After a bit of confusion (on my part) about who was posting what, this brings things back up to date in our never-ending quest to kill or be killed.
The totemic druid summons weren't lasting long at low levels, but fortunately we weren't planning on staying at low levels for very long . Shoal started off our progress before heading south to find Greywolf and get Ern a better sword. Neither of us had much in the way of useful spells there and a spirit summons died very quickly, while Greywolf ran round and round making everyone dizzy until he eventually fell over (I think our conversation during that had some reference to the Chinese torture of 'death by a thousand cuts'.
The basilisks caused no problems and Mutamin was always likely to struggle against a spirit snake.
Kyrian's party was undermined when Baerin switched sides, but there was still a fair amount of kiting required at the end to finish off Lindin.
Back in Beregost we expected that Silke would be another to struggle after being bitten by a snake, but she still managed to choke out the incantation for a lightning bolt - good job Ern had got a few levels by that point!
The battle horrors at Durlag's Tower made the mistake of being outside under cloudy skies wearing metal armor, but with no safe means of dealing with basilisks we left the roof for now and travelled towards the coast - watching Bassilus be eaten by lions on the way.
The sirines suffered the same fate and though the golems were not so easy, Ern's arrows soon sent them on their way.
We tend not to buy scrolls, at least until late in the game, but I was keen to get the scimitar on top of Durlag's Tower. Hence Ern invested in a PfP scroll to guard against the basilisks on the roof. They were soon toast, but there was a near death prior to that against a ghast. I mistook which of the icons was my character and took no action as a ghast attacked and paralysed Skull. Ern had no spells which could kill it quickly, so threw himself into the attack and successfully convinced the ghast to attack him instead (hooray) - and instantly paralyse him as well (horror). Fortunately Skull had previously summoned a nymph and it quickly cast cause serious wounds and attacked - reducing the ghast to near death. It was now a race to see which could land a fatal blow first - and the nymph came up trumps. After collecting the +2 scimitar on the roof, Skull found he wasn't theoretically strong enough to wield it (he reduced strength to 9 in order to boost wisdom and charisma), but was able to equip it with the help of a strength of one spell.
{Skull can be pretty vicious against enemies vulnerable to lightning, but that doesn't include the Doomsayer. Our normal tactic against that is to fill it full of magic missiles, but that's not a spell Ern knows yet. However, some insect damage and a couple of spirit lions seemed to make a perfectly acceptable substitute.
Then of course it was time to seek revenge on Laryssa. Fittingly Brage was left to slaughter his cousin before we stayed out of sight for a bit until he'd had a chance to calm down.
A few reputation quests then led up to taking on Tarnesh. At that time neither of us had any useful spells left, but Gate70 felt there was no need to rest - and was proved right as Tarnesh died to a single arrow.
} The session ended when my internet connection failed so there's no recent proper save. Testing it just now the autosave doesn't seem to be working, so we might need to do the bracketed bit of work again .
Throwing my hat back into the ring before I get too far in. I'm fairly sure restartitis won't kick in for this one now.
The idea is again for a Rogue Rebalanced Skald that doesn't ever kill anyone himself. Mods for BG1 are RR, SCS, Divine Remix, Item Revisions including critical hit items, and... I think that's everything pertinent. A couple minor quest mods, but nothing gamechanging. This attempt is going to be spiking damage and offense with two Archers. Alina is going to be dual-ing to Cleric at level 9, and Sebastian to Fighter at level 10 or 11, depending of how much I want Sebastian to be able to cast level 6's.
Early events: We started by heading to High Hedge, killing a couple skeletons, and saving Melicamp from the wolf-with-additional-hitpoints. Sleep allows us to take out Zargal and company with no damage, and we decide to try to kill Basillus for the heck of it. We interrupt his spells with arrows as well as blinding him with Vista, and he dies a pointy death soon after.
Spiders and Karlat are killed in Beregost, as well as an annoying Red Mage. Silke is left alone for now. After going to the FAI and returning all items to their owners barring the Girdle of Piercing, we try to head for Shoal to get my first Critical Hit Resistance item (Helm of Defense). Vista is the sacrifice, but Shoal never decides to talk to us and we kill her without ever getting to Droth. After heading to Nashkel, my decision to keep Baroque Neutral pays off as Neira gets off an Unholy Blight onto our back line, bringing both Archers to ~10 health each.
All the wilderness areas southwest of Nashkel are cleared with no deaths, including the Doomsayer. A mishap with accidentally having Vista in melee range happens, and she dies for the second time. After resurrecting her, we cleared the Basilisk area with little issue, and finish off Peter's party there with arrows as well. The Nashkel mines are fought through, and Vista starts off Mulahey with a failed Blind spell. Apparently, that turns him hostile without having reinforcements, and an initial spell is disrupted and then Sebastian hits his Command and Mulahey dies.
A couple mishaps with the Revenant almost gets Sebastian killed, but Vista hits a Blind, and Cato and Alina manage to get the aggro away from the paralyzed Sebastian. Finally, we head to Narcillicus with two Skeleton Warriors. An initial Hold Person is negated by a Minor Globe of Invulnerability while the Skeleton Warriors tank the initial Mustard Jelly attacks. Sebastian casts Remove Fear to prevent a Horror from destroying us which Vista gets a Mirror Image up; Narcillicus counters with a Remove Magic. Alina and Cato are still plucking away his Stoneskins, but not before Narcillicus throws a Web at the Skeleton Warriors, and Alina is nearby the skeletons; she peels off, and Cato finishes off the Mage. Both Skeleton Warriors fall to Mustard Jelly hits, but now everyone's wielding melee weapons and the two Mustard Jellies die with only one critical hit on Sebastian.
Our current levels are under the spoilers; Sebastian's true DEX is 18, 17 due to armor, and 19 due to Gauntlets of Dexterity. Next up is Ankhegs, Sirines, and Ulgoth's Beard.
Ok! We have a lot of catching up to do. Let's start with the Planar Prison quest.
I contemplated skipping this, but Kundane and the prospect of avenging Borco's halfling led Aestica and I into the conduit. No regrets on that decision. It was a fun, rewarding quest and, yes, we halfling warriors do need to stick together. Halfling's unite! High five Mazzy!
Anyhoo, onto the quest.
Mekrath
Aestica's battle with Mekrath illustrates the over/under Smite/Power Attack mage killing strategy. This should make clear why it's often preferable to the wait->dispelling arrow approach.
Mekrath's buffs fire. He casts ProMW. His aura is clouded. Aestica goes unenchanted Smite. Mekrath is instantly stunned without a save.
An unenchanted Power Attack with darts extends the stun. Given the APR of darts and the two round duration of Power Attack, Mekrath's odds of evading stun are very low.
Aestica is through Mekrath's skins now. She switches to the sling for the finish. Mekrath is dead. No waiting; no window; no resources consumed. Their are times when a dispelling arrow approach would work better, but the over/under Smite/Power Attack is great when it's available
The Bounty Hunters
The bounty hunter battle ws pretty straight forward- Aestica is stupidly over powered, after all.
We entered the prison running Sandthief invisibility. That drew out the bounty hunter mage's divination cast, allowing us to run RoAC II with lower divination risk. Why does that matter? The only things to fear in this fight are Malison/Doom->Pixie Prick, and Malison/Doom->FoD. Running RoAC II mitigated both risks
Used Ras to draw out a cast from the mage. Note that Ras may be released without breaking invisibility, meaning Aestica's aura will be clear when she breaks.
We break with an unenchanted Power Attack. Does this seem overkill? Sure it does. We'd win without all this. But Divination->Malison would cost us a Potion of Invulnerability. We're defending the potion case.
The mage is dead. We never see Malison
(Why Power Attack instead of Smite, you ask? Good question. Given the odd geometry of the Planar Prison, a Smite could have sent the bounty hunter mage well, anywhere. We don't want to risk knocking him into another area and complicating a later battle.)
With Malison off the field, it was time for some straight-forward chunk-a-punk. Done and done.
The Quadruple Mage Battle
This battle makes me nervous. I've seen powerful characters have trouble here, and you don't have to dig deep into Serg's archive to find examples of players who have lost characters here. Seeking an opportunity to observe her opponent, Aestica approached invisible and sent in Mr. Efreeti. Mr. Efreeti wasn't defeated. He was murdered. They slaughtered him.
Now Ras. Ras lasted a little longer, due to its physical damage resistance, but it was still nixed quick. By this point I still really-truly didn't know how I wanted to handle this battle.
Eventually, we decided to use our dispelling arrows. This was the first time we used them in this run. The purpose was to put the mages on their heels, and force them to use their auras on rebuffing, granting Aestica a opportunity to take down the melee foes without taking spell damage.
This worked, mostly, although we did take a touch of spell damage just before the finish
Time to finish the mages. The Reflex, the Shield Amulet, and positioning prevented damage from coming in to quickly. We did have to use some healing potions here. We also used a Potion of Insulation to weather a Chain Lightning onslaught
Dragonslayer Detect Invisibility for the evasive thrall.
Last mage
The Master of Thralls
The Master of Thralls demanded Aestica's patented demon killing strategy. Sling-bullet-to-the-face.
The Warden
Ok, boss man: Let's see what you've got...
Mantle. We can get over the top of that with ease. We chose Power Attack over Smite, since we didn't want to push the Warden into the den of yuan-ti mages
Sadly, a PW:B thwarted the Power Attack. Bummer. That'll cost us time and a dispelling arrow.
Our dispelling arrow lands. The Warden goes Improved Mantle
My first attempt degenerated into regular deaths as I tried out different tactics at level 1, before eventually ending in a travel ambush (still at level 1, though having done a lot of work). Shamans need the most XP of any class to get early levels and with a full party of those progress is slow and they're pretty vulnerable to archer travel ambushes (although level 1 protection did often work, I noted 3 occasions on which it didn't when it apparently should have, i.e. there was no other source of damage beyond the basic hit).
So with a premium on getting lots of XP early before much travel is undertaken, this time the shamans went immediately for a big win - successfully killing the Candlekeep rats without anyone even being rendered unconscious .
After that they went straight to Beregost and got Algernon's Cloak - that allowed them to charm Silke and wear her down against the spiders to get a better melee weapon. They also picked up plenty of other XP around Beregost, particularly by charming the sirines at the temple.
