Just found that Osric's innate spells aren't working. Tried using Shadowkeeper but that doesn'r work. I may give my Berserker another whirl if I can't sort it out.
isn't he a fighter/cleric? are you talking about bhaul powers... and its the orc I like best but the dwarf is good as well mate
He is a Fighter/Battleguard of Tempus courtesy of a mod that allows multi-classes to have a kit. I think 9 is the maximum number of them that you can create. It means a fresh installation every time that you run out of combinations. However that mod is not working properly probably due to mod conflicts. I have Fighter/Ceric of Torm, Fighter/Cleric of Tempus, and Fighter/Cleric of Talos as 3 of my 9 choices. The Fighter/Cleric of Talos combination is working fine, but when I went into Shadowkeeper, I discovered that there are 3 Battleguard of Tempus kits. That is probably the reason for my problems. I will have to discover where they all came from before my next installation.
Isn't there a version of SCS modified by Kreso- Aasim available which takes account of Spell Revisions? Or is it not quite up to date?
Yes, there is one, based on SCS v30. I'm using it in my current setup. DavidW appeared some time ago and mentioned something about a new version of SCS coming someday. And then has vanished again... Spell Revisions (like Item Revisions too) are also still on Beta state (even though it's quite stable), but it has some kind of a 'problem' - the constant change/tweaking of things... Now even more with @Aasim (Kreso) working on it, who has his own ideas, which stir things even further... Don't take me wrong - I have my eternal gratitude to all involved in creating and maintaining those wonderful mods but having a 'constant work-in-progress mod' might get frustrated. So personally I wouldn't count too much on having 'up to date' version anytime soon. I'm pretty happy with the version I use in my setup though and enough is as good as a feast.
CorEE II the dwarven cleric and his band of dwarves and Safana - FINAL Update!
The party made it out of the SoD dungeon. And we made it to the that first forest area. However, we were utterly slaughtered by the party at the bridge. I have no idea how I could have improved what I did.
Was thinking of doing a solo run, will get to that.
Well I rolled up a solo thief, but he bit the dust quick - he tried to kill Shoal early, but a wolf got into the fray and one-shotted Corthief XII. Apparently EE doesn't implement the level 1 protection the original had.
Not to be daunted, rolled up Corthief XIII - he will have a party to help him though. Will try to keep it small (4 man), to try to help with the leveling.
Rather than beginning at the beginning, I'd like to start this update with the highlight of the quest. Indeed, the highlight of the run.
This is Mr. Efreeti chunking Mae'Var's bartender, Gorch, with an uppercut scimitar slash.
It's moments like this that bring me back to this game, again and again, year after year. My real life is pretty unreal. I travel and adventure full time. Seeing the wonders of the world, hiking thousands of miles each season, I am in a constant state of awe. But when, I ask you, would I ever have a chance to watch a magical djinni pop a fat gangster like a plump and puffy meat ballon? Again, I ask you.
Ok. Let's turn to the quest.
In college I had a roommate who'd get so drunk that she'd sleep through fire alarms. I think of her every time I complete the Mistress Ada quest. I also think of Phlydia and what a crook she is. I mean, if 49000 xp is the going rate for a delivery quest, where did she get off giving me 50 xp and a rock?
Don't mind me. I'm just a halfling busting up all your training equipment...
Rayic Gethras
My characters usually over-buff for this, running 100% cold and fire resistance. Aestica just ran Ilbratha MI and 50% fire via Potion of Fire Resistance. That worked well enough, although she did take damage.
Due to its slow immunity effect, the Sword of Arvoreen is Aestica's favorite golem fighting weapon- when she can us it, that is. Aestica likes stone golems.
Now for the Cowled himself. The buffs were Shield, RoAC II and Ilbratha MI. We're wearing the BoIB and the the Boots of Grounding. We have Harmony and the Reflex at our side. We have a fully stocked potion case and tactical ammo for days. Let's do this.
Ray takes his pre-buffs and opens with Mantle. We don't have Everard yet, so he has 4 rounds to work with.
Remove is a sensible call. Teleport Field is a waste against the range fighting Aestica. The clock on Mantle is ticking. Mr. Efreeti is dropped in the hope that he might command Rayic's attention for at least one of the remaining rounds. He does. Shield is reapplied.
Rayic's final round of Mantle is used on Chain Lightning. Aestica counters with a Potion of Insulation, complementing her Boots of Grounding. You get nothing from me.
Mantle has expired. In comes the tactical ammo. Disruption galore.
Kudos to Rayic for getting off a single spell, Monster Summoning, in between arrows. And double-kudos for landing a last second MMM, avoiding the shutout.
Mae'Var
Mae'Var was overmatched here. Standard renewable buffs + Potion of Hill Giant Strength. Went for the cleric first in order to lessen Divination risk
With the cleric gone and Mae'Var attempting a backstab, we switched to the Reflex and went to work on the lackeys.
Mae'Var finally lands a backstab, but it's a dud. Somebody give this man a +2 short sword and a strength buff.
Out of invisibility charges, Mae'Var settled in for a toe-to-toe exchange. DUHM.
Aestica broke the situation down for him: "Pop quiz, Mae'Var: I'm a level 16 fighter with a buffed strength of 24 and an effective AC of -18; you're a mage/thief with a tapped book and minimal buffs. You're wielding an unenchanted short sword; I'm wielding the Flail of Ages. What, then, is going to happen to you?" Mae'var didn't get it at first, but after the first Ages wallop landed, he did.
@ussnorway I'd done the spiders near the bear in session 7, am past the spiders which have a beetle problem if that was what you were referring to.
@Corey_Russell I would view SoD similar to learning no-reload for the other games. What seems frustrating and impossible at first becomes much easier once you find some tactics that work for you (a few of our multiplayer runs ended at that point).
Blaggerd's cautious(ish) run. Siege of Dragonspear Update 1234567 8
A brief update as Blaggerd may not re-appear for a while. After tracking down a bear for Helvdar a group of orogs spot the party and think they are easy prey having not healed up recently. M'Khiin calls up lightning while Neera uses a well-placed fireball, and Corwin guns survivors down at an alarming rate. Blaggerd barely gets his sword in.
A room full of shadows is found, and with the party still not having healed up Blaggerd is concerned to see a pair of greater shadows and an undead guardian. Not to worry.
The Underground River entrance is explored, Blaggerd choosing to pay off a group of goblins much to the disgust of M'Khiin. All that is left in this area are the enemies guarding the entrance to the underground river, some newly-befriended ogres and the two druids who we have cut free.
Apparently EE doesn't implement the level 1 protection the original had.
It should be implemented (at least it works for me). If it doesn't work, there must be a reason. Can you reproduce the issue and report in on support.baldursgate.com , please?
@Corey_Russell I would view SoD similar to learning no-reload for the other games. What seems frustrating and impossible at first becomes much easier once you find some tactics that work for you (a few of our multiplayer runs ended at that point).
But that's my problem. I don't know what I could have done different. Silences did not work, hold persons did not work, we did enrage, but that didn't help, our melee and ranged attacks were useless (don't think we were able to kill a single one of the enemy party), and we had no time to lay snares/traps. As I said, I have no idea what I should/can do differently. At least in BG 1, if I failed a fight, I had an idea what to do differently. I have no idea in this one. We were even all dwarves (except Safana) to help with saves, but even that did not help.
If people have advice on that fight, I'd appreciate it, else will probably skip SoD - this party was optimized for SoD and it didn't even come close.
I'm not sure the wish breach vs. spell shield is a bug.
