Now that Frisky Bits has made it to BG2, we no longer have the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning, nor will we ever have an item that can so thoroughly destroy the game. We're going to have to be more careful from now on.
Frisky Bits is now a Seducer(10)->Mage(11). Their Seducer charms aren't going to stay competitive for very long, so their primary role will simply be to use their mage defenses to stay alive, breaking out Domination and Seduction only when we need to recruit a new critter. They won't be quite as interesting as a single-classed Seducer, but this is the only way I'm sure we can beat the Chosen of Cyric.
We remove Morentherene from the party, as even a small dragon is going to be too big to fit in SoA's numerous narrow corners. In the Promenade, we completely bankrupt the party buying scrolls.
First off, we need to deal with the slavers, a quick way to get +1 reputation and lower some store prices. Ziatar turns out to be vulnerable to Hold Person, apparently because she's half-human, but Gorkan Bloodaxe can bail her out.
Notice that "Gorken" has become "Gorkan." Due to import issues, I had to create all these party members from scratch, and accidentally misspelled his name. Now it is truly just an anagram of Korgan Bloodaxe.
Then we head to the Umar Hills, since it lets us avoid Suna Seni. Frisky Bits seduces a chicken and convinces it to commit suicide by drowning itself in acid.
I don't know why chickens can use acid attacks, but they can.
Due to removing the XP cap in SoD, our mages are already at level 12 and we can therefore cast the Death Spell, trivializing plenty of early-game critters. But we struggle against stronger ones, as our defenses aren't too great.
We grab the Ring of Spell Turning from the mimic cave, pummel the clown mage with our bare fists on the way out of the Umar Hills. Notice Ziatar using Remove Paralysis to undo a Symbol, Stun effect.
For once, I remember to prepare properly for the Ghosts of the Graveyard District and their long-range Wail of the Banshee spells. We clear up the local undead and seduce a wight so we can do the level drain trick.
Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers fall to a scorcher loop between Gorky and Darskhelin. We wait out Gaius' PFMW until Ziatar can get past his Stoneskins with a mod-introduced cleric-only flail we found somewhere.
Time to go get Sion. This time, our cat engages the Wizard Constructs, but with only Barbarian Rage to defend it (the cat is a Berserker, but my mods give it a Barbarian-style rage ability), it doesn't survive quite so well as Darskhelin did in the previous run.
Darskhelin saves the day with INT drain, which saw practically no use throughout SoD.
Another scorcher loop fries most of the folks in the Guarded Compound.
Darskhelin pesters Sion, knowing that his 90% magic resistance will keep him safe. But Sion has a Fallen Planetar, and it's Darskhelin's job to dodge its attacks until it goes away.
After 23 rounds of kiting, the Fallen Planetar vanishes, and we proceed to drain Sion down to level 5.
Frisky Bits seduces Sion, Ziatar casts Restoration to get him back to level 22, and we use the proceeds from our looting to buy him a new hand and eye.
There's just enough left over to buy a magic license, leaving us with only 85 gold. We head out to Trademeet to earn some money, discover that Spirit Trolls are now immune to the Death Spell, and then wipe out the trolls anyway with Sion's Fallen Planetar. No screenshots for the whole questline. Also, we drop Ziatar--I already know she has no future in this party.
I figure we should be strong enough to deal with the Temple Ruins now. Unfortunately, Sion's abnormally high level means that we have to deal with liches as random spawns.
The solution? We hassle the lich with Earthquake spells, knowing that each one will tear away its Stoneskins despite its spell protections.
We don't have enough to kill it, but Fallen Planetars can outlast a lich's PFMW spells.
The Shade Lord was simple. A Sunstone Bullet on the Shadow Altar, modest pressure on Shadow Patrick, and magic attacks to take down the Shade Lord's PFMW.
One of the nice quirks of the IWDification mod is that the Emotion: Hope spell stacks. Finding enough scrolls for everyone is very difficult, but trading a single level 4 spell slot for party-wide +2 to hit, damage, and saving throws is more than worth the trade.
It's not even necessary. It's just fun.
Other vampires are tougher, but we also have a +5 two-handed sword that can cast Sunray.
The sword also dispels magic on hit and has a vorpal effect, but I don't use it for that. It seems too simple.
Anyway, we bring in a Greater Wolfwere and give it a portrait I found on Buzzfeed, I think.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. I'm not going to pull any punches in this run until the Chosen of Cyric are dead.
Time to get on with the main questline. We side with Bodhi, as usual, and coast our way through the upgraded Shadow Thief headquarters, which I know how to handle better. And again, since I'm using every dirty trick at my disposal, our Greater Wolfwere is now practically invincible thanks to the Dwarven Defender kit.
Our party isn't totally invincible, of course. Because I'm afraid that spell deflection spells will keep us from using escape options on disabled party members, both Sion and Gorky are very vulnerable to PW: Stun.
It's a minor setback, however, and Aran Linvail isn't actually making any progress by backstabbing our Greater Wolfwere. I get bored and decide to speed things up. We torch Aran Linvail.
Then I realize that we only killed Aran Linvail's clone. He lands a couple more massive backstabs, one of which chunks our wight.
It's no problem. We can seduce a new one in the Unseeing Eye quest.
While I'm there, I decide to tackle the Unseeing Eye itself, which I normally put off for a really long time (Item Randomizer means no Shield of Balduran, among many other items we'd normally be able to find at the store). Darskhelin safely uses the Rift Device, which I always give to the party member least likely to get killed by a Death Ray or something.
The Death Tyrants are pretty wicked, but like all beholders besides Elder Orbs and Hive Mothers, they have no defenses to speak of.
Frisky Bits manages to land Domination on the Unseeing Eye, and because it has Improved Alacrity active, we can force it to waste its entire spellbook in less than a single round simply by starting and then canceling every spell it has memorized.
Of course, we can't get rid of its beholder rays that way, so when it starts zapping us, we Feeblemind it.
The Unseeing Eye is looking a little sick, so we make sure to heal it up with the Rod Resurrection.
After all, we don't want to kill it.
Yes, we can actually seduce the Unseeing Eye.
It doesn't have any mage HLAs, nor will we ever gather enough XP for it to learn any, but that doesn't much matter to us.
Because the Unseeing Eye, like all beholders, has constant effect Improved Alacrity.
We have the Unseeing Eye scribe a bunch of scrolls, and suddenly we have a powerful utility character that will never have to worry about getting caught with its aura clouded. Of course, High Watcher Oisig won't reward us for ending the cult until the Unseeing Eye is actually dead.
Thankfully, he doesn't mind at all when we resurrect it right in front of him.
On to Spellhold! I test out the Unseeing Eye's Improved Alacrity effect, but find that, for some reason, it can't burn through an enemy mage's spell protections just by firing a bunch of spell levels at them.
Spell deflection/reflection/trap effects ostensibly only block a certain number of spell levels. But Perth's defenses seem to have no limit; the Unseeing Eye can't burn through them. Luckily, Perth is not immune to area-effect spells, and a surprising number of SCS mages are perfectly vulnerable to Cone of Cold.
And we did manage to get rid of Perth's MGOI spell and also Breach him, which means Skull Trap also works just fine.
No Book of Daily Spell for us, though. Item Randomizer can be very cruel.
In the interests of maximizing XP, we talk to Desharik despite already having access to Spellhold. Interestingly enough, it seems like Romantic Encounters adds a third way of getting into the asylum.
I don't pick that option, though. Maybe next time, we'll see what happens.
We enter the Spellhold labyrinth. I accidentally turn Breudayael hostile again by sending Drusilia off to die against the nearest lich.
It seems that our Fire Storm in the previous run didn't make them hostile; it was enough for them to take damage from any source. We lock up Drusilia with the lich while the Unseeing Eye tanks Thordek, who is too stupid to avoid someone with PFMW active. Darskhelin eats his brains.
Like last time, Anastacia chases after us, and an Efreeti from the nearby lich joins in. We have trouble getting her to leave us alone.
Instead, we just make our way north and chop up the two Balors (Improved Alacrity helps the Unseeing Eye buff the party faster). Efreet in SCS have a habit of turning to mist and regenerating, so Darskhelin uses INT drain to make sure this one doesn't come back.
We make a break for the exit, but a lock gets in the way, and two Horrid Wilting spells are coming up.
Frisky Bits can pick the lock, but the Unseeing Eye is big and bulky and sluggish, and I'm not sure it can make it to the exit before those Horrid Wilting spells hit.
But the Unseeing Eye pre-buffs with Polymorph Self in case it needs to fit through doors. And the Flind form is fast enough for us to make it out safely.
We rest and recover. We have a big task ahead of us. We're going to kill Breudayael once more. But this time, we're going to try out a new tactic.
Rolling around in massive piles of Rogue Stones fills us with determination.
Current party: Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage Sion, Conjurer Unseeing Eye, Mage Wraith, Fighter Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter
As always, dealing with Breudayael means isolating him from his wife. Gorky creates some Mislead clones from a scroll to lure her astray.
Notice that she's attacking "Frisky Bits." Clones and the nameless critters that cast magic attacks in SCS are named Charname by default.
Anastacia isn't immune to Feeblemind, I don't think, so I have the Unseeing Eye using its Improved Alacrity to quickly disable her. We have a dagger, Traglia's Doom or something, that grants +5 to casting speed but imposes a -5 Charisma penalty, which means the Unseeing Eye has to cast Friends before equipping it.
The Unseeing Eye has only 3 base Charisma and we have no Ring of Human Influence due to Item Randomizer, which means it cannot use both the Eye of Vecna and Hand of Vecna without dying from stat drain.
With Anastacia stupefied, we sneak past Broofles and re-charm Drusilia so the lich can kill her. One Horrid Wilting softens her up, and a Fire Storm from Sion's Fallen Planetar finishes her off.
But with Drusilia gone, the lich turns its attention to us. A Cornugon and a Comet deal heavy damage.
The Wraith doesn't make it, but the Unseeing Eye kills the Cornugon and Sion's Fallen Planetar saves Gorky.
Darskhelin has failed a save against Demon Fear (which bypasses his 90% magic resistance) and wanders north to Breudayael, whose Staff of the True Magi cannot dispel the undispellable fear effect.
But an extra Resist Fear spell brings him back, and the lich's PFMW runs out, allowing our Fallen Planetar to chop it up. We even have time to bring back Sion.
I don't know what that dead beholder corpse is in the hallway, but it's not the Unseeing Eye, which is still quite alive.
We spend a few rounds in chaos, not sure whether (or how) to engage with the liches, or whether to flee. But eventually the liches lose their PFMW, and that basically always means death.
We head north to clear up the Noble Umber Hulks, who last much longer and hit much harder than I expected.
They have such high APR that they actually kill Sion before I can even react.
If Darskhelin didn't have INT drain to land some early, HP-independent kills, we might have gotten overrun and been forced to retreat.
We check out the mages to the northwest. They triggered their pre-buffs when we entered the area, and by now, their defenses have long since run out.
I don't have a screenshot for their death, but I believe Darskhelin just killed them with INT drain in a round or two.
So how are we going to kill Broofles this time? Well, Rogue Stones aren't the only thing you can copy using the item duplication trick. You can copy anything as long as you have at least two copies to start with and a bag of holding or store that can contain them. And since one of my mods added some Arrows of Detonation to the fletcher in the Promenade, we have an endless supply of Arrows of Detonation, which I finally break out to use against Broofles.
The damage is pathetic, but because the projectile is area-effect, we don't need to be able to target Broofles himself. All we have to do is target something next to him. And with Gorkan Bloodaxe using the Wand of Lightning trick to drink 6 duplicated Potions of Power at once and boost his HP dramatically, we don't even have to slow down to make sure Gorky survives the process.
Dealing 1d6 base damage per hit will take forever to kill Broofles, so we use Emotion: Hope to speed things up.
Without mods, this would only be possible if you found two Arrows of Detonation as a random drop, which would be extremely rare. Fire Seeds would also work, of course, though you'd need damage bonuses from Aid, a bard song, or the Archer kit to actually deal any physical damage, and Fire Seeds would have much lower APR.
For once, Broofles actually fights back when we attack him. But he's too stupid to cast Remove Magic or land a hit with his Staff of the True Magi. A Potion of Magic Shielding renders Gorky immune.
Even Broofles' Chain Contingency is stupid. He has an Improved Mantle spell in it even though his robe already grants immunity to normal weapons. Why not just use PFMW?
Broofles makes no real effort to defend himself. It's just a matter of time before this level 51 mage crumples.
I give Frisky Bits the Staff of Zoltan, which grants total invisibility to evil critters. I won't be bringing this into the final battle like I did in the Undergate run, but it will last until we're done with the Chosen of Cyric. We also find an Energy Drain scroll in the same spot--it seems that Item Randomizer only randomizes once per install.
All that's left is to kill Anastacia. One of her swords can set our XP to zero, but a simple PFMW spell can block them outright, and just like Thordek, Anastacia doesn't know how to change targets.
We stun her from a safe distance and then chop her up.
Jon-bon is next. With so many overpowered mod items, the Unseeing Eye can empty its spellbook at one spell per frame. And Jon-bon's defenses take two or three seconds to activate.
I don't give the Unseeing Eye all our casting speed-boosting items for normal fights because it's more interesting if more party members participate, but the Unseeing Eye's ability to spam damage spells is devastating, even against magic-resistant enemies like the mod-introduced drow ambush I hate so much after City Sushi.
I might have been able to seduce Ixilthetocal in this run, but I did not bother to try. Not because I didn't want him, but because I have bigger plans for this party. Even bigger, in fact, than the Unseeing Eye.
Which is saying something, considering how much the Unseeing Eye is dominating gameplay right now.
Like in Mollyboo's run, I decide to bring the Balor into the party, which is especially easy when we have so many more mage levels than we did before.
The Kuo-toa Prince, however, is not needed. It might be practically invincible due to its regeneration, but that's not good enough for me.
Partly this is because I am finding an offensive-oriented strategy to be much faster and much more fun than my typical defensive, evasive strategy.
Most of that damage, bear in mind, is coming from stacking Emotion: Hope spells, and not from the Balor's innate power.
This time, we tackle the Demon Knights. One of them is a fighter/mage/cleric with 20 mage levels, but it's immune to level drain and therefore can only be seduced by a level 40 Seducer. It does drop a couple of awesome items, however.
I normally play good-aligned parties, so I've had very few chances (which is to say, no chances) to use the Soul Reaver. The Robe of Vecna, however, is useless to us--I consider the Hand and Eye of Vecna to be the intended replacement for the robe, so I won't be using the robe itself at all.
We also find a Protection from Magic scroll for sale in Ust Natha. But we've only got one--we can't duplicate it, even if I wanted to.
Well, unless I move our save file to the multiplayer folder and then use the import/export trick to duplicate the scroll. Along with any number of other items. But I'm too lazy to go to all that work just to make this game even more broken than it already is.
I don't wage the Siege of Ust Natha this time. It grants lots of XP, but it takes time, and I've already done it with basically the same party. I'm trying to get to the Chosen of Cyric quickly; I'm not out to do every quest available.
But I do want to tackle the mind flayer city, which I believe I neglected in my previous run. Like always, I lure a mind flayer over to the doorway, obviating the need for using a Control Circlet.
This is important because I was too stupid to consider just using the item duplication trick on the Control Circlets.
Anyway, I don't bother fussing over our equipment to make sure everyone is immune to Psionic Blast. That would take too much time. Instead, I pass around duplicated Potions of Magic Shielding.
The item duplication trick, like many exploits, is far more broken than it seems at first. Guaranteed saving throws mean that the only danger here is from mind flayer critical hits, and for that, we have PFMW. The mind flayer city doesn't stand a chance.
Frisky Bits reaches mage level 15. At 1.8 million XP, I'm starting to think that my XP-reducing mod, which I tried to compensate for using EEKeeper, is taking away a lot more XP than I expected. We just got out of the Underdark; Frisky Bits at least should be well above 2 million XP by now.
But losing a few hundred thousand XP per character isn't worth worrying about. Not with this party, and not with all the mod items and exploits I've been saving up for the Chosen of Cyric.
In fact, there's only one thing left to do before we tackle Bodhi and move on to the Chosen of Cyric. I want to get one more party member, even more powerful than the Unseeing Eye.
But this one is going to be much, much harder to subdue.
Breaking the game beyond all recognition fills us with determination.
Current party: Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage Sion, Conjurer Unseeing Eye, Mage Balor, Fighter Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter
Biff returned Landrin's things before completing his collection of bags by blinding then attacking Neera (using invisibility to prevent the chance of her quest triggering).
Returning to reputation tasks Biff helped out Ardrouine.
Charleston Nib also got some aid,
though the Doomsayer was left for now as Biff accompanied Brage back to Nashkel. Neira would have been much easier done using web, but rather than wait for that Biff blinded her and wore her down with LMD before coming in for the kill.
Greywolf had too many HPs to wear down with LMDs and was difficult to hit with darts, so Biff speeded things up with a wand of frost blast before going invisible for the final blow.
With invisibility now available there was no danger in rescuing Samuel and Biff moved on to confront Bjornin's half-ogres. The first 3 of those were all killed by her first melee attack after being blinded, but he missed the final one 5 times in a row - their slow weapon speed though meant there was no retaliation and it was eventually finished off.
Completing the quest took Biff to level 5, making web available.
Biff tried to use web for a sneak attack on Silke, only to find a stoneskin magically appearing on her as soon as she was attacked despite being incapacitated. However, Biff not only blinded her, but quickly took down the stoneskin with darts and finished her off before she escaped from the webs anyway.
That netted him a +1 staff to increase his melee ability.
Looking to boost melee ability a bit more, Biff set off for Meilum. On the way he stopped off to save Arabelle, where I had a minor brainstorm - initially thinking I could use LMD repeatedly to draw xvarts away (as in LoB). Fortunately I realised the mistake immediately and Biff switched to using layered webs - which lasted just long enough to kill all the xvarts.
Meilum did fantastically well to resist 11 blind attempts, but Biff finally got the 12th to stick. He proved less good at resisting web and darts soon wore him down ready for the staff to strike.
Biff also couldn't resist retracing his steps to find the Doomsayer. He hasn't taken magic missile as a spell yet, so still had a bit of work to do after 12 LMDs - but web once more provided an easy answer.
In the same area he couldn't resist killing Laryssa (I'd previously dragged Brage out of range of her before allowing him to talk, so that she wouldn't disappear).
After a bit of violence at the Carnival (including finishing Vitiare off from invisible to avoid any chance of being pick-pocketed), Biff went to Durlag's Tower in search of some quick XP. The battle horrors don't have particularly good saves, so are easy meat for webs. However, the text doesn't report when they're held, which makes it slightly more difficult to tell if they're about to get free and I didn't watch closely enough to prevent the final one from getting an attack in - fortunately it wasn't a critical and Biff was able to finish it off and get to level 6 - finally learning how to use his darts properly there.
Biff killed the Doom Guard outside Durlags Tower to provide a clean sweep there. After finishing off its skeleton companions, web ended too early to get an immediate kill on the Doom Guard as well and Biff was hit once more (a bit of carelessness creeping into this run, so will need to be more careful). Biff only had one second level spell left (and wanted to keep that to rest invisibly, rather than use web). However, blindness and a first use of his new slow spell ensured the Doom Guard wouldn't get another chance to hit.
On the lower roof Biff didn't bother with any of that protection nonsense, but just used web and blindness against the lesser basilisk.
There is a potential danger with SCS that the greater basilisks on the upper roof will come to investigate attacks on each other, so Biff set up intermediate webs there to warn him if something else was approaching while he finished off the first one after it was blinded.
In fact they all died without any trouble to push Biff up to level 7.
Biff then rested a few times until he got an ambushing gnoll to grant a few extra HPs using LMDs prior to opening the trapped container there.
Inside, Biff quickly dealt with the ghasts - slowing them first provides a -4 save penalty to spells, so making them extremely vulnerable to web and blindness. With large groups Biff still needed to take care, but this was the only attack made on him (and with the ring of free action there was no danger there).
MSD enabled him to safely pick up the tome. Riggilo is potentially dangerous in SCS, but not after being webbed and blinded (he doesn't take advantage of being blinded to stealth).
Biff now knows magic missile, so can rapidly wear enemies down with those, though care is needed to ensure they don't kill anything.
A quick tour through the Cloud Peaks saw no real challenges, but enabled Biff to pick up another couple of points of reputation and a new tome.
The final tome available in the wilderness was slightly more of a challenge, but in fact web made things easy enough, despite the annoying ability of sirines to go invisible by script while already webbed and slowed - MSD protecting against the possibility of a sirine freeing itself and using domination before Biff could get out of range. The first group of sirines got Biff up to level 8
and with stoneskin now available the golems stood no chance despite their magic resistance.
The constitution tome allows Biff to use the Claw of Kazgaroth without HP penalties, but before buying that he still wanted a bit more reputation.
Invisibility allowed him to revive Tamah without troubling the nearby basilisks and he also used invisibility to loot the ankhegs (though wasn't desperate enough for HPs to bother webbing and blinding most of them). His final reputation upgrade came after sneaking through the Nashkel Mine and using stacked webs to avoid Mulahey calling for help.
Nimbul tried to run away in panic back in Nashkel, but found his feet stuck fast
- leaving a scroll behind for Biff to call up a backpack-loving cat.
After visiting a few shops and spending all his money on buying the Claw of Kazgaroth, Aule's Staff and a Robe of the Archmagi among other things, Biff returned to the Valley of the Tombs to add monster summoning to his wand collection (though with the restriction of only himself able to kill in melee, that won't get used much if at all). The Revenant was webbed and blinded there (though with free action and stoneskins it stood no chance anyway).
Narcillicus' mustard jellies were more of a potential threat - particularly as Biff had sold the girdle of bluntness (inventory constraints mean I don't hold on to spare girdles with mage characters). The first jelly managed to poison him twice, but he was still able to kill it well before he would have needed to run. The second also poisoned him twice and this time I hadn't bothered to drag it close to the map edge, so could potentially have been forced to use a green scroll - but Biff found a nice critical to finish the jelly off with time to spare.