They then chose their route and time to get safely down to Nashkel to buy a protection from petrification scroll. Coming back north again, they dropped off Mr Colquetle's amulet, enabling everyone to gain level 2.
Here are a few points I've noted about using shamans in this run: - multiple shamans don't increase the summoning limit for spirits (starting at 2), but having multiple shamans dance at once does greatly increase the speed at which summons are produced, i.e. the % chances for each shaman producing summons appear to be calculated separately. Active spirits, whoever they were originally summoned by, remain active if any shaman continues to dance. This enables spirits to be brought out quickly and then some shamans can lead enemies on to them (meaning most melee enemies have no chance, though ranged ones are still dangerous). - spirits also try and attack if they are in sight of a party member, even if that's not the shaman dancing. One of the problems with playing solo is that spirits won't attack if they get drawn outside sight range (and that can't be adjusted solo - though I keep meaning to investigate if Farsight affects this restriction, I've not got round to that yet). - if shamans are attacking when they try and start dancing, there's a good chance they will immediately cease dancing and revert to attacking. So if you want to dance you may wish to move a step first before starting to shuffle your feet.
Thanks for the tip @ussnorway. I haven't got that spell yet, but I am aiming to experiment with it (I've hung on to Gorion's belt partly for that purpose ). On core that spell is an absolute killer, but playing solo it's of pretty limited benefit with LoB.
Shamanic hordes {2} - LoB party (update 3) Previous updates:
At the basilisk area Lorbag himself had the best melee weapon (+1 staff taken from Silke) and took the responsibility for basilisk bashing. That carried some risk as a single hit could very easily kill him. However, by making sure that he was using the full distance 2 reach of the staff (that's easier I find if you attack on a diagonal) there was a small window of opportunity to see a basilisk switching to melee and moving towards him - and I concentrated hard to make sure there were no attacks on him. The death of the last, but one, of the separated basilisks got everyone up to level 3 (again good HPs there).
This screenshot shows the multiple dances in action. The shamans stopped with one of a chasing pack of gnolls actually in sight. Playing solo you would be exceptionally fortunate to get a spirit summoned in time for it to intercept the chase, but with the help of multiple dances summons were able to block the gnolls without any of the shamans needing to move.
Korax took a while to tag Mutamin, but eventually managed it to allow the shamans to shoot him down
and Korax quickly dealt with the pet basilisks after that. Baerin was then charmed and drawn away from the others and placed next to some summons before being attacked. Surprisingly, he actually switched from melee to ranged attack while directly in melee combat (not even trying to run back a bit first) and took a potshot at Lorbag.
That didn't prove to be an aberration as he was consistently doing that - making him a very difficult enemy to face as 2 hits on any of the shamans would prove fatal (and 2 hits could be done in less than a second of real time with my installation). They had used most of their spell healing ability before eventually managing to finish him off by taking it in turns to snipe at him from extreme range.
The first death of the run occurred soon after that with my concentration flagging a bit. About 5 attempts to charm Peter had failed and the shamans were trying to rest when ambushed by gnolls. Nothing unusual about that, but I was less precise with movement than needed there. In particular I made the mistake of moving some of the shamans in groups, which makes poor pathfinding far more likely - and I wasn't actually watching him as somehow a gnoll got within reach of Pretty Boy.
Returning from the temple, Peter was charmed at the next attempt and this time worn down against some gnolls to provide an easy kill. The same sort of thing happened to Lindin before Kirian was persuaded to waste most of her spells on spirits.
She kept only a sleep spell, which proved ineffective as she was shot down.
Ok. I'm going to cover this super-quick, because I'm eager to move Aestica into ToB.
The Vamps
Two of the three were nixed at range with Azuredge. The last, Del, was finished in melee with the iMod. I was, once upon a time, ambivalent about David's vampires due to con drain, but now I really like them. The only thing I have a problem with now is the bat form (to be addressed in the Bodhi post)
Perth
Aestica entered Spellhold using Perth's wardstone. Perth played his hand well here, using a Simmy + Mislead Chain to get off a Time Stop, but in the end, all that earned him was a few extra rounds. He never got a chance to take offensive action, save summoning.
Here we see Perth's opening. Note that the Mislead prevents Aestica from immediately executing unenchanted Smite->Power Attack.
Perth says "praeses," we activate RoAC II, evading the Time Stop. Perth can do nothing but play with Ras.
Time resumes. We need to subtract the Mislead, but which one is it? Waiting...Now we know
With the Mislead gone, all that's left is the kill Smite->Power Attack->Finish
The Labyrinth
Aestica's time in the Spellhold labyrinth was brief. She collected Dusty Rose, the Ring of Regeneration, and the Ring of Free Action. Chose the Boots of the North
We also recovered the Gessen Bow String. Someone remind me what the minimum required strength is to grab the Gessen string. I suspect that we overshot with our Potion of Storm Giant Strength, and Aestica isn't happy about it.
To Bodhi. This always makes me nervous. I'm always afraid that I'll lose my character while it's not under my control. This happened to someone (who I can't recall) back on the Bioware forums. I'd hate for it to happen again. I tried something new this time. It worked and I liked it. We equipped the iMoD and the Girdle of Bluntness and then activated Smite just before the slayer change. The Smite knocked Bodhi back and, critically, kept Slayer Aestica on the move, since her script made her chase the quickly receding Bodhi. This reduced contact time with both Bodhi and the elder vamps. I don't believe Bodhi got an attack roll in. The elder vamps got one, a miss
Jonicus
The trickiest part of this fight was dealing with the Aestica clone, which had spawned with the Reflex in the offhand. Thankfully, we had equipped the Blade of Roses in Everard's slot, so we didn't end up with sling bullets bouncing back and forth for an eternity.
Here we are stuck in the corner, trying to think of a plan. We want to nix the clone before it wipes out the inmates, but we also don't want to reveal ourselves within Irenicus's line of sight. The Reflex prevents us from attacking at range.
Reluctantly, we engage with Ages, but a "praeses" from Jon-Jon forces us to pull back and quaff a PoI
Time resumes. We go to work with Ages again. Aestica would so rather be on the other side of the room chucking sling bullets right now
Planetar. Smite->Power Attack with Everard
By now, Jon-Jon's Abjuration school stuff is tapped. He's ready for an arrow. We juke the summoned efreetis with a PoI and then fire away
While in the general vicinity the shamans took a trip to Gullykin to loot that - the particular attraction there being another +1 sling. Then they moved on to Durlag's Tower to have a go at the battle horrors. The lowest grade of spirit summons do very little damage to battle horrors and only Lorbag had a weapon that could hurt them. However, with 5 shamans dancing there was a regular supply of spirits to replace those killed and, as I hoped, the battle horrors were too stupid to do anything except attack the nearest creature. Killing even one of them took a looong time though and required quite a few minor adjustments in positioning in order to keep safe as the battle horror often moved slightly when attacking a new enemy. That led to carelessness with the battle horror at near death and Grunt was struck down. Rather than let the XP position get distorted between the party members I decided to run away - but didn't do that very carefully either!
Back again and the shamans had another long fight, but this time they were successful despite several of them getting hit by lightning - and Lorbag taking a blow from the battle horror once when misjudging how far away a snake spirit was attacking from. He was hit again against the second, but finally that one went down as well.
The third battle horror and doom guard on the walls were too dangerous to take on due to their skeleton archer comrades, so the shamans went instead to hunt for ghasts. That also required a lot of micro-management and a bit of RL distraction there was enough for Chat to be held and killed.
After coming back some more ghasts were finished off to get everyone to level 4 - unlocking 2nd level spells.
Dealing with groups of ghasts in those tight quarters was not easy though, so I decided to leave the tower with the rest of the ghasts for the moment.
We travelled to Durlag's tower with our weakened party of five. Turns out battle horrors hit with normal weapons:
An interesting thing in LoB I didn't think about: The poor demon knight doesn't even stand a chance trying to kill these tourists with his fireballs. Ike was fine as well, and I thought I would restore natural order to things by killing him. Turns out he counts as an innocent, and I lost quite a bit of reputation for this:
I later bought back most of this reputation at the temple. We faced no trouble in the upper levels of the tower and gained another wisdom tome for Sybia. Speaking of Sybia: She faced quite a bit of trouble in this dungeon. My approch to the three greater doppelgangers in the first level was very poor - I should have either went in to try and interrupt their spellcasting or wait out their buffs - instead, I did neither, and one of them ended up chasing Sybia, who wasn't wearing her armor as she had been disarming traps:
My pathing was suboptimal, and she ended up dying, forcing me to get back to the Nashkel temple and resurrect her:
A couple of minutes later, Sybia died again because I forgot about a trap location - another trip to the temple:
As for the battle with the dwarven warders, it went fairly well. We approached with full buffs, two spirit bears and three skeletons, and none of the warders got past our summons:
The only spell to hit my party was a dire charm, and our save was successful.
The second level featured some hard-fought battles against the various doppelganger forms. An Islanne clone managed to hit Nahema with a lightning bolt, which she barely survived:
However, during the same battle, around 5 doppelgangers showed up in total, and an invisible Kiel surprised and killed Sybia - once again:
We did win the fight thanks to our summons, though - but that's another trip to the temple. Eventually, we made our way to the dwarven doom guards, and they weren't able to hurt our spirit animals at all:
Level three featured Sybia using a protection from undead scroll. She disarmed the traps on the middle path and killed all of the skeletons - which took forever, and I had to use a second scroll before she was finished, as the duration of the first one ended.
The greater wyverns were next, but damn, these are tough in LoB:
With skeletons always walking ahead, we carefully took out the ashirukuru as well:
For the last time, we used the belt of antipode in the ice room. After this encounter, I threw the damn thing away:
The slime room was the last one we did, buffing with potions of absorption and equipping our 3 free action items + 2 potions of freedom for the chessboard in advance:
Now - our strategy was simple: Spam webs on the board while retaining our mobility thanks to the buffs I mentioned. Also, greater malison to start things off:
The enemy king was out at the front and an easy target for our ranged weapons, so this battle was over fairly quickly:
After the loss of part of our previous progress we redid the Doomsayer and Laryssa. Brage was annoyed by that this time, but Skull was able to charm him and convince him to return to Nashkel
- unfortunately Skull had not checked his inventory before talking to Brage and left a couple of items behind to evaporate into thin air.