Neither am I. There's a lack of clarity here.
Up until v21, Spell Shield still protected against Wish, even the SCS version, and it (usually, ~7/8 times) worked as per description: it intercepted the incoming attack and collapsed. It was only when David switched to the Spell Revision version of Spell Shield that Spell Shield stopped intercepting Wish. Was this David's intention? Possibly, but given the way the new Spell Shield is coded, requiring patches for new spells, or requiring spells to be patched for the new Spell Shield, it's entirely possible that a patch was just missed. This did occur with other lesser used spells, like the version of Breach found in the Wands of Spell Striking. The Wish Spell Shield interaction may be another example. Additionally, there is substantial evidence that David hadn't taken full account of the differences between the original Spell Shield and the new one as of v30, including the fact that his script behaves unreasonably in relation to it when it is run alongside spell protections, due to the fact that it does not sit atop protections, like the old Spell Shield did, and as the script assumes. Spell Shield is in need of attention, and the Wish-Spell Shield dynamic is amongst the matters that should be evaluated.
Irrespective of intent, which is unclear, I can say that I'd prefer to play with the pre-SR Spell Shield Spell Shield/Wish dynamic, the pre-v21 dynamic.
I'd also suggest that if the change was intentional, it merited a mention in the read me. Back on the Bioware forums, one of our players, Golden28, lost a character because of this.
Apparently EE doesn't implement the level 1 protection the original had.
It should be implemented (at least it works for me). If it doesn't work, there must be a reason. Can you reproduce the issue and report in on support.baldursgate.com , please?
Well, I'm not sure of the APR of the wolf in that area. If it gets 2 APR then maybe nothing's wrong. If it only gets 1 though, then at least the level 1 protection is not consistent. Incidentally, in my new run (Corthief XII), Imoen got hit with a kobold arrow while she was level 1 in an ambush and it dropped her to 1 HP - so it worked in that case. Not sure why it didn't work against the wolf.
Also, even in the original BG 1, the level 1 protection did not ALWAYS work, but usually did.
Isn't there a version of SCS modified by Kreso- Aasim available which takes account of Spell Revisions? Or is it not quite up to date?
Yes, there is one, based on SCS v30. I'm using it in my current setup.
....
I am immensely interested in this, once it becomes stable. **IF** the AI mages also are scripted to make use of the new SR spells. (I only play on terms of what the AI can do, for the sake of fairness.)
So, basically, I hope for seeing a mage paralyze me with:
I am immensely interested in this, once it becomes stable. **IF** the AI mages also are scripted to make use of the new SR spells. (I only play on terms of what the AI can do, for the sake of fairness.)
It is stable (I've not experienced any issues so far). It's just *work-in-progress* which might last *forever*. And yes, AI mages are scripted to make use of the new SR spells. Enemy Conjurers even have some monsters summoned as a part of their pre-buffs.
I am immensely interested in this, once it becomes stable. **IF** the AI mages also are scripted to make use of the new SR spells. (I only play on terms of what the AI can do, for the sake of fairness.)
It is stable (I've not experienced any issues so far). It's just *work-in-progress* which might last *forever*. And yes, AI mages are scripted to make use of the new SR spells. Enemy Conjurers even have some monsters summoned as a part of their pre-buffs.
Awesome.
Could you point to a sequence of links and an idiot-proof install guide if at all possible.
@Corey_Russell I would view SoD similar to learning no-reload for the other games. What seems frustrating and impossible at first becomes much easier once you find some tactics that work for you (a few of our multiplayer runs ended at that point).
But that's my problem. I don't know what I could have done different. Silences did not work, hold persons did not work, we did enrage, but that didn't help, our melee and ranged attacks were useless (don't think we were able to kill a single one of the enemy party), and we had no time to lay snares/traps. As I said, I have no idea what I should/can do differently. At least in BG 1, if I failed a fight, I had an idea what to do differently. I have no idea in this one. We were even all dwarves (except Safana) to help with saves, but even that did not help.
If people have advice on that fight, I'd appreciate it, else will probably skip SoD - this party was optimized for SoD and it didn't even come close.
Hey,
There's an easy way to deal with this fight that I've recently discovered. The first thing to note is that this fight is on a timer - after a certain number of rounds, it will stop and a cutscene will start instead. After the cutscene, the fight is over, so your party will be safe. Basically, all you have to do is to survive until the cutscene starts. A way to achieve this is by starting the battle with your entire party invisible (there is an invisibilty 10' radius scroll in the starting dungeon, so just use that spell before entering the general area around the bridge). Now, one of the enemy spellcaster does have a single divination spell, so all I had to do was disrupt this one cast with a single party member (I used a wand charge to make sure I would hit right away) and turn this character invisible again (I just used the invisibilty spell while protected by stoneskins, but a potion would be even safer). This way, you should be able to wait until the timer is over.
Alternatively, in a party of 6, having everyone throw a fireball at once right away (via potions, necklace charges or wands) should kill or severely weaken all of the enemies in most cases. This strategy honestly works for most of the difficult fights in SoD. Combinations of greater malison + web/slow/chaos might also be helpful.
Could you point to a sequence of links and an idiot-proof install guide if at all possible.
(I am running Mac/Steam.)
I'm not on Mac so can't comment on that. For my current setup I've used BigWorldSetup and it make sure all is installed in proper order. The link to Revised SCS is here. You might get some answers there. And check readme file for on MacOS installation and installation order with other mods (I just don't know which ones you might want to use). I also strongly recommend to use Item Revisions in conjunction with Spell Revisions or you might get some weird issues (fighting SR Basilisks without Pro vs Petrification and some items/spells not working as you are used to is not a fun, especially in no-reload run).
But that's my problem. I don't know what I could have done different. Silences did not work, hold persons did not work, we did enrage, but that didn't help, our melee and ranged attacks were useless (don't think we were able to kill a single one of the enemy party), and we had no time to lay snares/traps. As I said, I have no idea what I should/can do differently. At least in BG 1, if I failed a fight, I had an idea what to do differently. I have no idea in this one. We were even all dwarves (except Safana) to help with saves, but even that did not help.
If people have advice on that fight, I'd appreciate it, else will probably skip SoD - this party was optimized for SoD and it didn't even come close.
I'm far from an expert in SoD - there's lots of content I've never seen and I've only completed it in multi-player holding on desperately to Gate70s coat-tails. However, I feel I'm getting to grips with it to a certain extent and I've played it enough to reach some tentative conclusions: - SoD enemies are generally far more dangerous when attacking than in BG1. Numerous enemies have special abilities, such as fear, hold, called shot, invisibility etc and they use them much more intelligently than in BG1. That means that if you're used to playing a mainly defensive game and picking off enemies through kiting you're going to struggle. - while offensive abilities have been greatly enhanced, defensive ones have hardly been touched, so most enemies are not particularly hard to kill (at least on core). Therefore, to use a sporting metaphor "get your retaliation in first". If you disable or kill them quickly they can't do the same to you.
In relation to that specific encounter:
As Gate70 said you can approach it much more effectively by using meta-game knowledge. You have two main routes: 1) Aim to avoid combat in the knowledge that Caelar will call for a parley soon - so retreat, go invisible etc. 2) Take the offensive in order to kill the opposition and loot their bodies. In a party you could for instance throw in several fireballs to kill many of the enemies. If you know the battle is coming you can also pre-buff with potions (many SoD enemies use potions) and call out a few summons to soak up attacks. You are unlikely to kill them all before the parley begins, but you do have a window of opportunity to attack again after it concludes (when the former enemies are neutral).
