollyboo would have to be level 28 in order for Seduction to work, and even if we removed the XP cap, there's no way Mollyboo could ever have reached over 3 million XP by this point, even with the basilisk XP loop.
That's where our wight comes in.
The wight might be a lousy fighter in every dimension, but its natural weapon drains 1 level with every hit, and unlike a Totemic Druid's level 10 Spirit Wolf, the level drain offers no saving throw. If I can drain 9 levels from Morentherene, then Mollyboo will be able to bring her into the party with Seduction.
But that's easier said than done. First, we need to get our extremely fragile wight to land 9 hits on Morentherene without Morentherene smashing it in a single round. To keep our wight safe, Mollyboo has to chain-cast Domination so we can stop Morentherene from attacking us.
Dragons get a +2 bonus to saves vs. Domination and Charm, but with Greater Malison active, Mollyboo has a 50% chance of charming her for 1d3 rounds. On average, that will keep Morentherene under our control every round, but even a slight change in our luck could have the green dragon attacking us round after round after round. That's why our cat needs to be in position to keep Morentherene distracted, lest she tear apart our poor wight.
The wight has poor THAC0, so it really needs a potion of giant strength to hit Morentherene reliably. We land our first hit and drain her to level 13.
I have to keep track of the levels I drain. If I drain too few, then Mollyboo could spend many rounds trying to use Seduction, allowing Morentherene time to break free of Domination and attack our party. If I drain too many, I risk killing Morentherene, and that would be a huge loss for a no-reload run.
This will be a long process and luck can drag it out even further. When Morentherene makes her save vs. spell, she gets a chance to fight back. Fortunately, our cat takes most of her blows.
The wight just landed a hit with a roll of 13, but at some point, something changes about its THAC0 or Morentherene's AC.
The blip vanishes for some reason, and after a lot of failed tries, the wight manages to keep draining levels.
The problem with level drain is that it decreases Morenthere's maximum HP. Her Stoneskins provide a buffer, but once they run out, the wight is dealing far too much damage. The same potion that improved its THAC0 also boosted its damage.
I think we can keep Morentherene afloat using Mollyboo's Healing Touch spells (modded Bhaalspawn powers; not Seducer abilities), but I'm not positive. To make sure Morentherene survives the process, we take a break and let her heal up.
Level drain, thankfully, is permanent until death. Theoretically we could drag this out over many days, but draining a powerful enemy's levels until it's weak enough to seduce is already a very lengthy and dangerous process.
Feeblemind actually works great for this purpose, but I didn't consider using it at the time. You just need to dispel the Feeblemind effect after Seduction works; otherwise the seduced critter's script won't make it join the party.
We return to Morentherene's lair and resume our work.
Finally, our labors bear fruit, and we finish our work by using a Restoration scroll on the dragon to reverse the level drain. Morentherene the green dragon has joined the party!
Due to being charmed when she was down to level 5, she only has as much XP as a normal level 5 seduced critter would have (Seduction sets the target's XP to a certain amount based on the target's level). She won't gain a single level until midway through Shadows of Amn, and even then, she'll only have a single proficiency point.
But she doesn't need proficiency points. She has incredible stats across the board, with 4 attacks per round at 20 STR and over 150 HP, on top of having subzero base AC and extremely low THAC0. She deals almost as much damage as a well-built Kensai, Barbarian, or Berserker, and is almost as hard to kill as our cat. A min-maxed fighter/mage would still be stronger than her, actually, but she's far stronger than Schlumpsa, whom she replaced.
Besides, she's a freaking dragon. How often do you get to play as a freaking dragon?
She doesn't have her breath weapon or Stoneskin anymore (seduced critters very rarely retain their spells), but she still has immunity to poison and 15% MR. Her wide circle will prove a problem in close quarters, and she'll need to use Relair's Mistake to switch to wolf form to navigate in many areas, but she's awfully good with a throwing axe and can still fight from afar when she needs to.
Morentherene's sister, the half-dragon Ziatar, awaits us in the level below. In my previous, failed run as a solo Seducer, I killed Ziatar, but that doesn't make much sense RP-wise. This time, we're going to bring Ziatar into the party alongside her sister.
She comes bolstered by two mages in Insane mode, but a Chaos spell and concentrated melee pressure render them a non-issue.
Ziatar fights back, but like Morentherene, she has no defense against level drain besides her low AC. She's easy to persuade than her big sister.
Ziatar is a level 9 fighter/cleric who wields (and has proficiencies for) a two-handed sword she can't legally use. She's pretty weak offensively since she has no pips in cleric weapons, but for the first time, we have a priest in the party.
Unfortunately, she comes with a set list of spells, and it's not possible to change her spell choices.
Testing finds that she can eventually get all of her normal cleric spells if she hits level 10 in Shadows of Amn, but that's a long way away. I'm not really sure she's any stronger than the cat she replaced (in fact, I rather doubt it), but it would be weird to bring only one of the two green dragon sisters along with us.
Besides, with Morentherene, having a cat for a tank isn't quite as necessary.
But we're still not quite done with this dungeon. The last fight awaits us.
Darskhelin comes with a diverse party to defend him, but most of them have little defense against a Wand of Fire. We bomb the enemy while Morentherene sneaks past them in wolf form.
She switches to natural form and hurls her throwing axe at the enemy, finishing off two of them in short order.
Our twin mages, the bat and the Skeletal Mage, use Lower Resistance to weaken Darskhelin while Morentherene slays the last mage.
Why Lower Resistance? Well, for those of you who haven't played Siege of Dragonspear, Darskhelin happens to be a mind flayer. And once we've softened him up...
...we nail him with the Wand of Paralyzation, giving us 10 rounds of freedom to work him over without worrying about his deadly INT drain attack.
We'll need those 10 rounds, because seducing Darskhelin is going to be much tougher than seducing Morentherene, who was hard enough as it is. Although he's only level 8 and we only need to drain 3 levels (which warrants a healing spell, lest we kill him by accident)...