After visiting the FAI a spirit bear helped them clear the ankheg nest
and recover Farmer Brun's body (not really the best choice of spirits as its special attack kept scaring the ankhegs underground). Unfortunately it appeared that the farmer had already made a successful insurance claim against his son's estate and had no interest in having a body recognized despite our fiddling around with who had the body and trying saving and reloading).
Just to the north Tenya was in the process of teleporting away with her bowl - but she was not quick enough to evade the nymphs that had pre-cast cause serious wounds.
That opened up Ulgoth's Beard where Ern was lucky enough to learn all the spells on offer.
Thinking it was about time to get on with the main quest the duo went next to the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey was confused by some nymphs there, but that didn't stop him continuing with a rigid thinking for Skull - though that didn't do him much good anyway.
Ern once more learnt some additional spells from Mulahey's stock and quickly put webs to use on the amazons.
Back in Nashkel Nimbul was rendered harmless by poison and confusion. On the screen Rasaad looked like he had pinched our kill, but in fact the spirit snake had just got in first.
I had a bit of fun with Neira by experimenting with bringing the nymphs used on Nimbul into the inn by force-attacking Skull. That appeared to confuse the game somewhat with the result that Gate70 had the joy of seeing and attacking Biff the Understudy (though damage was correctly being done to Neira.
The final action saw Tranzig fail to deal with Ern's magic missiles, leaving the route to the Bandit Camp open.
In the fourth dungeon level, we quickly solved the first two parts of the riddle, as spiders aren't all that threatening to our summons by now. Skeletons proved to be quite effective against greater ghouls and crypt crawlers, and for one of the bigger groups, a very successful slow spell removed any chance of party members getting paralyzed:
Grael's group was slowed as well, and so we made our way to the demon knight. We opened with full buffs and skeletons:
However, our foe dispelled all of our buffs and even stunned Arbogast - iirc the first time I lost control of my bhaalspawn in this run:
Luckily, skeletons and ranged weapon users managed to kill him before he got to use any other spells:
Back to Ulgoth's Beard. We had our potions of invisibilty ready (and a minor sequencer with invisibility for Nahema, to save one potion) right away, as to evade any backstabs:
We retreated to the north, out of our opponent's sight, and prepared with summons and buffs. The battle wasn't close:
The next group of cult guards fell to the still-hasted party:
Finally, a well-protected Nahema lured the cult members out of their building, into some waiting spirit animals. Killing those proved to be a nearly impossible task for our opponents:
We rested and prepared to take on Aec'Letec. Our buffs included: Bless, Chant, PfE, Remove Fear, Oils of Speed, Potions of Storm Giant Strength, Heroism, Invulnerability, Mirrored Eyes, and, of course, Magic Shielding - this prevented the demon from dealing any major damage to the party, even on LoB:
While the currently targetted party member kept the demon busy by running away from him, the rest of the party took out all of the cult members, until only Aec'Letec was left:
Every time a party member got hurt, I had them drink a potion of regeneration, just in case. Finally, Aikar was able to inflict the final hit:
And we still had our potions of magic shielding active in the end, so there was really no threat of losing this fight.
@Alesia_BH Awesome run! You're making good use of power attack and smite, which is really unconventional -- greater whirlwind and critical strike do way more damage, but of course damage isn't everything. What are the limits of this strategy? For example, you didn't use it against Irenicus -- presumably because he's immune? Do you expect this to carry through to the endgame of ToB?
Recap: With the session end drawing close we kicked open some doors in preparation for hunting liches. We only have two scrolls of protection from undead though so may need to purchase another one before starting.
Teere has been EEKeepered back from Lathander to Tyr. Corarcher, Archer: CoreyRussell Mis, Archer: Grond0
Our lich run lasts about 45 minutes. We've got two more scrolls to protect us from Undead. First off is the one in the Old Tunnels, followed by the Crooked Crane and the Bridge District. Kangaxx doesn't last long at all but his demilich form gets a glimpse through our protections.
Teere survives a demilich howl, as does Mis. Corarcher keels over dead. Not good.
Mis wishes she'd suffered the same fate, but is instead treated to Imprisonment. Teere waits a few moments to confirm Kangaxx is ignoring her, gently teasing him with the ineffective Flail of Ages +3. No joy.
With Mis out of action until chapter 5, and no way then of rescuing her without recruiting a friendly mage, we move on to Trio EE Multiplayer attempt 3.
Kangaxx managed to imprison Grond0 in our last Trio run, as we re-rolled and came up with these characters:
Controlled by Corey_Russell (protagonist)
Controlled by Grond0
Controlled by Gate70
Candlekeep went smoothly mostly, with the exception of Berk getting in trouble with the guards for stealing. Despite having a thief in the party we weren't able to get the sapphire. This is because Corthief XIV wants to hide in the shadows as much as possible to hopefully stay out of trouble.
We did our usual thing of robbing the nearby NPCs in the forest by Candlekeep. Then we headed to kill Shoal. The dwarves wanted to get the helmet from Droth, except once we got there Shoal would only talk to the NPC due to the dwarves having no CHA to speak of. So kill her once again we did and pretty fast.
We were some of the basic tasks in Beregost when we faced Karlat. Grond0 mentioned off hand I would have to kill Karlat, as Grond0 didn't have a weapon he was proficient with. As it turned out, Berk got the critical hit that killed Karlat so guess didn't matter this time. But Corthief XIV thought it would be good to get Arghain's sword for Berk soon as we could, though we did make a few quick stops such as the stealth boots from the hobgoblins and taking out Merianne's ogrillions.
The dwarves got badly hurt, but the party did eventually kill Arghain and Arghain's buddies.
We took out Greywolf for his sword for Corthief XIV. Then we got the green scroll for protection from petrification, then out the basilisks - we'll go after Kirian's party next session.
Ankhegs are another unintelligent creature and thus relatively easy to convince to attack a never-ending stream of summons. However, care is always needed and Chat managed to require another temple visit by failing to recognise that he'd alerted an enemy on the flank. At least with 6 characters with 19 strength carrying shells for sale in Beregost there was plenty of cash for the raise dead spell. However, that's no excuse for the carelessness shown the instant the party got back to the ankheg nest. A third visit to the ankhegs wasn't totally uneventful as one character was again attacked, but this time he survived (which was rather fortunate considering it was Lorbag). Things started well enough on the field with a number of ankhegs fertilising the soil, until I accidentally used a select all + move command - resulting in summons disappearing and a fatal shot being aimed at Toke.
After visiting the temple again I was selling more shells and accidentally ordered a new suit of armor instead - losing a small amount of the financial gains from the area in the process.
Moving on to Ulgoth's Beard, Dushai met his maker before the shamans started repairing their damaged reputation. After giving Joia back her ring at the FAI they took on Tarnesh - only just avoiding a casualty from a magic missile there.
Some more reputation quests led to a conflict with the Doomsayer. I was attempting to tackle him in the same way as the battle horrors and that seemed to be going well early on. However, too much of my attention was probably being spent listening to some cricket and I didn't react instantly when the Doomsayer switched unexpectedly to Lorbag rather than a spirit snake - he tried to run back, but fractionally too late as a follow-up strike also hit.
@Alesia_BH Awesome run! You're making good use of power attack and smite, which is really unconventional -- greater whirlwind and critical strike do way more damage, but of course damage isn't everything. What are the limits of this strategy? For example, you didn't use it against Irenicus -- presumably because he's immune? Do you expect this to carry through to the endgame of ToB?
Thank you four your interest, YingusXiaous.
Aestica is, by all accounts, unconventional. She's an unkitted halfling fighter. She uses shields. She has grandmastery in slings, a pip in darts, and two pips in short swords. She breaks all the rules. And she does it with style. I like to think of her as the James Dean of kick-ass halfling woman warriors.
Onto Smite and Power Attack. As a solo no reloader, you find yourself thinking less about proportional damage and more about spatio-temporal management of battlefield threats. Power Attack and Smite (especially Smite) are excellent battlefield management tools. Aestica has made good use of them. Stun immunity is both surprisingly common and surprisingly rare. Enemies like Irenicus and Lavok are immune, but other powerful enemies are not. Knockback immunity is relatively rare.
Throughout ToB, spatio-temporal threat management will remain the focus of Aestica's approach to the battlefield. Smite and Power Attack will continue to see use, though they're likely to figure less prominently. Look for Aestica to use her Smites to separate enemies, breakout of box-ins, and keep dangerous, fast moving foes at a distance. Expect her to use her Power Attacks to shutdown mages early.
Once again, thanks for your interest!
Best,
A.
NW: Aestica has taken her one allowed Smite and only one additional Power Attack beyond that required en route to Critical Strike. She's invested little, but gained much. I should also note that Aestica has been using GWW and Critical Strike on a regular basis- more often that Smite and Power Attack. I just tend to talk about Smite and Power Attack more. IIRC, Aestica's current HLA setup is as follows:
Critical Strike x 2, Power Attack x 2, Smite Whirlwind x1, Greater Whirlwind x6 Hardiness x 5
Going forward, she'll be adding Critical Strikes. They'll get significant use once Aestica starts dual wielding under Improved Haste
Solve two problems (bad mic, no cursor in recording), cause one more (flickering). Either we get the flickering or we don't get cursor. I'd rather not have the flickering, so no more cursor.
Highlights for those who don't care to watch the whole thing: 2:04 Imoen and Neera raised 4:50 Nimbul nixed 16:44 Child consoled 17:41 Dryad defended (also in the absence of Dorn we wioll haven reach 20 reputation from this) 20:20 Officer Vai's request 23:00 Tranzig rolls an *8* to successfully save against Deafness (save vs Spell). This... doesn't feel like it should be a valid result given how easy it is to smear him onto the carpet. 27:02 Bassilus bested 37:30 Vampiric Wolves wrangled 39:30 Neera's Quest chain advances (finally). Also the whole "accidentally exploding Dorn" thing from last time. 44:13 Zombie apocalypse averted 44:33 IT'S A TRAP? 52:21 Rogdok raided 54:16 Ekandor eliminated. THIS was a tight fight, but aside from the sheer amount of damage we took early on (thanks to a verdammt OGRE) everything fell into place rather quickly. Ekandor got deafened at the outset and Neera NRD'd a half-duration Glitterdust at a lucky moment. 59:32 Adoy very strongly reminds me of Questor Thews with this statement. 1:08:18 Requisite closing character record view
Tried a Hammer of Moradin kit for the first time, this time on core. Once more failed fighting Krumm. I thought that using Moradin's Hammer the result might have been different particularly as this time he had a shield, however the result was the same Caldo fled and Krumm was lethal. My character had reached level 3.