The mage himself then got the standard treatment.
The final area to be tackled prior to seeking some bandits was Mutamin's garden. Rather than risk making a fatal mistake there Biff used the green scroll for protection against the basilisks and quickly wiped out enough of those to give him his final BG1 level.
Invisibility was used to separate Mutamin from his pets enough to finish them off before resting and webbing the mage. He managed to escape just as Biff was coming in for the kill, but taking potions healed Mutamin enough for Biff to be able to fire a magic missile at him and he was cut down while suffering from a consequential morale failure.
Webs then allowed all Kirian's party to be blinded and they were safely disposed of - Biff using spirit armor and haste for the first time during that.
We also find an Energy Drain scroll in the same spot--it seems that Item Randomizer only randomizes once per install.
Item Randomizer has two main modes: -Via script, which triggers each time you start a new game. -Via WeiDU, which works during mod installation, randomizes more items, but needs the reinstallation of the mod each time you want a fresh randomization.
Personally I prefer the second mode but seems if using BWS it's better to install it outside of BWS (after it) unless you want to reinstall the whole BWS setup only to have a fresh randomization for the new run.
There isn't a lot to tell about Nabatil's exploits at the Coast Way Crossing. I picked up Corwin and Glint, but didn't like any of the choices for a potential sixth party member for now. The party completed the sidequests around the area, with no significant troubles occuring. In the Repository of the Undead, I found out that this wall isn't as solid as it looks, as both sides were able to shoot through it:
The lich presented no problem to me, as "The Secret Revealed" dispelled all of his protections. I only had to kill him once thanks to Nabatil wearing boots of speed and being hasted (had to do it two times during my previous run).
Moving on to Troll Claw Forest, I eventually gave up on trying out different tactics against the big enemy hordes of SoD and went back to just throwing necklace of missles-charges at everything. I have 4 necklaces and 2 wands of fire - the second one is for Vhoghiln, whom I took along as my sixth party member - skald song and additional arcane abilites are propably useful, especially with the great "bard hat" item I found earlier on.
The first really interesting fight in the expansion (aside from the opening dungeon) was against Morentherene: I decided to burst the dragon down as soon as possible, but had buffs like remove fear, haste, bless, chant, PfE, skald song and, most importantly, protection from poison scrolls active, just in case. I had every party member use potions of firebreath to start the fight:
The dragon didn't die during the first round and managed to wing buffet, kicking my party out of position. This resulted in the rays of fire from the potion first almost killing Glint and actually killing Minsc, as it was impossible to move him away in time:
I had to return to camp for a raise dead spell.
Next, the Temple of Cyric: I almost killed Ziatar right away with Minsc and some ranged weapons, if not for a sanctuary spell:
The Neothelid was next to fall, and I nuked the Illithid and his followers with 6 fireballs while Vhoghiln, protected from fire and with stoneskins, distracted him:
We head back to the sewers, use Teleport to escape when that mod-introduced drow tries to force us into a new questline, and proceed to the mind flayer hideout. I cruise through most of the area, not worrying about my defenses too much.
Until Frisky Bits fails a save vs. spell.
Our main character is now stunned for 10 rounds, and multiple mind flayers are there to kill them with INT drain.
Psionic Blast is undispellable, and we have no cleric to cast Remove Paralysis. Nor can Fallen Planetars cast the spell. It is completely impossible for us to cure Frisk. And the mind flayers could see through any invisibility spell we could cast on them. Our only choice is to kill those mind flayers before they can eat Frisk's brains.
Which they could do in exactly 6 seconds.
The Balor and Darskhelin target the mind flayer closest to Frisky Bits, while Gorky is stunned and unable to take action. Sion begins casting Fallen Planetar, gambling that the mind flayers won't reach Frisky Bits until the ~4 seconds it takes for our Fallen Planetar to become active. The Unseeing Eye has Project Image active and is ready to apply spell damage.
Mind flayers have 90% magic resistance, but we need to do everything we can to save Frisky Bits. We are in luck: Gorky is closer to the flayers can will therefore soak up a few hits, buying Frisky Bits roughly another 4 seconds. The Unseeing Eye tries to bomb the mind flayers, but their magic resistance protects them.
There is a single mind flayer attacking Gorky, while the others are busy with the Balor. Hopefully the other mind flayers won't teleport to Frisky Bits when Gorky is dead (they can teleport all the way across the map if they have to). Our Fallen Planetar casts True Seeing to remove the mind flayers' Improved Invisibility, allowing the Unseeing Eye to cast Lower Resistance.
The first mind flayer dies to Darskhelin's attacks with the Divine Wind scimitar (which has a 30% chance of stunning for 20 seconds with no save), but there are more to take down before Frisky Bits is truly safe. The Unseeing Eye uses Pierce Shield, also to lower the enemies' MR, but it's not enough to make them truly vulnerable.
Fearing that our wall could break down, I have the Unseeing Eye create a clone to help box in Frisky Bits, and use Polymorph Self to squeeze through a tight area.
The enemy doesn't last long enough to break through to Frisky Bits.
The Staff of Zoltan should have made Frisky Bits untargetable by the mind flayers, but I was not willing to take any chances.
We did not come to the mind flayer hideout to gather loot or XP. We have a new recruit in mind. But it's going to be far harder to subdue than anything else we've tried to seduce before.
I have no interest in engaging the Alhoon and its minions in its own chamber; there isn't enough room to navigate. Instead, I retreat to the previous chamber and brace for the impact.
But it seems like the Psionic Blast spells here are stronger than I thought. The Balor gets stunned despite having a save vs. spell of 0.
One of these critters, probably an Ulitharid, is using the extra-powerful version of Psionic Blast which stuns for 20 rounds with a -4 save penalty.
We can deal with basic mind flayers despite losing our Balor, but the Alhoon could easily change that. To keep the Alhoon away from the party, I send Gorky up north to keep the mind flayer lich occupied.
I have a very special plan for this fight, but we need to get a character close to the Alhoon, without them having any chance of getting killed in the process.
That character is Sion, who can approach the Alhoon during Time Stop, since I've kept the hallway clear (otherwise he might get stuck on the way).
But... Time Stop does nothing. It has no effect whatsoever. It's not that the Alhoon is immune to Time Stop; the spell just doesn't do anything.
That was our big plan for this fight. Without it, things are going to get much more complicated.
We can still make it work, but there's a chance that we'll lose a character. Gorky drinks a potion while Sion runs north to toss him one of our limited Control Circlets.
We make it! Gorky charms the Alhoon with our first of four Control Circlets.
Perfect. Now we have to kill the remaining enemies and waste the Alhoon's spells, taking advantage of its Improved Alacrity to speed up the process of emptying its spellbook.
Then I realize that I've forgotten to memorize Energy Drain. Sion manages to land a Wish-rest so the Unseeing Eye can drain the Alhoon enough for Frisky Bits to seduce it.
But... we don't get any level 9 spell slots back. At all. Sion doesn't get any, and neither does the Unseeing Eye.
Does my install tweak Wish-resting so it only restores lower-level spells?
Regardless, we can't proceed without Energy Drain. That means we need to rest first. Which also means our first Control Circlet will wear off, and we'll have to use another.
But we use the circlet too soon, and the Alhoon goes hostile again. We only have two Control Circlets left. If we lose those, this is going to be extremely difficult.
Since I'm guessing we'll have to fight the Alhoon the conventional route at least once, I decide to try my hand at weakening it normally.
The Alhoon begins summoning a demon, but by the time it succeeds, we've already wiped out all of its defenses.
Now we can start draining it.
But as I belatedly realize, without Wish-resting, we can only drain 8 levels due to the Unseeing Eye's four level 9 spell slots. We have to rest again and drain the Alhoon some more.
But this time, we use the Control Circlet properly, waiting until the Alhoon launches its prebuffs.
This way, it doesn't just go hostile right after we use the circlet. We empty its spellbook and then continue draining it. It turns hostile, but that's what we want--it has no spells left to use against us, and now that it's hostile, we can hit it with Greater Malison to make it easier to land Seduction.
We remove our other mind flayer, Darskhelin, from the party, as our Alhoon already has superior THAC0 and nearly all the same abilities (Darskhelin is immune to elemental damage; the Alhoon is 50% resistant to physical damage). If we need INT drain, our Alhoon can do it instead.
But losing Darskhelin is actually a pretty big loss. He was an extremely, extremely important party member while he was with us.
It's worth it, though. The Alhoon is a level 20/20 fighter/mage with constant effect Improved Alacrity and the LICH.itm ring, granting him all the typical immunities of a lich.
Except for level drain, which is the only reason we were able to seduce it. But it has 5 APR and can drain 5 INT per hit at near-zero THAC0, on top of having all the advantages the Unseeing Eye does.
This is just getting silly.
But we're ready to take down the Chosen of Cyric. I have even bigger plans for them.
First, we head to the Graveyard District. I talk-block Bodhi to avoid having to deal with the vampires until I first wipe out the drow ambush. The Unseeing Eye overwhelms them despite their MR.
Then I see Arenthis, a local priest, has gone hostile for some reason. I don't want to kill him, even though reputation is completely meaningless at this point, so I charm him instead. Unfortunately, he still gets killed.
Our Alhoon has filled up its spellbook thanks to the mod that lets Gorky and Frisky Bits (if not Sion or the Unseeing Eye) create their own scrolls, allowing our Alhoon to do the same crazy stuff the Unseeing Eye can do.
Unfortunately, overwhelming force is not so useful in the fight against Bodhi, because Hazzerbazzer are immune to Horrid Wilting, have MGOI to block Skull Trap, and as vampires are immune to the damage from Cone of Cold and Chain Lightning, blocking our four primary damage spells. Worse yet, I fail to defend the Alhoon from Cloud of Bats.
Tactics Bodhi's Cloud of Bats spell can only be blocked by SI: Conjuration, while other vampires' Cloud of Bats spells can only be blocked by a save vs. breath at -2.
Bodhi's defenses are actually pretty weak, but she does have a very nasty Fire Shield that does magical cold damage, an extremely rare damage type for which we have no immunity.
Since Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh have strong defenses that I've historically struggled to break down, I just focus on Bodhi instead. Unfortunately, Gorky fails to heal himself with a potion when Bodhi's Fire Shield wounds him, opening him up to a PW: Stun spell. And Sion yet again, for some bizarre reason, cannot cast Time Stop and make it work.
Then Bodhi pulls out an area-effect spell that deals magical cold damage, and even the Alhoon, who is also undead and is immune to normal cold damage, suffers badly.
Sion casts Wish and opts for a party-wide Resurrection spell, but nothing happens. Perhaps because I used the Wand of Lightning trick and the djinn disrupted each other's spells.
Manasseh kills the Unseeing Eye's Project Image clone and also, somehow, the Fallen Planetar.
Fallen Planetars have 100% fire resistance. What the hell just happened?
The grand tradition of inexplicable failure continues. A Remove Magic spell fails to take down our defenses due to our mages being so high-level (except for Frisky Bits and Gorky, who are actually a level or two behind what they should be).
And another Wish-Resurrection fails completely, even though, this time, I did not use the Wand of Lightning trick. The spell just doesn't do anything.
Also, it seems that Project Image clones will get their first spell automatically disrupted if you make them start casting it immediately after they're created.
Notice that, with the main chamber clear of our allies, Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh have entered the hallway. But they did so without PFMW.
Drizzt ends up fighting Bodhi...
...and the last enemy falls. We stake Bodhi and head out.
This is the moment of truth.
The Chosen of Cyric is next. This is the fight that killed Mollyboo, bringing an end to one of my favorite runs. The fight I've been anticipating ever since I created Frisky Bits and started all over from Candlekeep.
We leave the graveyard with the most obscenely powerful party I've ever created in Shadows of Amn. We are filled with determination.
Current party: Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage Sion, Conjurer Unseeing Eye, Mage Balor, Fighter Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
On the way to Beregost to find Tranzig the amazons sprang an ambush. With most characters I just avoid them, but Biff fancied his chances. Some early webs were effective enough against the missile users and he was then able to blind the rest of them to make finishing them off straight-forward.
After Tranzig failed to find his way out of a sticky situation,
Biff set out for Larswood in search of a lift to the Bandit Camp. On the way Molkar's thugs tried their luck, but once more the ambushers were only able to add to Biff's bank balance.
He duly got Teven to show him the way to the Camp and just went invisible when Tazok chose to attack him. Typically I will use Algernon's Cloak to get Taurgosz' equipment, even if I'm not generally fighting. However, as I'm avoiding using the cloak much this run Biff left him alone and just went on into Tazok's tent. With mage protections, good missile defences and haste already running there he used his own invisibility spell to disappear after raiding the chest.
The Cloakwood encounters were skipped, with the exception of picking up a potion from Laskal. At the mine webs kept things quiet enough for Biff to blind Drasus and Rezdan and cut down Kysus. Genthore helpfully stayed neutral while Biff dealt with Rezdan. After Drasus ran away Biff beat up Genthore, though by this time he was out of most spells and was hit once between stoneskins. He had a wander round looking for Drasus, but was unable to find him so had a rest (that normally fixes enemies in place until activated again). After plodding round the whole map, Biff eventually tracked Drasus down behind the bike sheds stables and a few webs later grabbed the boots of speed.
In the Mine, Biff sneaked down to the bottom level and killed the guard before resting. A first use of summons dragged the battle horrors away from Davaeorn and they were slowed and blinded before Biff took care to avoid the summons getting the kills.
I intended that Biff would just get a sighter of Davaeorn without activating him, but he reacted quicker than expected.
That meant Biff had to contend with a host of guards, as well as Davaeorn - and without being able to use area damage to kill them quickly. The standard guards were easily pulled away into webs, while resting caused many of the guards to return to the entrance - allowing Biff to pick off the odd Black Talon as they moved back to Davaeorn. With the help of invisibility that allowed Biff to gently work through all but the last few Black Talons. He wore those down from range and then nipped in with buffs to finish them off before retreating again while Davaeorn was dispelling invisibility.
Once Davaeorn was on his own Biff buffed up and used a malison scroll from Ulgoth's Beard to see if he could get a web to work, but Davaeorn saved and put up minor globe. Next he tried a couple of wand of paralysation charges, but that had no effect even though Davaeorn didn't save. Biff then summoned some monsters to coax out nasty spells until he was finally able to finish the contest.
After flooding the mine Biff dodged the slave outside, just in case he has need of a reputation increase later. Moving on to the City he quickly sought out the tomes,
along with a nymph cloak
and Balduran's Cloak. The only problem was the fight with Marek where I forgot to re-equip the ring of free action before using web. Although Biff had pretty good saves, Marek recovered first and thus had the opportunity to try a spell - but fortunately magic missile was a poor choice and his remains were shortly decorating the ceiling.
Biff didn't bother with the Iron Throne, but did sort out the Seven Suns on the way to Candlekeep.
I forgot that Biff would be greeted there by ogre magi and didn't pause the game quickly enough to be confident about him casting invisibility himself - so he used an invisibility potion for the first time instead.
After all this time and all this work, after I clawed my way all the way back from Candlekeep, after building up our party for so long and investing so much thought in its future...
I just don't believe it.
Frisky Bits is dead.
...
...
...
Just kidding!
In all honesty, I knew far in advance that winning this fight was a given. With Frisky Bits holding the Staff of Zoltan, they are completely untargetable by the enemy (except, as I just now saw in Near Infinity, for both of the mages), which means dying in this fight would be nearly impossible. Especially because Frisky Bits has subzero saving throws.
But I have a very specific way I want to win this fight. A very, very specific way.
First off, I need everyone in the party to stay alive. Thanks to Improved Alacrity, the Unseeing Eye and Alhoon can erect lots of defenses in the first round without even needing contingencies or sequencers (which they did not prepare and mostly do not have anyway). Gorky and Frisky Bits don't have constant effect aura cleansing, but they can still cast Spell Immunity in the same round as Stoneskin, because SI ignores aura.
I don't want the enemy's irritating illusion spells getting in the way, so I have the Unseeing Eye cast True Seeing.
Notice that Sion is casting Summon Fallen Planetar. I figured that, with its relatively low casting time of 5, Sion could probably get it off before somebody backstabbed him to death, and since we only really needed Sion for that one spell, it's not a big loss if he dies.
Which he does. Before even finishing his spell.
He even got chunked. But like all the previous chunkings in this run, I'm just going to roll with it. I don't really need Sion anymore; I can just wait until Frisky Bits and Gorky get HLAs.
Frisky Bits has deafness due to Unholy Word, as they are the only good-aligned member in the party, but we don't need their spells, so I just have them drink a Potion of Magic Shielding while the Alhoon and the Unseeing Eye begin weakening the enemy.
We stun Kerith the Bleak, the enemy cleric, only for Gorky to accidentally cure him with the Staff of the True Magi.
Then I accidentally kill him.
This isn't going quite like I hoped. I wanted to disable them, but without Sion's Symbol, Stun spells, it would be hard to pin them down without actually, you know, killing them.
I thought a lot about the ending, but I didn't come here with a clear plan to subdue them. So I just kill everyone but Venduris.
Venduris, after all, is the leader of the party, and he is chiefly responsible for Mollyboo's death. So I'll focus my attention on him instead.
Unfortunately, he has some sort of Non-Detection effect. We can't reveal him.
I could attack him via script, since the Balor and I think also the Alhoon can see through invisibility, but first I want to get some spells in. I decide to wait for him to break invisibility.
He picks the only character without Stoneskin active. He deals massive damage, but our Balor can easily shrug it off.
Venduris switches gears and tries applying some poison to Gorky and our Alhoon, but Gorky's other defenses remain solid, and the Alhoon is immune to poison damage, if not the poison opcode.
Everything goes quiet. Venduris stays hidden, waiting for something to happen. Killing him would be easy, but I want to use some spells first. So I wait, too.
Finally, he appears.
I don't think I'm going to get the chance to use any spells on him, so I settle for the next best thing. I give the Heart of Braldain to the Alhoon and try to land the level drain effect on him, which has a 10% chance of triggering. As I've mentioned before, this effect doesn't use the level drain opcode; it uses the change level opcode, which means it permanently lowers the target's level and sets their XP to zero.
If he gets hit by the level drain effect, his maximum HP should drop, and I can see if that's happening by using CTRL-M after each hit and checking if he's lost more HP than the sword's damage alone should have taken away.
But he doesn't seem to lose the HP. So I use the Rod of Resurrection on him, lest we kill him accident.
He vanishes again, but this time, he doesn't come back. Divination magic is useless against him.
I need to draw him out somehow. I try summoning a bunch of critters, but he doesn't take the bait.
Maybe he only attacks party members. Since Sion just got chunked and we're not in combat at the moment, I have Frisky Bits seduce one of the summoned critters.
But he still won't take the bait.
Venduris simply refuses to drop invisibility, and there's nothing we can do to reveal him. He doesn't even appear temporarily, which means we can't use the Rod of Resurrection on him, much less a spell (the rod, unlike a spell, wouldn't get canceled if Venduris turned invisible before it hit).
I can't touch him without using area-effect spells or a critter that has invisibility detection. My plan only has one last hope. I turn on party AI and let the Alhoon attack Venduris via script.
And all of a sudden, Venduris is dead. The fight is over. We won, but it's a hollow victory.
This isn't what I wanted. Killing them wasn't enough; I had bigger plans than that.
I was going to cast Imprisonment on every one of them. Then press CTRL-T to advance time by one hour.
Then hold CTRL-T, to advance it even faster. I wanted them to spend months in Imprisonment, in solitary confinement, with no way of knowing if they'd ever escape. They'd think they would be trapped there forever. The isolation would be torture, and it would go on for months without end.
Then I would cast Freedom and bring them all back to the very same battlefield, finally releasing them from their torment.
But Wish-resting would have brought our spells back. Including Imprisonment. I would put them back in their cells, advance time with CTRL-T for even longer, and make them lose all hope of escape. They would stay there until they had lost their minds.
Then I'd free them again. I'd hack them apart and then heal them, then hack them apart and heal them again. I'd use the Heart of Braldain to drain their levels, healing them every time, until finally they were all level 1 to 4 characters with 0 XP. All of their abilities would be lost. All of their struggles and hardships, all of the work they had put into making themselves stronger, all of the years they spent honing their skills--I'd take it all away from them.
Then, finally, I would kill them. They would have disobeyed their god Cyric and still failed in their mission. And even if he forgave them, and didn't just let them rot in the Nine Hells, and even if they were ever brought back to life, they would be a shadow of their former selves. It would take years for them to make up all the progress they had lost--a temporary version of giving brain damage to a famous physicist, or taking a leg from an Olympic athlete. For the rest of their lives, they would regret crossing us. It would be the biggest mistake they had made by far, and it would haunt them to their final days.
But I didn't get to do any of that. It went by too fast. We just butchered them in a few rounds. Not counting the many rounds I let Venduris hide, I killed them even faster than they killed Mollyboo. It was a total victory for our party, and a crushing defeat for the enemy.
But I didn't want them to die.
I wanted them to suffer.
But a no-reload run is a no-reload run, and that means I can't go back and try it again. The Chosen of Cyric will simply remain dead. We are done with them now, and must turn our attention to future challenges.
Unintentionally showing mercy to our enemies fills us with determination.
Ah crap. I got bored waiting for the new IA release so I wanted to just start the IA game at LOB, but since it currently forces v1.3 on Steam and that has no LOB. Ah, I really have to wait until Critto creates IA7.0...
Or maybe I will just buy SoD on beamdog to complete the trilogy there and do an EET-BWS install with that. Any recommendations on EET?
@Artona: It's part of Rogue Rebalancing. The idea is to take all of the well-known exploits and strategies for thief characters and show what it's like when Mislead backstabs and so forth are turned against the party. You can avoid the fight by choosing the right dialogue options or, apparently, setting the difficulty to easy before you leave the Graveyard District after killing Bodhi.