Thanks for your input @Enuhal and @Grond0 ! I have a few comments in response:
Enuhal said...
There's an easy way to deal with this fight that I've recently discovered. The first thing to note is that this fight is on a timer - after a certain number of rounds, it will stop and a cutscene will start instead. After the cutscene, the fight is over, so your party will be safe. Basically, all you have to do is to survive until the cutscene starts. A way to achieve this is by starting the battle with your entire party invisible (there is an invisibilty 10' radius scroll in the starting dungeon, so just use that spell before entering the general area around the bridge). Now, one of the enemy spellcaster does have a single divination spell, so all I had to do was disrupt this one cast with a single party member (I used a wand charge to make sure I would hit right away) and turn this character invisible again (I just used the invisibilty spell while protected by stoneskins, but a potion would be even safer). This way, you should be able to wait until the timer is over.
Alternatively, in a party of 6, having everyone throw a fireball at once right away (via potions, necklace charges or wands) should kill or severely weaken all of the enemies in most cases. This strategy honestly works for most of the difficult fights in SoD. Combinations of greater malison + web/slow/chaos might also be helpful.
I have several comments in response: 1) We did NOT have a mage, so all mage based tactics were not available 2) We did NOT have enough invisibility potions for the whole party 3) We died AFTER the cutscene (that is, the battle continued) 4) We could have thrown fireballs right away, though they were pretty close, so would have been tricky. Guess could reload and see if that works. 5) Grondo also mentioned fireballs - guess I can reload and see if that's enough. He also mentions prebuffing with potions before hand, I can try that too. He also mentioned also I just have to survive until parley, but again we were all killed AFTER the parley.
If you were killed after the parley I guess that's because you continued hostilities and sent them hostile again. Try loading it up again so you can see how it works. I just did that fight earlier today and used 3 fireballs right at the start. With the help of that only 1 enemy survived until the parley started (and he was killed after it finished).
Most of the prologue dungeon was no problem, but I did carelessly trigger a trap at one point that sent 4 of the monks fleeing in terror.
That meant starting a battle with one group of mercenaries at something of a disadvantage, but the archers died quickly and none of the others did much damage. I seemed to remember Korlasz having fire protection, so he got a round of magic missiles instead, along with a first use of the Ring of Energy - that combination did just enough to convince him to give up. He was killed anyway before he disappeared, but the monks got no XP for that (presumably on the basis that cutting short a potential quest should be discouraged).
The monks didn't explore further as I don't know the traps in there well enough to judge the likelihood of fatalities.
In the City, stripping some NPCs of their valuables (as they didn't need them any more) funded a bit of shopping - picking up Bracers of Perseverance and Sidestep Slippers as they are monk specific items. Safana also provided a 4th Necklace of Missiles to the party. The only real fighting done was showing Sethyl that magic resistance is no help against a monk's stunning blows.
Out in the country the monks immediately travelled to the Coast Way Forest to ensure that bit of content was not lost. Helping the vampire there netted the monks the Trollblood Ioun Stone (a regeneration item, which is particularly useful for me as I don't use healing items).
An ambush area on the way back had some orcs and trolls and the monks tried to follow the trolls through a pool, but couldn't see where they were going. That could have been very annoying as the +2 Firefly sling is a good fit for this party, but fortunately (and it was fortunate) I hadn't got around to selling a ring of infravision and was able to get downstairs. Collecting the sling still presented a problem or two, particularly when Spectre was paralysed and it took an awfully long time for an attacking troll to realise it was supposed to be unconscious.
Back at the Coast Way Crossing the monks stumbled across a mirror in a burnt-out building that will supplement Spirit's identification abilities nicely. Her existing high intelligence will also allow her to use a golem statue without resorting to potions. Don't tell Corey, but I started the encounter at the bridge accidentally when talking to Herod who'd previously run a bit north away from some bandits. However, 3 fireballs at the start of the contest proved about right and the monks managed to kill everyone except Barrachus before the parlay started (and he didn't last long thereafter).
The monks cleared the remaining exterior of the area (relying on free action against the spiders) and then ventured inside the dwarven cave. They had an early problem there when Phantom was scouting and was affected by a mummy's fear aura the instant he opened a door.
Annoyingly, despite being scared he refused to actually run away from the enemies and even producing a stone golem wasn't enough to save him. All the dwarven clerics refused to help, so the party went back to camp to find Mizhena (they can use raise dead scrolls, but should probably save those for occasions when a cleric is not easily available). Coming back again I tried to avoid using too many resources, but Phantom was once more sent running in terror by a mummy, while Spectre was paralysed by a bone bat. With the enemies actively targeting disabled characters - even to the extent of dodging round melee attackers - it's really difficult to save them (and once more I couldn't).
The remaining enemies were quickly dealt with before another visit to Mizhena to ask if she deals in BOGOFs. Another undead group was handled without problems and the next one also seemed to be going well when most of the dangerous enemies fell for minor damage. However, the last of the bone bats paralysed Spectre, causing me to attack the last few undead more vigorously than I otherwise would have done. Phantom chose not to retreat when taken down to 30 HPs and was hit for a critical - for 30 HPs.
Finances took a further battering with another 800 gold for the temple (and that's before even considering the worth of resources used), but the monks gamely returned to the scene of so many crimes. They worked through various further enemies - helped by sharing the Troll Blood Ioun Stone around to avoid the need to rest. Finally they got to see a lich and hurriedly moved to reveal all its secrets. That succeeded
and I hastily found the phylactory and took it to be melted. So finally it's time to move on to the next area.
Aestica, Halfling Fighter: Minor Quests in and Around Athkatla
Minor quests! Yay! Minor quesst! What do you do when something totally isn't exciting? You use exclamation points to make them think that it is! Minor quests! Yay!
Anyhoo, Aestica added a few more credentials to her resume: liar, paladin killer. She's very proud.
After completing the Fallen Paladin's quest, we swung by Watcher's Keep to pick up the Crimson Dart. We contemplated going further, but the vampiric wraiths changed our minds.
Pro tip I: If you're interested in exploring Watcher's Keep beyond the Crimson Dart, but can't cope with the vampiric wraiths and suspect they may be there, enter the hall from the front entrance, rather than the side entrance. You'll have a shorter run to the door if and when you decide to bail.
Onto the next quest: Retrieving the Pale Green Ioun stone from Pai'Na. I felt bad about this: Grabbing someone's ioun stone and then criticaling them across the dome with Ages is pretty mean.
Pro Tip II: If you're a Claw wearer who's worried about the HP loss, pair the Claw with the Pale Green Ioun stone. It provides a 10% hp boost, rather than Balduran's 5 hp. It helps close the gap between the HP total of a Balduran wearer and a Claw wearer.
Pro Tip III: Don't be a bandit: Bandits get chunked
Ok. And now for something vaguely interesting: Mencar and his crew. Aestica's plan was to take her standard buffs, and then go straight for Mencar. The logic being that Mencar is the only target that really requires buffs, and Amon will probably bring a Remove into play sooner or later- better to get Mencar out of the way before that happens. Happily, we did succeed in breaking Mencar before the Remove came. Girdle of Bluntness + Ilbratha MI + RoAC II + DUHM. Effective AC of -19 here.
Next, we took down Brennan while Amon and Pooky played with Mr. Efreeti.
Orcslicer is dead. Pooky is a fracking nuisance.
And finally (or almost finally) Amon. Most of the damage in this battle came from MAA and COrbs.