Just realised why he failed. I think Krumm's belt protects against blunt weapons and in EE he has a +1 weapon.
Just a little thought about Power Attack and Smite. I personally think that these HLAs are vastly underrated. For example : surprisingly, the big bad Ascension Amelyssan herself is not immune to stun. While I was testing how to beat Mel with a solo unkitted fighter under LoB difficulty, I found that stun-locking her was pretty much the only option. Her damage resistance, massive hp pool (because LoB) and boost to saves (LoB adds +5 bonus to every enemy creature) made that strat very unreliable though. Nothing safe was found under these circumstances as far as I know.
Under non-LoB difficulty however, the -4 penalty to save given by each Power Attack can make that strategy much more efficient. After taking out the Five methodically, you could start with a Smite on Mel, switch to dual wielding, cast Power Attack. If one Power Attack sticks, she's stun for another two rounds. If you precasted Improved Haste from the Darkfire Bow or the Improved Cloak of Protection just before starting to kill the Five, you could enjoy 9 APR with Power Attack. That's 18 save at -4 she has to make to be able to make another move. 36 if you count your Simulacrum from the Vhailor' helm. Just a few Power Attacks should theoritically be sufficient to deal with her without her being able to do anything.
This strategy requires plenty of precise excution, though. 1) Bring all the Five to Near Death (I think it's the standard strat to deal with the Ascension final fight). 2) Cast your Simulacrum. 3) Cast Improved Haste, from either items. 4) Kill the Five. 5) Smite Mel with your PC. 6) Cast Power Attack. 7) Smite Mel with your Simulacrum. 8) Wail on Mel 'til she's gone !
Theoritically, this could work at a very high percentage of success. Bear in mind, I put the emphasis on theoritically ; I've haven't done it myself in a real game. It however speaks for how relevant Power Attack can be : GWW and Critical Strike are definitively good, but if your opponent can't even do a thing, a bit more damage won't make much of a difference. When an enemy is not immune to stun, I think the Smite/Power Attack combo is much more potent than GWW and CS.
@Alesia_BH I also wholeheartedly approve your choice of proficiencies. On a solo run, flexibility is much more important than attaining Grand Mastery. I had pretty much the same prof you had with my solo fighter, but replaced short swords with long swords. Since I had to go through SoD, where you need a +3 weapon for the final fight and there's a fabulous one near the end, that explain the difference. Also, now that slings add strength bonuses to their damage, they're probably the safest weapon to use, if only because of the range. For a solo fighter, it's probably the only Grand Mastery that I would always pick.
Sad to see your shaman run coming to an end, @Grond0 - I'd be really interested in seeing what the class can do at higher levels. I hope someone at some point manages to take a shaman to the later stages of the trilogy.
Thank you for the kind words @Alesia_BH - I'm really enjoying Aestica's run as well, and I am a big fan of the halfling fighter archetype (in fact, I recently ran an all halfling-party through IWD:EE in which every party member was proficient with slings). Also, I'm always happy to see you championing shields, as I love to use them for many reasons. I'm not only talking about safety, but in my recent games, I just don't want to spend points on any weapon styles until much later. Flexibilty is important. In an ideal world, all of my fighter-types would be able to use at least a ranged weapon, a blunt weapon, a +3 weapon (for SoD) and even some specialized items like an anti-Loup Garou weapon, one of the anti-undead weapons in Bg2 etc. - which makes shields a great default choice, as you really don't need sword and shield-style to make them effective, while dual wielding without two-weapon style isn't all that great in most cases.
@Alesia_BH I also wholeheartedly approve your choice of proficiencies. On a solo run, flexibility is much more important than attaining Grand Mastery. I had pretty much the same prof you had with my solo fighter, but replaced short swords with long swords. Since I had to go through SoD, where you need a +3 weapon for the final fight and there's a fabulous one near the end, that explain the difference. Also, now that slings add strength bonuses to their damage, they're probably the safest weapon to use, if only because of the range. For a solo fighter, it's probably the only Grand Mastery that I would always pick.
As a result of this, I have come to realise that when you have a spiritual weapon such as Moradin's Hammer or Helm's sword, it is wise to have your weapon proficiency in a weapon that does a different type of damage. So if you are a Paladin of Helm having proficiency in blunt weapons is a good idea, whereas it wouldn't be if you had Moradin's Hammer as a spiritual weapon. I didn't think of that before starting my last run.
We entered the thieve's maze where something quite curious happened: While walking around in party formation, Aikar simply phased through the wall, and suddenly, he was on the other side:
Luckily, his help wasn't needed against the skeleton warriors, as we had our own at the ready. An invisible Sybia had previously disarmed all the traps.
I should also mention that I spent all my money before going down here, as it won't be of any help in SoD. After buying the important potions, I still had around 120k left, so I decided to just rebuy my most important wands (I never had to rebuy any wands so far during this playthrough, but I just didn't know what else to spend my money on).
In the undercity, Sybia scouted the opposing party for some hasted and buffed skeleton warriors, who managed to take out the spellcasters before everyone was able to even go hostile. Very strange:
Eventually, our foes reacted, and we supported our summons with ranged weapons:
A quick battle, and no arrow of detonation was fired in our direction.
Tamoko was forced to deal with our spirit bears. However, she was assisted by some random skeletons who just happened to be nearby:
While part of our summons took care of the additional opponents, Nahema managed to blind Tamoko, sealing her fate:
Our buffs for Sarevok were mostly the same as against Aec'Letec, but without mirrored eyes and magic protection - instead, mind focusing was used to further increase our ranged capabilities. Nahema opened the fight by sneaking up to Sarevok and shooting an arrow of dispelling at him - successfully! Meanwhile, spells were flying at her from both Semaj and Angelo, and one of them was remove magic, so I seperated her from my party. Meanwhile, another arrow, another hit: Semaj just teleported in, and my second arrow of dispelling removed all of his protections:
Seems like Nahema could have won this battle on her own - the protectionless Semaj was easily killed by our still-buffed party and the summons. Angelo didn't enter the fray, so we just had to focus our attention on Arbogast's half-brother:
Sarevok struggled, as he was unable to get through our summons quickly enough, and died a few seconds later. I didn't manage to take a screenshot, the transition to SoD happened faster than expected.
Now, the real challenge awaits: What happens when you combine LoB difficulty with a smart AI and gigantic hordes of enemies? We will find out.
Here is some final party information for BG1: Arbogast, level 10 totemic druid, 107 kills (bhaalspawn); *Quarterstaff, *Dart, *Sling, *Club Ifirn, level 10 skald, 3 kills; *Bastard Sword, *Axe, *Two-Handed Sword, *Crossbow Sybia, level 7/8 cleric/thief, 176 kills; *War Hammer, *Quarterstaff, *Sling Aikar, level 8 Kensai, 463 kills, **Long Sword, **Axe, **Dagger Nahema, level 7/7 fighter/illusionist, 293 kills, **Bastard Sword, **Short Sword, **Longbow
I'm always happy to see you championing shields, as I love to use them for many reasons. I'm not only talking about safety, but in my recent games, I just don't want to spend points on any weapon styles until much later. Flexibilty is important.
I find it interesting that we no reloaders tend to converge on the same conclusions, and that those conclusions often differ from those of the player community at large. The world starts to look different when you don't have the luxury of dying, I guess
In an ideal world, all of my fighter-types would be able to use at least a ranged weapon, a blunt weapon, a +3 weapon (for SoD) and even some specialized items like an anti-Loup Garou weapon, one of the anti-undead weapons in Bg2 etc. - which makes shields a great default choice, as you really don't need sword and shield-style to make them effective, while dual wielding without two-weapon style isn't all that great in most cases.
Here's how it worked for Aestica. In BG1, she wanted two pips in a fast melee weapon (short swords), one pip in darts (for darts of stunning), one pip in shortbows (for dispelling arrows), and two pips in sling (for damage at maximum range). Heading into BG2, she needed a magical blunt weapon and the ability to use Ages and the Defender specifically, leading her to take 2 pips in flails. A point in maces would also be desirable for Bodhi. That covers 9 points, bringing us up to level 15.
At this point, she could have worked on her primary weapon, slings, or started taking two weapon points to allow dual-wielding with Ages and the Defender. She chose to reinforce slings for the following reasons: 1) by level 15, AC is still, very, very powerful- especially if taken as far as possible; 2) having dual-wielding points would nudge her away from keeping Harmony or the Reflex in the off-hand, increasing risk from disablers and Flame Arrow sequencers; 3) switching out the off-hand weapon every time you need to use a ranged weapon is cumbersome, and to the extent that that nudges you away from optimal melee range switching, becomes a source of risk.
By then, Aestica was close to HLA territory, and yet another reason to delay dual-wielding: GWW tends to work best when you have one weapon, not two.
So, when -if ever- will Aestica start dual-wielding? Early ToB. Once she has access to Improved Haste to multiply the added attacks -and Foebane to offset additional damage taken due to the lack of a shield- dual wielding will start to make sense. Up till now, though, it hasn't really- not to me, at least.
We're definitely looking forward to Foebane + The Defender + Hardiness! That's a combo worth rocking!
Also, now that slings add strength bonuses to their damage, they're probably the safest weapon to use, if only because of the range. For a solo fighter, it's probably the only Grand Mastery that I would always pick.
Slings have always, always been my go-to warrior proficiency. Due to their speed and extreme range they are relatively safe. The fact that they allow you to use a shield in the offhand makes them safer. The ability to stack strength damage means that you don't need to give up much damage wise -per hit- in comparison to melee weapons. Once you get GWW, the APR difference vanishes. And in tough late battles were standing still in melee contact for an entire round may be inadvisable, the APR advantage can actually swing to slings. On balance, the tradeoff works out well: you get vastly improved safety, with only moderately reduced offensive potential.