From here on out, I will be following the same rules that I did for Mollyboo's run until her untimely demise. We will no longer use any of the crazy overpowered mod items we used previously. The only mod items we can use will be spell scrolls from IWDification, golem manuals, and maybe crafting items (but I probably won't use the last two anyway). We will have to rely on normal weapons and items from the original game. I therefore reorganize our inventory, put all of our mod items into a separate bag of holding, and equip our party with normal stuff (except for the Hand and Eye of Vecna, which I consider a replacement for the robe, as Deirdre sold them instead of the robe).
Unfortunately, the Eye of Vecna does not go on the Unseeing Eye, because the Hand of Vecna's powers are more useful for it. The eye will go to the Alhoon instead. So the Unseeing Eye, the big eyeball character with no hands, gets a new hand, instead of a new eye.
We are far weaker without all those mod items, but I wanted to complete this run without relying on them. They were such a big part of my Undergate run that it felt a little compromised, so for the rest of Shadows of Amn and all of Throne of Bhaal, we will get our strength from Frisky Bits' Seducer kit, and the party members that it has gained us.
...By the way, this isn't our final party composition, even without counting the gap left by Sion's unfortunate chunking. As I've said before, I have big plans for this party.
Venduris has a ring which makes him immune to true sight or divination spells. You could have tried glitterdust or remove magic I believe. But still, he would hide quite quickly again unless you powerword:stun him or use AoE spells.
Having raised the party and received healing, we did a little shopping, mainly filling up Dynaheir's spell book. We then headed for the bandit camp where we impressed Tazok enough for him to let us join them.
Since we were vastly outnumbered my conscience didn't give me any trouble when I asked Dynaheir to cast web to both the east and west before paralysing Taughoz. We then used ranged weapons and spells to kill him, whilst Dynaheir kept her fireball spells until there were enough of the enemy webbed to make the spells highly effective. The bandit mages didn't cast a single offensive spell before they died and as a result we finished the battle uninjured. (What a contrast to my last run when we were slaughtered)
On the way back to Beregost we ran into more bandits who fell with no problems.
Similarly Tranzig fell without causing problems.
We were then ambushed by Lamalha and her cohorts.
At the FAI we were attacked by some good guys who had been deceived. I was sad to kill them, but at least their weaponry was usable.
Heading south we were attacked by Davenport et al. He was also easy to kill.
We then decided to take on the Section. The top floor was no problem and we both hasted our party and made it invisible before descending.
I don't know how they detected our presence, but a spell sent us to the depths where we met Paul Wolfe, their leader. Because of our invisibility, we were able to move out of sight where Dynaheir cast web followed by fireballs. WE thought we were about to end the battle relatively unscathed when an assassin back-stabbed Dynaheir and slew her. We had to use potions to escape without fighting as we no longer had Dynaheir to cast invisibility spells. A set-back rather than a disaster.
The question is: "Should I now re-enter to get all the goodies, or leave it at that having beaten the main enemies?"
Sion has been chunked, costing us our only mage who actually had HLAs.
So. Who's going to be our next party member?
Yes, really.
With the Unseeing Eye on hand, and with Energy Drain in its spellbook, the process has become extremely quick, where it used to be rather time-consuming.
Nizidramanii'yt is a level 23 fighter with mind-boggling stats and 664 maximum HP thanks to SCS. And since we have Relair's Mistake, we can switch him to wolf form whenever we need him to fit through a doorway or a narrow passage. Then he can switch right back, and suddenly there's a dragon in the middle of the enemy party.
The Planar Prison is not even a challenge anymore.
And with two mages with constant-effect Improved Alacrity in the group, we can rapidly debuff enemy mages who would otherwise shrug off our dragon's and Balor's melee attacks.
Unfortunately, magic attacks are rather unreliable in SCS when mages come with Mislead clones and Simulacrum clones, because there's a good chance your Pierce Shield or whatever will hit the clone instead of the mage. That means debuffing Tolgerias is dicey.
But he buffs with Protection from Magical Weapons, which means we can just pummel him with normal weapons.
Even this party isn't immune to bugs, of course, but that's what the console is for.
Level 1 in Watcher's Keep is a chaotic fight, but the screenshots aren't as interesting, so we'll move on to the Chromatic Demon, who has a unique Cone of Cold spell I don't recognize. It does magical cold damage.
I try my hand at a scorcher loop while the Chromatic Demon is in snowball form, but I forget that Gorky lost his immunity to fire when the Chromatic Demon landed Remove Magic. He nearly dies.
I usually use the Wand of Cloudkill to beat the Chromatic Demon, but we have enough spell slots to kill it the conventional route.
Now that Frisky Bits no longer has (or rather, can no longer use) the Staff of Zoltan, I want another way of keeping them out of trouble. The answer is the Staff of the Magi, but that requires taking on the Twisted Rune. Gorky loses half his HP early on, while our Balor distracts Vaxall, whose Anti-magic Ray could prove troublesome on characters like Gorky, who really needs his buffs to survive.
Notice Frisky Bits hanging out in the stairway to nowhere in the southwest. The enemy very rarely pokes around there; it's a good sanctuary for Charname.
Revanek goes down quickly due to having no mage levels, but unfortunately, Shangalar uses Wish to take down most of our defenses.
Neither Spell Shield nor Spell Immunity can block it, unlike a normal Breach spell. But in my experience, the player's version of Wish Breach doesn't work at all.
Layenne stops time, but it's not really a great decision, because both Vaxall and Shangalar's weapon immunity spells wear down during Time Stop.
Still, Vaxall has extra PFMW spells, and the Balor can only apply so much pressure with a nonmagical longsword when Shangalar's Wish Breach took away its Improved Haste spell. And the Alhoon isn't available to help out due to failing a save against Shangalar's Dragon Fear aura, and Gorky is busy trying to take down Shyressa, who eventually turns to mist form. As for Nizidramanii'yt, he's kind of stuck.
I prefer to take down Vaxall first, but he's proving more resilient than I expected. I should have brought some throwing axes so Nizidramanii'yt could hit him from afar.
The Alhoon isn't going to recover for a while. We have multiple castings of Resist Fear, but unfortunately, the Alhoon's lich immunities block level 1-5 spells, even friendly ones, but do not grant it immunity to fear. The Alhoon can only cast Resist Fear on itself as a pre-buff, and Shangalar's Wish Breach took it down.
Feeling anxious, I have Frisky Bits activate a Spell Sequencer in case Shyressa gets too close. Meanwhile, the Alhoon's defenses start to thin as it runs around panicking.
Shyressa goes down! Layenne casts another Time Stop, wearing down Vaxall's PFMW spell again, but he just casts another one when it wears off, putting us right back where we started.
Worse yet, Gorky gets in Vaxall's range, costing him his spellcasting. Shangalar still has PFMW up, blocking Nizidramanii'yt's Mace of Disruption, and Shangalar blasts us with Comet.
Plus, Layenne has now covered our primary battlefield with an Incendiary Cloud. It wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for that troublesome Wish Breach.
I need to get the Unseeing Eye out of there, even if it means crossing Vaxall. I send our beholder out of the cloud and turn it invisible. On the way, we blast Vaxall with Cone of Cold.
As resilient as the enemy is, the game gives a lot of silly immunities to enemies in general, which means critters like Nizidramanii'yt are basically impossible to disable. Bringing these critters into the party makes you appreciate just how much the deck is stacked against you; they're so much stronger than most conventional characters.
Those immunities ensure that Nizidramanii'yt outlasts Shangalar's PFMW spells. The lich goes down.
By now, the Alhoon has recovered from Dragon Fear, and the Balor has finally knocked Vaxall unconscious with his bare fists, and Layenne's weapon immunities have worn off. The beholder dies, and Layenne loses a spell for the first time in the entire fight.
She doesn't have enough space to re-cast PFMW, nor does she seem to have that classic Spell Deflection+Spell Shield+PFMW Spell Trigger that many SCS mages keep on hand. No weapon immunities means death.
Frisky Bits now has the Staff of the Magi, plus the Cloak of Mirroring thanks to Item Randomizer. These are important defensive assets for any Charname with mage levels or UAI.
Using the Staff of the Magi to invisibly poke random passersby fills us with determination.
Current party: Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter Unseeing Eye, Mage Balor, Fighter Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
Our party now contains four mages, a mind flayer lich, a beholder, a balor, and a dragon. And as if that wasn't enough, some mod character gives us a Wish scroll--normally not available until ToB.
We still don't scribe the scroll, but we are now ready for Irenicus. The Unseeing Eye opens with a Time Stop, using a dagger to kill a clone who might otherwise soak up a magic attack meant for Jon-bon himself.
Unfortunately, Irenicus' djinni can also absorb such spells.
Irenicus lands a Wish Breach, and the Unseeing re-casts Time Stop. The best it can do, really, is haste our Balor and zap Irenicus with Chain Lightning.
Irenicus loses his PFMW, only to re-cast it right afterwards. But rather than resort to nonmagical weapons, I let my fighters waste their time using ineffective weapons while my mages try to debuff Irenicus.
Magic attacks take time to take effect, but we can keep Irenicus from bouncing back by disrupting his spells with area-effect damage.
Irenicus loses more spell protections, but more importantly, his PFMW runs out, allowing our fighters to attack him despite his Shadow Door.
Soon, his Stoneskins are gone.
We pick all the good options in the Hell trials to maintain Frisky Bits' good alignment. It's time to face Irenicus as the Slayer.
This is what our party looks like before the final battle:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Alhoon, Fighter/Mage
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter
Balor, Fighter
For all the critters who joined the party in BG2, their XP is irrelevant, but due to an XP mod, Frisky Bits and Gorkan Bloodaxe have 500,000 to 1,000,000 XP less than what they'd normally have at the end of Shadows of Amn. But it's not that big of a gap when you have a freaking dragon in the group.
As powerful as this party is, I need to be careful. Frisky Bits has been able to rely on invisibility for much of this run, but the Slayer can see right through it, and I've seen the Slayer attack people during Time Stop. I need to make sure this fight does not last long enough for that to happen.
A Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency triggers early, bringing Irenicus down to Near Death.
It would feel cheap to finish him off so easily, so I decide to let him regenerate. A Remove Magic spell takes down the Balor's and Nizidramanii'yt's buffs, but SI: Abjuration protects the rest of the party. But we have bad news: it seems the slayer is already casting Time Stop.
No, I'm not going to let this happen. I'm not going to put Frisky Bits in danger just so Jon-bon has a chance to get back to Uninjured. I have the Unseeing Eye cast Time Stop first.
I hadn't considered this at the time, but this was actually a risky move on its own. If I failed to disrupt the Slayer's Time Stop spell, I would have worn out Frisky Bits' PFMW spell, leaving them with a clouded aura and no weapon immunities right before Jon-bon stopped time.
Except, Frisky Bits never cast PFMW. They just ran away.
The Unseeing Eye begins to empty its spellbook.
And with four level 9 spell slots, the Unseeing Eye can chain-cast Time Stop, compensating for its slow spellcasting (-2 to casting speed with the Hand of Vecna, which otherwise would be -4 with the robe).
Irenicus still has spell protections, so the Unseeing Eye uses its damage spells on the nearby demons instead. But it doesn't matter. Enough of its area-effect spells got past the Slayer's magic resistance to end the fight early.
Irenicus only had 5 seconds to kill Frisky Bits before the Unseeing Eye cast Time Stop. It wasn't enough.
Finally, we've brought a solo Seducer into Throne of Bhaal. Things have been good so far, but that won't necessarily last. There are a lot of enemies in ToB who can see through invisibility, and plenty more have PFMW and other nasty mage spells. It will take more than the Staff of the Magi to keep Frisky Bits alive.
And Ascension Melissan is an entirely different kind of challenge.
A mod-related bug breaks the game and prevents us from progressing to ToB. We have to delete the SUELLE.dlg or SUELLE2.dlg from the override folder to make sure Ellesime takes us to the next game, but Shadows of Amn finally comes to an end.
Ellesime thanks us for our service. Flirting with a hot elven queen fills us with determination.
The tale of Grant Pix, Part 1 "The Nobody of Parting"
With two pips in Qstaff, and one each for Sling and two-handed weapon style. I'd have preferred a Barbarian with these stats (since Barb rage would cover the Strength deficiency in addition to the mind shield effect AND I'd be able to get a bunch of other incidental buffs including Sling spec just from being a Barbarian) but you can't dual a Barb, which means either no free Mind Shield or else no Cleric levels. The 11 intelligence is because I'm hoping to bring at least one No-Reload character into BG2 and I can take two hits from Mind Flayers this way. I really want to make a "Cursed Ring of Protection from Illithids" that locks your Int at 6.
The upshot of this is that I can't get the better goodies from the Candlekeep Inn. I also can't get the better rewards from the Baby Quests since I'm CG and don't have 18 charisma (This may be to my detriment on multiple counts since I need a team face AND I'm used to 3E where your effectiveness at Turn Undead is influenced by your Charisma).
As usual, I start from the Inn and work my way counterclockwise (since that means I have to make one fewer pass to get everything done). Carbos dies after three attacks (and lands none), my Rage for the day got wasted because the default AI script is kinda not very good at managing it (though it made the rats even more trivial than usual)
and I let the post-Rage fatigue wear off before confronting Shank (who dies virtually as soon as he becomes hostile).
...I am currently wondering why Firebead (a mage) gave an identify scroll to Tethtoril (another mage) to examine. I thought about taking the scroll with me but I get a healing potion out of actually completing his quest so m'eh.
Incidentally, I'm playing my steam version, which I use as an unmodded instance. I need to completely redo my modded instance before I play anything in it.
I picked up Xzar and Montaron for cannon fodder; I had Xzar memorize a Chill Touch since it's an anti-warrior Save-Or-Else and I want the Elves' Bane at least through Cloakwood. I also give him the Ring of the Princes (-1 AC) and Evermemory (double level 1 spell slots) as a temporary measure; I'm fully expecting him to fall to something at some point before we get our BG1 mage and this at least frees up an inventory slot. Grant Pix gets the Anitpode Belt (Immunity to Cold, but 2x damage from Hot) for now, less because Cold Damage is a thing and more to fill space (though I'm going to hang on to Antipode for a while).
Tarnesh falls rather quickly today; initiative and casting times were on my side. We got a handful of spell scrolls out of this, one of which was Magic Missile.
We go inside, chat with a few folks, and meet up with Khalid and Jaheira. I don't intend to keep them so much as I need cannon fodder, plus Jaheira comes with a free Invisibility Potion and Khalid is a passable fighter across the board for these early game shenanigans.
Xzar dies to the Belted Ogress, and Montaron just barely escapes the same fate.
The good news is we now have the Elves' Bane (-4 AC against piercing and ranged weapons), so now we're good to march to Nashkel... almost. We have a couple things to do in Beregost before we head south, one of which is getting a better Quarterstaff for Grant Pix. Since Montaron survived the Ogre, that gives me another bit of cannon fodder for what's coming up. Silke's not usually a challenge once you get past her evocations, and Imoen does still have a nice little Wand of Magic Missiles.
But before we can deal with Silke, we need our third Permanent Party Member.
Ekandor's goons go down without much of a fight (though admittedly Montaron got moved to right behind them, which made all the difference) and we get ourselves a shiny new Neera! She starts with a bunch of spells, including the ever-important Chromatic Orb. Oh, and Magic Missile too, but at level 1 it's inferior to Chromatic Orb against non-mages. I put Antipode on Montaron since Neera has a 10% chance of taking a point of fire damage any time she lands a melee hit.
Now it's time to deal with Silke...
I spent a full minute positioning for a fight that lasted less than one round. Yay. Neera used up Tarnesh's scroll of Magic Missile for that fight, which was the source of virtually all the damage there. Inside the Red Sheaf inn is a quest NPC, Purdue. Unfortunately, to talk to him we have to first defeat yet another Bounty Hunter - Karlat.
We get inside and things begin... somewhat favorably. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer turns Chromatic Orb into an Entangle Effect, so we have a bit of time to reposition ourselves once Montaron dies. Nobody else takes a hit in the fight, mostly because I had the sense to pull everyone back and kite the sucker to death (I forgot to grab a screencap of this one)
Talking down Marl pushes Jaheira over 4000 total exp, which lets her level up. We trade our pay for "defending" Silke for a scroll of Glitterdust (which I wouldn't have had this spell in mind, except for recent events that happened to @semiticgod's character, Frisky Bits - thank you @Iroumen for the nudge, as it will be incredibly helpful in Chapter 7). I still want to pick up a couple more scrolls before we head south, but they're not necessary spells by any stretch. Plus, since we have to visit the High Hedge anyway we may as well do a few quests for EXP and gold. We head out to find Bassilus (this is such a bad idea but 5k gold this early in the game is nothing to sneeze at, plus he's usually cake when you actually have a way to keep him at range).
Then again, maybe I should do some other stuff first. Like get lost and wander into the Hobgoblin Trio of Death, Doom, and Despair. Whoops.
I switch the +1 Quarterstaff to Jaheira (since Grant Pix can actually score hits with his sling while Jaheira has better melee THAC0 right now thanks to being level 2/2) and have her hold the line while we kite the others down to size. Jaheira takes the Potion of Invulnerability, giving her 0 AC and much better saving throws (I was hoping to save that potion for later, but desperate times call for desperate measures). But it isn't enough.
At least we survived this fight; it usually kills me (and Imoen now has a melee weapon worth keeping, which is an added benefit). But the victory is pyrrhic in more than one sense - losing Jaheira means I have to shelve the Bassilus hunt for now as I no longer have a way to keep him at range, AND I burned the potions of Defense and Invulnerability, both of which I had wanted for later, AND I lost my highest-level character. Next time, I'll bring a verdammt map.
After a bit of wandering and a lucky stray hit, we gather the needed materials and go to see the Wonderful Wizard of Grump.
This is the first time I've gotten the experience for this side quest in No Reload conditions - Imoen reaches level 2. Maybe I should play the lottery. But I really need to rest, and I want to get the scrolls I came out here to get before I do. It costs me 300, but I walk away with Blindness and Protection from Petrification. Still, not being able to take on Bassilus hurts, since now I almost have to deal with Greywolf just for the money. At least I can put that off until after dealing with Nimbul, since I don't really need Varscona given who else I plan to recruit.
I dump Imoen's points into Set Traps. She actually starts with enough Find Traps to handle the 3rd level of the Nashkel Mines, so I can put off raising her FT skill for a little while, and Thief Traps are a little too powerful in Unmodded. Returning Purdue's sword pushes Grant Pix over the threshold, and I guess this is as good a stopping point as any.
We finally enter Throne of Bhaal. And the second it begins, something absolutely ridiculous happens.
Count the digits in that XP figure.
The party just got 11 million XP.
There's actually a good explanation for this. When you arrive in ToB, the party gets an XP boost which depends on the party. It's supposed to get everyone up to 2.5 million XP if they're not already there. Seduced critters from SoA have barely any XP due to being seduced when they were level drained (Seduction grants XP based on level).
But Gorky and Frisky Bits both have a 200% XP modifier to compensate for an XP-cutting mod I accidentally installed, and therefore ended up with 5 million XP for both of them. Yet the Unseeing Eye also got 5 million XP, even though it had no such modifier.
Testing found that without those modifiers, they'd be at 2.5 million XP at most, including the Unseeing Eye. Without the XP-cutting mod to begin with, Gorky and Frisky Bits would have been at about 3 million XP at the beginning of ToB and 5 million at the end, instead of 5 million at the beginning and 6 million (say) at the end. It buys us a few extra spell slots.
It's too late to change it now, however, and it doesn't actually make much difference:
1. The Unseeing Eye already had 4 level 9 spell slots at level 20 (for some reason), and the spell slots are extraneous. 2. Frisky Bits doesn't actually do much of anything, like most of my main characters. 3. Gorky...
Well, you'll find out about Gorky soon enough.
Anyhoo, time to murdalize Illasera. Frisky Bits takes down her buffs with the Staff of the Magi, only to find that Illasera can fight back, seeing right through SotM invisibility. [spoiler]
Shorn of their buffs and suffering from spell failure, Frisky Bits scurries away while the rest of the party zeros in on Illasera.
Since I don't want to spend Frisk's aura casting a PFMW spell that might easily fail, I have them drink a potion instead, buying them enough time for our Planetar to Heal them.
We wouldn't have had the Planetar if it weren't for the XP modifier, but we would have had it if we didn't have that stupid XP tax mod installed.
Within the round, Frisky Bits is out of range, while Illasera is surrounded and under massive pressure. She doesn't last long.
In the Pocket Plane, we have to face Jon-bon for the third time, plus Sarevok for the third time and Bodhi for the second time (which would have been the third if we didn't side with her in Chapter 3). Sarevok is helpless, Bodhi is unlucky, and Irenicus can't do much besides hide behind his defenses until time runs out.
We do throw out Dragon's Breath, which I'm not sure we would have had at the time, and it knocks out Jon-bon for 3 seconds a pop.
The saving throw has a -10 penalty, which Comet knocks the target out for 18 seconds and no save penalty.
We finally get to Saradush and can buy all the scrolls I've been missing out on, including Emotion: Hope, the one spell we know that we cannot create using the scroll creation mod thingy.
Notice that we still have a million gold. After duplicating so much crap in the pre-Chosen of Cyric days, I have no idea how much gold or how many potions I'm supposed to have. It actually saves me a lot of inventory management and thinking. And God knows I hate thinking about stuff.
Dragon's Breath turns out to be a bit of a bust, as the only vulnerable critters are non-mages and mage clones.
Debuffers are more effective, though it's an involved process, since SCS mages often have defensive Spell Triggers and you need high levels (bards and Inquisitors, really) to land Dispel or Remove Magic once SI: Abjuration is gone.
Honestly, I don't know why I bother. With the Staff of the Magi and PFMW, no mage is going to kill Frisky Bits. Nor is any mage going to kill Nizidramanii'yt. So far, every time we've failed to land debuffers, we just outlasted PFMW instead without actually suffering any deaths.
I attempt to seduce Tibbit in the Marching Mountains, since he's one of the few critters in the game with Called Shot, but he runs away before we can get him.