...he also has a save vs. spell of 5. Greater Malison bumps that up to 9, but as an "alien" mind, he gets a +3 bonus to his save vs. Domination. That amounts to a 25% chance to land Domination, which we can only count on lasting for a single round. In that single round, Mollyboo has to land Seduction, which has a 20% chance of working. That means it will take 20 rounds on average to seduce Darskhelin, and bad luck can prolong it much further.
But after several charges from the Wand of Paralyzation and many rounds of trying, we finally bring him into the party. And he is very impressive indeed.
He has no psionic abilities anymore, but he does still have his natural weapon, which drains 5 Intelligence per hit for 30 seconds with no save. It strikes as a +2 weapon, but Enchanted Weapon will make it strike as +3, enough to hit the final boss of SoD in case my other tactics fail.
Darskhelin replaces our wight, because we will not need level drain in SoD anymore. This is the strongest party we can create until we reach BG2.
But even this doesn't mean we're invincible. I'm too lazy to post the full fight with the Shadow Aspect in the same area, but even our party isn't immune to everything. Two party members die and two others get very close before we finally kill the last shadows.
And I've already died once in SoD with nearly the same party, because I let my old Seducer's guard down. The enemy, after all, doesn't need to kill Morentherene in order to end this run.
They just need to kill Mollyboo.
Current party:
Mollyboo, Seducer
Morentherene, Green Dragon Fighter
Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter
Ziatar, Half-dragon Fighter/Cleric
Bat, Mage
Skeletal Mage, Mage
Mollyboo: A "Solo" Seducer in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 7
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899249/#Comment_899249
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899476/#Comment_899476
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899528/#Comment_899528
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899532/#Comment_899532
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899677/#Comment_899677
FYI, these last few posts happened a little while ago. That's why they came in so fast; they were already done as of this writing.
On to the spiders! Four of our party members are immune to poison, so this area is pretty simple. I speed things up with area-effect stuffs.
Bridgefort is a bigger danger; the Crusaders aren't so reliant on a single source of damage. They've got mages and clerics as well as fighters and archers. We send out a few cheap summons via the Wand of Monster Summoning, giving Morentherene time to slip past the ranks in wolf form and switch to dragon form, which otherwise would not really fit through the gate.
But when we layer multiple area-effect spells at once, the enemy clears up surprisingly quickly.
With our sky-high APR thanks to Darskhelin and Morentherene, any mage without PFMW will struggle to survive while still visible.
The Barghest is a major threat in this fight with his strong attacks, but he fails a lucky save, and one of his mage friends gets caught without MGOI.
Overwhelming force is proving quite effective. The enemy can't catch Mollyboo by surprise if Morentherene and Darskhelin obliterate them within a few rounds.
I don't know if it's possible to fail the fight on the bridge itself, but an Arrow of Dispelling and a Wand of Fire ensure we do not.
We use the Spectacles of Spectacle on Nazramu, the djinni at the Coalition Camp, to buy a bunch of powerful SoD-exclusive items and sell off some loose equipment (Nazramu buys stuff at much higher prices than other vendors; it's good to save some stuff to sell to him). We stop by one of the few remaining side areas to pick up an antidote that will win us the Martyr's Morningstar back at the camp, and on the way, we tackle the only basilisk that a Seducer can bring into the party in the entire trilogy without using mods. It's a level 10 critter, while BG1 Lesser Basilisks are level 6, so it still requires a wight's level drain.
Wait, why didn't I bring the wight out here so I could use Seduction on the basilisk?
That's the weird thing. The Greater Basilisk has 0 attacks per round. Even if you use Seduction on it and convert it to a level 10 fighter, it still cannot attack. Since I've always approached it with Protection from Petrification active, I'm not sure it can attack at all. Maybe if we brought it into BG2 and gave it Belm or used some other means of boosting its APR, it could petrify stuff.
But it's more or less useless as a companion in SoD. It might have 1 APR in LoB mode, but it's not possible to seduce it in LoB mode unless one of your party members is a Totemic Druid, because wights will get +12 levels in LoB mode and cannot be level drained to make them vulnerable to Seduction.
Anyway, we buy a bunch of Greater Restoration scrolls, run away from the dead magic encounter (I nearly died there on my first playthrough, and I didn't find anything valuable in it during my second playthrough), get the Martyr's Morningstar, and have a brief scare with Ziatar and a trap.
We smash our way through to the Underground River thingy, but since I'm still worried about reputation for some reason, I charm Rigah the Rasheman warrior into fighting the local ogres, which means me a very special sword.
It's my understanding that the Dragon Blade can be found in BG2 if you continue from SoD, and I've been very interested to see how it works with Critical Strike, which ostensibly would make it automatically slow every target it hit for 6 seconds, without any saving throw.
Brute force wins us a lot of fights in the tunnels, and the only characters who get killed are my mages, who have mostly just been spending their time watching our dragon and mind flayer kill everything.
Finally we arrive at Halathlaer's lair. This is where my last Seducer died when she failed a saving throw against the dragon's fear. This time, I keep Mollyboo well out of the way, and push her saves below 0 with potions.
It's hardly even necessary. Morentherene is immune to most mage disablers and Darskhelin has 90% magic resistance and immunity to elemental damage, so they can just up and break down the mages' Stoneskins without worrying about retaliation.
I use the Spectacles of Spectacle to pull Zadroth into the Material Plane, but this time, I directly provoke him in dialogue.
But we still have two charges from the Secret Revealed, the perfect anti-lich tool which offers no saving throw. It nets us a nice robe...
...but I feel bad for unleashing the lich. Nobody ever criticizes you for freeing Kangaxx, but here, an Endless Watcher attacks you after you free Zadroth, and he accuses you of endangering millions of lives or something. The robe isn't worth the guilt, but it's too late to reload.
We hurry through the tunnels and make our way to Hephernaan. I let Darskhelin tackle Heifer and his mage friend while Morentherene throws her axe from the doorway. Darskhelin's 90% magic resistance will keep him safe, and his INT drain attack, which I normally don't use, gets us an early kill on a well-defended mage.