For a soloist, the only thing EE's change to slings has done is encourage a reunion. In the pre-Baldurdash, pre-G3 days, the Sling of Everard stacked strength damage, like Seeking, making Everard the sling of choice. After Gaider confirmed that the intention had been for Seeking and Seeking alone to stack strength damage, Baldurdash and G3 patched Everard and Seeking became the go-to. Now, under EE, it's Everard again. Am I enjoying the change? Sure. Getting a new powerful weapon is always goofy fun. Do I think it was necessary or advisable? Not really. The old dynamic encouraged proficiency diversity, since you could only have one great sling fighter. Now it makes sense to give slings to very nearly everyone.
(BTW. Party idea: 5 sling fighting barbarians and a Teleport Field casting sorcerer...)
This strategy requires plenty of precise excution, though. 1) Bring all the Five to Near Death (I think it's the standard strat to deal with the Ascension final fight). 2) Cast your Simulacrum. 3) Cast Improved Haste, from either items. 4) Kill the Five. 5) Smite Mel with your PC. 6) Cast Power Attack. 7) Smite Mel with your Simulacrum. 8) Wail on Mel 'til she's gone !
Makes sense. And I think it would be an excellent strategy for a pure class fighter insane run.
In the old Ascension Solo Challenge, one player, The Truth, completed the battle on insane with a pure fighter. I respected the accomplishment, but some of his tactics struck me as either exploity or unreliable. I think you may have mapped out the most promising warrior formula to date. Aestica may try to implement in a post run insane Ascension attempt, if not her NR challenge run.
Comments
Skull (Half-elf Totemic Druid, Grond0); Ern (Human Bard, Gate70)
Previous run
After a bit of confusion (on my part) about who was posting what, this brings things back up to date in our never-ending quest to kill or be killed.
The totemic druid summons weren't lasting long at low levels, but fortunately we weren't planning on staying at low levels for very long
The basilisks caused no problems and Mutamin was always likely to struggle against a spirit snake.
Back in Beregost we expected that Silke would be another to struggle after being bitten by a snake, but she still managed to choke out the incantation for a lightning bolt - good job Ern had got a few levels by that point!
The battle horrors at Durlag's Tower made the mistake of being outside under cloudy skies wearing metal armor, but with no safe means of dealing with basilisks we left the roof for now and travelled towards the coast - watching Bassilus be eaten by lions on the way.
We tend not to buy scrolls, at least until late in the game, but I was keen to get the scimitar on top of Durlag's Tower. Hence Ern invested in a PfP scroll to guard against the basilisks on the roof. They were soon toast, but there was a near death prior to that against a ghast. I mistook which of the icons was my character and took no action as a ghast attacked and paralysed Skull. Ern had no spells which could kill it quickly, so threw himself into the attack and successfully convinced the ghast to attack him instead (hooray) - and instantly paralyse him as well (horror). Fortunately Skull had previously summoned a nymph and it quickly cast cause serious wounds and attacked - reducing the ghast to near death. It was now a race to see which could land a fatal blow first - and the nymph came up trumps.
After collecting the +2 scimitar on the roof, Skull found he wasn't theoretically strong enough to wield it (he reduced strength to 9 in order to boost wisdom and charisma), but was able to equip it with the help of a strength of one spell.
{Skull can be pretty vicious against enemies vulnerable to lightning, but that doesn't include the Doomsayer. Our normal tactic against that is to fill it full of magic missiles, but that's not a spell Ern knows yet. However, some insect damage and a couple of spirit lions seemed to make a perfectly acceptable substitute.
A few reputation quests then led up to taking on Tarnesh. At that time neither of us had any useful spells left, but Gate70 felt there was no need to rest - and was proved right as Tarnesh died to a single arrow.
The session ended when my internet connection failed so there's no recent proper save. Testing it just now the autosave doesn't seem to be working, so we might need to do the bracketed bit of work again
Skull, Totemic Druid 7, 52 HPs, 31 kills
Ern, Bard 7, 50 HPs, 25 kills
The idea is again for a Rogue Rebalanced Skald that doesn't ever kill anyone himself. Mods for BG1 are RR, SCS, Divine Remix, Item Revisions including critical hit items, and... I think that's everything pertinent. A couple minor quest mods, but nothing gamechanging. This attempt is going to be spiking damage and offense with two Archers. Alina is going to be dual-ing to Cleric at level 9, and Sebastian to Fighter at level 10 or 11, depending of how much I want Sebastian to be able to cast level 6's.
Early events: We started by heading to High Hedge, killing a couple skeletons, and saving Melicamp from the wolf-with-additional-hitpoints. Sleep allows us to take out Zargal and company with no damage, and we decide to try to kill Basillus for the heck of it. We interrupt his spells with arrows as well as blinding him with Vista, and he dies a pointy death soon after.
Spiders and Karlat are killed in Beregost, as well as an annoying Red Mage. Silke is left alone for now. After going to the FAI and returning all items to their owners barring the Girdle of Piercing, we try to head for Shoal to get my first Critical Hit Resistance item (Helm of Defense). Vista is the sacrifice, but Shoal never decides to talk to us and we kill her without ever getting to Droth. After heading to Nashkel, my decision to keep Baroque Neutral pays off as Neira gets off an Unholy Blight onto our back line, bringing both Archers to ~10 health each.
All the wilderness areas southwest of Nashkel are cleared with no deaths, including the Doomsayer. A mishap with accidentally having Vista in melee range happens, and she dies for the second time. After resurrecting her, we cleared the Basilisk area with little issue, and finish off Peter's party there with arrows as well. The Nashkel mines are fought through, and Vista starts off Mulahey with a failed Blind spell. Apparently, that turns him hostile without having reinforcements, and an initial spell is disrupted and then Sebastian hits his Command and Mulahey dies.
A couple mishaps with the Revenant almost gets Sebastian killed, but Vista hits a Blind, and Cato and Alina manage to get the aggro away from the paralyzed Sebastian. Finally, we head to Narcillicus with two Skeleton Warriors. An initial Hold Person is negated by a Minor Globe of Invulnerability while the Skeleton Warriors tank the initial Mustard Jelly attacks. Sebastian casts Remove Fear to prevent a Horror from destroying us which Vista gets a Mirror Image up; Narcillicus counters with a Remove Magic. Alina and Cato are still plucking away his Stoneskins, but not before Narcillicus throws a Web at the Skeleton Warriors, and Alina is nearby the skeletons; she peels off, and Cato finishes off the Mage. Both Skeleton Warriors fall to Mustard Jelly hits, but now everyone's wielding melee weapons and the two Mustard Jellies die with only one critical hit on Sebastian.
Our current levels are under the spoilers; Sebastian's true DEX is 18, 17 due to armor, and 19 due to Gauntlets of Dexterity. Next up is Ankhegs, Sirines, and Ulgoth's Beard.
Woot-Woot!
(Apologies for allowing Aestica's coverage to fall behind her progress. I'll be sure to get her updates caught up before continuing on to ToB!)
Best,
A.
Ok! We have a lot of catching up to do. Let's start with the Planar Prison quest.
I contemplated skipping this, but Kundane and the prospect of avenging Borco's halfling led Aestica and I into the conduit. No regrets on that decision. It was a fun, rewarding quest and, yes, we halfling warriors do need to stick together. Halfling's unite! High five Mazzy!
Anyhoo, onto the quest.
Mekrath
Aestica's battle with Mekrath illustrates the over/under Smite/Power Attack mage killing strategy. This should make clear why it's often preferable to the wait->dispelling arrow approach.
Mekrath's buffs fire. He casts ProMW. His aura is clouded. Aestica goes unenchanted Smite. Mekrath is instantly stunned without a save.
An unenchanted Power Attack with darts extends the stun. Given the APR of darts and the two round duration of Power Attack, Mekrath's odds of evading stun are very low.
Aestica is through Mekrath's skins now. She switches to the sling for the finish. Mekrath is dead. No waiting; no window; no resources consumed. Their are times when a dispelling arrow approach would work better, but the over/under Smite/Power Attack is great when it's available
The Bounty Hunters
The bounty hunter battle ws pretty straight forward- Aestica is stupidly over powered, after all.
We entered the prison running Sandthief invisibility. That drew out the bounty hunter mage's divination cast, allowing us to run RoAC II with lower divination risk. Why does that matter? The only things to fear in this fight are Malison/Doom->Pixie Prick, and Malison/Doom->FoD. Running RoAC II mitigated both risks
Used Ras to draw out a cast from the mage. Note that Ras may be released without breaking invisibility, meaning Aestica's aura will be clear when she breaks.
We break with an unenchanted Power Attack. Does this seem overkill? Sure it does. We'd win without all this. But Divination->Malison would cost us a Potion of Invulnerability. We're defending the potion case.
The mage is dead. We never see Malison
(Why Power Attack instead of Smite, you ask? Good question. Given the odd geometry of the Planar Prison, a Smite could have sent the bounty hunter mage well, anywhere. We don't want to risk knocking him into another area and complicating a later battle.)
With Malison off the field, it was time for some straight-forward chunk-a-punk. Done and done.
The Quadruple Mage Battle
This battle makes me nervous. I've seen powerful characters have trouble here, and you don't have to dig deep into Serg's archive to find examples of players who have lost characters here. Seeking an opportunity to observe her opponent, Aestica approached invisible and sent in Mr. Efreeti. Mr. Efreeti wasn't defeated. He was murdered. They slaughtered him.
Now Ras. Ras lasted a little longer, due to its physical damage resistance, but it was still nixed quick. By this point I still really-truly didn't know how I wanted to handle this battle.
Eventually, we decided to use our dispelling arrows. This was the first time we used them in this run. The purpose was to put the mages on their heels, and force them to use their auras on rebuffing, granting Aestica a opportunity to take down the melee foes without taking spell damage.
This worked, mostly, although we did take a touch of spell damage just before the finish
Time to finish the mages. The Reflex, the Shield Amulet, and positioning prevented damage from coming in to quickly. We did have to use some healing potions here. We also used a Potion of Insulation to weather a Chain Lightning onslaught
Dragonslayer Detect Invisibility for the evasive thrall.