Inside the fire giant lair itself, Nizidramanii'yt lands the biggest hit of the run, largely thanks to the fact that our Alhoon can finally cast Emotion: Hope.
The main reason this is important is because the Alhoon is immune to level 1 to 5 spells, and cannot benefit from Emotion: Hope unless it's the caster. Learning the spell allowed it to get subzero saving throws like the rest of the party.
Upstairs, we have a red dragon to deal with alongside the fire giants. But if this party is good at anything, it's melee combat. Only Gorky gets in trouble, and that's just because I wasn't paying attention.
I don't know I bother buffing with so many Emotion: Hope spells, either. It's not like we need the extra damage output; we've got a freaking dragon on the team.
Though it is satisfying to see those higher damage values. And it certainly speeds things up.
Normally, I'd have a lot more screenshots to post, but this run is even simpler than my Fire Seed run. There aren't as many turning points or exciting changes in the fight when you've got a dragon in the party.
Which is not to say this run hasn't been fun. Because I've loved it. Nizidramanii'yt is killing fire giants with Soul Reaver. How cool is that?
We head north and confront Imix, who targets Gorky. Remember what I said about Gorky's extra HLAs not really mattering?
Yeah... Having Gorky get chunked isn't really a big loss for us. In fact, I'd already planned on replacing either him or the Balor.
Gorky joined us in the Nashkel mines and he's been with us ever since. But it doesn't even seem like a loss now that he's gone. He's been living in the shadow of the Unseeing Eye and various other critters for quite some time.
The run continues. Overwhelming force dominates gameplay, just like it has since we got Morentherene back in SoD.
Next up, Yaga-Shura himself. Who turns out to be a bit of a sissy.
His soldiers catch us by surprise, but a potion and the Staff of the Magi make sure that our primary mages don't have to worry about losing any Stoneskins.
The Balor can handle these guys. For all the talk about mages in SoA, ToB is very much a game of fighters.
But since I already have more spell slots than I really need...
...I may as well just clean up the map a little.
I don't know if Yaga-Shura returns on a timer or whether you have to walk across the bridge or something, so I just send Frisky Bits running around the map. The soldiers seem to spawn wherever they go.
Yaga-Shura eventually shows up next to the bridge. Nizidramanii'yt hurls the Dwarven Thrower at him, but Yaga-Shura takes scratch damage even from a heavily-buffed dragon's critical hit.
The giant's resistances are supposed to decrease over time, so I decrease the pressure on Yaga-Shura himself and turn our attention to his allies instead. Unfortunately, I don't work hard enough on the mage who spawned with him (phrasing), allowing him to Breach us with Wish.
But we have spare slots and start rebuilding our defenses, and occasionally pester the mage with light damage until eventually it runs out of Stoneskins.
Yaga-Shura very slowly begins to take more damage with each hit as his resistances go down.
But our APR is so ridiculously high that he's still at over 80% resistance when we finally hack away his 350 HP.
Two of the Five have fallen. We head to Amkethran, where Nizidramanii'yt is accused of stealing a tiny man's boots.
I love seeing people offering normal reactions to a party like ours.
Getting away with stealing people's boots fills us with determination.
Current party: Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter Unseeing Eye, Mage Balor, Fighter Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
Draconis is troublesome, as always. Our attempts to debuff him are half-assed and ineffective, so we mostly just wait out his buffs.
Finally, Draconis transformatizes. Guess what?
Draconis is actually a dragon! Who would have guessed?
Anyway, we're going to seduce him.
We need extra spell slots to drain enough levels, so the Unseeing Eye uses Project Image to cast Energy Drain, making the clone kill itself so it can create a new one.
Frisky Bits also tries Wish-resting, and accidentally choosing the Horrid Wilting option. But thanks to the Cloak of Mirroring, only the rest of the party suffers horribly. Plus the genie.
Seducing Draconis is only a matter of time. Unlike other dragons, he is coded as a mage, which means he combines all of the absurd advantages of being a dragon with all of the absurd advantages of being a mage.
But it turns out that these are the most of his spell slots.
He's still a spectacular character. But it's not enough to justify bringing him into the party. I don't see how seducing him could possibly make sense when we're here to kill his father. More importantly, I can't stand Draconis' dumb name. I decide to kill him as planned. Nizidramanii'yt nibbles Draconis' ear until the dragon is dead.
We have to come back later, where we discover that two black dragons named Olinissimous and Zirimanat'ryl are angry that Draconis cheated on them with another black dragon named Nizidramanii'yt. We resurrect Draconis so he can defend himself against these allegations of infidelity and jungle dragon fever.
Draconis fails his Diplomacy check and his old lovers descend upon him. Ever the bottom, Draconis immediately fails a save against Dragon Fear, and Ollie Shimmershao and Ziggy Mini-Tail chase him around in circles.
Nizidramanii'yt gets bored of watching and decides to murder one of Draconis' old lovers in front of his very eyes. Meanwhile, Draconis himself is getting thrashed by Zimmizongers--and not in the good way, either.
Only a Heal spell keeps Draconis alive (he's actually pretty pathetic on his own), but we manage to kill Draconis' former boy toys, saving his life for now.
But then Oliver Simmons' secret girlfriend, Ithy'nassendra, shows up. She came here to kill the dragons that her old flame was cheating on her with, and when Itchy Nassendra sees that the perpetrators also killed Oliver Slobberface, the sheer anger causes her to vomit with rage all over Draconis.
Thus begins yet another violent threesome. But Itchy McBitchface is hopelessly outnumbered.
But then Itchy's secret boyfriend, Carnifex, shows up. He is even more furious, because Draconis once called him an idiot in an online flamewar, and now Carnifex wants to start a real one.
So we seduce Carnifex...
...and convince him to join the party on the condition that he gets to chomp on Draconis' delicious noggin. We have another dragon in the party! And he's even stronger than Nizidramanii'yt.
The only truly interesting fight in Abazigal's lair before Abazigal himself is the group of Death Tyrants and Tyrant Golems, who themselves are nothing more than beholders with the damage resistances of demiliches.
They aren't actually golems, so the Staff of Smiting cannot instantly kill them. All they are are beholders who take forever to kill.
We save Bondari the reloader, kill Bondari the reloader, and then part amicably with Bondari the reloader, netting us the Bronze Pantalettes and therefore the Big Metal Unit and the all-important Scorcher Ammunition. But I head to Abazigal first.
With Carnifex and Nizidramnii'yt in the party and with two copies of Abazigal's wife, Tamah, on the map, this is a five-dragon battle.
But with Improved Haste on both of our dragons plus the Alhoon and Balor, we have a huge advantage in damage output over the enemy, and soon demote Abazigal from bigamist to monogamist.
Tamah has a breath weapon that deals crushing damage, and the Alhoon gets caught off-guard, but the Alhoon never has to wait before it can cast its next spell.
Soon, Abazigal is alone.
It takes a few extra rounds, but we also put down the nearby drakes and salamanders. The Alhoon casts Black Blade of Disaster and the Unseeing Eye sends out a Project Image clone to renew our Improved Haste spells.
With Nizidramanii'yt's Soul Reaver crippling his THAC0, Abazigal can do nothing but watch as a balor, a mind flayer, and two dragons tear him apart.
We forge the BMU and get the Scorcher Ammunition and Big Metal Rod for the Unseeing Eye, who presumably uses the Hand of Vecna to hold the thing. I didn't realize it at the time, but to deal missile damage with the Scorcher Ammunition, you need a crossbow that deals some level of base damage, and the Big Metal Rod, the only crossbow usable by single-classed mages, has no such bonus. Frisk therefore only deals fire damage to Odamaron in Sendai's lair. It's still enough to disrupt some of his spells.
We waste a lot of rounds this way, including multiple Time Stop spells on both sides, but eventually I realize my mistake and give the Scorcher Ammunition to Carnifex, along with the Heavy Crossbow of Searing, which allows him to deal missile damage that will bypass Odamaron's resistances, chew through his Stoneskins, and kill him in moments.
We do the same to Ogremoch, though I again forget to use a proper crossbow to deal missile damage, while Diaytha can be crushed using melee weapons alone.
Carnifex is using an upgraded version of the Impaler that Cespenar gave us. It's basically just the Impaler, but with +1 APR and the option of using it as a missile weapon.
We try seducing the Hive Mother, since it is, like the Unseeing Eye and Elder Orbs, coded as a mage. Unfortunately, it has no assigned spell slots and is therefore useless to us.
We enter Sendai's final chamber and start smashing the statues. Some of the enemies are mages, but it seems that they, too, suffer from targeting issues due to the way SCS makes magic attacks work. They lose a Ruby Ray of Reversal spell that gets wastes on a dragon with no spell protections to remove.
The enemy hits pretty hard, but we hit a lot harder.
None of the statues have ironclad defenses. All of them can be broken down.
Notice Carnifex using the Flail of Ages +5. Another unnecessary boost to the party's strength.
Even a mage with Improved Mantle isn't safe, because we've forged Pitchwife, a silly +5 combination of Gnasher and Blackblood.
Eventually, the real Sendai appears. She's a cleric/mage at over 6 million XP with all the HLAs she could want.
But she doesn't deal a single point of damage before the Alhoon smashes through her Stoneskins and Improved Mantle.
Then we land a Breach, and her last line of defense is gone.
Time to visit Balthazar! Although most of our party members are evil, Frisky Bits themself is good-aligned, has 20 reputation, and easily has the stats to convince Balthazar to fight alongside us.
Before Melissan, we have to take care of the Pocket Plane trials, which I usually don't bother to complete until I've dealt with the Five. It seems that beating the Chosen of Cyric in Chapter 6 actually has an impact on the original Chosen of Cyric fight in the Pocket Plane.
We don't have to fight any more of his faithful; he just talks a bit and goes away.
Last is the Ravager. But...
This normally challenging fight is really not a problem for us. Ours is a melee-heavy party that excels in brute force, low-magic fights like the Ravager.
One of my mods changes the leadup to Melissan a bit. She appeared earlier in Balthazar's monastery, fought us, and "died," and we also have a new fight in the grove near Suldannessellar. Basically, it's just a bunch of random demons. The only interesting threat is the Fallen Solar, who is just as strong as the Fallen Solars you see at the Throne of Bhaal fight.
Notice that the Balor has donned the Big Metal Unit, as it is just slightly strong than full plate mail on the balor and it won't increase the size of his circle. We chat with Balthazar one last time.
There is nothing left but Melissan and the throne. It is time to bring this to an end.
We are filled with determination.
Final party: Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage Carnifex, Fighter Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter Unseeing Eye, Mage Balor, Fighter Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
In the catacombs haste and slow allowed Biff to out-manoeuvre the phase spiders rather than just by-passing them invisibly. He did leave alone the dopplegangers, but he had a go at Prat's group with the usual web + blind tactics. Only Sakul and Tam were blinded initially, but some summons helped run interference as Biff struck down Bor. After summons soaked up Prat's spells a first use of darts of stunning helped Biff deal with Prat, but when Biff attempted to do the same to Sakul and Tam some phase spiders teleported in. Dealing with about 5 of those dragged other spiders in and a slight mistake at one point led to Biff being poisoned - he hastily used a green scroll to avoid death there as the chances of resting in time were very limited. Eventually though the spiders were dead and Biff was able to go back to finish off Sakul and Tam before webbing and blinding the basilisks.
Back in the City Slythe was another stunning victim, while summons occupied Krystin until Biff could safely engage her.
At the palace the doppleganger mage was charmed along with some of the Flaming Fist guards before Biff rested. A teleport field scroll was followed by spirit armor for Belt to keep him going for a round or two while Biff turned Liia invisible and used malison and chaos scrolls. Once Belt died the dopplegangers were at a bit of a loss and Biff was able to wear them down with the Flaming Fist and finish them off himself. I turned autopause: enemy in sight on to avoid the possibility of being surprised by the doppleganger mage transforming and a number of charmed nobles and summons then caused him to use up spells before Biff came in for the finish (having used a first potion of regeneration to ensure HPs were maximised).
Biff worked his way through the inhabitants of the maze, but was a bit lucky against the third skeleton warrior, which got worn down quicker than expected and could potentially have been killed by a summons rather than Biff when both attacked almost together in the final moments. Deciding that called for a night's sleep I saved the game there.
After using his surplus cash on recharging a few wands, Biff went into the Undercity - but left the party there untouched in favour of quickly getting to grips with Sarevok. As is quite often the case by the time a run gets to this point I felt reluctant to fail here and just started using 'risk-free' tactics: - going invisible in a corner to drag Sarevok, Semaj, Diarmid and Tazok together. - using a potion of magic shielding to tempt Angelo out of hiding and invisibility to wait out his buffs (not using summons due to the possibility of them being scared or confused and activating the other enemies). He was then paralysed by wand and beaten up before summons helped out with the resulting skeleton warrior. - waited a bit longer until Diarmid's protection from magic scroll had run out and then bombarded with fireballs to kill Semaj and Tazok. One of their replacement skeleton warriors took damage and came out to fight and was also killed with the help of summons.
And at this point I realised it was still too early in the morning and I wasn't thinking clearly. The rules of the run are that Biff's party are not allowed to kill anyone except through his own melee attacks - and I'd just killed Tazok and Semaj with fireballs ...
I suppose you could argue that they're not really dead until their skeleton warrior replacements have gone, but that's a very poor argument, so Biff will have to try again at some point in the future.
After the untimely end for Biff's run I didn't want to go back to Candlekeep with him immediately, so decided to try a new character - though with a similar theme. I have in the past tried a run where a fighter was only allowed to kill enemies with Brage's berserking sword. I can't remember if I've completed BG1 like that, but I've certainly gone a long way in a basic BGT installation. However, I'm planning to use the same SCS installation as with Biff this time and can't see any way in which a fighter could be successful against Sarevok using that restriction.
Hence I've created Bash as a fighter / mage, restricted in that he can never be responsible for enemy deaths except through using the berserking sword. The additional options given by spells should make progress for him relatively easy for much of the game, though I can think of several fights where he could be in trouble - but we'll see.
I'd been rolling his character for about half an hour without ever getting a total score above 86 and was thinking about settling for that - when this one popped up .
Bash had an unfortunate childhood. He's supposedly a half-elf, but his appearance suggests the possibility that perhaps his mother lay under the wrong blanket at one point. From an early age he was teased mercilessly by other children and his personality has warped under the strain. At this point it's a toss-up whether he will be thrown out of Candlekeep before storming off by himself. He has a huge amount of rage pent-up inside him and is just searching for the right tool that could let it out ...
@Pokota It's Perdue not Purdue which is an in joke as Perdue is French for lost.
@Grond0 I enjoyed your Biff run. I'm wondering if I will meet with doppelganger mages in my run. I have no idea what effect some of my mods will have which certainly makes things interesting. It's like a brand new game. Bash looks more like a half-dwarf, so I get your point regarding blankets and side thereof.
The restriction on Bash only relates to killing - so he was able to beat a nobleman unconscious in order to steal his ring.
After completing a few chores in Candlekeep Bash hit the road - immediately running away from Imoen to leave open the possibility of killing her later.
He travelled straight down to find Brage and drew him away from his cousin as usual.
While in Nashkel he also picked up some improved armor. On his way back to Beregost a hobgoblin became his first victim amid a satisfying shower of body parts.
Shortly afterwards Bash was lucky that Algernon's Cloak survived a slashing blow rather better than its former owner.
Unlike with Biff I won't specifically be aiming to minimise use of that, though I'm not sure yet the extent to which it will be used.
Next, Biff returned to the Crossroads to find Imoen - by this time he'd learnt LMD as a Bhaal power and that provided a good means to annoy Immy (to prevent her joining the party) before the big sword lashed out.
Xzar was then blinded
to set him and Montaron up for the kill. Heading north, Bash was no match yet for a rampaging ogre - however, a sleeping ogre was a different matter.
North again, Bash dealt with some hobgoblins at the FAI before going on to the ankheg area. I was aiming to position against the fishermen such that Bash wouldn't be drawn towards the ankhegs while berserking. That was good in theory, but could have gone wrong when he attacked one of the chickens - fortunately he recovered control after that was killed before following any of the other chickens into dangerous territory.
Bash gave Tenya back her bowl to get a first level up.
I was originally thinking to dodge round the ankheg as normal to get to Ulgoth's Beard (by coming just into view and then running round the house when it attacks). That could well have worked, but is risky as there is the possibility of going berserk the instant an enemy is sighted. As a result I decided to play safe and look for something different to do. Sleep made some ogrillons and hobgoblins south of Beregost easy in order to complete quests for Mirianne and Zhurlong. One point to note here is that when enemies are helpless they don't trigger berserk behavior, i.e. Bash won't automatically attack sleeping enemies.
Sleep helped with the gnolls at High Hedge as well before tackling Karlat. There were various elements of danger there as, though no-one else was visible when Bash triggered the fight, Perdue does wander round. However, Bash got away with it after successfully blinding Karlat while he was approaching (and putting his armor back on immediately). That meant Karlat needed a critical to hit and he only got one of those. When Karlat's morale broke things could also have turned nasty (at least as far as reputation goes ), but fortunately he was trapped against the wall and didn't run into anyone else.
In the Cloud Peaks, Bash used Algernon's Cloak for the first time to draw Sendai's archer companions away from her - the XP there giving him another fighter level.
Bash tried charming Sendai as well while she was neutral, but failed. Deciding that trying again posed too much risk of losing control, he went to charm Zal instead. The two of them then beat up Sendai (Zal benefiting from his potion of speed afterwards to run away from any potential attack by Bash)
and then helped Rufie to give Bash another mage level.
Zal went on to help take on Vax (attacking him before he talked in order to prevent Zal from switching sides). Zal was badly wounded in the process though and regrettably had to be put down for his own good.
Just a quick note: CorEE II the dwarven cleric and his band of dwarves (MP characters) and Kivan are still kicking. They've just cleared the Ankheg farm area and are level 5. They will likely explore the Cloakwood pretty soon. They are in BG 1 EE, no mods.
I am playing Insane mode without XP or damage bonuses, which means two Fallen Solars appear right off the bat. With +5 arrows that dispel magic at level 22, deal 2d6+4 mage damage, and remove specific protections up to level 6, spell protections up to level 6, and illusionary protections up to level 8, their arrows mean death for essentially anyone who needs dispellable defenses to stay afloat. We therefore use our dragons to block off both Fallen Solars while our mages use the only spell that makes any sense for mages to use unless they're level 27 or higher.
Once again, I fail to consider the problem of Cloud of Bats, but otherwise Bodhi isn't a big deal because of her lack of mage defenses.
Frisky Bits is running away from a Fallen Solar's Creeping Doom spell to buy enough time to cast SI: Conjuration. Our fighters hurry to kill the Fallen Solars before they cause any more trouble.
Irenicus lands a Time Stop, but makes no progress on our party. Frisky Bits needs to re-cast PFMW, and stays on the run because their movement rate still isn't high enough for them to cast SI: Conjuration (which requires just under 3 seconds) before the slow-moving Creeping Doom projectile hits them. Meanwhile, our fighters crush the Fallen Solars.
Irenicus becomes vulnerable and suffers heavy damage, but somehow manages to survive many direct hits. But eventually he casts PFMW, improving his defenses but still leaving him vulnerable to nonmagical weapons.
The fights around the pools are really nothing special. They're just bands of demons, and while their stats are high and they lots of magic resistance and such, the only ones with mage defenses are Mariliths with their PFMW spells. But they have no spell protections to hold off a Breach.
The pools rest the party after activating each one, which means we can cast lots of spells before the big fight. We layer lots of Emotion: Hope spells on the party (though with Remove Magic factoring in the equation, the bonuses are really only important for the Alhoon), summon multiple Planetars, and cast a few Skull Traps close to Illasera before finally casting our second most important spell: SI: Abjuration, the only thing that will keep us safe from high-level Remove Magic spells.
Fully buffed, our party has incredible stats across the board, even though our dragons and Balor will probably lose most of their bonuses very quickly.
The Unseeing Eye's Skull Traps trigger gradually during the following dialogue, wounding Illasera (a major concern due to her dispelling arrows with spell failure) and Gromnir (the least concern).
Our mages open with PFMW, which apparently ran out during the dialogue. Sendai is a high-priority target with massive defenses whom I've heard can heal the enemy as an area-effect. Due to Item Randomizer, we only have a single Protection from Magic scroll, so we will use it on Sendai while leaving Abazigal alone.
To the east, Carnifex loses all of his defenses to Illasera's arrows, and because Gromnir is getting in the way, needs to use the Impaler, upgraded to a throwing spear, to harm Illasera. Over to the west, Nizidramanii'yt is slaughtering Sendai's Fallen Deva (summoned via a Chain Contingency), because we want to get rid of extraneous enemies before we kill any of the Five. Once one of the Five goes down, Melissan will appear, and we don't want that to happen quite yet.
Because we didn't have a Protection from Magic for him, Abazigal is free to stop time, allowing him and Balthazar to land automatic hits.
Abazigal has huge damage output and high APR, and our Balor has no PFMW, forcing it to rely on its meager 40% damage resistance (I should have tried to use Wish Hardiness before hand) to survive during Time Stop. It's not remotely enough, and Abazigal chunks it.
But Time Stop ends, and we take down the first of the Five.
Melissan appears. She's the biggest threat of all, but she can be briefly knocked out by killing one of the Five. It's usually best to try to kill them in rapid sequence (which means you should deal plenty of damage to each of the Five before killing any of them) so that you can stun-lock Melissan for the first few moments of combat. We start with Gromnir, who is already close to death.
Sarevok is also at Near Death thanks to our Alhoon.
Somehow, Nizidramanii'yt manages to kill Yaga-Shura, who was recently at full health, before Carnifex or the Alhoon kill Gromnir or Sarevok.
Then the game crashes for some reason. I always hated when it does this; it ruins immersion and makes the final battle much more stressful.
I am impatient, so once I kill Jon-bon, Bodhi, and the Fallen Solars again using the conventional method (since they're actually a threat), I don't bother with the demons at the pools. They're no danger to us anyway.
We proceed much the same as before, though for some reason Abazigal fails to kill anyone during his Time Stop.