Which I guess could have just as easily come from an Arrow of Dispelling, because items dominate BG1 and SoD gameplay. There are other enemies coming in from the south and east, but monsters and disablers are keeping them at bay.
Back in Heifer's room, I foolishly order Darskhelin to launch an Arrow of Dispelling at Heifer, only for him to remind me that Heifer comes pre-buffed with Physical Mirror, bouncing the arrow right back at our mind flayer.
I'm worried that killing Heifer with INT drain could cause a bug, so I have Darskhelin switch to the Fractal Blade instead, which can remove Heifer's illusory defenses. Down south, our own mages thin the enemy herd to make sure we'll have a clear path to the exit when Heifer goes down.
Another enemy mage appears, but Darskhelin is ready and kills him with INT drain.
We use the Wand of Monster Summoning to help break down Heifer's Stoneskins and a Wand of Fire to torch some Crusaders who might get in our way when we try to escape.
Heifer teleports away, giving us our cue to exit. We grab some items and flee before we get boxed in by the incoming Crusaders. Morentherene has to switch to wolf form to slip past the enemies, and miraculously, her 15% magic resistance wards off a Feeblemind spell that could otherwise have spelled her death.
I pack the party together to turn them invisible, only to see Ziatar fail a save against Chaos.
I already know what I have to do. I send the rest of the party south towards the exit and make no attempt whatsoever to save Ziatar's life. Unless I'm willing to reveal the entire party and spend the next ~10 rounds fighting an increasingly powerful horde of Crusaders, Ziatar is doomed. I let them take her.
EE's quick-loot feature lets us grab her equipment from afar and continue our escape without losing our invisibility.
In retrospect, I probably could have saved Ziatar with an Arrow of Dispelling. But the cost of raising her is minimal at this stage; it makes little difference.
We hurry through the tunnels while invisible, but it seems the Crusaders are smarter than I thought.
We have plenty of Potions of Invisibility, but the enemy has more than one divination spell. Morentherene lags behind and is exposed while still in wolf form.
But this isn't Ziatar; this is Morentherene. And these Crusaders are much more limited in number. A green dragon is more than capable of tackling these guys on her own.
But I'm impatient to leave; I'm not fully sure that there aren't more Crusaders on the way, waiting for some script or timer to activate them. I break invisibility to speed things up.
Notice the blinding fog effects. Once the way is clear, Morentherene switches to wolf form and we scurry outside. But we're not done yet with the Crusaders.
Before we lay siege to Dragonspear Castle, the Crusaders will invade the Coalition Camp. We have to fight them off.
Mollyboo: A "Solo" Seducer in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 8
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899249/#Comment_899249
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899476/#Comment_899476
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899528/#Comment_899528
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899532/#Comment_899532
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899677/#Comment_899677
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899690/#Comment_899690
Actually, the invasion is less exciting than I remembered. Wands of Fire incinerate much of the opposition.
Even the final wave is boring. Morentherene and Darskhelin just eat everything.
So we march on Dragonspear Castle. Arrows of Detonation are excellent here, and I've saved up plenty.
We've also got plenty of Arrows of Dispelling, and this time I remember to use them when Ziatar gets confused.
I accidentally let Ziatar get too close to the enemy. She doesn't have the stuff to survive under pressure from the archers, but the enemy is already disintegrating because of our Arrows of Detonation and Wands of Fire.
The next wave appears. But our strategy need not change.
It makes perfect sense that fireballs would dominate tactics during a siege, but it does feel less interesting if you've already been through BG2 and no longer find fireballs quite so incredible.
Ashatiel challenges Mollyboo to single combat. Ashatiel proves to be an absolute coward, and cannot tolerate being hit even once.
Aside from a Chaos spell that fails to confuse anyone in the party, the enemy barely does anything to us before we bomb them into oblivion.
The next wave begins! And it plays just the same.
The enemy survives a while longer, but they can't bring anyone down. Morentherene chops Ashatiel in half with a throwing axe.
I fight some optional enemies to the north and one of them kills Ziatar with fire damage, but the details aren't too interesting.
Next stop, Avernus! Illaruel manages to charm Ziatar, but Mollyboo can cure it with Dispel Charm while the rest of the party draw Wands of Frost and put down Illaruel within the round.
We buff the party during the long elevator ride to the final battle. This is what our party looks like at the end of Siege of Dragonspear.
Mollyboo:
The Skeletal Mage:
The Bat:
Darskhelin:
Ziatar:
Morentherene:
We reach the final arena at the strongest this party has ever been. Mollyboo, most importantly, is buffed with a Potion of Magic Shielding and SI: Abjuration from a scroll, ensuring that her defenses will remain strong even if the rest of the party should suffer.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899555/#Comment_899555
The session started with a lot of micro-managing to kill the half-ogres at the Lake area. The first one to die had lost the bulk of his HPs while charmed, but I couldn't let him die while on my side as that would make Bjornin's quest impossible to achieve (the same principle works with other fights where a group of enemies must die, such as helping Ardrouine and Arabelle). The pseudo-dragon wouldn't last long in melee against even a single half-ogre, but its regeneration and the relatively slow weapon speed of the half-ogres allow it to dart in and out pretty safely if you're careful. Wimp was better able to contribute damage of her own in this fight thanks to now wearing the bracers of dexterity. The necessity to keep a close eye on the fight at all times had the advantage that there was no difficulty in reacting when Wimp ran out of darts and hurled herself at the enemies on a couple of occasions.
After reporting in to Bjornin and stocking up on darts, Wimp returned to the Lake area and activated Drizzt. While the gnolls gently chewed their way through Drizzt, Wimp tried to do the same to them. She only managed to kill 3 of them though, which was rather less than I was hoping for (largely because I forgot to rest on arrival in the area and Wimp became fatigued right at the start of the fight - her miserable constitution means she gets fatigued after most travel). Unwilling to let the gnolls get away with killing poor Drizzt though, Wimp spent a while charming Teyngan and his companions (picking up equipment while resting to ensure it didn't disappear) and using them to kill the gnolls. Teyngan & co were given the usual thanks for their sterling service before Wimp spent the last few minutes of the session lugging all the equipment back to Nashkel to sell or store.