Last mage
The Master of Thralls
The Master of Thralls demanded Aestica's patented demon killing strategy. Sling-bullet-to-the-face.
The Warden
Ok, boss man: Let's see what you've got...
Mantle. We can get over the top of that with ease. We chose Power Attack over Smite, since we didn't want to push the Warden into the den of yuan-ti mages
Sadly, a PW:B thwarted the Power Attack. Bummer. That'll cost us time and a dispelling arrow.
Our dispelling arrow lands. The Warden goes Improved Mantle
Everard over the top for the finish
Spellhold next.
Best,
A.
Previous updates:
My first attempt degenerated into regular deaths as I tried out different tactics at level 1, before eventually ending in a travel ambush (still at level 1, though having done a lot of work). Shamans need the most XP of any class to get early levels and with a full party of those progress is slow and they're pretty vulnerable to archer travel ambushes (although level 1 protection did often work, I noted 3 occasions on which it didn't when it apparently should have, i.e. there was no other source of damage beyond the basic hit).
So with a premium on getting lots of XP early before much travel is undertaken, this time the shamans went immediately for a big win - successfully killing the Candlekeep rats without anyone even being rendered unconscious
They then chose their route and time to get safely down to Nashkel to buy a protection from petrification scroll. Coming back north again, they dropped off Mr Colquetle's amulet, enabling everyone to gain level 2.
Lorbag - L2, 20 HPs, 7 kills
Chat - L2, 18 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Pretty Boy - L2, 20 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Grinch - L2, 20 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Grunt - L2, 17 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Toke - L2, 16 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Here are a few points I've noted about using shamans in this run:
- multiple shamans don't increase the summoning limit for spirits (starting at 2), but having multiple shamans dance at once does greatly increase the speed at which summons are produced, i.e. the % chances for each shaman producing summons appear to be calculated separately. Active spirits, whoever they were originally summoned by, remain active if any shaman continues to dance. This enables spirits to be brought out quickly and then some shamans can lead enemies on to them (meaning most melee enemies have no chance, though ranged ones are still dangerous).
- spirits also try and attack if they are in sight of a party member, even if that's not the shaman dancing. One of the problems with playing solo is that spirits won't attack if they get drawn outside sight range (and that can't be adjusted solo - though I keep meaning to investigate if Farsight affects this restriction, I've not got round to that yet).
- if shamans are attacking when they try and start dancing, there's a good chance they will immediately cease dancing and revert to attacking. So if you want to dance you may wish to move a step first before starting to shuffle your feet.
Shamanic hordes {2} - LoB party (update 3)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904573/#Comment_904573
At the basilisk area Lorbag himself had the best melee weapon (+1 staff taken from Silke) and took the responsibility for basilisk bashing. That carried some risk as a single hit could very easily kill him. However, by making sure that he was using the full distance 2 reach of the staff (that's easier I find if you attack on a diagonal) there was a small window of opportunity to see a basilisk switching to melee and moving towards him - and I concentrated hard to make sure there were no attacks on him. The death of the last, but one, of the separated basilisks got everyone up to level 3 (again good HPs there).
This screenshot shows the multiple dances in action. The shamans stopped with one of a chasing pack of gnolls actually in sight. Playing solo you would be exceptionally fortunate to get a spirit summoned in time for it to intercept the chase, but with the help of multiple dances summons were able to block the gnolls without any of the shamans needing to move.
Korax took a while to tag Mutamin, but eventually managed it to allow the shamans to shoot him down
The first death of the run occurred soon after that with my concentration flagging a bit. About 5 attempts to charm Peter had failed and the shamans were trying to rest when ambushed by gnolls. Nothing unusual about that, but I was less precise with movement than needed there. In particular I made the mistake of moving some of the shamans in groups, which makes poor pathfinding far more likely - and I wasn't actually watching him as somehow a gnoll got within reach of Pretty Boy.
Returning from the temple, Peter was charmed at the next attempt and this time worn down against some gnolls to provide an easy kill. The same sort of thing happened to Lindin before Kirian was persuaded to waste most of her spells on spirits.
Lorbag - L3, 30 HPs, 21 kills
Chat - L3, 25 HPs, 14 kills, 0 deaths
Pretty Boy - L3, 28 HPs, 10 kills, 1 death
Grinch - L3, 27 HPs, 8 kills, 0 deaths
Grunt - L3, 24 HPs, 8 kills, 0 deaths
Toke - L3, 26 HPs, 18 kills, 0 deaths
Ok. I'm going to cover this super-quick, because I'm eager to move Aestica into ToB.
The Vamps
Two of the three were nixed at range with Azuredge. The last, Del, was finished in melee with the iMod. I was, once upon a time, ambivalent about David's vampires due to con drain, but now I really like them. The only thing I have a problem with now is the bat form (to be addressed in the Bodhi post)
Perth
Aestica entered Spellhold using Perth's wardstone. Perth played his hand well here, using a Simmy + Mislead Chain to get off a Time Stop, but in the end, all that earned him was a few extra rounds. He never got a chance to take offensive action, save summoning.
Here we see Perth's opening. Note that the Mislead prevents Aestica from immediately executing unenchanted Smite->Power Attack.
Perth says "praeses," we activate RoAC II, evading the Time Stop. Perth can do nothing but play with Ras.
Time resumes. We need to subtract the Mislead, but which one is it? Waiting...Now we know
With the Mislead gone, all that's left is the kill Smite->Power Attack->Finish
The Labyrinth
Aestica's time in the Spellhold labyrinth was brief. She collected Dusty Rose, the Ring of Regeneration, and the Ring of Free Action. Chose the Boots of the North
We also recovered the Gessen Bow String. Someone remind me what the minimum required strength is to grab the Gessen string. I suspect that we overshot with our Potion of Storm Giant Strength, and Aestica isn't happy about it.
To Bodhi. This always makes me nervous. I'm always afraid that I'll lose my character while it's not under my control. This happened to someone (who I can't recall) back on the Bioware forums. I'd hate for it to happen again. I tried something new this time. It worked and I liked it. We equipped the iMoD and the Girdle of Bluntness and then activated Smite just before the slayer change. The Smite knocked Bodhi back and, critically, kept Slayer Aestica on the move, since her script made her chase the quickly receding Bodhi. This reduced contact time with both Bodhi and the elder vamps. I don't believe Bodhi got an attack roll in. The elder vamps got one, a miss
Jonicus
The trickiest part of this fight was dealing with the Aestica clone, which had spawned with the Reflex in the offhand. Thankfully, we had equipped the Blade of Roses in Everard's slot, so we didn't end up with sling bullets bouncing back and forth for an eternity.
Here we are stuck in the corner, trying to think of a plan. We want to nix the clone before it wipes out the inmates, but we also don't want to reveal ourselves within Irenicus's line of sight. The Reflex prevents us from attacking at range.
Reluctantly, we engage with Ages, but a "praeses" from Jon-Jon forces us to pull back and quaff a PoI
Time resumes. We go to work with Ages again. Aestica would so rather be on the other side of the room chucking sling bullets right now
Planetar. Smite->Power Attack with Everard
By now, Jon-Jon's Abjuration school stuff is tapped. He's ready for an arrow. We juke the summoned efreetis with a PoI and then fire away
Fin!
To the Underdark!
Best,
A.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904573/#Comment_904573
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904585/#Comment_904585
While in the general vicinity the shamans took a trip to Gullykin to loot that - the particular attraction there being another +1 sling. Then they moved on to Durlag's Tower to have a go at the battle horrors. The lowest grade of spirit summons do very little damage to battle horrors and only Lorbag had a weapon that could hurt them. However, with 5 shamans dancing there was a regular supply of spirits to replace those killed and, as I hoped, the battle horrors were too stupid to do anything except attack the nearest creature. Killing even one of them took a looong time though and required quite a few minor adjustments in positioning in order to keep safe as the battle horror often moved slightly when attacking a new enemy. That led to carelessness with the battle horror at near death and Grunt was struck down. Rather than let the XP position get distorted between the party members I decided to run away - but didn't do that very carefully either!
Back again and the shamans had another long fight, but this time they were successful despite several of them getting hit by lightning - and Lorbag taking a blow from the battle horror once when misjudging how far away a snake spirit was attacking from. He was hit again against the second, but finally that one went down as well.
The third battle horror and doom guard on the walls were too dangerous to take on due to their skeleton archer comrades, so the shamans went instead to hunt for ghasts. That also required a lot of micro-management and a bit of RL distraction there was enough for Chat to be held and killed.
Lorbag - L4, 34 HPs, 23 kills
Chat - L4, 38 HPs, 14 kills, 1 death
Pretty Boy - L4, 37 HPs, 12 kills, 1 death
Grinch - L4, 34 HPs, 10 kills, 0 deaths
Grunt - L4, 34 HPs, 7 kills, 1 death
Toke - L4, 36 HPs, 23 kills, 1 death
Previous posts:
Part II: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903150/#Comment_903150
Part III: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903226/#Comment_903226
Part IV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903521/#Comment_903521
Part V: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903598/#Comment_903598
Part VI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903749/#Comment_903749
Part VII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903878/#Comment_903878
Part VIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904203/#Comment_904203
Part IX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904266/#Comment_904266
We travelled to Durlag's tower with our weakened party of five. Turns out battle horrors hit with normal weapons:
An interesting thing in LoB I didn't think about: The poor demon knight doesn't even stand a chance trying to kill these tourists with his fireballs. Ike was fine as well, and I thought I would restore natural order to things by killing him. Turns out he counts as an innocent, and I lost quite a bit of reputation for this:
I later bought back most of this reputation at the temple. We faced no trouble in the upper levels of the tower and gained another wisdom tome for Sybia. Speaking of Sybia: She faced quite a bit of trouble in this dungeon. My approch to the three greater doppelgangers in the first level was very poor - I should have either went in to try and interrupt their spellcasting or wait out their buffs - instead, I did neither, and one of them ended up chasing Sybia, who wasn't wearing her armor as she had been disarming traps:
My pathing was suboptimal, and she ended up dying, forcing me to get back to the Nashkel temple and resurrect her:
A couple of minutes later, Sybia died again because I forgot about a trap location - another trip to the temple:
As for the battle with the dwarven warders, it went fairly well. We approached with full buffs, two spirit bears and three skeletons, and none of the warders got past our summons:
The only spell to hit my party was a dire charm, and our save was successful.