Illasera goes down and Melissan appears. We then turn our attention to Gromnir and Sarevok...
...and discover that, somehow, Melissan can deal physical damage to the Unseeing Eye despite its Stoneskins. The damage must come from Melissan's Globe of Blades, since the Unseeing Eye has PFMW active, but I have no idea how she could possibly deal slashing damage to a character who still has Stoneskins.
This time, Nizidramnii'yt focuses on Sarevok instead of Yaga-Shura, and both Sarevok and Gromnir quickly fall, knocking out Melissan twice in succession.
We then turn to Abazigal and Yaga-Shura, ignoring Sendai because she has no offensive power to speak of. We can get past Abazigal's PFMW using normal weapons.
Abazigal and Melissan take down the Alhoon's Stoneskins because I've neglected to re-cast PFMW on it.
I have it cast Stoneskin, but due to the way Improved Alacrity works, the Alhoon can't drink a healing potion for another 6 seconds, which means I need to send it away for a moment to buy time. Meanwhile, the Unseeing Eye restores our Balor's Improved Haste so we can try to kill Abazigal and therefore knock out Melissan again.
Abazigal's defenses hold strong, so Yaga-Shura is the first to fall.
Abazigal summons a Fallen Planetar as his Stoneskins run out, and a Fallen Solar that I've somehow overlooked casts Creeping Doom.
Abazigal goes down... but Melissan somehow casts Time Stop, even though Abazigal's death ostensibly should have disrupted her spell.
Frisky Bits' PFMW has just run out. I hadn't been refreshing it; it wore off partway through Melissan's Time Stop.
My heart goes cold. I know what's coming next.
Melissan has an attack that's almost impossible to survive, a Time Stop followed by Teleport Without Error to Charname and then Greater Whirlwind Attack, more than enough to cut through the maximum number of Stoneskins and kill practically any character while you're helpless to stop it. There are only three defenses against it:
1. Protection from Magical Weapons (or Absolute Immunity, which is really no stronger in this fight) 2. Focus, the innate ability you gain from one of the pools, which grants 30 seconds of immunity to Time Stop and can be cast once every 60 seconds 3. Extremely high damage resistance, about 80% or higher.
But I haven't kept up Frisky Bits' PFMW spells, I didn't use Focus because I didn't hear Melissan casting Time Stop, and I failed to stack Hardiness spells with Wish (the only remaining method of stacking Hardiness in EE).
Sure enough, Melissan teleports all the way across the map to Frisky Bits.
All I can do is watch and hope that Time Stop will run out early. But it doesn't.
Frisky Bits dies.
I don't want it to end like this, so I go back and fight Melissan again, giving us our first reload of the entire run. This time, I have Frisky Bits cast PFMW constantly, and though we lose the Alhoon and suffer terribly because I neglect the rest of the party's defenses, we eventually bring down Melissan.
But this is no longer a no-reload run. Despite all our efforts, Frisky Bits died because I failed to pay attention to their defenses.
The cause is clear. I spent so much time focusing on maximizing the party's offensive powers that I broke my most productive habit.
In nearly every other run, I design my strategy on how to keep Charname alive at all costs. Rather than focusing on how I can beat the enemy, I identify all the ways that Charname could possibly die and then patch the holes in our defenses, ensuring that even if we struggle at every step of the way to win each fight, we cannot actually lose.
But with two dragons, a Balor, an Alhoon, and the Unseeing Eye, we had so much offensive power that I started neglecting Frisky Bits' defenses. Why bother worrying about what the enemy could do to Frisky Bits when we always crush the enemy within a few rounds?
That was my mistake. I entered with the wrong strategy and got Frisky Bits killed because I had too much confidence in the party's damage output.
I'm not sure I'm willing to start all over again just to finally complete a solo no-reload tetralogy run, which so far has yet to be done. Would it really be worth the trouble just to be able to say we got it done without reloading?
But I stew for a day, and my outlook changes. I might not be willing to start all over in Candlekeep--I've already beaten BG1, SoD, and most of BG2 (the hardest parts, really, considering our growth over time) twice with a solo Seducer--but I am willing to start all over in ToB, just to complete this run as a proper no-reload run.
I load up my first save in ToB and get started. We are filled with determination.
Comments
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 20
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
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Now that Frisky Bits has made it to BG2, we no longer have the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning, nor will we ever have an item that can so thoroughly destroy the game. We're going to have to be more careful from now on.
Frisky Bits is now a Seducer(10)->Mage(11). Their Seducer charms aren't going to stay competitive for very long, so their primary role will simply be to use their mage defenses to stay alive, breaking out Domination and Seduction only when we need to recruit a new critter. They won't be quite as interesting as a single-classed Seducer, but this is the only way I'm sure we can beat the Chosen of Cyric.
We remove Morentherene from the party, as even a small dragon is going to be too big to fit in SoA's numerous narrow corners. In the Promenade, we completely bankrupt the party buying scrolls.
First off, we need to deal with the slavers, a quick way to get +1 reputation and lower some store prices. Ziatar turns out to be vulnerable to Hold Person, apparently because she's half-human, but Gorkan Bloodaxe can bail her out.
Notice that "Gorken" has become "Gorkan." Due to import issues, I had to create all these party members from scratch, and accidentally misspelled his name. Now it is truly just an anagram of Korgan Bloodaxe.
Then we head to the Umar Hills, since it lets us avoid Suna Seni. Frisky Bits seduces a chicken and convinces it to commit suicide by drowning itself in acid.
I don't know why chickens can use acid attacks, but they can.
Due to removing the XP cap in SoD, our mages are already at level 12 and we can therefore cast the Death Spell, trivializing plenty of early-game critters. But we struggle against stronger ones, as our defenses aren't too great.
We grab the Ring of Spell Turning from the mimic cave, pummel the clown mage with our bare fists on the way out of the Umar Hills. Notice Ziatar using Remove Paralysis to undo a Symbol, Stun effect.
For once, I remember to prepare properly for the Ghosts of the Graveyard District and their long-range Wail of the Banshee spells. We clear up the local undead and seduce a wight so we can do the level drain trick.
Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers fall to a scorcher loop between Gorky and Darskhelin. We wait out Gaius' PFMW until Ziatar can get past his Stoneskins with a mod-introduced cleric-only flail we found somewhere.
Time to go get Sion. This time, our cat engages the Wizard Constructs, but with only Barbarian Rage to defend it (the cat is a Berserker, but my mods give it a Barbarian-style rage ability), it doesn't survive quite so well as Darskhelin did in the previous run.
Darskhelin saves the day with INT drain, which saw practically no use throughout SoD.
Another scorcher loop fries most of the folks in the Guarded Compound.
Darskhelin pesters Sion, knowing that his 90% magic resistance will keep him safe. But Sion has a Fallen Planetar, and it's Darskhelin's job to dodge its attacks until it goes away.
After 23 rounds of kiting, the Fallen Planetar vanishes, and we proceed to drain Sion down to level 5.
Frisky Bits seduces Sion, Ziatar casts Restoration to get him back to level 22, and we use the proceeds from our looting to buy him a new hand and eye.
There's just enough left over to buy a magic license, leaving us with only 85 gold. We head out to Trademeet to earn some money, discover that Spirit Trolls are now immune to the Death Spell, and then wipe out the trolls anyway with Sion's Fallen Planetar. No screenshots for the whole questline. Also, we drop Ziatar--I already know she has no future in this party.
I figure we should be strong enough to deal with the Temple Ruins now. Unfortunately, Sion's abnormally high level means that we have to deal with liches as random spawns.
The solution? We hassle the lich with Earthquake spells, knowing that each one will tear away its Stoneskins despite its spell protections.
We don't have enough to kill it, but Fallen Planetars can outlast a lich's PFMW spells.
The Shade Lord was simple. A Sunstone Bullet on the Shadow Altar, modest pressure on Shadow Patrick, and magic attacks to take down the Shade Lord's PFMW.
One of the nice quirks of the IWDification mod is that the Emotion: Hope spell stacks. Finding enough scrolls for everyone is very difficult, but trading a single level 4 spell slot for party-wide +2 to hit, damage, and saving throws is more than worth the trade.
It's not even necessary. It's just fun.
Other vampires are tougher, but we also have a +5 two-handed sword that can cast Sunray.
The sword also dispels magic on hit and has a vorpal effect, but I don't use it for that. It seems too simple.
Anyway, we bring in a Greater Wolfwere and give it a portrait I found on Buzzfeed, I think.
Then I decide to test out @edsterz' and @profanitywarning's item duplication trick. After two or three minutes, I end up with this.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. I'm not going to pull any punches in this run until the Chosen of Cyric are dead.
Time to get on with the main questline. We side with Bodhi, as usual, and coast our way through the upgraded Shadow Thief headquarters, which I know how to handle better. And again, since I'm using every dirty trick at my disposal, our Greater Wolfwere is now practically invincible thanks to the Dwarven Defender kit.
Our party isn't totally invincible, of course. Because I'm afraid that spell deflection spells will keep us from using escape options on disabled party members, both Sion and Gorky are very vulnerable to PW: Stun.
It's a minor setback, however, and Aran Linvail isn't actually making any progress by backstabbing our Greater Wolfwere. I get bored and decide to speed things up. We torch Aran Linvail.
Then I realize that we only killed Aran Linvail's clone. He lands a couple more massive backstabs, one of which chunks our wight.
It's no problem. We can seduce a new one in the Unseeing Eye quest.
While I'm there, I decide to tackle the Unseeing Eye itself, which I normally put off for a really long time (Item Randomizer means no Shield of Balduran, among many other items we'd normally be able to find at the store). Darskhelin safely uses the Rift Device, which I always give to the party member least likely to get killed by a Death Ray or something.
The Death Tyrants are pretty wicked, but like all beholders besides Elder Orbs and Hive Mothers, they have no defenses to speak of.
Frisky Bits manages to land Domination on the Unseeing Eye, and because it has Improved Alacrity active, we can force it to waste its entire spellbook in less than a single round simply by starting and then canceling every spell it has memorized.
Of course, we can't get rid of its beholder rays that way, so when it starts zapping us, we Feeblemind it.
The Unseeing Eye is looking a little sick, so we make sure to heal it up with the Rod Resurrection.
After all, we don't want to kill it.
Yes, we can actually seduce the Unseeing Eye.
It doesn't have any mage HLAs, nor will we ever gather enough XP for it to learn any, but that doesn't much matter to us.
Because the Unseeing Eye, like all beholders, has constant effect Improved Alacrity.
We have the Unseeing Eye scribe a bunch of scrolls, and suddenly we have a powerful utility character that will never have to worry about getting caught with its aura clouded. Of course, High Watcher Oisig won't reward us for ending the cult until the Unseeing Eye is actually dead.
Thankfully, he doesn't mind at all when we resurrect it right in front of him.
On to Spellhold! I test out the Unseeing Eye's Improved Alacrity effect, but find that, for some reason, it can't burn through an enemy mage's spell protections just by firing a bunch of spell levels at them.
Spell deflection/reflection/trap effects ostensibly only block a certain number of spell levels. But Perth's defenses seem to have no limit; the Unseeing Eye can't burn through them. Luckily, Perth is not immune to area-effect spells, and a surprising number of SCS mages are perfectly vulnerable to Cone of Cold.
And we did manage to get rid of Perth's MGOI spell and also Breach him, which means Skull Trap also works just fine.
No Book of Daily Spell for us, though. Item Randomizer can be very cruel.
In the interests of maximizing XP, we talk to Desharik despite already having access to Spellhold. Interestingly enough, it seems like Romantic Encounters adds a third way of getting into the asylum.
I don't pick that option, though. Maybe next time, we'll see what happens.
We enter the Spellhold labyrinth. I accidentally turn Breudayael hostile again by sending Drusilia off to die against the nearest lich.
It seems that our Fire Storm in the previous run didn't make them hostile; it was enough for them to take damage from any source. We lock up Drusilia with the lich while the Unseeing Eye tanks Thordek, who is too stupid to avoid someone with PFMW active. Darskhelin eats his brains.
Like last time, Anastacia chases after us, and an Efreeti from the nearby lich joins in. We have trouble getting her to leave us alone.
Instead, we just make our way north and chop up the two Balors (Improved Alacrity helps the Unseeing Eye buff the party faster). Efreet in SCS have a habit of turning to mist and regenerating, so Darskhelin uses INT drain to make sure this one doesn't come back.
We make a break for the exit, but a lock gets in the way, and two Horrid Wilting spells are coming up.
Frisky Bits can pick the lock, but the Unseeing Eye is big and bulky and sluggish, and I'm not sure it can make it to the exit before those Horrid Wilting spells hit.
But the Unseeing Eye pre-buffs with Polymorph Self in case it needs to fit through doors. And the Flind form is fast enough for us to make it out safely.
We rest and recover. We have a big task ahead of us. We're going to kill Breudayael once more. But this time, we're going to try out a new tactic.
Rolling around in massive piles of Rogue Stones fills us with determination.
Current party:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Sion, Conjurer
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Wraith, Fighter
Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 21
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/899226/#Comment_899226
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As always, dealing with Breudayael means isolating him from his wife. Gorky creates some Mislead clones from a scroll to lure her astray.
Notice that she's attacking "Frisky Bits." Clones and the nameless critters that cast magic attacks in SCS are named Charname by default.
Anastacia isn't immune to Feeblemind, I don't think, so I have the Unseeing Eye using its Improved Alacrity to quickly disable her. We have a dagger, Traglia's Doom or something, that grants +5 to casting speed but imposes a -5 Charisma penalty, which means the Unseeing Eye has to cast Friends before equipping it.
The Unseeing Eye has only 3 base Charisma and we have no Ring of Human Influence due to Item Randomizer, which means it cannot use both the Eye of Vecna and Hand of Vecna without dying from stat drain.
With Anastacia stupefied, we sneak past Broofles and re-charm Drusilia so the lich can kill her. One Horrid Wilting softens her up, and a Fire Storm from Sion's Fallen Planetar finishes her off.
But with Drusilia gone, the lich turns its attention to us. A Cornugon and a Comet deal heavy damage.
The Wraith doesn't make it, but the Unseeing Eye kills the Cornugon and Sion's Fallen Planetar saves Gorky.
Darskhelin has failed a save against Demon Fear (which bypasses his 90% magic resistance) and wanders north to Breudayael, whose Staff of the True Magi cannot dispel the undispellable fear effect.
But an extra Resist Fear spell brings him back, and the lich's PFMW runs out, allowing our Fallen Planetar to chop it up. We even have time to bring back Sion.
I don't know what that dead beholder corpse is in the hallway, but it's not the Unseeing Eye, which is still quite alive.
We spend a few rounds in chaos, not sure whether (or how) to engage with the liches, or whether to flee. But eventually the liches lose their PFMW, and that basically always means death.
We head north to clear up the Noble Umber Hulks, who last much longer and hit much harder than I expected.
They have such high APR that they actually kill Sion before I can even react.
If Darskhelin didn't have INT drain to land some early, HP-independent kills, we might have gotten overrun and been forced to retreat.
We check out the mages to the northwest. They triggered their pre-buffs when we entered the area, and by now, their defenses have long since run out.
I don't have a screenshot for their death, but I believe Darskhelin just killed them with INT drain in a round or two.
So how are we going to kill Broofles this time? Well, Rogue Stones aren't the only thing you can copy using the item duplication trick. You can copy anything as long as you have at least two copies to start with and a bag of holding or store that can contain them. And since one of my mods added some Arrows of Detonation to the fletcher in the Promenade, we have an endless supply of Arrows of Detonation, which I finally break out to use against Broofles.
The damage is pathetic, but because the projectile is area-effect, we don't need to be able to target Broofles himself. All we have to do is target something next to him. And with Gorkan Bloodaxe using the Wand of Lightning trick to drink 6 duplicated Potions of Power at once and boost his HP dramatically, we don't even have to slow down to make sure Gorky survives the process.
Dealing 1d6 base damage per hit will take forever to kill Broofles, so we use Emotion: Hope to speed things up.
Without mods, this would only be possible if you found two Arrows of Detonation as a random drop, which would be extremely rare. Fire Seeds would also work, of course, though you'd need damage bonuses from Aid, a bard song, or the Archer kit to actually deal any physical damage, and Fire Seeds would have much lower APR.
For once, Broofles actually fights back when we attack him. But he's too stupid to cast Remove Magic or land a hit with his Staff of the True Magi. A Potion of Magic Shielding renders Gorky immune.
Even Broofles' Chain Contingency is stupid. He has an Improved Mantle spell in it even though his robe already grants immunity to normal weapons. Why not just use PFMW?
Broofles makes no real effort to defend himself. It's just a matter of time before this level 51 mage crumples.
I give Frisky Bits the Staff of Zoltan, which grants total invisibility to evil critters. I won't be bringing this into the final battle like I did in the Undergate run, but it will last until we're done with the Chosen of Cyric. We also find an Energy Drain scroll in the same spot--it seems that Item Randomizer only randomizes once per install.
All that's left is to kill Anastacia. One of her swords can set our XP to zero, but a simple PFMW spell can block them outright, and just like Thordek, Anastacia doesn't know how to change targets.
We stun her from a safe distance and then chop her up.
Jon-bon is next. With so many overpowered mod items, the Unseeing Eye can empty its spellbook at one spell per frame. And Jon-bon's defenses take two or three seconds to activate.
I don't give the Unseeing Eye all our casting speed-boosting items for normal fights because it's more interesting if more party members participate, but the Unseeing Eye's ability to spam damage spells is devastating, even against magic-resistant enemies like the mod-introduced drow ambush I hate so much after City Sushi.
I might have been able to seduce Ixilthetocal in this run, but I did not bother to try. Not because I didn't want him, but because I have bigger plans for this party. Even bigger, in fact, than the Unseeing Eye.
Which is saying something, considering how much the Unseeing Eye is dominating gameplay right now.
Like in Mollyboo's run, I decide to bring the Balor into the party, which is especially easy when we have so many more mage levels than we did before.
The Kuo-toa Prince, however, is not needed. It might be practically invincible due to its regeneration, but that's not good enough for me.
Partly this is because I am finding an offensive-oriented strategy to be much faster and much more fun than my typical defensive, evasive strategy.
Most of that damage, bear in mind, is coming from stacking Emotion: Hope spells, and not from the Balor's innate power.
This time, we tackle the Demon Knights. One of them is a fighter/mage/cleric with 20 mage levels, but it's immune to level drain and therefore can only be seduced by a level 40 Seducer. It does drop a couple of awesome items, however.
I normally play good-aligned parties, so I've had very few chances (which is to say, no chances) to use the Soul Reaver. The Robe of Vecna, however, is useless to us--I consider the Hand and Eye of Vecna to be the intended replacement for the robe, so I won't be using the robe itself at all.
We also find a Protection from Magic scroll for sale in Ust Natha. But we've only got one--we can't duplicate it, even if I wanted to.
Well, unless I move our save file to the multiplayer folder and then use the import/export trick to duplicate the scroll. Along with any number of other items. But I'm too lazy to go to all that work just to make this game even more broken than it already is.
I don't wage the Siege of Ust Natha this time. It grants lots of XP, but it takes time, and I've already done it with basically the same party. I'm trying to get to the Chosen of Cyric quickly; I'm not out to do every quest available.
But I do want to tackle the mind flayer city, which I believe I neglected in my previous run. Like always, I lure a mind flayer over to the doorway, obviating the need for using a Control Circlet.
This is important because I was too stupid to consider just using the item duplication trick on the Control Circlets.
Anyway, I don't bother fussing over our equipment to make sure everyone is immune to Psionic Blast. That would take too much time. Instead, I pass around duplicated Potions of Magic Shielding.
The item duplication trick, like many exploits, is far more broken than it seems at first. Guaranteed saving throws mean that the only danger here is from mind flayer critical hits, and for that, we have PFMW. The mind flayer city doesn't stand a chance.
Frisky Bits reaches mage level 15. At 1.8 million XP, I'm starting to think that my XP-reducing mod, which I tried to compensate for using EEKeeper, is taking away a lot more XP than I expected. We just got out of the Underdark; Frisky Bits at least should be well above 2 million XP by now.
But losing a few hundred thousand XP per character isn't worth worrying about. Not with this party, and not with all the mod items and exploits I've been saving up for the Chosen of Cyric.
In fact, there's only one thing left to do before we tackle Bodhi and move on to the Chosen of Cyric. I want to get one more party member, even more powerful than the Unseeing Eye.
But this one is going to be much, much harder to subdue.
Breaking the game beyond all recognition fills us with determination.
Current party:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Sion, Conjurer
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Balor, Fighter
Darskhelin, Mind Flayer Fighter
Previous updates:
Biff returned Landrin's things before completing his collection of bags by blinding then attacking Neera (using invisibility to prevent the chance of her quest triggering).
Returning to reputation tasks Biff helped out Ardrouine.
Greywolf had too many HPs to wear down with LMDs and was difficult to hit with darts, so Biff speeded things up with a wand of frost blast before going invisible for the final blow.
With invisibility now available there was no danger in rescuing Samuel and Biff moved on to confront Bjornin's half-ogres. The first 3 of those were all killed by her first melee attack after being blinded, but he missed the final one 5 times in a row - their slow weapon speed though meant there was no retaliation and it was eventually finished off.
Biff tried to use web for a sneak attack on Silke, only to find a stoneskin magically appearing on her as soon as she was attacked despite being incapacitated. However, Biff not only blinded her, but quickly took down the stoneskin with darts and finished her off before she escaped from the webs anyway.
Looking to boost melee ability a bit more, Biff set off for Meilum. On the way he stopped off to save Arabelle, where I had a minor brainstorm - initially thinking I could use LMD repeatedly to draw xvarts away (as in LoB). Fortunately I realised the mistake immediately and Biff switched to using layered webs - which lasted just long enough to kill all the xvarts.
Biff also couldn't resist retracing his steps to find the Doomsayer. He hasn't taken magic missile as a spell yet, so still had a bit of work to do after 12 LMDs - but web once more provided an easy answer.