Not sure how much difference it makes. The fireball charges of the Wand of Fire could be replicated using Arrows of Detonation, but I often used the scorcher charges because I could control them more easily. The siege of Dragonspear Castle would have been essentially the same, as would most of the fights in the game where I used wand charges, but Davaeorn could have been very ugly--that was the one time where my only mage was dead.
Although I thought I installed the component that makes wands usable by thieves... and Mollyboo, unlike the other party members, was created normally. So she was supposed to be able to use the wands she used against Davaeorn.
Definitely sped up a lot of fights, though. Wands are crazy.
Hyra (Elf Ranger, Gate70); Dave (Half-elf Cleric/Ranger, Grond0)
We've made it to the city of Baldur's Gate, only to be poisoned by Marek. Delirious Dave asks a different question instead of how to remove a geas for Lothander. No problem, we'll just rest although the guards make a concerted effort to stop us loitering.
SoD next time. Starting gear is shown here.
Gate70: Teere, human female Priest of Tyr. Or is she (see end)?
Corey Russell: Corarcher, elf male Archer.
Grond0: Mis, elf female Archer.
Prat and his gang don't really know what hits them. One of our archers is almost caught up in the conflagration (ran out of arrows = ran into the inferno. Is that my own detonation arrow I'm passing?)
Grond0 asks if we are heading Siege-side, Corey_Russell gamely suggests that would be foolhardy so we're off to Amn instead.
There wasn't much trouble in the opening dungeon, but Ulvaryl evades us. The duergar mage with Illyich gets a pyrotechnic display going but we're not sufficiently distracted for it to worry us unduly.
We step outside, sort out the circus and head to Gaelan Bayle. After agreeing to help him...
(and a mild side-quest of hunt slot 3 down)
...we turn down Hexxat and add quests for Firkraag and Nalia to our list before heading out in search of trouble. Suna Seni kindly obliges and we head for Watchers Keep (potion case hunting) only to run into Renfeld and his attackers. We backpack him and head back to the Slums so that's enough for one day.
Anyway, Teere spotted a slight issue. She equipped a war hammer at the start then realised she could only select fists. 4 weapon spots, and a class of Cleric. Special abilities have been set as a Boon so fair to say her days as a Priest of Tyr are all Lathandered up.
Halfling thief, 17-19-18-8-8-8 all points in hide (75), proficiency bow and short sword. Buy bow, arrows, short sword, studded leather.
Run through Candlekeep.
Lions way, Gorion dies. Loot imoen for potions and wand. Loot xzar and montaron for potions of healing, oil of speed). Get Diamond. Think about how imoen has a bow and montaron has a short sword... Head East.
Coast way, Loot ring of Princes, head north.
Friendly arm Inn, Loot ring of wizardry. Sell. Hide. Head inside. Loot jaheira and Khalid (potion of Invisibility, potion of health. Sell wand, diamond. Hide. Head outside. Identify rings in church. Head outside of walls. Head south.
Coast way, Kill a bandit. Head south to Beregost.
Beregost, Head West to high hedge
High hedge, Head to talantyr, sell ring of wizardry. buy 3 potion of explosions, 3 potion of fire resistance. Scroll of magic protection.
Discover intelligence is too low to use it (needs 9). Must find potion of mind focusing somewhere...
Head West to shipwreck coast
Shipwreck coast. Fail hiding and waste 4 potions of healing killing a wolf. try killing shoal the nereid with a backstab. Discover it is too little damage, she talks to me and kisses me to death.
End of run 1.
Exact same flow (including too low intelligence because I thought that was a funny mistake).
Shipwreck Cove. No wolf this time. Kill shoal with bow by running around shrubbery. This is not really speedy, but I have a plan to speed up...
Level up. Then face mad arcand for his oil of fiery burning. Pelting him with arrows is okay, but he gets off a hold person and then a flamestrike to finish me off. Death.
End of run 2.
Mollyboo: A "Solo" Seducer in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 9
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899249/#Comment_899249
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899476/#Comment_899476
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899528/#Comment_899528
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899532/#Comment_899532
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899677/#Comment_899677
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899690/#Comment_899690
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899705/#Comment_899705
Always hated Belhifet and probably always will. He's much more interesting in Siege of Dragonspear, where he's not flat-out immune to all spells, but even in SoD, defeating him mostly just means hitting him with weapons until he's dead, much like IWD.
But for once, I have a melee-heavy party. We start out by using a Wand of Frost on Hephernaan and sending Mollyboo south, as her SI: Abjuration scroll ran out during the buildup to the fight. It proves to be a good choice, because our front line, which has no SI: Abjuration buffs and was within range of Bellyfat's opening Dispel Magic spell, loses all of the defenses I gave them before combat.
I don't know how big of a threat Hephernaan is, but I focus on taking him down first. Bellyfat makes some strong progress on Morentherene before Heifer goes down.
My frontline needs a boost, and the bat is there to provide it. The robe from Zadroth gave him a Spell Sequencer, and Emotion: Hope, a spell from IWDification, stacks for +6 to hit, damage, and saving throws.
It doesn't provide any AC bonuses, so our front line is still quite vulnerable, especially Darskhelin with his low CON.
Bellyfat likes to disappear, but his absence just gives us time to take down his allies.
Just in case we need to, we start throwing Lower Resistance spells at Bellyfat, which would allow us to deal damage to him using Wands of Frost. Meanwhile, our fighters and Bellyfat chip away at each other.
The bat and Skeletal Mage use scrolls to try to land a Polymorph Other or Hold Monster on Bellyfat once Greater Malison hits. Ziatar uses Greater Restoration to keep our front line in top condition.
Mollyboo reveals Bellyfat when he tries to hide. We buff Darskhelin with Enchanted Weapon, because I want to see if we can kill Bellyfat using INT drain.
Cornugons join the fight. Since I've seen them stun on hit in BG2, I take them out before Bellyfat. Ziatar nearly dies, but a simple Greater Restoration scroll brings her back up to speed.