The second level featured some hard-fought battles against the various doppelganger forms. An Islanne clone managed to hit Nahema with a lightning bolt, which she barely survived:
However, during the same battle, around 5 doppelgangers showed up in total, and an invisible Kiel surprised and killed Sybia - once again:
We did win the fight thanks to our summons, though - but that's another trip to the temple. Eventually, we made our way to the dwarven doom guards, and they weren't able to hurt our spirit animals at all:
Level three featured Sybia using a protection from undead scroll. She disarmed the traps on the middle path and killed all of the skeletons - which took forever, and I had to use a second scroll before she was finished, as the duration of the first one ended.
The greater wyverns were next, but damn, these are tough in LoB:
With skeletons always walking ahead, we carefully took out the ashirukuru as well:
For the last time, we used the belt of antipode in the ice room. After this encounter, I threw the damn thing away:
The slime room was the last one we did, buffing with potions of absorption and equipping our 3 free action items + 2 potions of freedom for the chessboard in advance:
Now - our strategy was simple: Spam webs on the board while retaining our mobility thanks to the buffs I mentioned. Also, greater malison to start things off:
The enemy king was out at the front and an easy target for our ranged weapons, so this battle was over fairly quickly:
The final level awaits.
Enuhal
Skull (Half-elf Totemic Druid, Grond0); Ern (Human Bard, Gate70)
Previous updates
After the loss of part of our previous progress we redid the Doomsayer and Laryssa. Brage was annoyed by that this time, but Skull was able to charm him and convince him to return to Nashkel
After visiting the FAI a spirit bear helped them clear the ankheg nest
Just to the north Tenya was in the process of teleporting away with her bowl - but she was not quick enough to evade the nymphs that had pre-cast cause serious wounds.
Thinking it was about time to get on with the main quest the duo went next to the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey was confused by some nymphs there, but that didn't stop him continuing with a rigid thinking for Skull - though that didn't do him much good anyway.
Back in Nashkel Nimbul was rendered harmless by poison and confusion. On the screen Rasaad looked like he had pinched our kill, but in fact the spirit snake had just got in first.
The final action saw Tranzig fail to deal with Ern's magic missiles, leaving the route to the Bandit Camp open.
Skull, Totemic Druid 8, 60 HPs, 59 kills
Ern, Bard 7, 50 HPs, 58 kills
Previous posts:
Part II: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903150/#Comment_903150
Part III: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903226/#Comment_903226
Part IV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903521/#Comment_903521
Part V: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903598/#Comment_903598
Part VI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903749/#Comment_903749
Part VII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903878/#Comment_903878
Part VIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904203/#Comment_904203
Part IX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904266/#Comment_904266
Part X: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904610/#Comment_904610
In the fourth dungeon level, we quickly solved the first two parts of the riddle, as spiders aren't all that threatening to our summons by now. Skeletons proved to be quite effective against greater ghouls and crypt crawlers, and for one of the bigger groups, a very successful slow spell removed any chance of party members getting paralyzed:
Grael's group was slowed as well, and so we made our way to the demon knight. We opened with full buffs and skeletons:
However, our foe dispelled all of our buffs and even stunned Arbogast - iirc the first time I lost control of my bhaalspawn in this run:
Luckily, skeletons and ranged weapon users managed to kill him before he got to use any other spells:
Back to Ulgoth's Beard. We had our potions of invisibilty ready (and a minor sequencer with invisibility for Nahema, to save one potion) right away, as to evade any backstabs:
We retreated to the north, out of our opponent's sight, and prepared with summons and buffs. The battle wasn't close:
The next group of cult guards fell to the still-hasted party:
Finally, a well-protected Nahema lured the cult members out of their building, into some waiting spirit animals. Killing those proved to be a nearly impossible task for our opponents:
We rested and prepared to take on Aec'Letec. Our buffs included: Bless, Chant, PfE, Remove Fear, Oils of Speed, Potions of Storm Giant Strength, Heroism, Invulnerability, Mirrored Eyes, and, of course, Magic Shielding - this prevented the demon from dealing any major damage to the party, even on LoB:
While the currently targetted party member kept the demon busy by running away from him, the rest of the party took out all of the cult members, until only Aec'Letec was left:
Every time a party member got hurt, I had them drink a potion of regeneration, just in case. Finally, Aikar was able to inflict the final hit:
And we still had our potions of magic shielding active in the end, so there was really no threat of losing this fight.
Let's hope we do that well with Sarevok.
Enuhal
Recap: With the session end drawing close we kicked open some doors in preparation for hunting liches. We only have two scrolls of protection from undead though so may need to purchase another one before starting.
Teere has been EEKeepered back from Lathander to Tyr.
Corarcher, Archer: CoreyRussell
Mis, Archer: Grond0
Our lich run lasts about 45 minutes. We've got two more scrolls to protect us from Undead. First off is the one in the Old Tunnels, followed by the Crooked Crane and the Bridge District. Kangaxx doesn't last long at all but his demilich form gets a glimpse through our protections.
Teere survives a demilich howl, as does Mis. Corarcher keels over dead. Not good.
Mis wishes she'd suffered the same fate, but is instead treated to Imprisonment. Teere waits a few moments to confirm Kangaxx is ignoring her, gently teasing him with the ineffective Flail of Ages +3. No joy.
With Mis out of action until chapter 5, and no way then of rescuing her without recruiting a friendly mage, we move on to Trio EE Multiplayer attempt 3.
Kangaxx managed to imprison Grond0 in our last Trio run, as we re-rolled and came up with these characters:
Controlled by Grond0
Controlled by Gate70
Candlekeep went smoothly mostly, with the exception of Berk getting in trouble with the guards for stealing. Despite having a thief in the party we weren't able to get the sapphire. This is because Corthief XIV wants to hide in the shadows as much as possible to hopefully stay out of trouble.
We did our usual thing of robbing the nearby NPCs in the forest by Candlekeep. Then we headed to kill Shoal. The dwarves wanted to get the helmet from Droth, except once we got there Shoal would only talk to the NPC due to the dwarves having no CHA to speak of. So kill her once again we did and pretty fast.
We were some of the basic tasks in Beregost when we faced Karlat. Grond0 mentioned off hand I would have to kill Karlat, as Grond0 didn't have a weapon he was proficient with. As it turned out, Berk got the critical hit that killed Karlat so guess didn't matter this time. But Corthief XIV thought it would be good to get Arghain's sword for Berk soon as we could, though we did make a few quick stops such as the stealth boots from the hobgoblins and taking out Merianne's ogrillions.
The dwarves got badly hurt, but the party did eventually kill Arghain and Arghain's buddies.
We took out Greywolf for his sword for Corthief XIV. Then we got the green scroll for protection from petrification, then out the basilisks - we'll go after Kirian's party next session.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904573/#Comment_904573
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904585/#Comment_904585
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904609/#Comment_904609
Ankhegs are another unintelligent creature and thus relatively easy to convince to attack a never-ending stream of summons. However, care is always needed and Chat managed to require another temple visit by failing to recognise that he'd alerted an enemy on the flank. At least with 6 characters with 19 strength carrying shells for sale in Beregost there was plenty of cash for the raise dead spell. However, that's no excuse for the carelessness shown the instant the party got back to the ankheg nest. A third visit to the ankhegs wasn't totally uneventful as one character was again attacked, but this time he survived (which was rather fortunate considering it was Lorbag). Things started well enough on the field with a number of ankhegs fertilising the soil, until I accidentally used a select all + move command - resulting in summons disappearing and a fatal shot being aimed at Toke.
After visiting the temple again I was selling more shells and accidentally ordered a new suit of armor instead - losing a small amount of the financial gains from the area in the process.
Moving on to Ulgoth's Beard, Dushai met his maker before the shamans started repairing their damaged reputation. After giving Joia back her ring at the FAI they took on Tarnesh - only just avoiding a casualty from a magic missile there.
Some more reputation quests led to a conflict with the Doomsayer. I was attempting to tackle him in the same way as the battle horrors and that seemed to be going well early on. However, too much of my attention was probably being spent listening to some cricket and I didn't react instantly when the Doomsayer switched unexpectedly to Lorbag rather than a spirit snake - he tried to run back, but fractionally too late as a follow-up strike also hit.
Aestica is, by all accounts, unconventional. She's an unkitted halfling fighter. She uses shields. She has grandmastery in slings, a pip in darts, and two pips in short swords. She breaks all the rules. And she does it with style. I like to think of her as the James Dean of kick-ass halfling woman warriors.
Onto Smite and Power Attack. As a solo no reloader, you find yourself thinking less about proportional damage and more about spatio-temporal management of battlefield threats. Power Attack and Smite (especially Smite) are excellent battlefield management tools. Aestica has made good use of them. Stun immunity is both surprisingly common and surprisingly rare. Enemies like Irenicus and Lavok are immune, but other powerful enemies are not. Knockback immunity is relatively rare.
Throughout ToB, spatio-temporal threat management will remain the focus of Aestica's approach to the battlefield. Smite and Power Attack will continue to see use, though they're likely to figure less prominently. Look for Aestica to use her Smites to separate enemies, breakout of box-ins, and keep dangerous, fast moving foes at a distance. Expect her to use her Power Attacks to shutdown mages early.
Once again, thanks for your interest!
Best,
A.
NW: Aestica has taken her one allowed Smite and only one additional Power Attack beyond that required en route to Critical Strike. She's invested little, but gained much. I should also note that Aestica has been using GWW and Critical Strike on a regular basis- more often that Smite and Power Attack. I just tend to talk about Smite and Power Attack more. IIRC, Aestica's current HLA setup is as follows:
Critical Strike x 2, Power Attack x 2, Smite
Whirlwind x1, Greater Whirlwind x6
Hardiness x 5
Going forward, she'll be adding Critical Strikes. They'll get significant use once Aestica starts dual wielding under Improved Haste
"The Nobody of Parting"
Adoy-doy!
Solve two problems (bad mic, no cursor in recording), cause one more (flickering). Either we get the flickering or we don't get cursor. I'd rather not have the flickering, so no more cursor.