Glad that's over with. Windspear Hills soon.
Best,
A.
Btw. I haven't been keeping everyone posted on purchases, have I? Here are the durables that we've bought, in order of acquisition.
The Reflex Ring of Air Control Sling of Seeking (obsoleted) Belt of Inertial Barrier Cloak of Displacement Boots of Grounding Girdle of Bluntness Glasses of Identification Sling of Everard Azuredge
@Corey_Russell I would view SoD similar to learning no-reload for the other games. What seems frustrating and impossible at first becomes much easier once you find some tactics that work for you (a few of our multiplayer runs ended at that point).
But that's my problem. I don't know what I could have done different. Silences did not work, hold persons did not work, we did enrage, but that didn't help, our melee and ranged attacks were useless (don't think we were able to kill a single one of the enemy party), and we had no time to lay snares/traps. As I said, I have no idea what I should/can do differently. At least in BG 1, if I failed a fight, I had an idea what to do differently. I have no idea in this one. We were even all dwarves (except Safana) to help with saves, but even that did not help.
If people have advice on that fight, I'd appreciate it, else will probably skip SoD - this party was optimized for SoD and it didn't even come close.
I found web plus fireballs and suchlike a good tactic. Also have tanks who won't get held for whatever reason ready to race in and take out mages/clerics who are about to cast spells.
Next time I am in there I will try to document a bit better, but up until now I haven't as I didn't want to put too many spoilers in. With my current set-up I probably won't get that far!! I am definitely considering to reverting back to playing core settings.
As we made our way to the sirens once again, this time, I had Firun scout ahead, so we managed to avoid the hobgoblin elites and only fought a couple of normal hobgoblins. Also, some interesting AI behaviour resulted in the sirens starting to wander around as soon as Firun scouted them, so I could pick them off one by one, with a charm-immune spirit lion tanking:
After the first siren group, I had to rest as my spirit lion was dead, but a new one was summoned in order to defeat Sil:
I avoided fighting the flesh golems for now, but Nahema used her invisibilty spell in order to steal the pirate treasure (and she used the constitution tome herself).
More experience was in order, as I wanted to get druid level 6 for Arbogast - 2 spirit animals are better than 1. First, I dealt with this rather dangerous wolfpack:
I also felt ready to try and kill some Ankhegs now. The level 5 spirit animals generally survive at least 3 ankheg hits, which gave me time to blind and command the ankhegs. Blinded ankhegs are annoying, as they often tend to stay underground and have to be lured out by walking to their position, which can be dangerous. The gold and experience points are totally worth it, though. All in all, I cleared the Ankheg cave (though I needed to rest once) and the remaining northern maps, got to level 6 and decided that I now had enough power to directly fight most random monster packs and adventurer groups - so I finally was able to just start clearing maps.
Oh yes, this is some serious damage output compared to earlier on:
We started by clearing the areas west of the Lion's Way. Even further west, we killed the flesh golems (where, once again, my spirit animal's claws were ineffective - they still don't count as magical weapons), cleared the xvart village and made our way to Shoal.
Fun fact: I don't think I've ever used silence 10' radius before in my life - if I need a save-or-else spell in the level 2 cleric slot, I usually go for hold person, but the save penalty makes silence very interesting for LoB. So this might excuse why, for a second, I thought silence was a single target spell, only affecting one opponent. This is what happens if you have no idea what you're doing:
So Sybia managed to silence everyone else on screen - except for the opponent she actually wanted to silence. As a result, Droth actually was able to get a spell off (in this case a dire charm, affecting Sybia) before he was killed - but the spirit lion's simply tanked Sybia's pitiful damage:
I also cleared the rest of the map, with Nahema using glitterdust against the ogre pack (which is interesting: Glitterdust doesn't last long enough for us to actually kill the enemies during the duration, but it provides the time to stick additional, longer-lasting crowd control spells and take out at least half of them). We also found some more sirens to kill.
The Cloudkeep mountains were mostly an easy area for our party, as we had the belt of the antipode for winter wolves and spirit lions for everything else. With one exception: I accidentally walked into Sendai, Alexander and Delgod, with Firun and Aikar totally out of position and separated from the rest of the party. A sensible person might simply pick the dialogue options to skip this battle, but I wanted that studded leather armor +2...
Alexander and Delgod hit with every shot and killed Firun before he could walk away, so I had to grab his things and flee the map:
I returned with a resurrected archer and two fresh spirit lions to take my revenge.
At Charleston's dig site, I used a choke poin to avoid getting surrounded:
As for Ba'Ruk: Now, THIS is what I call a good glitterdust:
BTW this shows how deadly kobold commandos are: One volley was enough to bring a spirit lion to below half hp. Any non-summon would be very, very dead in this spot.
I had some fun at the gnoll fortress and got a charisma tome for Ifirn. For the big gnoll groups, I quickly ran out of spirit animals, so I had to rely on glitterdust and blindness. This is me shooting at three blinded gnolls:
Laurel's gibberlings were far more effective: They surrounded the paladin, and, a couple of rounds after this screenshot, actually killed her:
Now, the western part of the map was pretty much cleared, and so were the areas east of the Lion's Way (except for the Ulcaster Ruins). Time to make our way to the east. While we killed the basilisks early on, there was still an adventuring party and the golden girdle to claim - They used entangle, we used web. Guess which side was more successful?
As you can see, Sybia also hit cleric level 5 by now, so we can actually summon a couple of skeletons to reinforce our front line. This was helpful against the red wizards:
For the big spider group to the east, we decided to soften them up with some wand of fire charges - 5 charges dropped them to around half hp, after that, we charged in with our summons and killed them:
You know what's great about web? Except for the wolves, by level 5, all spirit animals are immune to it:
Narcillicus didn't even get to cast his improved invisibility spell:
However, his mustard jellies were rather tough. I had to go into melee range, which put my party at risk - but since the spirit animals don't deal magical damage yet, there's no other choice:
Another adventuring party really wanted to get to know our web spells:
As you can see, I take precautions with crowd control: One effect often isn't enough, and web doesn't last too long anyway, so I usually have all spellcasters try to apply different debuffs during the first two rounds of combat, to increase the chance that at least one effect will actually stick. I mostly use blindness, glitterdust and web as my arcane spells plus command, hold person, silence and miscast magic as divine spells for major encounters right now, but the list will continue to grow. These are replacing any damage spells and short-duration buffs (like bless and chant) in my current spellbook. I plan to use bless and chant later on, once I've got more spell slots, but right now, they just aren't worth it considering how long battles usually last in LoB.
What still remains: The Firewine and Ulcaster dungeons (I need more find trap skills before attempting these), the doomsayer (I'm saving him for later) and Kahrk - he will have to do for now! Now, if Kahrk ever gets to target a party member, that party member will either have to use a rare potion (like invisibilty, oil of speed or magic blocking) or he/she will propably be dead - so this is a fight for summons, and only summons. A level 7 Arbogast added forest beings and animal summoning I to the mix:
Summons from spells weren't quite enough to beat Kahrk, however: I had to add one charge from my wand of monster summoning to win:
Now that the wilderness areas are mostly cleared, we should propably progress with the main plot next time!
Aestica, Halfling Fighter: Windspear Hills- Part 1
Wow. This was a disaster. Like Irma to Barbuda, hurricane Alesia came and futzed up Aestica's junk. I mean, I got everything wrong here. Everything. This was an incredibly sloppy quest. Do I have an excuse? No. Do I have an explanation? Yes. It was 3:00 in the morning, I was halfway into a bottle of wine, and I was simultaneously watching one of my favorite movies, Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It. Apologies, Aestica. It won't happen again. And as for for the potion bill, I'll stay up all night making darts with the Cloak of the Stars to make up for it. Penance.
