Well, I'll take the time to introduce the no-reload game I'm working on right now. Here's Miluiel, an elven bard. Yeah, I EEKeepered my bard into an elf, because I just can't stomach the fact that elves, who are renowned for their love of arts and nature, can't be druids and bards in AD&D. So, here she is :
I had a fantastic roll with her, because recently, I decided to forbid stat redistribution on my character. I think rolling character is more fun this way. So, having 18 int and 17 dex while having a decent wisdom and no penalty to other score is awesome. She's a pureclass bard, but with a little twist : she has the IWD bard songs (through IWDification) instead of the regular one. After having read a bit about the regular unkitted bard song, I'm not sure I took the most powerful option, because a bonus to luck seems to be very powerful at higher level. From the look of it, I'm trading power for flexibility, which is not necessarily a bad thing... She's also kinda dear to me, because I gave her my wife's name in Elvish.
So, she started alone to level up a bit. She made all the little chores around Beregost to get a few levels, then she recruited Branwen. Branwen is rocking the Battleguard of Tempus kit, dual wielding warhammers. Without a shield and with only 13 strength, she actually needs loads of buffing to be good at meleeing, but she offers the power of a single class cleric in BG1, which is pretty high.
With Branwen, they decided to tackle Tarnesh. A simple Shield spell offsetted much of his offense, because Branwen was meleeing him with the guards. He fell soon enough. Inside FAI, I took Jaheira with me, but gently asked Khalid to stay at the inn. He kindly did so. After that, I recruited Kivan and kitted him into an archer. It does make him much more powerful, but I plan to use him in BG2 through a mod in which he is an archer. So yeah, for the sake of consistency, I kitted him.
With the foursome, I tackled the Mines. Not much to say : we're about at level 5, so nothing's a real threat. Against Mulahey, we went into his lair and Jaheira casted Entangle to slow down his crew. After Entangle, we focused on Mulahey, who fell soon enough, but not after being able to slip in a Hold Person that got Miluiel. It was more a nuisance than anything else, because I managed to wipe the rest of Mulahey's goons not long after.
In the Mines, I also recruited Xan. I toyed with the idea of making him a fighter/mage multi, but decided to make him in an illegal fighter3 --> enchanter. He can then use him sword decently, but not at a high APR. I'll do the same thing in BG2, because I also plan to use him through a mod there. Actually, if I would have made him into a multi f/m, he would have been much stronger as the game progress. I just want him to be able to use him sword somewhat, not necessarily be a powerhouse with it.
A small detour in Gullykin allowed me to recruit another awesome lady : Alora. Now that her rabbit foot is working properly, she's an absolutely delightful thief. And guess what, there's also a mod for her in BG2. So, she'll also be there.
With my team complete, we decided to tackle Bassilus. He went down without problem : between magis missiles from me and Alora, he was constently disrupted, so he went down without dealing any damage.
I'll post more later, but I have to stop now.
See ya !
Edit : Something's really weird... I try to place the first spoiler tag after the description of the fight with Mulahey, but it's always replaced before it. Someone had something like that happened before ?
Korlasz's Tomb. I hate this place. Clearing this area on LoB has to be the most annoying thing I ever did in the entire BG series, including fighting multiple groups of tactics spirit trolls with the more annoying trolls SCS-option installed right out of chateau irenicus and with a good-aligned party. If this is any indication for what SoD is going to be like for this party, it's going to be a rough ride - though I generally think that Korlasz's Tomb is one of the hardest parts of the expansion anyway, so it might get easier.
Now, I know there are relatively easy ways around the tomb if you a) play solo or with a smaller group and have enough protection from undead scrolls and b) you don't mind skipping most fights. I do mind - this is a completionist run after all.
First off, we get a reminder that our opponents have kits now, and they like to use their special abilites. Imagine my shock when this happened: "Timestop? In SoD?" - but it turned out to be shadowstep:
Regardless - with the smarter AI, our foes quickly decided to simply ignore our summons and go straight for the most vulnerable party members. I wasn't ready for this. I had no way to detect a hidden-in-plain-sight shadowdancer, and Ifirn doesn't have stoneskins yet, as we only found the one scroll that Nahema used.
With the help of the flaming fist, some spirit bear fear and Nahema's tanking abilities, the first group of opponents was eventually defeated:
The flaming fist healer even resurrected Ifirn for free. For Porios' group, Nahema approached, and I was trying to have him stand down. Seems like her charisma wasn't high enough, or I chose the wrong conversation option - a battle started, and luckily, two spirit bears quickly rendered the mage ineffective:
Meanwhile, the rest of my party stayed far, far away. Still, those enemies that couldn't hurt spirit animals due to their normal weapons searched around for new targets - and I didn't realize it was possible to shoot across the chasm. The 1 hp Ifirn, freshly resurrected, was hit by an opposing archer and died once again. While I was able to win this fight with relative ease by blocking the bridge with summoned monsters, this time, I had to pay for the resurrection.