Darskhelin goes for a stat drain kill, but I'm not even sure he got it. With three Emotion: Hope spells active and our STR well above 19, the damage alone is too much for Bellyfat.
The battle is won! Siege of Dragonspear is over! Now we get to bring a mind flayer fighter and a green dragon into BG2.
This party won't last forever, though. Seduction will net us even stronger critters in BG2, if we can constrain them first.
Current party:
Mollyboo, Seducer
Morentherene, Green Dragon Fighter
Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter
Ziatar, Half-dragon Fighter/Cleric
Bat, Mage
Skeletal Mage, Mage
More of the same. This time shoal and mad arcand bite the dust. Level up and boost find traps to 50 and pick pockets to 55. I get a potion of magic resistance from the surgeon and head south... Only to discover that there is no south possible to the lighthouse map, so I need to go to the high hedge, then south to the red canyons, then West to the lighthouse map. I need to consider whether this layover to shoal is worth it. For sure it is two levels which I think I need for thieving skills.
Okay, I go to black alarics cave and disarm the traps and hide well enough to get relairs mistake, the tome of constitution (since I am there anyway), and some other stuff. Leave map south to the archaeological dig site.
Archaeological dig. Find captain brage, guess the riddle and get transported to nashkel. Woohoo, i feel smarter than my protagonist.
Nashkel. Identify tome and cloak and use them. Then find out the Wolf form from relairs mistake does not give that much faster walking... I thought it always did that! I suppose bg2 walking speed makes you not see much difference now in bgee.
Try to steal a potion of Invisibility from the manor only to find out pick locks is too low level...
Go to carnival.
Nashkel carnival. Go into tent with potion monger and buy both. Try to get potion of Invisibility from chest only to find out pick locks is too low level... Buy necklace of missiles. Head to mines.
Mines. Get through all levels in stealth and disarming traps. All up to mulahey. Open chest, no letters!!! Wait, what? It must be on the guy... Another New thing in bgee. Kill him with 3 potions of explosions and 1 oil of fiery burning. (get short sword +1 and potion of absorption). Leave to Valley of tombs.
Valley of tombs, try to leave to Beregost... Wait what? Destination unreachable!! That is new in bgee... Fine. Go to nashkel. Go to nashkel Road. Go to Beregost Road. Go to Beregost. Hey, I should have done marl earlier. Steal algernons cloak. Kill tranzig. Go to temple area. Id short sword and cloak. Go to peldvale.
Peldvale, talk to teven and join the cause and get teleported to the bandit camp.
Bandit camp. Wait, I actually do not get the option to talk my way out of a fight with tazok? Run and bombard with arrows and charges of necklace of missiles. Drink potion of absorption, stealth, head into tent. Open chest, get letters, gauntlets of something, someone gets toasted with lightning. Potion of Invisibility and run run run. Out and back to friendly arm Inn. Hey, here they have potion of genius and mind focusing on the temple.
Friendly arm Inn to cloakwood all through to mines. Charm drasus. He kills the others. Disarm drasus and let the guards kill him. Get boots of speed. Just wear them. Run through mines to davaeorn lair. Disarm traps... Figure out that algernons cloak is only 1 charge!!! Use potion of mind focusing, want to use scroll of magic protection on him to disable him that way. Then figure out of is cast on self! Decide not to use it. Try a backstab. Run around having used potions of fire resistance and casting necklace of missiles around myself. Die to combined overlooked ward and lightning bolt from davaeorn. Death.
End of run 3.
Same old, same old. Davaeorn now dies to necklace of missiles. Run out of mines. Go all the way up to baldurs gate East. Buy arrows of detonation from sorcerous sundries. Go to baldurs gate center. Baldurs gate south. Step into iron Throne, head out (this triggers having investigated it). Head to baldurs gate south West. Talk to scar. Talk to Duke Eltan. Get quest. Talk to him again. Get book and go to Candlekeep. Nice, making progress.
Through library, no guard finds me to accuse me of killing the iron Throne (is that new or did I wait too short?) Kill the iron Throne with necklace of missiles. Get arrested.
Run through catacombs back to baldurs gate East. Get tome of dexterity from black lily. Recharge necklace and algernon at the sundries. Head to sewers and get into undercellars. Charm slythe. Have him attack me bare-handed to have him follow me out into the sewers. (still charmed) run him into the ogre and carrion crawlers. Get invitation stealthed and go to baldurs gate north.
Head into ducal palace... And i have no idea how to win that.... Stuck for a bit.
I will post pictures later. I ran the last runs on my pc.
This it the time statistics by the way.
Candlekeep: 2:40 (creation)
Lion's Way, Coast Way: 4:30 (looting)
FAI: 7:15 (selling)
Coast Way, Beregost: 8:15 (skipping)
High Hedge: 10:00 (buying)
Shipwreck Coast: 17:30 (two battles!)
High Hedge, Red Canyons: 18:00 (walk around)
Lighthouse Area: 22:30 (cave)
Excavation site, Nashkel: 25:30 (Sell)
Carnival: 27:30 (buy)
Mines: 31:30 (walk)
Mulahey, Valley of Tombs: 34:45 (killing)
Nashkel, Nashkel Road, Beregost Road, Beregost: 39:45 (Tranzig)
Larswood, Camp: 43:00 (Tazok, Tent)
Ankheg Farm, FAI, Cloakwood all: 47:45 (sell, Drasus)
Mines: 53:45 (down, Davaeorn)
FAI, Ankheg Farm, Bridge, BGEast: 55:45 (walk, sundries)
BG C, BG S, BG SW, Candlekeep: 57:45 (walk, iron throne, flaming fist)
Catacombs, BG E, Sewers, Undercellars, BG N, Duchal: 60:00 (run, Slythe)
Duchal Palace........ To be Continued.
Pictures make everything more fun. This run was not super speedy because then I would take blade and offensive spin rest-spam everything and avoid all combat with mirror image and kill all with want of frost, that one would take only about 30-40 minutes. With a thief it is so much more fun to actually use skills, items, run into surprised and everything.