After a bit of violence at the Carnival (including finishing Vitiare off from invisible to avoid any chance of being pick-pocketed), Biff went to Durlag's Tower in search of some quick XP. The battle horrors don't have particularly good saves, so are easy meat for webs. However, the text doesn't report when they're held, which makes it slightly more difficult to tell if they're about to get free and I didn't watch closely enough to prevent the final one from getting an attack in - fortunately it wasn't a critical and Biff was able to finish it off and get to level 6 - finally learning how to use his darts properly there.
Sorcerer L6, 29 HPs, 89 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901222/#Comment_901222
Biff killed the Doom Guard outside Durlags Tower to provide a clean sweep there. After finishing off its skeleton companions, web ended too early to get an immediate kill on the Doom Guard as well and Biff was hit once more (a bit of carelessness creeping into this run, so will need to be more careful). Biff only had one second level spell left (and wanted to keep that to rest invisibly, rather than use web). However, blindness and a first use of his new slow spell ensured the Doom Guard wouldn't get another chance to hit.
On the lower roof Biff didn't bother with any of that protection nonsense, but just used web and blindness against the lesser basilisk.
Inside, Biff quickly dealt with the ghasts - slowing them first provides a -4 save penalty to spells, so making them extremely vulnerable to web and blindness. With large groups Biff still needed to take care, but this was the only attack made on him (and with the ring of free action there was no danger there).
A quick tour through the Cloud Peaks saw no real challenges, but enabled Biff to pick up another couple of points of reputation and a new tome.
Invisibility allowed him to revive Tamah without troubling the nearby basilisks and he also used invisibility to loot the ankhegs (though wasn't desperate enough for HPs to bother webbing and blinding most of them). His final reputation upgrade came after sneaking through the Nashkel Mine and using stacked webs to avoid Mulahey calling for help.
After visiting a few shops and spending all his money on buying the Claw of Kazgaroth, Aule's Staff and a Robe of the Archmagi among other things, Biff returned to the Valley of the Tombs to add monster summoning to his wand collection (though with the restriction of only himself able to kill in melee, that won't get used much if at all). The Revenant was webbed and blinded there (though with free action and stoneskins it stood no chance anyway).
The final area to be tackled prior to seeking some bandits was Mutamin's garden. Rather than risk making a fatal mistake there Biff used the green scroll for protection against the basilisks and quickly wiped out enough of those to give him his final BG1 level.
Sorcerer L9, 52 HPs, 185 kills
-Via script, which triggers each time you start a new game.
-Via WeiDU, which works during mod installation, randomizes more items, but needs the reinstallation of the mod each time you want a fresh randomization.
Personally I prefer the second mode but seems if using BWS it's better to install it outside of BWS (after it) unless you want to reinstall the whole BWS setup only to have a fresh randomization for the new run.
Previous post: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900910/#Comment_900910
There isn't a lot to tell about Nabatil's exploits at the Coast Way Crossing. I picked up Corwin and Glint, but didn't like any of the choices for a potential sixth party member for now. The party completed the sidequests around the area, with no significant troubles occuring. In the Repository of the Undead, I found out that this wall isn't as solid as it looks, as both sides were able to shoot through it:
The lich presented no problem to me, as "The Secret Revealed" dispelled all of his protections. I only had to kill him once thanks to Nabatil wearing boots of speed and being hasted (had to do it two times during my previous run).
Moving on to Troll Claw Forest, I eventually gave up on trying out different tactics against the big enemy hordes of SoD and went back to just throwing necklace of missles-charges at everything. I have 4 necklaces and 2 wands of fire - the second one is for Vhoghiln, whom I took along as my sixth party member - skald song and additional arcane abilites are propably useful, especially with the great "bard hat" item I found earlier on.
The first really interesting fight in the expansion (aside from the opening dungeon) was against Morentherene: I decided to burst the dragon down as soon as possible, but had buffs like remove fear, haste, bless, chant, PfE, skald song and, most importantly, protection from poison scrolls active, just in case. I had every party member use potions of firebreath to start the fight:
The dragon didn't die during the first round and managed to wing buffet, kicking my party out of position. This resulted in the rays of fire from the potion first almost killing Glint and actually killing Minsc, as it was impossible to move him away in time:
I had to return to camp for a raise dead spell.
Next, the Temple of Cyric: I almost killed Ziatar right away with Minsc and some ranged weapons, if not for a sanctuary spell:
The Neothelid was next to fall, and I nuked the Illithid and his followers with 6 fireballs while Vhoghiln, protected from fire and with stoneskins, distracted him:
I will make my way to Bridgefort next!
Enuhal
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 22
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
We head back to the sewers, use Teleport to escape when that mod-introduced drow tries to force us into a new questline, and proceed to the mind flayer hideout. I cruise through most of the area, not worrying about my defenses too much.
Until Frisky Bits fails a save vs. spell.
Our main character is now stunned for 10 rounds, and multiple mind flayers are there to kill them with INT drain.
Psionic Blast is undispellable, and we have no cleric to cast Remove Paralysis. Nor can Fallen Planetars cast the spell. It is completely impossible for us to cure Frisk. And the mind flayers could see through any invisibility spell we could cast on them. Our only choice is to kill those mind flayers before they can eat Frisk's brains.
Which they could do in exactly 6 seconds.
The Balor and Darskhelin target the mind flayer closest to Frisky Bits, while Gorky is stunned and unable to take action. Sion begins casting Fallen Planetar, gambling that the mind flayers won't reach Frisky Bits until the ~4 seconds it takes for our Fallen Planetar to become active. The Unseeing Eye has Project Image active and is ready to apply spell damage.
Mind flayers have 90% magic resistance, but we need to do everything we can to save Frisky Bits. We are in luck: Gorky is closer to the flayers can will therefore soak up a few hits, buying Frisky Bits roughly another 4 seconds. The Unseeing Eye tries to bomb the mind flayers, but their magic resistance protects them.
There is a single mind flayer attacking Gorky, while the others are busy with the Balor. Hopefully the other mind flayers won't teleport to Frisky Bits when Gorky is dead (they can teleport all the way across the map if they have to). Our Fallen Planetar casts True Seeing to remove the mind flayers' Improved Invisibility, allowing the Unseeing Eye to cast Lower Resistance.
The first mind flayer dies to Darskhelin's attacks with the Divine Wind scimitar (which has a 30% chance of stunning for 20 seconds with no save), but there are more to take down before Frisky Bits is truly safe. The Unseeing Eye uses Pierce Shield, also to lower the enemies' MR, but it's not enough to make them truly vulnerable.
Fearing that our wall could break down, I have the Unseeing Eye create a clone to help box in Frisky Bits, and use Polymorph Self to squeeze through a tight area.
The enemy doesn't last long enough to break through to Frisky Bits.
The Staff of Zoltan should have made Frisky Bits untargetable by the mind flayers, but I was not willing to take any chances.
We did not come to the mind flayer hideout to gather loot or XP. We have a new recruit in mind. But it's going to be far harder to subdue than anything else we've tried to seduce before.
I have no interest in engaging the Alhoon and its minions in its own chamber; there isn't enough room to navigate. Instead, I retreat to the previous chamber and brace for the impact.
But it seems like the Psionic Blast spells here are stronger than I thought. The Balor gets stunned despite having a save vs. spell of 0.
One of these critters, probably an Ulitharid, is using the extra-powerful version of Psionic Blast which stuns for 20 rounds with a -4 save penalty.
We can deal with basic mind flayers despite losing our Balor, but the Alhoon could easily change that. To keep the Alhoon away from the party, I send Gorky up north to keep the mind flayer lich occupied.
I have a very special plan for this fight, but we need to get a character close to the Alhoon, without them having any chance of getting killed in the process.
That character is Sion, who can approach the Alhoon during Time Stop, since I've kept the hallway clear (otherwise he might get stuck on the way).
But... Time Stop does nothing. It has no effect whatsoever. It's not that the Alhoon is immune to Time Stop; the spell just doesn't do anything.
That was our big plan for this fight. Without it, things are going to get much more complicated.
We can still make it work, but there's a chance that we'll lose a character. Gorky drinks a potion while Sion runs north to toss him one of our limited Control Circlets.
We make it! Gorky charms the Alhoon with our first of four Control Circlets.
Perfect. Now we have to kill the remaining enemies and waste the Alhoon's spells, taking advantage of its Improved Alacrity to speed up the process of emptying its spellbook.
Then I realize that I've forgotten to memorize Energy Drain. Sion manages to land a Wish-rest so the Unseeing Eye can drain the Alhoon enough for Frisky Bits to seduce it.
But... we don't get any level 9 spell slots back. At all. Sion doesn't get any, and neither does the Unseeing Eye.
Does my install tweak Wish-resting so it only restores lower-level spells?
Regardless, we can't proceed without Energy Drain. That means we need to rest first. Which also means our first Control Circlet will wear off, and we'll have to use another.
But we use the circlet too soon, and the Alhoon goes hostile again. We only have two Control Circlets left. If we lose those, this is going to be extremely difficult.
Since I'm guessing we'll have to fight the Alhoon the conventional route at least once, I decide to try my hand at weakening it normally.
The Alhoon begins summoning a demon, but by the time it succeeds, we've already wiped out all of its defenses.
Now we can start draining it.
But as I belatedly realize, without Wish-resting, we can only drain 8 levels due to the Unseeing Eye's four level 9 spell slots. We have to rest again and drain the Alhoon some more.
But this time, we use the Control Circlet properly, waiting until the Alhoon launches its prebuffs.
This way, it doesn't just go hostile right after we use the circlet. We empty its spellbook and then continue draining it. It turns hostile, but that's what we want--it has no spells left to use against us, and now that it's hostile, we can hit it with Greater Malison to make it easier to land Seduction.
We remove our other mind flayer, Darskhelin, from the party, as our Alhoon already has superior THAC0 and nearly all the same abilities (Darskhelin is immune to elemental damage; the Alhoon is 50% resistant to physical damage). If we need INT drain, our Alhoon can do it instead.
But losing Darskhelin is actually a pretty big loss. He was an extremely, extremely important party member while he was with us.
It's worth it, though. The Alhoon is a level 20/20 fighter/mage with constant effect Improved Alacrity and the LICH.itm ring, granting him all the typical immunities of a lich.
Except for level drain, which is the only reason we were able to seduce it. But it has 5 APR and can drain 5 INT per hit at near-zero THAC0, on top of having all the advantages the Unseeing Eye does.
This is just getting silly.
But we're ready to take down the Chosen of Cyric. I have even bigger plans for them.
First, we head to the Graveyard District. I talk-block Bodhi to avoid having to deal with the vampires until I first wipe out the drow ambush. The Unseeing Eye overwhelms them despite their MR.
Then I see Arenthis, a local priest, has gone hostile for some reason. I don't want to kill him, even though reputation is completely meaningless at this point, so I charm him instead. Unfortunately, he still gets killed.
Our Alhoon has filled up its spellbook thanks to the mod that lets Gorky and Frisky Bits (if not Sion or the Unseeing Eye) create their own scrolls, allowing our Alhoon to do the same crazy stuff the Unseeing Eye can do.
Unfortunately, overwhelming force is not so useful in the fight against Bodhi, because Hazzerbazzer are immune to Horrid Wilting, have MGOI to block Skull Trap, and as vampires are immune to the damage from Cone of Cold and Chain Lightning, blocking our four primary damage spells. Worse yet, I fail to defend the Alhoon from Cloud of Bats.
Tactics Bodhi's Cloud of Bats spell can only be blocked by SI: Conjuration, while other vampires' Cloud of Bats spells can only be blocked by a save vs. breath at -2.
Bodhi's defenses are actually pretty weak, but she does have a very nasty Fire Shield that does magical cold damage, an extremely rare damage type for which we have no immunity.
Since Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh have strong defenses that I've historically struggled to break down, I just focus on Bodhi instead. Unfortunately, Gorky fails to heal himself with a potion when Bodhi's Fire Shield wounds him, opening him up to a PW: Stun spell. And Sion yet again, for some bizarre reason, cannot cast Time Stop and make it work.
Then Bodhi pulls out an area-effect spell that deals magical cold damage, and even the Alhoon, who is also undead and is immune to normal cold damage, suffers badly.
Sion casts Wish and opts for a party-wide Resurrection spell, but nothing happens. Perhaps because I used the Wand of Lightning trick and the djinn disrupted each other's spells.
Manasseh kills the Unseeing Eye's Project Image clone and also, somehow, the Fallen Planetar.
Fallen Planetars have 100% fire resistance. What the hell just happened?
The grand tradition of inexplicable failure continues. A Remove Magic spell fails to take down our defenses due to our mages being so high-level (except for Frisky Bits and Gorky, who are actually a level or two behind what they should be).
And another Wish-Resurrection fails completely, even though, this time, I did not use the Wand of Lightning trick. The spell just doesn't do anything.
Also, it seems that Project Image clones will get their first spell automatically disrupted if you make them start casting it immediately after they're created.
Notice that, with the main chamber clear of our allies, Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh have entered the hallway. But they did so without PFMW.
Drizzt ends up fighting Bodhi...
...and the last enemy falls. We stake Bodhi and head out.
This is the moment of truth.
The Chosen of Cyric is next. This is the fight that killed Mollyboo, bringing an end to one of my favorite runs. The fight I've been anticipating ever since I created Frisky Bits and started all over from Candlekeep.
We leave the graveyard with the most obscenely powerful party I've ever created in Shadows of Amn. We are filled with determination.
Current party:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Sion, Conjurer
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Balor, Fighter
Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901222/#Comment_901222
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901259/#Comment_901259
On the way to Beregost to find Tranzig the amazons sprang an ambush. With most characters I just avoid them, but Biff fancied his chances. Some early webs were effective enough against the missile users and he was then able to blind the rest of them to make finishing them off straight-forward.
After Tranzig failed to find his way out of a sticky situation,
The Cloakwood encounters were skipped, with the exception of picking up a potion from Laskal. At the mine webs kept things quiet enough for Biff to blind Drasus and Rezdan and cut down Kysus. Genthore helpfully stayed neutral while Biff dealt with Rezdan. After Drasus ran away Biff beat up Genthore, though by this time he was out of most spells and was hit once between stoneskins. He had a wander round looking for Drasus, but was unable to find him so had a rest (that normally fixes enemies in place until activated again). After plodding round the whole map, Biff eventually tracked Drasus down behind the
bike shedsstables and a few webs later grabbed the boots of speed.In the Mine, Biff sneaked down to the bottom level and killed the guard before resting. A first use of summons dragged the battle horrors away from Davaeorn and they were slowed and blinded before Biff took care to avoid the summons getting the kills.
After flooding the mine Biff dodged the slave outside, just in case he has need of a reputation increase later. Moving on to the City he quickly sought out the tomes,
Biff didn't bother with the Iron Throne, but did sort out the Seven Suns on the way to Candlekeep.
Sorcerer L9, 52 HPs, 239 kills
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 23
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901358/#Comment_901358
I don't believe it.
After all this time and all this work, after I clawed my way all the way back from Candlekeep, after building up our party for so long and investing so much thought in its future...
I just don't believe it.
Frisky Bits is dead.
...
...
...
Just kidding!
In all honesty, I knew far in advance that winning this fight was a given. With Frisky Bits holding the Staff of Zoltan, they are completely untargetable by the enemy (except, as I just now saw in Near Infinity, for both of the mages), which means dying in this fight would be nearly impossible. Especially because Frisky Bits has subzero saving throws.
But I have a very specific way I want to win this fight. A very, very specific way.
First off, I need everyone in the party to stay alive. Thanks to Improved Alacrity, the Unseeing Eye and Alhoon can erect lots of defenses in the first round without even needing contingencies or sequencers (which they did not prepare and mostly do not have anyway). Gorky and Frisky Bits don't have constant effect aura cleansing, but they can still cast Spell Immunity in the same round as Stoneskin, because SI ignores aura.
I don't want the enemy's irritating illusion spells getting in the way, so I have the Unseeing Eye cast True Seeing.
Notice that Sion is casting Summon Fallen Planetar. I figured that, with its relatively low casting time of 5, Sion could probably get it off before somebody backstabbed him to death, and since we only really needed Sion for that one spell, it's not a big loss if he dies.
Which he does. Before even finishing his spell.
He even got chunked. But like all the previous chunkings in this run, I'm just going to roll with it. I don't really need Sion anymore; I can just wait until Frisky Bits and Gorky get HLAs.
Frisky Bits has deafness due to Unholy Word, as they are the only good-aligned member in the party, but we don't need their spells, so I just have them drink a Potion of Magic Shielding while the Alhoon and the Unseeing Eye begin weakening the enemy.
We stun Kerith the Bleak, the enemy cleric, only for Gorky to accidentally cure him with the Staff of the True Magi.
Then I accidentally kill him.
This isn't going quite like I hoped. I wanted to disable them, but without Sion's Symbol, Stun spells, it would be hard to pin them down without actually, you know, killing them.
I thought a lot about the ending, but I didn't come here with a clear plan to subdue them. So I just kill everyone but Venduris.
Venduris, after all, is the leader of the party, and he is chiefly responsible for Mollyboo's death. So I'll focus my attention on him instead.
Unfortunately, he has some sort of Non-Detection effect. We can't reveal him.
I could attack him via script, since the Balor and I think also the Alhoon can see through invisibility, but first I want to get some spells in. I decide to wait for him to break invisibility.
He picks the only character without Stoneskin active. He deals massive damage, but our Balor can easily shrug it off.
Venduris switches gears and tries applying some poison to Gorky and our Alhoon, but Gorky's other defenses remain solid, and the Alhoon is immune to poison damage, if not the poison opcode.
Everything goes quiet. Venduris stays hidden, waiting for something to happen. Killing him would be easy, but I want to use some spells first. So I wait, too.
Finally, he appears.
I don't think I'm going to get the chance to use any spells on him, so I settle for the next best thing. I give the Heart of Braldain to the Alhoon and try to land the level drain effect on him, which has a 10% chance of triggering. As I've mentioned before, this effect doesn't use the level drain opcode; it uses the change level opcode, which means it permanently lowers the target's level and sets their XP to zero.
If he gets hit by the level drain effect, his maximum HP should drop, and I can see if that's happening by using CTRL-M after each hit and checking if he's lost more HP than the sword's damage alone should have taken away.
But he doesn't seem to lose the HP. So I use the Rod of Resurrection on him, lest we kill him accident.
He vanishes again, but this time, he doesn't come back. Divination magic is useless against him.
I need to draw him out somehow. I try summoning a bunch of critters, but he doesn't take the bait.
Maybe he only attacks party members. Since Sion just got chunked and we're not in combat at the moment, I have Frisky Bits seduce one of the summoned critters.
But he still won't take the bait.
Venduris simply refuses to drop invisibility, and there's nothing we can do to reveal him. He doesn't even appear temporarily, which means we can't use the Rod of Resurrection on him, much less a spell (the rod, unlike a spell, wouldn't get canceled if Venduris turned invisible before it hit).
I can't touch him without using area-effect spells or a critter that has invisibility detection. My plan only has one last hope. I turn on party AI and let the Alhoon attack Venduris via script.
And all of a sudden, Venduris is dead. The fight is over. We won, but it's a hollow victory.
This isn't what I wanted. Killing them wasn't enough; I had bigger plans than that.
I was going to cast Imprisonment on every one of them. Then press CTRL-T to advance time by one hour.
Then hold CTRL-T, to advance it even faster. I wanted them to spend months in Imprisonment, in solitary confinement, with no way of knowing if they'd ever escape. They'd think they would be trapped there forever. The isolation would be torture, and it would go on for months without end.
Then I would cast Freedom and bring them all back to the very same battlefield, finally releasing them from their torment.
But Wish-resting would have brought our spells back. Including Imprisonment. I would put them back in their cells, advance time with CTRL-T for even longer, and make them lose all hope of escape. They would stay there until they had lost their minds.
Then I'd free them again. I'd hack them apart and then heal them, then hack them apart and heal them again. I'd use the Heart of Braldain to drain their levels, healing them every time, until finally they were all level 1 to 4 characters with 0 XP. All of their abilities would be lost. All of their struggles and hardships, all of the work they had put into making themselves stronger, all of the years they spent honing their skills--I'd take it all away from them.
Then, finally, I would kill them. They would have disobeyed their god Cyric and still failed in their mission. And even if he forgave them, and didn't just let them rot in the Nine Hells, and even if they were ever brought back to life, they would be a shadow of their former selves. It would take years for them to make up all the progress they had lost--a temporary version of giving brain damage to a famous physicist, or taking a leg from an Olympic athlete. For the rest of their lives, they would regret crossing us. It would be the biggest mistake they had made by far, and it would haunt them to their final days.
But I didn't get to do any of that. It went by too fast. We just butchered them in a few rounds. Not counting the many rounds I let Venduris hide, I killed them even faster than they killed Mollyboo. It was a total victory for our party, and a crushing defeat for the enemy.
But I didn't want them to die.
I wanted them to suffer.
But a no-reload run is a no-reload run, and that means I can't go back and try it again. The Chosen of Cyric will simply remain dead. We are done with them now, and must turn our attention to future challenges.
Unintentionally showing mercy to our enemies fills us with determination.
Or maybe I will just buy SoD on beamdog to complete the trilogy there and do an EET-BWS install with that.
Any recommendations on EET?
Unfortunately, the Eye of Vecna does not go on the Unseeing Eye, because the Hand of Vecna's powers are more useful for it. The eye will go to the Alhoon instead. So the Unseeing Eye, the big eyeball character with no hands, gets a new hand, instead of a new eye.
We are far weaker without all those mod items, but I wanted to complete this run without relying on them. They were such a big part of my Undergate run that it felt a little compromised, so for the rest of Shadows of Amn and all of Throne of Bhaal, we will get our strength from Frisky Bits' Seducer kit, and the party members that it has gained us.
...By the way, this isn't our final party composition, even without counting the gap left by Sion's unfortunate chunking. As I've said before, I have big plans for this party.
Big, big plans.