Derg the Orc and I have something in common, apparently. We did not think the beginning of the Windspear Hills quest was fun.
At least that's what the evidence suggest. Had I found the beginning of the quest fun, I would have taken screen shots, surely. And had I taken screenshots, I wouldn't have been forced to make up a story about Derg. But here we are. It's kinda-sorta a shame, because the Ruhk fight was interesting, as SCS rakshasa fights tend to be. Kitty-poo (Kitthix) webbed him, in the end. It was cool.
As for my decision to burn a Pro-Undead scroll before peaking around the corner to see if the vamps were there, we'd have to file that in the not-so-cool category. The vamps were not there, ghasts and mummies were instead. Mistep 1
Onto the Samia quest. Pro Fire + Potion of Fire Resistance for the guardians.
I love Journal's vote of confidence here. Samia's plan hasn't been foiled yet: We're working on it.
Used Sandthief to get south of Samia's crew, near the doorway, with fallback space, before triggering the encounter. This was the last sensible move I made in this fight. Everything went haywire shortly after that.
Ferric Ironblade goes first
We fell back for no clear reason. Maybe the Remove spooked me? Maybe I was uncomfortable with Kaol's proximity, and thus the size of the counter window? Perhaps I feared a Harm from Legdoril? Who's to say? What I can say is that I picked the wrong spot to fall back to. That corner is not a good place to be. Misstep 2.
Quaffed a PoI to disrupt Legdoril, heal, regroup, and reposition. The bill gets higher.
Samia and her kensai fall soon after. Not sure what Kaol was up to at this point.
Time for Mr Efreeti to shine.
(Looks like Aestica was just cheering on Mr Efreeti here…)
With the fall Legdoril, we were ready to go on the hunt for Kaol. His Abjuration stuff is spent now, so it's just a matter of launching tactical ammo until he dies.
In the end, it was a sloppy, inefficient fight, but not phenomenally wasteful, at least, save the wrong-turn-PoI. The disaster true was yet to come.
Fun fact: I don't think I've ever used silence 10' radius before in my life - if I need a save-or-else spell in the level 2 cleric slot, I usually go for hold person, but the save penalty makes silence very interesting for LoB. So this might excuse why, for a second, I thought silence was a single target spell, only affecting one opponent. This is what happens if you have no idea what you're doing:
So Sybia managed to silence everyone else on screen - except for the opponent she actually wanted to silence.
Isn't it nice to play a game that can always make you laugh .
Just found that Osric's innate spells aren't working. Tried using Shadowkeeper but that doesn'r work. I may give my Berserker another whirl if I can't sort it out.
I changed my mind and ran a Dwarven Gallant Fighter.
Unlike his predecessor he beat the assassins in Candlekeep.
The first two were straightforward despite their extra equipment. The same could not be said of Mendas!
Ragnor buffed himself to the limit in the training room. Bless, PfEvil and oil of speed.
Despite that Mendas was a tough nut to crack and Ragnor had to use two healing potions to survive.
After killing the gnolls south of the ambush, ragnor headed south again and took on a wolf. To his surprise it was far more powerful than he expected.
It took him three days to recover from his wounds! On his way to High Hedge, a skeleton was equally devastating.
He gradually made his way to the north, having to flee from hobgoblins to avoid melee! His sling was however quite effective despite having little proficiency with it. He took on Tenya and everything seemed to be going wrong. She cast command and afterwards his armour broke. Then she cast rigid thinking. He went out of her sight not realising what he was doing, and it proved to be a master stroke. When he returned, she surrendered.
He went to Nashkel where he collected some good armour and then proceeded to get more good armour by killing 3 of the Flaming Fist.
He next took on an ogre and gained two belts.
Then came the most dangerous battle of all! An ankheg! However, he survived. My next game will definitely be on core, not hard. This set-up is too much for me. What is more, I was intending to dual-class to cleric, and a mistake in installation means that I can no longer dual-class any characters.
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2350 // Alter Multiclass Restrictions -> Allow humans to multiclass: v3 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2360 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Single Classes: v3 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2370 // Alter Dual-class Restrictions -> Humans can no longer dual-class: v3
Doh! Apparently I never made a full save in the Forest for CorEE II and my autosaves have already been overwritten by my new game. So can't test out your ideas anytime soon. Should I get to that point again, will do them then.
Comments
The Fighter/Cleric of Talos combination is working fine, but when I went into Shadowkeeper, I discovered that there are 3 Battleguard of Tempus kits. That is probably the reason for my problems. I will have to discover where they all came from before my next installation.
Spell Revisions (like Item Revisions too) are also still on Beta state (even though it's quite stable), but it has some kind of a 'problem' - the constant change/tweaking of things... Now even more with @Aasim (Kreso) working on it, who has his own ideas, which stir things even further... Don't take me wrong - I have my eternal gratitude to all involved in creating and maintaining those wonderful mods but having a 'constant work-in-progress mod' might get frustrated. So personally I wouldn't count too much on having 'up to date' version anytime soon. I'm pretty happy with the version I use in my setup though and enough is as good as a feast.
The party made it out of the SoD dungeon. And we made it to the that first forest area. However, we were utterly slaughtered by the party at the bridge. I have no idea how I could have improved what I did.
Was thinking of doing a solo run, will get to that.
Hopefully some of our SoD No Reload veterans will offer some advice.
Best,
A.
Not to be daunted, rolled up Corthief XIII - he will have a party to help him though. Will try to keep it small (4 man), to try to help with the leveling.
Rather than beginning at the beginning, I'd like to start this update with the highlight of the quest. Indeed, the highlight of the run.
This is Mr. Efreeti chunking Mae'Var's bartender, Gorch, with an uppercut scimitar slash.
It's moments like this that bring me back to this game, again and again, year after year. My real life is pretty unreal. I travel and adventure full time. Seeing the wonders of the world, hiking thousands of miles each season, I am in a constant state of awe. But when, I ask you, would I ever have a chance to watch a magical djinni pop a fat gangster like a plump and puffy meat ballon? Again, I ask you.
Ok. Let's turn to the quest.
In college I had a roommate who'd get so drunk that she'd sleep through fire alarms. I think of her every time I complete the Mistress Ada quest. I also think of Phlydia and what a crook she is. I mean, if 49000 xp is the going rate for a delivery quest, where did she get off giving me 50 xp and a rock?
Don't mind me. I'm just a halfling busting up all your training equipment...
Rayic Gethras
My characters usually over-buff for this, running 100% cold and fire resistance. Aestica just ran Ilbratha MI and 50% fire via Potion of Fire Resistance. That worked well enough, although she did take damage.
Due to its slow immunity effect, the Sword of Arvoreen is Aestica's favorite golem fighting weapon- when she can us it, that is. Aestica likes stone golems.
Now for the Cowled himself. The buffs were Shield, RoAC II and Ilbratha MI. We're wearing the BoIB and the the Boots of Grounding. We have Harmony and the Reflex at our side. We have a fully stocked potion case and tactical ammo for days. Let's do this.
Ray takes his pre-buffs and opens with Mantle. We don't have Everard yet, so he has 4 rounds to work with.
Remove is a sensible call. Teleport Field is a waste against the range fighting Aestica. The clock on Mantle is ticking. Mr. Efreeti is dropped in the hope that he might command Rayic's attention for at least one of the remaining rounds. He does. Shield is reapplied.