At this point, I decided that the most promising strategy for level 2 of the dungeon might be to let summons do all the work while the party is invisible (just being far aways obviously isn't enough, they will always find me) - so I needed to learn invisibility 10' radius (it just so happens there is a scroll right in Ammon's room). Of course, this requires resting, but resting gets interrupted all the time down here, and by very tough groups of skeletons (none of my fighters have their blunt weapon proficiencies yet - I knowingly sacrificed my ability to deal with skeletons in favor of +3 weapons for this run). The flaming fist soldiers were quite helpful here:
However, I discovered a way to make resting a bit easier after that: playing around with doors, line of sight and haste, I ran away from a monster spawn, rested again nearby, and this time, it worked. So we go downstairs, invisble:
The first level was just "trying to get used to SoD again" - the second level was hell. One of main reasons: Bonebats. They have the innate ability to see through invisibility, they count as skeletal undead, so I can barely hurt them at all (especially with LoB hp), and they even paralyze on hit. Bonebats foiled most of my plans - the other half of my plans was foiled by the fact that there were always enough undead who could hit even fire elementals, no problem (which isn't the case at all in SoA - fire elementals are basically immune to anything but vampires and liches). Other really dangous enemies: Skeletal mages. They are protected my mirror images, use spells like stinking cloud, and, most importantly, they cast haste on their entire undead army. And they know to stay far back, so it's not exactly easy to snipe them (plus, they are skeletons, so ranged weapons barely do any damage). My previous tactics for such foes prevented me from being aware of most of the relevant information here - bombing everything with fireballs doesn't exactly allow you to study enemy behaviour. But fireballs barely do any damage in LoB, so that's not going to be an option.
I learned most of this in the first room, but it took quite a bit longer until I really internalized everything - my summons were quickly defeated, and stinking cloud hit multiple party members. My only way to get them out of trouble: Another invisibility 10' radius. We barely had enough time to save Sybia and Ifirn. Meanwhile, Arbogast, assisted by the flaming fist, used his wand of the heavens to take out the bonebats:
I was eventually able to stabilize the situation with multiple wand of monster summoning charges, while a spirit bear tried to go after the opposing archer line:
Finally, we chased down the final archer. To deal any significant damage at all, I mostly had to rely on my wand of the heavens charges - rebuying the wands turned out to be quite a good investment after all. As we had so much trouble with even the first hostile group, it was time to drink some healing potions and bring out the big guns: Our two remaining protection from undead scrolls. With the rest of the party remaining invisible, Sybia (because she can also disarm traps and uses a blunt weapon) and Aikar (our best damage dealer) started trying to kill as many foes as possible. They only managed to take out the next two groups before the durations ran out - so that's a group of zombies:
And a group of shadows. However, the group of shadows looked a little bit small to me - and I turned out to be right. As my party walked up to their original position, multiple invisible foes suddenly attacked us - including three wraiths and a greater shadow:
The ensuing level drains left Aikar at level 4 (ouch!) and Sybia at levels 5/6 (at least she can still summon some skeletons). With all the flaming fist dead, including the healer, and Sybia unable to cast level 4 cleric spells, we had no way to regain our levels right now. We also really had to rest by now. I decided to try it right at the stairs back to level 1 (to be able to flee upstairs if needed), and this turned out to be a great move: While the game told me that my rest was disrupted, the skeletal hordes either didn't actually spawn, or they spawned somewhere else, maybe because there simply wasn't enough space for them to appear. So at least I have my spells back.
Now, for the next group of mercenaries. I started the battle with double-web and summons, taking out at least the most dangerous foes (including a mage) asap. However, the web durations were soon over, and I was forced to flee. Nahema, the only one tanky enough to stand up to these opponents, took a few stabs at exposed foes:
I also had her use my remaining potion buffs - no reason to save them for anything else, we can buy plenty of potions if we make it out of this tomb. I eventually made my stand near the entrance to the level, blocking off the tunnel with wand summons once again, allowing my party to use their ranged weapons to win this fight.
The next group of skeletal undead (in the rooms to the east of the mercenaries, on the way to the restless spirit quest) was the hardest one for me. They had shadowed souls, who spam a lifedrain spell that can a) deal tons of very hard to block damage and b) heal their allies. They also had a bladed skeleton, which deals tons of damage and can easily kill a fire elemental. When it turned out that my initial summons didn't stand a chance, I tried to invisibly flee back to the entrance once again, but Aikar was caught by a hasted bonebat - and this is where I learned about their paralyzation ability:
Nahema ran in to save her ally, but she was too late - and with no resurrections available, we are down to 4:
We managed to get away and rest, which doensn't exactly reset enemy position, but the enemies are usually a bit further back. With a new summoned army, we brought our opponents down to 1 bonebat. However, this last one was able to catch Ifirn, and a save by invisibility (which wouldn't have worked anyway, but would have at least stopped the bladed skeleton) failed - down to 3:
Luckily, Sybia and Arbogast managed to burn down the final bonebat with their wands while Nahema provided fodder via monster summoning charges. Thus, we were able to rely on invisiblity against our remaining foes - with Nahema usually fighting in melee combat or kiting, while wand charges did most of the damage:
There was still one group of undead left, though: The guardians in the secret room. At this point, I had learned a lot about the various undead, their abilites, strengths and weaknesses, and I had also managed to rest again, using the stairs to level 1. This fight went so much better for my party: Starting off with greater malison and webs, we used free action items to take out the skeletal mage and the shadowed souls. After that, web timers ran out (even after renewing the webs), but we managed to get out in time and keep the remaining foes busy with wand summons:
Our tactis included a slow retreat with constant wand of the heavens usage to take out the bonebats, and some buffed Nahema heroics - here's the death of the final bonebat:
Time for Korlasz herself. But first, another rest.