Anyway.
Speedy is born. One of its creations has slightly lower stats that the original, but anyway. Low intelligence remains since I thought that fun.
That realisation when you see that you cannot use the beloved scroll (meant for later in the game to have 'options' open for the final fight).
A wolf decides to join the dance with Shoal. What a problem that was...
Mad Arcand nipping me in my last run when I noticed I did not level up yet. Ouch! So close to another careless run.
Feeling good about being a thief. Adds dimension to the run.
Despite not running fast, the cloak does get its uses when stealth fails (at 40/100 move/hide in shadows inside).
Hi Algernon, Hi Tranzig. I am a thief. Feel me!.... I mean. Fear me!
By the way. Saving because taking notes and tracking time.
Stupid Orc. Why can you not trust my lovely face when I say I am of the tough kind?
Having fun with Drasus. His potion of frost giant strength sure sped things up. Tchik tchik, splatter!
I have no more use for you, but I take the boots, thanks. Thankfully they are not uggs.
Yep. Thief. Go. Disable.
Ah right, I forgot to mention. The potions of fire merely got rid of his mirror image. Then the necklace was run out of charges (save 1) and I had to run around backstabbing him.
This guy survived for a long time in the game until I thought, why not. I am here anyway...
This one was genius. I charmed Slythe and figured out how to get himself killed without dropping reputation or making the entire undercellars hostile towards me. Awesome! Maybe I should add this trick to the list of @semiticgod. Charmed characters and summons can follow you to other zones by setting them to attack you. Then area transition. When you get to the new place, they stand right next to you.
Seems to work decently. The rest is made to sleep in due time and with a lot of backstabs they are killed one by one (the back is on the side where the head lies on the floor).
Yes!
Running through the maze and detrapping it is easy enough. Then I prepare in the temple as planned. Scroll of magic, oil of speed (extra), potion of fire resistance (versus angelo I thought). Then run around the center trying not to die to battle horrors, while trying to get poison to stick or fireballs to damage. In the end the skull traps bring him down.
Speedrun complete!
Real life time taken, 1 hour, 12 minutes.
In-game time taken, 19 days 12 hours.
I wonder if I should continue...
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899555/#Comment_899555
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899768/#Comment_899768
I mis-calculated Charleston Nib's desire for help and he told Wimp to be on her way even with a zero reaction adjustment (-2 from charisma, +2 from reputation). She had better luck at the lighthouse where one charmed worg did enough damage to allow Wimp and the pseudo-dragon to finish the others off (the familiar's slightly quicker speed helping with kiting there) and get a reward from Ardrouine.
After getting a lift back to Nashkel with Brage, Wimp travelled up to High Hedge in search of her final reputation increase. On the way, Melicamp's wolf had proved much too strong for the familiar in melee and had to be kited nearly all the time. After resting at High Hedge until a skeleton tried an ambush, the balance of power against that in melee proved much more favorable and the pseudo-dragon eventually gnawed its head off without ever getting past injured status itself (despite its intended blur spell being interrupted). She wasn't able to carry the skull as well as Melicamp though, which meant she needed to use the quick loot feature on the way to Thalantyr's. While doing that she had to dodge a bear, which resulted in activating the gnolls - leading to another lengthy session of kiting to deal with them (once activated they have a follow-me script, so resting or leaving the area won't stop them following). After all that work, Wimp was presented with just a chicken dinner as a reward (and she's a vegetarian)
With no easy options for gaining reputation left she took a risk by trying to rescue Samuel. She was lucky there in just taking relatively light damage in a hobgoblin ambush, but avoiding encountering what would probably have been a fatal meeting with bandits.
With reputation now up to 20, Wimp will actually be aiming to learn (and even use) a few spells next time
Two weeks ago, I also started playing again. I was hoping to return to the game with the new SCS version, but there haven't been any news over there for a while, so I'm currently playing modless.
So far, I've failed with two runs, for rather strange reasons:
My first attempt was what I called the "rotating party challenge", which involves taking along 5 randomized official NPC companions and rolling for 5 new ones each time you level up, with the extra twist of every death being permanent, so you can actually run out of NPCs if you aren't careful. This results in some very unusual (and very underleveled) combinations, but it was great fun. I was playing a totemic druid (to always have some fighting abilty thanks to summons, and because of the fast level progression in BG1, allowing for many different party combinations), only lost Minsc, Rasaad and Garrick (to deaths) plus Kivan and Edwin (due to them leaving the party because of their quests), but after I was finshed with the duchal palace
My next run was an attempt at a self-created party designed to go for my first successful SoD no-reload, but in a house in Beregost, I accidentally triggered this encounter:
Now, on monday I've started to play another character, and I'm planning to document his exploits here.
Meet Nabatil, true neutral halfing shadowdancer.
His stats are 17/19/18/14/2/18, he's proficient in quarterstaffs and shortbows, and all of his thief ability points are going into stealth for now:
I'm playing on core rules, and the BG1 part of this run will be mostly solo - though this is not a strict rule: Solo play is simply meant to speed up progress, since I'm mostly interested in getting to SoD and no-reloading it. I will take NPCs along when it's convenient, and in SoD, I plan to play with a full party. I've only ever played through SoD once and don't remember details like trap locations or mage scripts, but since some people here managed to do a no-reload on their very first try, I think there's a good chance for me to make it if I get there.
Since I normally don't like solo play (not because I don't know how to do it, but because I just enjoy group versus group combat more), I decided to go with a shadowdancer because I imagine he will be great at surviving (thanks to his ability to hide everywhere, stop time to run away and his improved saving throws). The ability to stealth and run away at all times will also give me time to figure out new tactics if my initial approach to an encounter isn't working.
Good luck to everyone else,
Enuhal
Hyra (Elf Ranger, Gate70); Dave (Half-elf Cleric/Ranger, Grond0)
Siege of Dragonspear. The opening dungeon is full of tricky encounters so we detonated our way out. For somne reason the Grand Dukes were a little wary of our uncontrolled firepower so sent us out into the wilderness. Their caution was well justified, Hyra accidentally using the wrong arrows in a troll cave.