Rayic's final round of Mantle is used on Chain Lightning. Aestica counters with a Potion of Insulation, complementing her Boots of Grounding. You get nothing from me.
Mantle has expired. In comes the tactical ammo. Disruption galore.
Kudos to Rayic for getting off a single spell, Monster Summoning, in between arrows. And double-kudos for landing a last second MMM, avoiding the shutout.
Mae'Var
Mae'Var was overmatched here. Standard renewable buffs + Potion of Hill Giant Strength. Went for the cleric first in order to lessen Divination risk
With the cleric gone and Mae'Var attempting a backstab, we switched to the Reflex and went to work on the lackeys.
Mae'Var finally lands a backstab, but it's a dud. Somebody give this man a +2 short sword and a strength buff.
Out of invisibility charges, Mae'Var settled in for a toe-to-toe exchange. DUHM.
Aestica broke the situation down for him: "Pop quiz, Mae'Var: I'm a level 16 fighter with a buffed strength of 24 and an effective AC of -18; you're a mage/thief with a tapped book and minimal buffs. You're wielding an unenchanted short sword; I'm wielding the Flail of Ages. What, then, is going to happen to you?" Mae'var didn't get it at first, but after the first Ages wallop landed, he did.
Head of the class, Mae'Var: head of the class
Firkraag's Pleasure Palace is next.
Best,
A.
Anyway, is there any chance for a thru-hinking blog in the future?
@Corey_Russell I would view SoD similar to learning no-reload for the other games. What seems frustrating and impossible at first becomes much easier once you find some tactics that work for you (a few of our multiplayer runs ended at that point).
Blaggerd's cautious(ish) run. Siege of Dragonspear
Update 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
A brief update as Blaggerd may not re-appear for a while. After tracking down a bear for Helvdar a group of orogs spot the party and think they are easy prey having not healed up recently. M'Khiin calls up lightning while Neera uses a well-placed fireball, and Corwin guns survivors down at an alarming rate. Blaggerd barely gets his sword in.
@Corey_Russell I would view SoD similar to learning no-reload for the other games. What seems frustrating and impossible at first becomes much easier once you find some tactics that work for you (a few of our multiplayer runs ended at that point).
But that's my problem. I don't know what I could have done different. Silences did not work, hold persons did not work, we did enrage, but that didn't help, our melee and ranged attacks were useless (don't think we were able to kill a single one of the enemy party), and we had no time to lay snares/traps. As I said, I have no idea what I should/can do differently. At least in BG 1, if I failed a fight, I had an idea what to do differently. I have no idea in this one. We were even all dwarves (except Safana) to help with saves, but even that did not help.
If people have advice on that fight, I'd appreciate it, else will probably skip SoD - this party was optimized for SoD and it didn't even come close.
Up until v21, Spell Shield still protected against Wish, even the SCS version, and it (usually, ~7/8 times) worked as per description: it intercepted the incoming attack and collapsed. It was only when David switched to the Spell Revision version of Spell Shield that Spell Shield stopped intercepting Wish. Was this David's intention? Possibly, but given the way the new Spell Shield is coded, requiring patches for new spells, or requiring spells to be patched for the new Spell Shield, it's entirely possible that a patch was just missed. This did occur with other lesser used spells, like the version of Breach found in the Wands of Spell Striking. The Wish Spell Shield interaction may be another example. Additionally, there is substantial evidence that David hadn't taken full account of the differences between the original Spell Shield and the new one as of v30, including the fact that his script behaves unreasonably in relation to it when it is run alongside spell protections, due to the fact that it does not sit atop protections, like the old Spell Shield did, and as the script assumes. Spell Shield is in need of attention, and the Wish-Spell Shield dynamic is amongst the matters that should be evaluated.
Irrespective of intent, which is unclear, I can say that I'd prefer to play with the pre-SR Spell Shield Spell Shield/Wish dynamic, the pre-v21 dynamic.
I'd also suggest that if the change was intentional, it merited a mention in the read me. Back on the Bioware forums, one of our players, Golden28, lost a character because of this.
Best,
A.
Also, even in the original BG 1, the level 1 protection did not ALWAYS work, but usually did.
So, basically, I hope for seeing a mage paralyze me with:
Minor Sequencer -> True Strike + Ghoul Touch
before kicking my sorry, unexpecting bum.
Could you point to a sequence of links and an idiot-proof install guide if at all possible.
(I am running Mac/Steam.)
Thanks in advance.
There's an easy way to deal with this fight that I've recently discovered. The first thing to note is that this fight is on a timer - after a certain number of rounds, it will stop and a cutscene will start instead. After the cutscene, the fight is over, so your party will be safe. Basically, all you have to do is to survive until the cutscene starts. A way to achieve this is by starting the battle with your entire party invisible (there is an invisibilty 10' radius scroll in the starting dungeon, so just use that spell before entering the general area around the bridge). Now, one of the enemy spellcaster does have a single divination spell, so all I had to do was disrupt this one cast with a single party member (I used a wand charge to make sure I would hit right away) and turn this character invisible again (I just used the invisibilty spell while protected by stoneskins, but a potion would be even safer). This way, you should be able to wait until the timer is over.
Alternatively, in a party of 6, having everyone throw a fireball at once right away (via potions, necklace charges or wands) should kill or severely weaken all of the enemies in most cases. This strategy honestly works for most of the difficult fights in SoD. Combinations of greater malison + web/slow/chaos might also be helpful.
- SoD enemies are generally far more dangerous when attacking than in BG1. Numerous enemies have special abilities, such as fear, hold, called shot, invisibility etc and they use them much more intelligently than in BG1. That means that if you're used to playing a mainly defensive game and picking off enemies through kiting you're going to struggle.
- while offensive abilities have been greatly enhanced, defensive ones have hardly been touched, so most enemies are not particularly hard to kill (at least on core). Therefore, to use a sporting metaphor "get your retaliation in first". If you disable or kill them quickly they can't do the same to you.
In relation to that specific encounter:
1) Aim to avoid combat in the knowledge that Caelar will call for a parley soon - so retreat, go invisible etc.
2) Take the offensive in order to kill the opposition and loot their bodies. In a party you could for instance throw in several fireballs to kill many of the enemies. If you know the battle is coming you can also pre-buff with potions (many SoD enemies use potions) and call out a few summons to soak up attacks. You are unlikely to kill them all before the parley begins, but you do have a window of opportunity to attack again after it concludes (when the former enemies are neutral).
There's an easy way to deal with this fight that I've recently discovered. The first thing to note is that this fight is on a timer - after a certain number of rounds, it will stop and a cutscene will start instead. After the cutscene, the fight is over, so your party will be safe. Basically, all you have to do is to survive until the cutscene starts. A way to achieve this is by starting the battle with your entire party invisible (there is an invisibilty 10' radius scroll in the starting dungeon, so just use that spell before entering the general area around the bridge). Now, one of the enemy spellcaster does have a single divination spell, so all I had to do was disrupt this one cast with a single party member (I used a wand charge to make sure I would hit right away) and turn this character invisible again (I just used the invisibilty spell while protected by stoneskins, but a potion would be even safer). This way, you should be able to wait until the timer is over.
Alternatively, in a party of 6, having everyone throw a fireball at once right away (via potions, necklace charges or wands) should kill or severely weaken all of the enemies in most cases. This strategy honestly works for most of the difficult fights in SoD. Combinations of greater malison + web/slow/chaos might also be helpful.