Journal of Osweald
Having raised the party and received healing, we did a little shopping, mainly filling up Dynaheir's spell book.We then headed for the bandit camp where we impressed Tazok enough for him to let us join them.
The bandit mages didn't cast a single offensive spell before they died and as a result we finished the battle uninjured. (What a contrast to my last run when we were slaughtered)
On the way back to Beregost we ran into more bandits who fell with no problems.
Similarly Tranzig fell without causing problems.
At the FAI we were attacked by some good guys who had been deceived. I was sad to kill them, but at least their weaponry was usable.
Heading south we were attacked by Davenport et al. He was also easy to kill.
I don't know how they detected our presence, but a spell sent us to the depths where we met Paul Wolfe, their leader. Because of our invisibility, we were able to move out of sight where Dynaheir cast web followed by fireballs. WE thought we were about to end the battle relatively unscathed when an assassin back-stabbed Dynaheir and slew her.
The question is: "Should I now re-enter to get all the goodies, or leave it at that having beaten the main enemies?"
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 24
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901358/#Comment_901358
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901390/#Comment_901390
Sion has been chunked, costing us our only mage who actually had HLAs.
So. Who's going to be our next party member?
Yes, really.
With the Unseeing Eye on hand, and with Energy Drain in its spellbook, the process has become extremely quick, where it used to be rather time-consuming.
Nizidramanii'yt is a level 23 fighter with mind-boggling stats and 664 maximum HP thanks to SCS. And since we have Relair's Mistake, we can switch him to wolf form whenever we need him to fit through a doorway or a narrow passage. Then he can switch right back, and suddenly there's a dragon in the middle of the enemy party.
The Planar Prison is not even a challenge anymore.
And with two mages with constant-effect Improved Alacrity in the group, we can rapidly debuff enemy mages who would otherwise shrug off our dragon's and Balor's melee attacks.
Unfortunately, magic attacks are rather unreliable in SCS when mages come with Mislead clones and Simulacrum clones, because there's a good chance your Pierce Shield or whatever will hit the clone instead of the mage. That means debuffing Tolgerias is dicey.
But he buffs with Protection from Magical Weapons, which means we can just pummel him with normal weapons.
Even this party isn't immune to bugs, of course, but that's what the console is for.
Level 1 in Watcher's Keep is a chaotic fight, but the screenshots aren't as interesting, so we'll move on to the Chromatic Demon, who has a unique Cone of Cold spell I don't recognize. It does magical cold damage.
I try my hand at a scorcher loop while the Chromatic Demon is in snowball form, but I forget that Gorky lost his immunity to fire when the Chromatic Demon landed Remove Magic. He nearly dies.
I usually use the Wand of Cloudkill to beat the Chromatic Demon, but we have enough spell slots to kill it the conventional route.
Now that Frisky Bits no longer has (or rather, can no longer use) the Staff of Zoltan, I want another way of keeping them out of trouble. The answer is the Staff of the Magi, but that requires taking on the Twisted Rune. Gorky loses half his HP early on, while our Balor distracts Vaxall, whose Anti-magic Ray could prove troublesome on characters like Gorky, who really needs his buffs to survive.
Notice Frisky Bits hanging out in the stairway to nowhere in the southwest. The enemy very rarely pokes around there; it's a good sanctuary for Charname.
Revanek goes down quickly due to having no mage levels, but unfortunately, Shangalar uses Wish to take down most of our defenses.
Neither Spell Shield nor Spell Immunity can block it, unlike a normal Breach spell. But in my experience, the player's version of Wish Breach doesn't work at all.
Layenne stops time, but it's not really a great decision, because both Vaxall and Shangalar's weapon immunity spells wear down during Time Stop.
Still, Vaxall has extra PFMW spells, and the Balor can only apply so much pressure with a nonmagical longsword when Shangalar's Wish Breach took away its Improved Haste spell. And the Alhoon isn't available to help out due to failing a save against Shangalar's Dragon Fear aura, and Gorky is busy trying to take down Shyressa, who eventually turns to mist form. As for Nizidramanii'yt, he's kind of stuck.
I prefer to take down Vaxall first, but he's proving more resilient than I expected. I should have brought some throwing axes so Nizidramanii'yt could hit him from afar.
The Alhoon isn't going to recover for a while. We have multiple castings of Resist Fear, but unfortunately, the Alhoon's lich immunities block level 1-5 spells, even friendly ones, but do not grant it immunity to fear. The Alhoon can only cast Resist Fear on itself as a pre-buff, and Shangalar's Wish Breach took it down.
Feeling anxious, I have Frisky Bits activate a Spell Sequencer in case Shyressa gets too close. Meanwhile, the Alhoon's defenses start to thin as it runs around panicking.
Shyressa goes down! Layenne casts another Time Stop, wearing down Vaxall's PFMW spell again, but he just casts another one when it wears off, putting us right back where we started.
Worse yet, Gorky gets in Vaxall's range, costing him his spellcasting. Shangalar still has PFMW up, blocking Nizidramanii'yt's Mace of Disruption, and Shangalar blasts us with Comet.
Plus, Layenne has now covered our primary battlefield with an Incendiary Cloud. It wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for that troublesome Wish Breach.
I need to get the Unseeing Eye out of there, even if it means crossing Vaxall. I send our beholder out of the cloud and turn it invisible. On the way, we blast Vaxall with Cone of Cold.
As resilient as the enemy is, the game gives a lot of silly immunities to enemies in general, which means critters like Nizidramanii'yt are basically impossible to disable. Bringing these critters into the party makes you appreciate just how much the deck is stacked against you; they're so much stronger than most conventional characters.
Those immunities ensure that Nizidramanii'yt outlasts Shangalar's PFMW spells. The lich goes down.
By now, the Alhoon has recovered from Dragon Fear, and the Balor has finally knocked Vaxall unconscious with his bare fists, and Layenne's weapon immunities have worn off. The beholder dies, and Layenne loses a spell for the first time in the entire fight.
She doesn't have enough space to re-cast PFMW, nor does she seem to have that classic Spell Deflection+Spell Shield+PFMW Spell Trigger that many SCS mages keep on hand. No weapon immunities means death.
Frisky Bits now has the Staff of the Magi, plus the Cloak of Mirroring thanks to Item Randomizer. These are important defensive assets for any Charname with mage levels or UAI.
Using the Staff of the Magi to invisibly poke random passersby fills us with determination.
Current party:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Balor, Fighter
Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate 2
Part 25
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901358/#Comment_901358
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901390/#Comment_901390
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901428/#Comment_901428
Our party now contains four mages, a mind flayer lich, a beholder, a balor, and a dragon. And as if that wasn't enough, some mod character gives us a Wish scroll--normally not available until ToB.
We still don't scribe the scroll, but we are now ready for Irenicus. The Unseeing Eye opens with a Time Stop, using a dagger to kill a clone who might otherwise soak up a magic attack meant for Jon-bon himself.
Unfortunately, Irenicus' djinni can also absorb such spells.
Irenicus lands a Wish Breach, and the Unseeing re-casts Time Stop. The best it can do, really, is haste our Balor and zap Irenicus with Chain Lightning.
Irenicus loses his PFMW, only to re-cast it right afterwards. But rather than resort to nonmagical weapons, I let my fighters waste their time using ineffective weapons while my mages try to debuff Irenicus.
Magic attacks take time to take effect, but we can keep Irenicus from bouncing back by disrupting his spells with area-effect damage.
Irenicus loses more spell protections, but more importantly, his PFMW runs out, allowing our fighters to attack him despite his Shadow Door.
Soon, his Stoneskins are gone.
We pick all the good options in the Hell trials to maintain Frisky Bits' good alignment. It's time to face Irenicus as the Slayer.
This is what our party looks like before the final battle:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Alhoon, Fighter/Mage
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter
Balor, Fighter
For all the critters who joined the party in BG2, their XP is irrelevant, but due to an XP mod, Frisky Bits and Gorkan Bloodaxe have 500,000 to 1,000,000 XP less than what they'd normally have at the end of Shadows of Amn. But it's not that big of a gap when you have a freaking dragon in the group.
As powerful as this party is, I need to be careful. Frisky Bits has been able to rely on invisibility for much of this run, but the Slayer can see right through it, and I've seen the Slayer attack people during Time Stop. I need to make sure this fight does not last long enough for that to happen.
A Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency triggers early, bringing Irenicus down to Near Death.
It would feel cheap to finish him off so easily, so I decide to let him regenerate. A Remove Magic spell takes down the Balor's and Nizidramanii'yt's buffs, but SI: Abjuration protects the rest of the party. But we have bad news: it seems the slayer is already casting Time Stop.
No, I'm not going to let this happen. I'm not going to put Frisky Bits in danger just so Jon-bon has a chance to get back to Uninjured. I have the Unseeing Eye cast Time Stop first.
I hadn't considered this at the time, but this was actually a risky move on its own. If I failed to disrupt the Slayer's Time Stop spell, I would have worn out Frisky Bits' PFMW spell, leaving them with a clouded aura and no weapon immunities right before Jon-bon stopped time.
Except, Frisky Bits never cast PFMW. They just ran away.
The Unseeing Eye begins to empty its spellbook.
And with four level 9 spell slots, the Unseeing Eye can chain-cast Time Stop, compensating for its slow spellcasting (-2 to casting speed with the Hand of Vecna, which otherwise would be -4 with the robe).
Irenicus still has spell protections, so the Unseeing Eye uses its damage spells on the nearby demons instead. But it doesn't matter. Enough of its area-effect spells got past the Slayer's magic resistance to end the fight early.
Irenicus only had 5 seconds to kill Frisky Bits before the Unseeing Eye cast Time Stop. It wasn't enough.
Finally, we've brought a solo Seducer into Throne of Bhaal. Things have been good so far, but that won't necessarily last. There are a lot of enemies in ToB who can see through invisibility, and plenty more have PFMW and other nasty mage spells. It will take more than the Staff of the Magi to keep Frisky Bits alive.
And Ascension Melissan is an entirely different kind of challenge.
A mod-related bug breaks the game and prevents us from progressing to ToB. We have to delete the SUELLE.dlg or SUELLE2.dlg from the override folder to make sure Ellesime takes us to the next game, but Shadows of Amn finally comes to an end.
Ellesime thanks us for our service. Flirting with a hot elven queen fills us with determination.
"The Nobody of Parting"
The upshot of this is that I can't get the better goodies from the Candlekeep Inn. I also can't get the better rewards from the Baby Quests since I'm CG and don't have 18 charisma (This may be to my detriment on multiple counts since I need a team face AND I'm used to 3E where your effectiveness at Turn Undead is influenced by your Charisma).
As usual, I start from the Inn and work my way counterclockwise (since that means I have to make one fewer pass to get everything done). Carbos dies after three attacks (and lands none), my Rage for the day got wasted because the default AI script is kinda not very good at managing it (though it made the rats even more trivial than usual)
...I am currently wondering why Firebead (a mage) gave an identify scroll to Tethtoril (another mage) to examine. I thought about taking the scroll with me but I get a healing potion out of actually completing his quest so m'eh.
Incidentally, I'm playing my steam version, which I use as an unmodded instance. I need to completely redo my modded instance before I play anything in it.
I picked up Xzar and Montaron for cannon fodder; I had Xzar memorize a Chill Touch since it's an anti-warrior Save-Or-Else and I want the Elves' Bane at least through Cloakwood. I also give him the Ring of the Princes (-1 AC) and Evermemory (double level 1 spell slots) as a temporary measure; I'm fully expecting him to fall to something at some point before we get our BG1 mage and this at least frees up an inventory slot. Grant Pix gets the Anitpode Belt (Immunity to Cold, but 2x damage from Hot) for now, less because Cold Damage is a thing and more to fill space (though I'm going to hang on to Antipode for a while).
Tarnesh falls rather quickly today; initiative and casting times were on my side. We got a handful of spell scrolls out of this, one of which was Magic Missile.
Xzar dies to the Belted Ogress, and Montaron just barely escapes the same fate.
The good news is we now have the Elves' Bane (-4 AC against piercing and ranged weapons), so now we're good to march to Nashkel... almost. We have a couple things to do in Beregost before we head south, one of which is getting a better Quarterstaff for Grant Pix. Since Montaron survived the Ogre, that gives me another bit of cannon fodder for what's coming up. Silke's not usually a challenge once you get past her evocations, and Imoen does still have a nice little Wand of Magic Missiles.
But before we can deal with Silke, we need our third Permanent Party Member.
Now it's time to deal with Silke...
I spent a full minute positioning for a fight that lasted less than one round. Yay. Neera used up Tarnesh's scroll of Magic Missile for that fight, which was the source of virtually all the damage there. Inside the Red Sheaf inn is a quest NPC, Purdue. Unfortunately, to talk to him we have to first defeat yet another Bounty Hunter - Karlat.
We get inside and things begin... somewhat favorably. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer turns Chromatic Orb into an Entangle Effect, so we have a bit of time to reposition ourselves once Montaron dies. Nobody else takes a hit in the fight, mostly because I had the sense to pull everyone back and kite the sucker to death (I forgot to grab a screencap of this one)
Talking down Marl pushes Jaheira over 4000 total exp, which lets her level up. We trade our pay for "defending" Silke for a scroll of Glitterdust (which I wouldn't have had this spell in mind, except for recent events that happened to @semiticgod's character, Frisky Bits - thank you @Iroumen for the nudge, as it will be incredibly helpful in Chapter 7). I still want to pick up a couple more scrolls before we head south, but they're not necessary spells by any stretch. Plus, since we have to visit the High Hedge anyway we may as well do a few quests for EXP and gold. We head out to find Bassilus (this is such a bad idea but 5k gold this early in the game is nothing to sneeze at, plus he's usually cake when you actually have a way to keep him at range).
Then again, maybe I should do some other stuff first. Like get lost and wander into the Hobgoblin Trio of Death, Doom, and Despair. Whoops.
I switch the +1 Quarterstaff to Jaheira (since Grant Pix can actually score hits with his sling while Jaheira has better melee THAC0 right now thanks to being level 2/2) and have her hold the line while we kite the others down to size. Jaheira takes the Potion of Invulnerability, giving her 0 AC and much better saving throws (I was hoping to save that potion for later, but desperate times call for desperate measures). But it isn't enough.
After a bit of wandering and a lucky stray hit, we gather the needed materials and go to see the Wonderful Wizard of Grump.
This is the first time I've gotten the experience for this side quest in No Reload conditions - Imoen reaches level 2. Maybe I should play the lottery. But I really need to rest, and I want to get the scrolls I came out here to get before I do. It costs me 300, but I walk away with Blindness and Protection from Petrification. Still, not being able to take on Bassilus hurts, since now I almost have to deal with Greywolf just for the money. At least I can put that off until after dealing with Nimbul, since I don't really need Varscona given who else I plan to recruit.
I dump Imoen's points into Set Traps. She actually starts with enough Find Traps to handle the 3rd level of the Nashkel Mines, so I can put off raising her FT skill for a little while, and Thief Traps are a little too powerful in Unmodded. Returning Purdue's sword pushes Grant Pix over the threshold, and I guess this is as good a stopping point as any.
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Throne of Bhaal
Part 26
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901358/#Comment_901358
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901390/#Comment_901390
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901428/#Comment_901428
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901443/#Comment_901443
We finally enter Throne of Bhaal. And the second it begins, something absolutely ridiculous happens.
Count the digits in that XP figure.
The party just got 11 million XP.
There's actually a good explanation for this. When you arrive in ToB, the party gets an XP boost which depends on the party. It's supposed to get everyone up to 2.5 million XP if they're not already there. Seduced critters from SoA have barely any XP due to being seduced when they were level drained (Seduction grants XP based on level).
But Gorky and Frisky Bits both have a 200% XP modifier to compensate for an XP-cutting mod I accidentally installed, and therefore ended up with 5 million XP for both of them. Yet the Unseeing Eye also got 5 million XP, even though it had no such modifier.
Testing found that without those modifiers, they'd be at 2.5 million XP at most, including the Unseeing Eye. Without the XP-cutting mod to begin with, Gorky and Frisky Bits would have been at about 3 million XP at the beginning of ToB and 5 million at the end, instead of 5 million at the beginning and 6 million (say) at the end. It buys us a few extra spell slots.
It's too late to change it now, however, and it doesn't actually make much difference:
1. The Unseeing Eye already had 4 level 9 spell slots at level 20 (for some reason), and the spell slots are extraneous.
2. Frisky Bits doesn't actually do much of anything, like most of my main characters.
3. Gorky...
Well, you'll find out about Gorky soon enough.
Anyhoo, time to murdalize Illasera. Frisky Bits takes down her buffs with the Staff of the Magi, only to find that Illasera can fight back, seeing right through SotM invisibility.
[spoiler]
Shorn of their buffs and suffering from spell failure, Frisky Bits scurries away while the rest of the party zeros in on Illasera.
Since I don't want to spend Frisk's aura casting a PFMW spell that might easily fail, I have them drink a potion instead, buying them enough time for our Planetar to Heal them.
We wouldn't have had the Planetar if it weren't for the XP modifier, but we would have had it if we didn't have that stupid XP tax mod installed.
Within the round, Frisky Bits is out of range, while Illasera is surrounded and under massive pressure. She doesn't last long.
In the Pocket Plane, we have to face Jon-bon for the third time, plus Sarevok for the third time and Bodhi for the second time (which would have been the third if we didn't side with her in Chapter 3). Sarevok is helpless, Bodhi is unlucky, and Irenicus can't do much besides hide behind his defenses until time runs out.
We do throw out Dragon's Breath, which I'm not sure we would have had at the time, and it knocks out Jon-bon for 3 seconds a pop.
The saving throw has a -10 penalty, which Comet knocks the target out for 18 seconds and no save penalty.
We finally get to Saradush and can buy all the scrolls I've been missing out on, including Emotion: Hope, the one spell we know that we cannot create using the scroll creation mod thingy.
Notice that we still have a million gold. After duplicating so much crap in the pre-Chosen of Cyric days, I have no idea how much gold or how many potions I'm supposed to have. It actually saves me a lot of inventory management and thinking. And God knows I hate thinking about stuff.
Dragon's Breath turns out to be a bit of a bust, as the only vulnerable critters are non-mages and mage clones.
Debuffers are more effective, though it's an involved process, since SCS mages often have defensive Spell Triggers and you need high levels (bards and Inquisitors, really) to land Dispel or Remove Magic once SI: Abjuration is gone.
Honestly, I don't know why I bother. With the Staff of the Magi and PFMW, no mage is going to kill Frisky Bits. Nor is any mage going to kill Nizidramanii'yt. So far, every time we've failed to land debuffers, we just outlasted PFMW instead without actually suffering any deaths.
I attempt to seduce Tibbit in the Marching Mountains, since he's one of the few critters in the game with Called Shot, but he runs away before we can get him.
Inside the fire giant lair itself, Nizidramanii'yt lands the biggest hit of the run, largely thanks to the fact that our Alhoon can finally cast Emotion: Hope.
The main reason this is important is because the Alhoon is immune to level 1 to 5 spells, and cannot benefit from Emotion: Hope unless it's the caster. Learning the spell allowed it to get subzero saving throws like the rest of the party.
Upstairs, we have a red dragon to deal with alongside the fire giants. But if this party is good at anything, it's melee combat. Only Gorky gets in trouble, and that's just because I wasn't paying attention.
I don't know I bother buffing with so many Emotion: Hope spells, either. It's not like we need the extra damage output; we've got a freaking dragon on the team.
Though it is satisfying to see those higher damage values. And it certainly speeds things up.
Normally, I'd have a lot more screenshots to post, but this run is even simpler than my Fire Seed run. There aren't as many turning points or exciting changes in the fight when you've got a dragon in the party.
Which is not to say this run hasn't been fun. Because I've loved it. Nizidramanii'yt is killing fire giants with Soul Reaver. How cool is that?
We head north and confront Imix, who targets Gorky. Remember what I said about Gorky's extra HLAs not really mattering?
Yeah... Having Gorky get chunked isn't really a big loss for us. In fact, I'd already planned on replacing either him or the Balor.
Gorky joined us in the Nashkel mines and he's been with us ever since. But it doesn't even seem like a loss now that he's gone. He's been living in the shadow of the Unseeing Eye and various other critters for quite some time.
The run continues. Overwhelming force dominates gameplay, just like it has since we got Morentherene back in SoD.
Next up, Yaga-Shura himself. Who turns out to be a bit of a sissy.
His soldiers catch us by surprise, but a potion and the Staff of the Magi make sure that our primary mages don't have to worry about losing any Stoneskins.
The Balor can handle these guys. For all the talk about mages in SoA, ToB is very much a game of fighters.
But since I already have more spell slots than I really need...
...I may as well just clean up the map a little.
I don't know if Yaga-Shura returns on a timer or whether you have to walk across the bridge or something, so I just send Frisky Bits running around the map. The soldiers seem to spawn wherever they go.
Yaga-Shura eventually shows up next to the bridge. Nizidramanii'yt hurls the Dwarven Thrower at him, but Yaga-Shura takes scratch damage even from a heavily-buffed dragon's critical hit.
The giant's resistances are supposed to decrease over time, so I decrease the pressure on Yaga-Shura himself and turn our attention to his allies instead. Unfortunately, I don't work hard enough on the mage who spawned with him (phrasing), allowing him to Breach us with Wish.
But we have spare slots and start rebuilding our defenses, and occasionally pester the mage with light damage until eventually it runs out of Stoneskins.
Yaga-Shura very slowly begins to take more damage with each hit as his resistances go down.
But our APR is so ridiculously high that he's still at over 80% resistance when we finally hack away his 350 HP.
Two of the Five have fallen. We head to Amkethran, where Nizidramanii'yt is accused of stealing a tiny man's boots.
I love seeing people offering normal reactions to a party like ours.
Getting away with stealing people's boots fills us with determination.
Current party:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Balor, Fighter
Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Throne of Bhaal
Part 27
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901358/#Comment_901358
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901390/#Comment_901390
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901428/#Comment_901428
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901443/#Comment_901443
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901473/#Comment_901473
Draconis is troublesome, as always. Our attempts to debuff him are half-assed and ineffective, so we mostly just wait out his buffs.