A Shadow Aspect used a lethal dose of multiplayer lag to kill Dave - his armour showing where he thought he was, while the Shadow Aspect was next to Hyra at the time.
Combat on the run ensues and after two sets of breath weapon Hyra steps outside for some fresh air. She heals partially and goes to return but Dave wants to rest. Later Dave, let's press home our 'advantage'.
Mollyboo: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 10
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899249/#Comment_899249
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899476/#Comment_899476
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899528/#Comment_899528
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899532/#Comment_899532
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899677/#Comment_899677
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899690/#Comment_899690
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899705/#Comment_899705
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899899/#Comment_899899
As much as I love having Morentherene in the party, she is not going to stick around in BG2. A juvenile green dragon is awfully strong, but we can do better. More importantly, BG2 has a lot of narrow spaces, far more so than BG1 or SoD (or any of the IE games), which means that Morentherene can't actually move around unless we can find Relair's Mistake, the cloak that lets you shapeshift into a wolf.
It's actually not even possible for her to escape Chateau Irenicus without getting killed or polymorphed. Her circle is too big for her to get anywhere, either in the first level or the second.
Without Morentherene to smash everything, I let Mollyboo do some of the work. Seducers are good for more than just bringing weird monsters into the party. They also have some fun charming and backstabbing options. They're lousy backstabbers normally, but if they backstab a character they charm, they can instantly kill the target.
Mollyboo saves the party a lot of HP by turning the enemies against each other and reducing the pressure on us. Seducers do very well, relatively speaking, in low-rest environments due to being able to cast Domination at will.
Right after I kill Morentherene so we can escape the dungeon, I discover, to my delight, that Ziatar now has all her priest spells, without having to hit level 10 first.
In retrospect, I think this is just because I needed to use a workaround to get this party into BG2. Normally, I can't import a whole party into BG2; I can only import Charname.
Outside Chateau Irenicus, we have an awful time against Rhialto, a clown-faced sorcerer from some mod or another. He has a lot of high-level spells, but Darskhelin has 90% MR, buying us enough time to raise Morentherene and outlast Rhialto's PFMW.
Notice I've removed the Skeletal Mage. Since it's immune to INT bonuses from Potions of Genius, I don't think it will work well in the long run due to the risk of scroll scribing failures.
We run into a mod-related bug early after visiting the circus. Aerie wants us to go on a quest to save Quayle or something and since the dialogue options to say "no" sound like you're being a jerk, I say yes. She forcibly joins the party, but this is a solo run and I'm not allowed to accept NPCs, only seduced critters, so I kick her out.
But then she teleports us to some new area based on Kuldahar and I hit a game-breaking bug.
Apparently she's involved in a dialogue here, but since I booted her from the party to abide by the rules of a solo run, I couldn't bring her along. It's impossible to leave the area, rendering the game impossible to continue. I reload and this time I tell her to get lost. She hates us for it, but I'm not willing to break the rules to complete a quest I'm not even interested in.
Our party might be too weak to handle later fights (bear in mind that seduced critters without classes suffer a 50% XP penalty when they get the fighter class, so HLAs are out of the question), but we're still above-average for the early game in Shadows of Amn. This means we can tackle Mencar Pennypincher.
Mollyboo uses Domination to immediately turn the tide in our favor.
But Domination doesn't last forever, and Ziatar has rather lousy defenses due to having poor armor. Darskhelin has the same problem, compounded by poor DEX.
Mollyboo manages to charm Brennan Risling and Pooky, but it doesn't get us much. She runs away from Mencar and Brennan when they target her and avoids a backstab long enough for Morentherene, who can see through invisibility, to smash Brennan. Our dragon also takes down Mencar and Pooky, with a little help from our bat.
It's a pity that we can't use mod items in this run, because enemies drop some pretty awesome items in my install.
We can, however, use Harbinger, a lucky random drop. But when we turn it against a mugger, we accidentally slay a bystander.
It costs a fortune to restore our reputation, but selling off Harbinger offsets the cost.
Ziatar's and Darskhelin's vulnerability resurfaces in a fight with some tourists from Lord of the Rings visiting the Umar Hills and we find, to my delight, a Ring of Spell Turning in the mimic cave. Plus a pair of Boots of Speed at Jermien's house and the wolf shapeshifting cloak in Anath's lair.
That cloak will let Morentherene slip through tight spaces, but I still don't plan on keeping her in the long run.
We stop short of fighting the Shade Lord, because some mod character warns us about the upcoming fight, and I'm worried the Shade Lord is much tougher than I'm expecting. Instead, we head to Trademeet, where to combine the Ring of Spell Turning with a Minor Spell Turning spell to generate a scorcher loop between Darskhelin (who already comes with immunity to fire) and our bat (who needs a Protection from Fire pre-buff). It incinerates Kyland Lind, who otherwise can be a major problem.
Then I stop by the graveyard to pick up an important new NPC. But it seems I forgot that my install has some dangerous new enemies in the cemetery.
By sheer luck, I pre-buffed with Death Ward in case Mollyboo got surprised in a random encounter. I think that spell was the only reason she survived. We buff the whole party with Death Ward before fighting the numerous other ghosts wandering around, all of which instantly cast Wail of the Banshee.
We bust out the scorcher loop to score some easily kills in the sewers, both against some mod enemies and our good friends, Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers.
Gaius is immune thanks to his mage defenses, but he has no tools to get past Darskhelin's sky-high MR, allowing us to wait out his weapon immunities and kill him with stat drain.
It costs us some XP, but most of our power in this run will not come from XP.
Which reminds me: I accidentally installed a mod that cuts both quest and kill XP roughly in half. I compensated for this by removing the XP penalty from our seducer fights and doubling XP for everyone else in the party. This means we'll get the same amount of XP we would in a normal BG2 run.
We encounter a Medusa just outside Pai'Na's lair, but I knew it was coming, so everyone was already immune to petrification, allowing Mollyboo to charm it.