I have several comments in response:
1) We did NOT have a mage, so all mage based tactics were not available
2) We did NOT have enough invisibility potions for the whole party
3) We died AFTER the cutscene (that is, the battle continued)
4) We could have thrown fireballs right away, though they were pretty close, so would have been tricky. Guess could reload and see if that works.
5) Grondo also mentioned fireballs - guess I can reload and see if that's enough. He also mentions prebuffing with potions before hand, I can try that too. He also mentioned also I just have to survive until parley, but again we were all killed AFTER the parley.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903092/#Comment_903092
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903108/#Comment_903108
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903136/#Comment_903136
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903185/#Comment_903185
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903348/#Comment_903348
Most of the prologue dungeon was no problem, but I did carelessly trigger a trap at one point that sent 4 of the monks fleeing in terror.
In the City, stripping some NPCs of their valuables (as they didn't need them any more) funded a bit of shopping - picking up Bracers of Perseverance and Sidestep Slippers as they are monk specific items. Safana also provided a 4th Necklace of Missiles to the party. The only real fighting done was showing Sethyl that magic resistance is no help against a monk's stunning blows.
Out in the country the monks immediately travelled to the Coast Way Forest to ensure that bit of content was not lost. Helping the vampire there netted the monks the Trollblood Ioun Stone (a regeneration item, which is particularly useful for me as I don't use healing items).
Back at the Coast Way Crossing the monks stumbled across a mirror in a burnt-out building that will supplement Spirit's identification abilities nicely. Her existing high intelligence will also allow her to use a golem statue without resorting to potions. Don't tell Corey, but I started the encounter at the bridge accidentally when talking to Herod who'd previously run a bit north away from some bandits. However, 3 fireballs at the start of the contest proved about right and the monks managed to kill everyone except Barrachus before the parlay started (and he didn't last long thereafter).
The monks cleared the remaining exterior of the area (relying on free action against the spiders) and then ventured inside the dwarven cave. They had an early problem there when Phantom was scouting and was affected by a mummy's fear aura the instant he opened a door.
The remaining enemies were quickly dealt with before another visit to Mizhena to ask if she deals in BOGOFs. Another undead group was handled without problems and the next one also seemed to be going well when most of the dangerous enemies fell for minor damage. However, the last of the bone bats paralysed Spectre, causing me to attack the last few undead more vigorously than I otherwise would have done. Phantom chose not to retreat when taken down to 30 HPs and was hit for a critical - for 30 HPs.
Finances took a further battering with another 800 gold for the temple (and that's before even considering the worth of resources used), but the monks gamely returned to the scene of so many crimes. They worked through various further enemies - helped by sharing the Troll Blood Ioun Stone around to avoid the need to rest. Finally they got to see a lich and hurriedly moved to reveal all its secrets. That succeeded
Chimera - L8, 62 HPs, 214 kills
Phantom - L8, 58 HPs, 285 kills, 5 deaths
Spectre - L8, 70 HPs, 175 kills, 2 deaths
Wraith - L8, 71 HPs, 238 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L8, 74 HPs, 266 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L8, 68 HPs, 217 kills, 0 deaths
Minor quests! Yay! Minor quesst! What do you do when something totally isn't exciting? You use exclamation points to make them think that it is! Minor quests! Yay!
Anyhoo, Aestica added a few more credentials to her resume: liar, paladin killer. She's very proud.
After completing the Fallen Paladin's quest, we swung by Watcher's Keep to pick up the Crimson Dart. We contemplated going further, but the vampiric wraiths changed our minds.
Pro tip I: If you're interested in exploring Watcher's Keep beyond the Crimson Dart, but can't cope with the vampiric wraiths and suspect they may be there, enter the hall from the front entrance, rather than the side entrance. You'll have a shorter run to the door if and when you decide to bail.
Onto the next quest: Retrieving the Pale Green Ioun stone from Pai'Na. I felt bad about this: Grabbing someone's ioun stone and then criticaling them across the dome with Ages is pretty mean.
Pro Tip II: If you're a Claw wearer who's worried about the HP loss, pair the Claw with the Pale Green Ioun stone. It provides a 10% hp boost, rather than Balduran's 5 hp. It helps close the gap between the HP total of a Balduran wearer and a Claw wearer.
Pro Tip III: Don't be a bandit: Bandits get chunked
Ok. And now for something vaguely interesting: Mencar and his crew. Aestica's plan was to take her standard buffs, and then go straight for Mencar. The logic being that Mencar is the only target that really requires buffs, and Amon will probably bring a Remove into play sooner or later- better to get Mencar out of the way before that happens. Happily, we did succeed in breaking Mencar before the Remove came. Girdle of Bluntness + Ilbratha MI + RoAC II + DUHM. Effective AC of -19 here.
Next, we took down Brennan while Amon and Pooky played with Mr. Efreeti.
Orcslicer is dead. Pooky is a fracking nuisance.
And finally (or almost finally) Amon. Most of the damage in this battle came from MAA and COrbs.
Glad that's over with. Windspear Hills soon.
Best,
A.
Btw. I haven't been keeping everyone posted on purchases, have I? Here are the durables that we've bought, in order of acquisition.
The Reflex
Ring of Air Control
Sling of Seeking (obsoleted)
Belt of Inertial Barrier
Cloak of Displacement
Boots of Grounding
Girdle of Bluntness
Glasses of Identification
Sling of Everard
Azuredge
Next time I am in there I will try to document a bit better, but up until now I haven't as I didn't want to put too many spoilers in. With my current set-up I probably won't get that far!! I am definitely considering to reverting back to playing core settings.
Previous posts:
Part II: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903150/#Comment_903150
Part III: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903226/#Comment_903226
As we made our way to the sirens once again, this time, I had Firun scout ahead, so we managed to avoid the hobgoblin elites and only fought a couple of normal hobgoblins. Also, some interesting AI behaviour resulted in the sirens starting to wander around as soon as Firun scouted them, so I could pick them off one by one, with a charm-immune spirit lion tanking:
After the first siren group, I had to rest as my spirit lion was dead, but a new one was summoned in order to defeat Sil:
I avoided fighting the flesh golems for now, but Nahema used her invisibilty spell in order to steal the pirate treasure (and she used the constitution tome herself).
More experience was in order, as I wanted to get druid level 6 for Arbogast - 2 spirit animals are better than 1. First, I dealt with this rather dangerous wolfpack:
I also felt ready to try and kill some Ankhegs now. The level 5 spirit animals generally survive at least 3 ankheg hits, which gave me time to blind and command the ankhegs. Blinded ankhegs are annoying, as they often tend to stay underground and have to be lured out by walking to their position, which can be dangerous. The gold and experience points are totally worth it, though. All in all, I cleared the Ankheg cave (though I needed to rest once) and the remaining northern maps, got to level 6 and decided that I now had enough power to directly fight most random monster packs and adventurer groups - so I finally was able to just start clearing maps.
Oh yes, this is some serious damage output compared to earlier on:
We started by clearing the areas west of the Lion's Way. Even further west, we killed the flesh golems (where, once again, my spirit animal's claws were ineffective - they still don't count as magical weapons), cleared the xvart village and made our way to Shoal.