Highlights for those who don't care to watch the whole thing:
2:04 Imoen and Neera raised
4:50 Nimbul nixed
16:44 Child consoled
17:41 Dryad defended (also in the absence of Dorn we wioll haven reach 20 reputation from this)
20:20 Officer Vai's request
23:00 Tranzig rolls an *8* to successfully save against Deafness (save vs Spell). This... doesn't feel like it should be a valid result given how easy it is to smear him onto the carpet.
27:02 Bassilus bested
37:30 Vampiric Wolves wrangled
39:30 Neera's Quest chain advances (finally). Also the whole "accidentally exploding Dorn" thing from last time.
44:13 Zombie apocalypse averted
44:33 IT'S A TRAP?
52:21 Rogdok raided
54:16 Ekandor eliminated. THIS was a tight fight, but aside from the sheer amount of damage we took early on (thanks to a verdammt OGRE) everything fell into place rather quickly. Ekandor got deafened at the outset and Neera NRD'd a half-duration Glitterdust at a lucky moment.
59:32 Adoy very strongly reminds me of Questor Thews with this statement.
1:08:18 Requisite closing character record view
I'm getting super-tempted to try a multi-player run!
Best,
A.
Once more failed fighting Krumm.
Just realised why he failed. I think Krumm's belt protects against blunt weapons and in EE he has a +1 weapon.
I'd try it, but I think I'd drive people crazy with all my buffing and running around.
With an arcane character. It'd be all:
Gate70: "Where's Alesia?"
Grond0: "She's still buffing. She's on buff 6. She has 9 more to go"
And with a warrior:
Grond0: "Where's Alesia?"
Gate70: "Didn't you notice the halfling running around with the sling, attacking once every 6 rounds? That's her."
Best,
A.
Under non-LoB difficulty however, the -4 penalty to save given by each Power Attack can make that strategy much more efficient. After taking out the Five methodically, you could start with a Smite on Mel, switch to dual wielding, cast Power Attack. If one Power Attack sticks, she's stun for another two rounds. If you precasted Improved Haste from the Darkfire Bow or the Improved Cloak of Protection just before starting to kill the Five, you could enjoy 9 APR with Power Attack. That's 18 save at -4 she has to make to be able to make another move. 36 if you count your Simulacrum from the Vhailor' helm. Just a few Power Attacks should theoritically be sufficient to deal with her without her being able to do anything.
This strategy requires plenty of precise excution, though. 1) Bring all the Five to Near Death (I think it's the standard strat to deal with the Ascension final fight). 2) Cast your Simulacrum. 3) Cast Improved Haste, from either items. 4) Kill the Five. 5) Smite Mel with your PC. 6) Cast Power Attack. 7) Smite Mel with your Simulacrum. 8) Wail on Mel 'til she's gone !
Theoritically, this could work at a very high percentage of success. Bear in mind, I put the emphasis on theoritically ; I've haven't done it myself in a real game. It however speaks for how relevant Power Attack can be : GWW and Critical Strike are definitively good, but if your opponent can't even do a thing, a bit more damage won't make much of a difference. When an enemy is not immune to stun, I think the Smite/Power Attack combo is much more potent than GWW and CS.
@Alesia_BH I also wholeheartedly approve your choice of proficiencies. On a solo run, flexibility is much more important than attaining Grand Mastery. I had pretty much the same prof you had with my solo fighter, but replaced short swords with long swords. Since I had to go through SoD, where you need a +3 weapon for the final fight and there's a fabulous one near the end, that explain the difference. Also, now that slings add strength bonuses to their damage, they're probably the safest weapon to use, if only because of the range. For a solo fighter, it's probably the only Grand Mastery that I would always pick.
(And I loved your statement of the case for Smite & Power Attack.)
Best,
A.
NW: As a reminder to non-EE players, the Sling of Seeking will stack strength damage in classic installs
Thank you for the kind words @Alesia_BH - I'm really enjoying Aestica's run as well, and I am a big fan of the halfling fighter archetype (in fact, I recently ran an all halfling-party through IWD:EE in which every party member was proficient with slings). Also, I'm always happy to see you championing shields, as I love to use them for many reasons. I'm not only talking about safety, but in my recent games, I just don't want to spend points on any weapon styles until much later. Flexibilty is important. In an ideal world, all of my fighter-types would be able to use at least a ranged weapon, a blunt weapon, a +3 weapon (for SoD) and even some specialized items like an anti-Loup Garou weapon, one of the anti-undead weapons in Bg2 etc. - which makes shields a great default choice, as you really don't need sword and shield-style to make them effective, while dual wielding without two-weapon style isn't all that great in most cases.
Previous posts:
Part II: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903150/#Comment_903150
Part III: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903226/#Comment_903226
Part IV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903521/#Comment_903521
Part V: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903598/#Comment_903598
Part VI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903749/#Comment_903749
Part VII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903878/#Comment_903878
Part VIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904203/#Comment_904203
Part IX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904266/#Comment_904266
Part X: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904610/#Comment_904610
Part XI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904632/#Comment_904632
We entered the thieve's maze where something quite curious happened: While walking around in party formation, Aikar simply phased through the wall, and suddenly, he was on the other side:
Luckily, his help wasn't needed against the skeleton warriors, as we had our own at the ready. An invisible Sybia had previously disarmed all the traps.
I should also mention that I spent all my money before going down here, as it won't be of any help in SoD. After buying the important potions, I still had around 120k left, so I decided to just rebuy my most important wands (I never had to rebuy any wands so far during this playthrough, but I just didn't know what else to spend my money on).
In the undercity, Sybia scouted the opposing party for some hasted and buffed skeleton warriors, who managed to take out the spellcasters before everyone was able to even go hostile. Very strange:
Eventually, our foes reacted, and we supported our summons with ranged weapons:
A quick battle, and no arrow of detonation was fired in our direction.
Tamoko was forced to deal with our spirit bears. However, she was assisted by some random skeletons who just happened to be nearby:
While part of our summons took care of the additional opponents, Nahema managed to blind Tamoko, sealing her fate:
Our buffs for Sarevok were mostly the same as against Aec'Letec, but without mirrored eyes and magic protection - instead, mind focusing was used to further increase our ranged capabilities. Nahema opened the fight by sneaking up to Sarevok and shooting an arrow of dispelling at him - successfully! Meanwhile, spells were flying at her from both Semaj and Angelo, and one of them was remove magic, so I seperated her from my party. Meanwhile, another arrow, another hit: Semaj just teleported in, and my second arrow of dispelling removed all of his protections:
Seems like Nahema could have won this battle on her own - the protectionless Semaj was easily killed by our still-buffed party and the summons. Angelo didn't enter the fray, so we just had to focus our attention on Arbogast's half-brother:
Sarevok struggled, as he was unable to get through our summons quickly enough, and died a few seconds later. I didn't manage to take a screenshot, the transition to SoD happened faster than expected.
Now, the real challenge awaits: What happens when you combine LoB difficulty with a smart AI and gigantic hordes of enemies? We will find out.
Here is some final party information for BG1:
Arbogast, level 10 totemic druid, 107 kills (bhaalspawn); *Quarterstaff, *Dart, *Sling, *Club
Ifirn, level 10 skald, 3 kills; *Bastard Sword, *Axe, *Two-Handed Sword, *Crossbow
Sybia, level 7/8 cleric/thief, 176 kills; *War Hammer, *Quarterstaff, *Sling
Aikar, level 8 Kensai, 463 kills, **Long Sword, **Axe, **Dagger
Nahema, level 7/7 fighter/illusionist, 293 kills, **Bastard Sword, **Short Sword, **Longbow
Enuhal
At this point, she could have worked on her primary weapon, slings, or started taking two weapon points to allow dual-wielding with Ages and the Defender. She chose to reinforce slings for the following reasons: 1) by level 15, AC is still, very, very powerful- especially if taken as far as possible; 2) having dual-wielding points would nudge her away from keeping Harmony or the Reflex in the off-hand, increasing risk from disablers and Flame Arrow sequencers; 3) switching out the off-hand weapon every time you need to use a ranged weapon is cumbersome, and to the extent that that nudges you away from optimal melee range switching, becomes a source of risk.
By then, Aestica was close to HLA territory, and yet another reason to delay dual-wielding: GWW tends to work best when you have one weapon, not two.
So, when -if ever- will Aestica start dual-wielding? Early ToB. Once she has access to Improved Haste to multiply the added attacks -and Foebane to offset additional damage taken due to the lack of a shield- dual wielding will start to make sense. Up till now, though, it hasn't really- not to me, at least.
We're definitely looking forward to Foebane + The Defender + Hardiness! That's a combo worth rocking!
Slings have always, always been my go-to warrior proficiency. Due to their speed and extreme range they are relatively safe. The fact that they allow you to use a shield in the offhand makes them safer. The ability to stack strength damage means that you don't need to give up much damage wise -per hit- in comparison to melee weapons. Once you get GWW, the APR difference vanishes. And in tough late battles were standing still in melee contact for an entire round may be inadvisable, the APR advantage can actually swing to slings. On balance, the tradeoff works out well: you get vastly improved safety, with only moderately reduced offensive potential.
For a soloist, the only thing EE's change to slings has done is encourage a reunion. In the pre-Baldurdash, pre-G3 days, the Sling of Everard stacked strength damage, like Seeking, making Everard the sling of choice. After Gaider confirmed that the intention had been for Seeking and Seeking alone to stack strength damage, Baldurdash and G3 patched Everard and Seeking became the go-to. Now, under EE, it's Everard again. Am I enjoying the change? Sure. Getting a new powerful weapon is always goofy fun. Do I think it was necessary or advisable? Not really. The old dynamic encouraged proficiency diversity, since you could only have one great sling fighter. Now it makes sense to give slings to very nearly everyone.
(BTW. Party idea: 5 sling fighting barbarians and a Teleport Field casting sorcerer...) Makes sense. And I think it would be an excellent strategy for a pure class fighter insane run.
In the old Ascension Solo Challenge, one player, The Truth, completed the battle on insane with a pure fighter. I respected the accomplishment, but some of his tactics struck me as either exploity or unreliable. I think you may have mapped out the most promising warrior formula to date. Aestica may try to implement in a post run insane Ascension attempt, if not her NR challenge run.
In any case, excellent work, Arctodus!
Best,
A.