Mollyboo uses Seduction to bring the Medusa into the party, but unfortunately, it only has 1 APR. It can petrify things with its gaze attack, but it really won't be reliable. It probably won't stay in the party for very long.
We also pick up a wight from the chamber across from Pai'Na's lair (I considered seducing Pai'Na to get some druid levels, but decided against it). The wight is very weak, just like our wight from SoD, but its level drain will be even more critical in BG2.
I accidentally arrived in the graveyard at night while having enough gold to side with Bodhi, and since I always side with Bodhi, I lose access to the Mae'Var questline. It's not too big of a loss, however--I've already got the two most important things I need for the next fight.
We're only a level 9 party, but it's time to tackle the Guarded Compound.
The nature of speedruns seems very different from that of no-reloads, however. A speedrunner will generally use a set of powerful exploits which very seldom fail; a speedrunner will use most any trick or glitch provided that it doesn't require cheat codes or an external editor. And even if you did lose a speedrun, they go by so quick that you could easily restart it from the beginning, making the no-reload aspect irrelevant when it's already redundant.
Mollyboo: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 11
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899249/#Comment_899249
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899476/#Comment_899476
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899528/#Comment_899528
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899532/#Comment_899532
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899677/#Comment_899677
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899690/#Comment_899690
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899705/#Comment_899705
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899899/#Comment_899899
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900093/#Comment_900093
It appears that one of my mods has edited the fight at the first level of the Guarded Compound.
I don't know what a Wizard Construct is, but it can cast PFMW--a very bad sign. Fortunately, Darskhelin has abnormally high APR even with his bare hands, and can punch his way through Wizard Construct's Stoneskins.
Another Wizard Construct joins the fight, but we disable one of them and dominate the other thanks to some lucky saving throws.
With their spellcasting frustrated, the Wizard Constructs can't do much else to us. Soon the battle is won.
Upstairs is a deadlier party. We enter while invisible and use Darskhelin's immunity to elemental damage to tank an acid trap. Sion or maybe Stalman reveals us just as we make it out of their line of sight.
The southeast section of the map is a great hiding place, especially because you can duck into the southernmost room and hide in a secret passageway. It's a great way to wear down the enemy.
But our primary tactic for this fight is more of a blitzkrieg thing. With Darskhelin using the Ring of Spell Turning, our bat starts up a scorcher loop, and we wipe out two important foes before the loop fizzles out.
But Sion is completely unaffected, and Darskhelin still has several other melee bruisers to deal with.
Sion uses Wish to cast Breach on the entire party, but fortunately Darskhelin still has strong MR and immunity to elemental damage to keep him alive.
But the Fallen Planetar manages to get past Darskhelin's 90% magic resistance, and while he still resists the bulk of the damage, his HP pool is pretty shallow to begin with.
Darskhelin stays on the run. I can't possibly handle the enemy as they are now; I need to wait for their defenses to run low. Most importantly, I need the Cornugon and the Fallen Planetar to go away.
The Cornugon has despawned, but the Fallen Planetar remains, and with Darskhelin's low movement rate, our mind flayer cannot avoid every hit.
Chunked by Globe of Blades. Per my normal rules, I can bring back Darskhelin, who is easily our MVP, but I'm not going to. In all honesty, I won't need him.
Ziatar goes out to distract the enemy before that Fallen Planetar wanders around and stumbles across Mollyboo. The enemy approaches the party, forcing us to retreat to the southern room while Ziatar runs around.
Ziatar keeps the Fallen Planetar busy until it vanishes, but Sion catches us by surprise, slaying both our wight and our bat and dealing heavy damage to Ziatar.
But we came prepared for this. Mollyboo brings back our bat using the Rod of Resurrection while Ziatar makes her escape with Sanctuary to regroup with the party.
Our bat renews its defenses and goes out to drain some more spells out of Sion, but there are too many melee enemies to deal with.
The bat begins to panic. Ziatar rushes in with the Wand of Fire, but it's not enough to clear up the room.
Sion nails our bat with Melf's Acid Arrow. Our Medusa comes out to try to petrify one of the enemies, but she's not fast enough to save the bat.
The Medusa's defenses are even weaker, and she dies in moments.
They finish off the bat, and suddenly only a single party member besides Mollyboo remains: Ziatar, who honestly is not much of a tank.
But Mollyboo is in a good position. She's holed up in the secret passageway to the southwest, casting Domination through the wall to help out Ziatar.
It doesn't do much besides get Olaf backstabbed, unfortunately, and with Ketta roaming around with no divination spells to reveal her, we don't know where she is, making it impossible for Ziatar to avoid a backstab.
But Ziatar survives, her resistances block the poison damage, and Mollyboo's charmed golem smashes Ketta, only to see Olaf smash it in turn.
The enemy is disintegrating. Mollyboo charms Olaf again and uses him to take down Maferan.
It takes a few tries, but Ziatar manages to bring down Olaf once he's been wounded.
Finally, we've taken down Sion's friends, and all of his defenses have run out. We prepare to end the battle. Mollyboo uses the Rod of Resurrection on the wight, Sion, and the bat.
Wait, why are we healing Sion?
Well...
Sion is level 20 and has no immunity to level drain. If we drain enough levels, Mollyboo can seduce him. But he has so little HP that we need to heal him and shore up his defenses just to make sure we don't kill him by accident.
I count the levels by arranging potions in Mollyboo's inventory to make sure I don't make any mistakes. We let him go hostile so we hit him with Greater Malison.
It took a lot of work and it got our strongest character chunked, but we bring Sion into the party. He is a level 20 Conjurer with decent stats and some spectacular spell picks.
I give him Darskhelin's old portrait, a shot of Stan from Okage. With him in the party, we no longer need our bat.
Sion will never gain a level in this run, but he won't need to. His Fallen Planetar will pave the way through much of Shadows of Amn, saving us a lot of time and worry.
But this is only the beginning. I have even bigger plans for this party than a single level 20 mage.
Current party:
Mollyboo, Seducer
Ziatar, Half-dragon Fighter/Cleric
Wight, Fighter
Medusa, Fighter
Sion, Conjurer