Fun fact: I don't think I've ever used silence 10' radius before in my life - if I need a save-or-else spell in the level 2 cleric slot, I usually go for hold person, but the save penalty makes silence very interesting for LoB. So this might excuse why, for a second, I thought silence was a single target spell, only affecting one opponent. This is what happens if you have no idea what you're doing:
So Sybia managed to silence everyone else on screen - except for the opponent she actually wanted to silence. As a result, Droth actually was able to get a spell off (in this case a dire charm, affecting Sybia) before he was killed - but the spirit lion's simply tanked Sybia's pitiful damage:
I also cleared the rest of the map, with Nahema using glitterdust against the ogre pack (which is interesting: Glitterdust doesn't last long enough for us to actually kill the enemies during the duration, but it provides the time to stick additional, longer-lasting crowd control spells and take out at least half of them). We also found some more sirens to kill.
The Cloudkeep mountains were mostly an easy area for our party, as we had the belt of the antipode for winter wolves and spirit lions for everything else. With one exception: I accidentally walked into Sendai, Alexander and Delgod, with Firun and Aikar totally out of position and separated from the rest of the party. A sensible person might simply pick the dialogue options to skip this battle, but I wanted that studded leather armor +2...
Alexander and Delgod hit with every shot and killed Firun before he could walk away, so I had to grab his things and flee the map:
I returned with a resurrected archer and two fresh spirit lions to take my revenge.
At Charleston's dig site, I used a choke poin to avoid getting surrounded:
As for Ba'Ruk: Now, THIS is what I call a good glitterdust:
BTW this shows how deadly kobold commandos are: One volley was enough to bring a spirit lion to below half hp. Any non-summon would be very, very dead in this spot.
I had some fun at the gnoll fortress and got a charisma tome for Ifirn. For the big gnoll groups, I quickly ran out of spirit animals, so I had to rely on glitterdust and blindness. This is me shooting at three blinded gnolls:
Laurel's gibberlings were far more effective: They surrounded the paladin, and, a couple of rounds after this screenshot, actually killed her:
Now, the western part of the map was pretty much cleared, and so were the areas east of the Lion's Way (except for the Ulcaster Ruins). Time to make our way to the east. While we killed the basilisks early on, there was still an adventuring party and the golden girdle to claim - They used entangle, we used web. Guess which side was more successful?
As you can see, Sybia also hit cleric level 5 by now, so we can actually summon a couple of skeletons to reinforce our front line. This was helpful against the red wizards:
For the big spider group to the east, we decided to soften them up with some wand of fire charges - 5 charges dropped them to around half hp, after that, we charged in with our summons and killed them:
You know what's great about web? Except for the wolves, by level 5, all spirit animals are immune to it:
Narcillicus didn't even get to cast his improved invisibility spell:
However, his mustard jellies were rather tough. I had to go into melee range, which put my party at risk - but since the spirit animals don't deal magical damage yet, there's no other choice:
Another adventuring party really wanted to get to know our web spells:
As you can see, I take precautions with crowd control: One effect often isn't enough, and web doesn't last too long anyway, so I usually have all spellcasters try to apply different debuffs during the first two rounds of combat, to increase the chance that at least one effect will actually stick. I mostly use blindness, glitterdust and web as my arcane spells plus command, hold person, silence and miscast magic as divine spells for major encounters right now, but the list will continue to grow. These are replacing any damage spells and short-duration buffs (like bless and chant) in my current spellbook. I plan to use bless and chant later on, once I've got more spell slots, but right now, they just aren't worth it considering how long battles usually last in LoB.
What still remains: The Firewine and Ulcaster dungeons (I need more find trap skills before attempting these), the doomsayer (I'm saving him for later) and Kahrk - he will have to do for now!
Now, if Kahrk ever gets to target a party member, that party member will either have to use a rare potion (like invisibilty, oil of speed or magic blocking) or he/she will propably be dead - so this is a fight for summons, and only summons. A level 7 Arbogast added forest beings and animal summoning I to the mix:
Summons from spells weren't quite enough to beat Kahrk, however: I had to add one charge from my wand of monster summoning to win:
Now that the wilderness areas are mostly cleared, we should propably progress with the main plot next time!
Enuhal
Wow. This was a disaster. Like Irma to Barbuda, hurricane Alesia came and futzed up Aestica's junk. I mean, I got everything wrong here. Everything. This was an incredibly sloppy quest. Do I have an excuse? No. Do I have an explanation? Yes. It was 3:00 in the morning, I was halfway into a bottle of wine, and I was simultaneously watching one of my favorite movies, Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It. Apologies, Aestica. It won't happen again. And as for for the potion bill, I'll stay up all night making darts with the Cloak of the Stars to make up for it. Penance.
Derg the Orc and I have something in common, apparently. We did not think the beginning of the Windspear Hills quest was fun.
At least that's what the evidence suggest. Had I found the beginning of the quest fun, I would have taken screen shots, surely. And had I taken screenshots, I wouldn't have been forced to make up a story about Derg. But here we are. It's kinda-sorta a shame, because the Ruhk fight was interesting, as SCS rakshasa fights tend to be. Kitty-poo (Kitthix) webbed him, in the end. It was cool.
As for my decision to burn a Pro-Undead scroll before peaking around the corner to see if the vamps were there, we'd have to file that in the not-so-cool category. The vamps were not there, ghasts and mummies were instead. Mistep 1
Onto the Samia quest. Pro Fire + Potion of Fire Resistance for the guardians.
I love Journal's vote of confidence here. Samia's plan hasn't been foiled yet: We're working on it.
Used Sandthief to get south of Samia's crew, near the doorway, with fallback space, before triggering the encounter. This was the last sensible move I made in this fight. Everything went haywire shortly after that.
Ferric Ironblade goes first
We fell back for no clear reason. Maybe the Remove spooked me? Maybe I was uncomfortable with Kaol's proximity, and thus the size of the counter window? Perhaps I feared a Harm from Legdoril? Who's to say? What I can say is that I picked the wrong spot to fall back to. That corner is not a good place to be. Misstep 2.
Quaffed a PoI to disrupt Legdoril, heal, regroup, and reposition. The bill gets higher.
Samia and her kensai fall soon after. Not sure what Kaol was up to at this point.
Time for Mr Efreeti to shine.
(Looks like Aestica was just cheering on Mr Efreeti here…)
With the fall Legdoril, we were ready to go on the hunt for Kaol. His Abjuration stuff is spent now, so it's just a matter of launching tactical ammo until he dies.
In the end, it was a sloppy, inefficient fight, but not phenomenally wasteful, at least, save the wrong-turn-PoI. The disaster true was yet to come.
Best,
A.
Unlike his predecessor he beat the assassins in Candlekeep.
The first two were straightforward despite their extra equipment. The same could not be said of Mendas!
Ragnor buffed himself to the limit in the training room. Bless, PfEvil and oil of speed.
Despite that Mendas was a tough nut to crack and Ragnor had to use two healing potions to survive.
On his way to High Hedge, a skeleton was equally devastating.
He took on Tenya and everything seemed to be going wrong. She cast command and afterwards his armour broke. Then she cast rigid thinking. He went out of her sight not realising what he was doing, and it proved to be a master stroke. When he returned, she surrendered.
He went to Nashkel where he collected some good armour and then proceeded to get more good armour by killing 3 of the Flaming Fist.
He next took on an ogre and gained two belts.
Then came the most dangerous battle of all! An ankheg!
However, he survived.
My next game will definitely be on core, not hard. This set-up is too much for me. What is more, I was intending to dual-class to cleric, and a mistake in installation means that I can no longer dual-class any characters.
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2350 // Alter Multiclass Restrictions -> Allow humans to multiclass: v3
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2360 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Single Classes: v3
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2370 // Alter Dual-class Restrictions -> Humans can no longer dual-class: v3