Finally, Draconis transformatizes. Guess what?
Draconis is actually a dragon! Who would have guessed?
Anyway, we're going to seduce him.
We need extra spell slots to drain enough levels, so the Unseeing Eye uses Project Image to cast Energy Drain, making the clone kill itself so it can create a new one.
Frisky Bits also tries Wish-resting, and accidentally choosing the Horrid Wilting option. But thanks to the Cloak of Mirroring, only the rest of the party suffers horribly. Plus the genie.
Seducing Draconis is only a matter of time. Unlike other dragons, he is coded as a mage, which means he combines all of the absurd advantages of being a dragon with all of the absurd advantages of being a mage.
But it turns out that these are the most of his spell slots.
He's still a spectacular character. But it's not enough to justify bringing him into the party. I don't see how seducing him could possibly make sense when we're here to kill his father. More importantly, I can't stand Draconis' dumb name. I decide to kill him as planned. Nizidramanii'yt nibbles Draconis' ear until the dragon is dead.
We have to come back later, where we discover that two black dragons named Olinissimous and Zirimanat'ryl are angry that Draconis cheated on them with another black dragon named Nizidramanii'yt. We resurrect Draconis so he can defend himself against these allegations of infidelity and jungle dragon fever.
Draconis fails his Diplomacy check and his old lovers descend upon him. Ever the bottom, Draconis immediately fails a save against Dragon Fear, and Ollie Shimmershao and Ziggy Mini-Tail chase him around in circles.
Nizidramanii'yt gets bored of watching and decides to murder one of Draconis' old lovers in front of his very eyes. Meanwhile, Draconis himself is getting thrashed by Zimmizongers--and not in the good way, either.
Only a Heal spell keeps Draconis alive (he's actually pretty pathetic on his own), but we manage to kill Draconis' former boy toys, saving his life for now.
But then Oliver Simmons' secret girlfriend, Ithy'nassendra, shows up. She came here to kill the dragons that her old flame was cheating on her with, and when Itchy Nassendra sees that the perpetrators also killed Oliver Slobberface, the sheer anger causes her to vomit with rage all over Draconis.
Thus begins yet another violent threesome. But Itchy McBitchface is hopelessly outnumbered.
But then Itchy's secret boyfriend, Carnifex, shows up. He is even more furious, because Draconis once called him an idiot in an online flamewar, and now Carnifex wants to start a real one.
So we seduce Carnifex...
...and convince him to join the party on the condition that he gets to chomp on Draconis' delicious noggin. We have another dragon in the party! And he's even stronger than Nizidramanii'yt.
The only truly interesting fight in Abazigal's lair before Abazigal himself is the group of Death Tyrants and Tyrant Golems, who themselves are nothing more than beholders with the damage resistances of demiliches.
They aren't actually golems, so the Staff of Smiting cannot instantly kill them. All they are are beholders who take forever to kill.
We save Bondari the reloader, kill Bondari the reloader, and then part amicably with Bondari the reloader, netting us the Bronze Pantalettes and therefore the Big Metal Unit and the all-important Scorcher Ammunition. But I head to Abazigal first.
With Carnifex and Nizidramnii'yt in the party and with two copies of Abazigal's wife, Tamah, on the map, this is a five-dragon battle.
But with Improved Haste on both of our dragons plus the Alhoon and Balor, we have a huge advantage in damage output over the enemy, and soon demote Abazigal from bigamist to monogamist.
Tamah has a breath weapon that deals crushing damage, and the Alhoon gets caught off-guard, but the Alhoon never has to wait before it can cast its next spell.
Soon, Abazigal is alone.
It takes a few extra rounds, but we also put down the nearby drakes and salamanders. The Alhoon casts Black Blade of Disaster and the Unseeing Eye sends out a Project Image clone to renew our Improved Haste spells.
With Nizidramanii'yt's Soul Reaver crippling his THAC0, Abazigal can do nothing but watch as a balor, a mind flayer, and two dragons tear him apart.
We forge the BMU and get the Scorcher Ammunition and Big Metal Rod for the Unseeing Eye, who presumably uses the Hand of Vecna to hold the thing. I didn't realize it at the time, but to deal missile damage with the Scorcher Ammunition, you need a crossbow that deals some level of base damage, and the Big Metal Rod, the only crossbow usable by single-classed mages, has no such bonus. Frisk therefore only deals fire damage to Odamaron in Sendai's lair. It's still enough to disrupt some of his spells.
We waste a lot of rounds this way, including multiple Time Stop spells on both sides, but eventually I realize my mistake and give the Scorcher Ammunition to Carnifex, along with the Heavy Crossbow of Searing, which allows him to deal missile damage that will bypass Odamaron's resistances, chew through his Stoneskins, and kill him in moments.
We do the same to Ogremoch, though I again forget to use a proper crossbow to deal missile damage, while Diaytha can be crushed using melee weapons alone.
Carnifex is using an upgraded version of the Impaler that Cespenar gave us. It's basically just the Impaler, but with +1 APR and the option of using it as a missile weapon.
We try seducing the Hive Mother, since it is, like the Unseeing Eye and Elder Orbs, coded as a mage. Unfortunately, it has no assigned spell slots and is therefore useless to us.
We enter Sendai's final chamber and start smashing the statues. Some of the enemies are mages, but it seems that they, too, suffer from targeting issues due to the way SCS makes magic attacks work. They lose a Ruby Ray of Reversal spell that gets wastes on a dragon with no spell protections to remove.
The enemy hits pretty hard, but we hit a lot harder.
None of the statues have ironclad defenses. All of them can be broken down.
Notice Carnifex using the Flail of Ages +5. Another unnecessary boost to the party's strength.
Even a mage with Improved Mantle isn't safe, because we've forged Pitchwife, a silly +5 combination of Gnasher and Blackblood.
Eventually, the real Sendai appears. She's a cleric/mage at over 6 million XP with all the HLAs she could want.
But she doesn't deal a single point of damage before the Alhoon smashes through her Stoneskins and Improved Mantle.
Then we land a Breach, and her last line of defense is gone.
Time to visit Balthazar! Although most of our party members are evil, Frisky Bits themself is good-aligned, has 20 reputation, and easily has the stats to convince Balthazar to fight alongside us.
Before Melissan, we have to take care of the Pocket Plane trials, which I usually don't bother to complete until I've dealt with the Five. It seems that beating the Chosen of Cyric in Chapter 6 actually has an impact on the original Chosen of Cyric fight in the Pocket Plane.
We don't have to fight any more of his faithful; he just talks a bit and goes away.
Last is the Ravager. But...
This normally challenging fight is really not a problem for us. Ours is a melee-heavy party that excels in brute force, low-magic fights like the Ravager.
One of my mods changes the leadup to Melissan a bit. She appeared earlier in Balthazar's monastery, fought us, and "died," and we also have a new fight in the grove near Suldannessellar. Basically, it's just a bunch of random demons. The only interesting threat is the Fallen Solar, who is just as strong as the Fallen Solars you see at the Throne of Bhaal fight.
Notice that the Balor has donned the Big Metal Unit, as it is just slightly strong than full plate mail on the balor and it won't increase the size of his circle. We chat with Balthazar one last time.
There is nothing left but Melissan and the throne. It is time to bring this to an end.
We are filled with determination.
Final party:
Frisky Bits, Seducer/Mage
Carnifex, Fighter
Nizidramanii'yt, Fighter
Unseeing Eye, Mage
Balor, Fighter
Alhoon, Mind Flayer Fighter/Mage
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901222/#Comment_901222
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901259/#Comment_901259
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901375/#Comment_901375
In the catacombs haste and slow allowed Biff to out-manoeuvre the phase spiders rather than just by-passing them invisibly. He did leave alone the dopplegangers, but he had a go at Prat's group with the usual web + blind tactics. Only Sakul and Tam were blinded initially, but some summons helped run interference as Biff struck down Bor. After summons soaked up Prat's spells a first use of darts of stunning helped Biff deal with Prat, but when Biff attempted to do the same to Sakul and Tam some phase spiders teleported in. Dealing with about 5 of those dragged other spiders in and a slight mistake at one point led to Biff being poisoned - he hastily used a green scroll to avoid death there as the chances of resting in time were very limited. Eventually though the spiders were dead and Biff was able to go back to finish off Sakul and Tam before webbing and blinding the basilisks.
Back in the City Slythe was another stunning victim, while summons occupied Krystin until Biff could safely engage her.
At the palace the doppleganger mage was charmed along with some of the Flaming Fist guards before Biff rested. A teleport field scroll was followed by spirit armor for Belt to keep him going for a round or two while Biff turned Liia invisible and used malison and chaos scrolls. Once Belt died the dopplegangers were at a bit of a loss and Biff was able to wear them down with the Flaming Fist and finish them off himself. I turned autopause: enemy in sight on to avoid the possibility of being surprised by the doppleganger mage transforming and a number of charmed nobles and summons then caused him to use up spells before Biff came in for the finish (having used a first potion of regeneration to ensure HPs were maximised).
Biff worked his way through the inhabitants of the maze, but was a bit lucky against the third skeleton warrior, which got worn down quicker than expected and could potentially have been killed by a summons rather than Biff when both attacked almost together in the final moments. Deciding that called for a night's sleep I saved the game there.
After using his surplus cash on recharging a few wands, Biff went into the Undercity - but left the party there untouched in favour of quickly getting to grips with Sarevok. As is quite often the case by the time a run gets to this point I felt reluctant to fail here and just started using 'risk-free' tactics:
- going invisible in a corner to drag Sarevok, Semaj, Diarmid and Tazok together.
- using a potion of magic shielding to tempt Angelo out of hiding and invisibility to wait out his buffs (not using summons due to the possibility of them being scared or confused and activating the other enemies). He was then paralysed by wand and beaten up before summons helped out with the resulting skeleton warrior.
- waited a bit longer until Diarmid's protection from magic scroll had run out and then bombarded with fireballs to kill Semaj and Tazok. One of their replacement skeleton warriors took damage and came out to fight and was also killed with the help of summons.
And at this point I realised it was still too early in the morning and I wasn't thinking clearly. The rules of the run are that Biff's party are not allowed to kill anyone except through his own melee attacks - and I'd just killed Tazok and Semaj with fireballs ...
I suppose you could argue that they're not really dead until their skeleton warrior replacements have gone, but that's a very poor argument, so Biff will have to try again at some point in the future.
After the untimely end for Biff's run I didn't want to go back to Candlekeep with him immediately, so decided to try a new character - though with a similar theme. I have in the past tried a run where a fighter was only allowed to kill enemies with Brage's berserking sword. I can't remember if I've completed BG1 like that, but I've certainly gone a long way in a basic BGT installation. However, I'm planning to use the same SCS installation as with Biff this time and can't see any way in which a fighter could be successful against Sarevok using that restriction.
Hence I've created Bash as a fighter / mage, restricted in that he can never be responsible for enemy deaths except through using the berserking sword. The additional options given by spells should make progress for him relatively easy for much of the game, though I can think of several fights where he could be in trouble - but we'll see.
I'd been rolling his character for about half an hour without ever getting a total score above 86 and was thinking about settling for that - when this one popped up
Bash had an unfortunate childhood. He's supposedly a half-elf, but his appearance suggests the possibility that perhaps his mother lay under the wrong blanket at one point. From an early age he was teased mercilessly by other children and his personality has warped under the strain. At this point it's a toss-up whether he will be thrown out of Candlekeep before storming off by himself. He has a huge amount of rage pent-up inside him and is just searching for the right tool that could let it out ...
@Grond0 I enjoyed your Biff run. I'm wondering if I will meet with doppelganger mages in my run. I have no idea what effect some of my mods will have which certainly makes things interesting. It's like a brand new game.
Bash looks more like a half-dwarf, so I get your point regarding blankets and side thereof.
Previous updates:
The restriction on Bash only relates to killing - so he was able to beat a nobleman unconscious in order to steal his ring.
He travelled straight down to find Brage and drew him away from his cousin as usual.
Next, Biff returned to the Crossroads to find Imoen - by this time he'd learnt LMD as a Bhaal power and that provided a good means to annoy Immy (to prevent her joining the party) before the big sword lashed out.
North again, Bash dealt with some hobgoblins at the FAI before going on to the ankheg area. I was aiming to position against the fishermen such that Bash wouldn't be drawn towards the ankhegs while berserking. That was good in theory, but could have gone wrong when he attacked one of the chickens - fortunately he recovered control after that was killed before following any of the other chickens into dangerous territory.
Bash gave Tenya back her bowl to get a first level up.
Sleep helped with the gnolls at High Hedge as well before tackling Karlat. There were various elements of danger there as, though no-one else was visible when Bash triggered the fight, Perdue does wander round. However, Bash got away with it after successfully blinding Karlat while he was approaching (and putting his armor back on immediately). That meant Karlat needed a critical to hit and he only got one of those. When Karlat's morale broke things could also have turned nasty (at least as far as reputation goes
In the Cloud Peaks, Bash used Algernon's Cloak for the first time to draw Sendai's archer companions away from her - the XP there giving him another fighter level.
Fighter 3 / Mage 3, 31 HPs, 39 kills
Frisky Bits: A "Solo" Seducer in Throne of Bhaal
Part 28
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900164/#Comment_900164
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900364/#Comment_900364
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900440/#Comment_900440
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900689/#Comment_900689
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900912/#Comment_900912
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900928/#Comment_900928
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900951/#Comment_900951
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/900997/#Comment_900997
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901002/#Comment_901002
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901189/#Comment_901189
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901215/#Comment_901215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901358/#Comment_901358
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901390/#Comment_901390
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901428/#Comment_901428
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901443/#Comment_901443
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901473/#Comment_901473
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/901475/#Comment_901475
I am playing Insane mode without XP or damage bonuses, which means two Fallen Solars appear right off the bat. With +5 arrows that dispel magic at level 22, deal 2d6+4 mage damage, and remove specific protections up to level 6, spell protections up to level 6, and illusionary protections up to level 8, their arrows mean death for essentially anyone who needs dispellable defenses to stay afloat. We therefore use our dragons to block off both Fallen Solars while our mages use the only spell that makes any sense for mages to use unless they're level 27 or higher.
Once again, I fail to consider the problem of Cloud of Bats, but otherwise Bodhi isn't a big deal because of her lack of mage defenses.
Frisky Bits is running away from a Fallen Solar's Creeping Doom spell to buy enough time to cast SI: Conjuration. Our fighters hurry to kill the Fallen Solars before they cause any more trouble.
Irenicus lands a Time Stop, but makes no progress on our party. Frisky Bits needs to re-cast PFMW, and stays on the run because their movement rate still isn't high enough for them to cast SI: Conjuration (which requires just under 3 seconds) before the slow-moving Creeping Doom projectile hits them. Meanwhile, our fighters crush the Fallen Solars.
Irenicus becomes vulnerable and suffers heavy damage, but somehow manages to survive many direct hits. But eventually he casts PFMW, improving his defenses but still leaving him vulnerable to nonmagical weapons.
The fights around the pools are really nothing special. They're just bands of demons, and while their stats are high and they lots of magic resistance and such, the only ones with mage defenses are Mariliths with their PFMW spells. But they have no spell protections to hold off a Breach.
The pools rest the party after activating each one, which means we can cast lots of spells before the big fight. We layer lots of Emotion: Hope spells on the party (though with Remove Magic factoring in the equation, the bonuses are really only important for the Alhoon), summon multiple Planetars, and cast a few Skull Traps close to Illasera before finally casting our second most important spell: SI: Abjuration, the only thing that will keep us safe from high-level Remove Magic spells.
Fully buffed, our party has incredible stats across the board, even though our dragons and Balor will probably lose most of their bonuses very quickly.
The Unseeing Eye's Skull Traps trigger gradually during the following dialogue, wounding Illasera (a major concern due to her dispelling arrows with spell failure) and Gromnir (the least concern).
Our mages open with PFMW, which apparently ran out during the dialogue. Sendai is a high-priority target with massive defenses whom I've heard can heal the enemy as an area-effect. Due to Item Randomizer, we only have a single Protection from Magic scroll, so we will use it on Sendai while leaving Abazigal alone.
To the east, Carnifex loses all of his defenses to Illasera's arrows, and because Gromnir is getting in the way, needs to use the Impaler, upgraded to a throwing spear, to harm Illasera. Over to the west, Nizidramanii'yt is slaughtering Sendai's Fallen Deva (summoned via a Chain Contingency), because we want to get rid of extraneous enemies before we kill any of the Five. Once one of the Five goes down, Melissan will appear, and we don't want that to happen quite yet.
Because we didn't have a Protection from Magic for him, Abazigal is free to stop time, allowing him and Balthazar to land automatic hits.
Abazigal has huge damage output and high APR, and our Balor has no PFMW, forcing it to rely on its meager 40% damage resistance (I should have tried to use Wish Hardiness before hand) to survive during Time Stop. It's not remotely enough, and Abazigal chunks it.
But Time Stop ends, and we take down the first of the Five.
Melissan appears. She's the biggest threat of all, but she can be briefly knocked out by killing one of the Five. It's usually best to try to kill them in rapid sequence (which means you should deal plenty of damage to each of the Five before killing any of them) so that you can stun-lock Melissan for the first few moments of combat. We start with Gromnir, who is already close to death.
Sarevok is also at Near Death thanks to our Alhoon.
Somehow, Nizidramanii'yt manages to kill Yaga-Shura, who was recently at full health, before Carnifex or the Alhoon kill Gromnir or Sarevok.
Then the game crashes for some reason. I always hated when it does this; it ruins immersion and makes the final battle much more stressful.
I am impatient, so once I kill Jon-bon, Bodhi, and the Fallen Solars again using the conventional method (since they're actually a threat), I don't bother with the demons at the pools. They're no danger to us anyway.
We proceed much the same as before, though for some reason Abazigal fails to kill anyone during his Time Stop.
Illasera goes down and Melissan appears. We then turn our attention to Gromnir and Sarevok...
...and discover that, somehow, Melissan can deal physical damage to the Unseeing Eye despite its Stoneskins. The damage must come from Melissan's Globe of Blades, since the Unseeing Eye has PFMW active, but I have no idea how she could possibly deal slashing damage to a character who still has Stoneskins.
This time, Nizidramnii'yt focuses on Sarevok instead of Yaga-Shura, and both Sarevok and Gromnir quickly fall, knocking out Melissan twice in succession.
We then turn to Abazigal and Yaga-Shura, ignoring Sendai because she has no offensive power to speak of. We can get past Abazigal's PFMW using normal weapons.
Abazigal and Melissan take down the Alhoon's Stoneskins because I've neglected to re-cast PFMW on it.
I have it cast Stoneskin, but due to the way Improved Alacrity works, the Alhoon can't drink a healing potion for another 6 seconds, which means I need to send it away for a moment to buy time. Meanwhile, the Unseeing Eye restores our Balor's Improved Haste so we can try to kill Abazigal and therefore knock out Melissan again.
Abazigal's defenses hold strong, so Yaga-Shura is the first to fall.
Abazigal summons a Fallen Planetar as his Stoneskins run out, and a Fallen Solar that I've somehow overlooked casts Creeping Doom.
Abazigal goes down... but Melissan somehow casts Time Stop, even though Abazigal's death ostensibly should have disrupted her spell.
Frisky Bits' PFMW has just run out. I hadn't been refreshing it; it wore off partway through Melissan's Time Stop.
My heart goes cold. I know what's coming next.
Melissan has an attack that's almost impossible to survive, a Time Stop followed by Teleport Without Error to Charname and then Greater Whirlwind Attack, more than enough to cut through the maximum number of Stoneskins and kill practically any character while you're helpless to stop it. There are only three defenses against it:
1. Protection from Magical Weapons (or Absolute Immunity, which is really no stronger in this fight)
2. Focus, the innate ability you gain from one of the pools, which grants 30 seconds of immunity to Time Stop and can be cast once every 60 seconds
3. Extremely high damage resistance, about 80% or higher.
But I haven't kept up Frisky Bits' PFMW spells, I didn't use Focus because I didn't hear Melissan casting Time Stop, and I failed to stack Hardiness spells with Wish (the only remaining method of stacking Hardiness in EE).
Sure enough, Melissan teleports all the way across the map to Frisky Bits.
All I can do is watch and hope that Time Stop will run out early. But it doesn't.
Frisky Bits dies.
I don't want it to end like this, so I go back and fight Melissan again, giving us our first reload of the entire run. This time, I have Frisky Bits cast PFMW constantly, and though we lose the Alhoon and suffer terribly because I neglect the rest of the party's defenses, we eventually bring down Melissan.
But this is no longer a no-reload run. Despite all our efforts, Frisky Bits died because I failed to pay attention to their defenses.
The cause is clear. I spent so much time focusing on maximizing the party's offensive powers that I broke my most productive habit.
In nearly every other run, I design my strategy on how to keep Charname alive at all costs. Rather than focusing on how I can beat the enemy, I identify all the ways that Charname could possibly die and then patch the holes in our defenses, ensuring that even if we struggle at every step of the way to win each fight, we cannot actually lose.
But with two dragons, a Balor, an Alhoon, and the Unseeing Eye, we had so much offensive power that I started neglecting Frisky Bits' defenses. Why bother worrying about what the enemy could do to Frisky Bits when we always crush the enemy within a few rounds?
That was my mistake. I entered with the wrong strategy and got Frisky Bits killed because I had too much confidence in the party's damage output.
I'm not sure I'm willing to start all over again just to finally complete a solo no-reload tetralogy run, which so far has yet to be done. Would it really be worth the trouble just to be able to say we got it done without reloading?
But I stew for a day, and my outlook changes. I might not be willing to start all over in Candlekeep--I've already beaten BG1, SoD, and most of BG2 (the hardest parts, really, considering our growth over time) twice with a solo Seducer--but I am willing to start all over in ToB, just to complete this run as a proper no-reload run.
I load up my first save in ToB and get started. We are filled with determination.