Compared to the undead, Korlasz had a major disadvantage: None of her servants have the +2 weapons needed to hit a fire elemental, and she doesn't have bonebats to counter our invisibility. I opened up with malison, slow and webs plus skeletons:
Korlasz surrenders if you bring her to low hp, or at least she's supposed to, that's why I had my summons attack her right away. Meanwhile, Nahema had to deal with a cleric casting hold person on her, so she used a greenstone amulet charge:
At the same time, Arbogast had been replacing fallen skeletons with spirit bears and his fire elemental. Some opponents here had at least +1 weapons, so they did in fact attack the spirit bears and didn't all go looking for my party. Still, Nahema provided Arbogast with another invisibility, and Sybia went in under sanctuary (she previously had to reveal herself as one opponent was getting too annoying for Nahema) to direct the fight as soon as our fire elemental, previously confused by Korlasz, was free again:
Eventually, Korlasz didn't have any protections left, and the summons simply killed her. She didn't try to surrender, maybe because there were no visible party members nearby.
Anyhow, with our fire elemental now truly invincible (as Korlasz was the only one able to affect it in any way), it just cleared up any remaining opponents, and we gather all the loot (which was kind of a problem, as we had to carry the gear of Aikar and Ifirn as well).
Now, we can finally relax for a bit in the duchal palace. I can tell you, getting out of this dungeon took a lot of time, a lot of wand charges, a lot of potions, a lot of nerves. Still, we survived. As it turns out, if there's anything I'm good at, its keeping druids out of trouble, no matter the fate of the other party members.
Edit : Something's really weird... I try to place the first spoiler tag after the description of the fight with Mulahey, but it's always replaced before it. Someone had something like that happened before ?
@Arctodus - if you want to correct the format you could delete the "<3" in your original post, which is being shown up as a spoiler.
Today's session commenced with a visit to the Bandit Camp. There was pretty serene progress outside until Taurgosz appeared, when a couple of archers hit Ern with criticals. That meant he was taking a bit of a risk in continuing to hang around in the midst of the action, but he did so successfully - to Taurgosz's cost.
Inside Tazok's tent webs and nymphs made the contest there pretty straightforward.
As usual there wasn't too much action in the Cloakwood, but Skull felt a bit bored running from all the ambushes and decided to take on a pair of wyverns. Ern may have felt a bit miffed by being expected to run around there, as he tried to finish off the 2 near-death beasts by targeting a skull trap on top of Skull's head - that wasn't really what I had in mind when I named him that .
Arriving at the mine Drasus & co were all disabled and slaughtered.
Inside the mine we were out of invisibility and Hareishan spotted us trying to get downstairs. With no decent quick-acting spells left we both resorted to a rare use of wands to persuade her to let us carry on.
Near Davaeorn the battle horrors were pulled away first before Skull chased down the mage, while Ern filled him full of magic missiles from the rear.
It was at this point in the session that I remembered that Skull was a totemic druid and had rather more summons than just nymphs available .
In the City we quickly did our usual routine of collecting tomes and a few choice items - on this occasion that included the gauntlets of ogre power, which give a huge boost to Skull's normal attacks with strength of 9.
However, we decided that Drizzt's equipment was wasted on him and determined to seek a transfer of that. To help in the process we did far more work than usual in the City in order to get up to our level caps. That included for instance Degrodel, Shandalar's daughters, the ogre mage in the sewers, Arkion & Nemphre and Jardak & his butler.
The Maulers found themselves severely overmatched and failed to inflict any damage, but there was no disgrace there as neither did the Iron Throne party.
That left Ern only needing a few more XP for his final level. We'd previously left the ghasts in Ramazith's Tower, so went back for those.
And did those extra levels actually make Drizzt easier? Well, yes basically. He suffered the indignity of having magic resistance cast on him and was then held by a nymph.
We then spent a while doing various little quests to boost reputation back up to 20, before reporting in to Duke Eltan for duty in Candlekeep.
I returned to the old camp where Neera made her potion and Safana helped me find a spy then we survive an ambush and fulfill my dream of becoming a ogre leader... we can't do the myconids so we kick in the front door of the Crusader Encampment and kill an evil Druid to save the oak tree.
We don't really have the best lich hunting gear but Neera pops enchant weapon onto Corwin and Sarah, I pray for my holly sword and Safana places a stone golum... round 1 = unlock him (only one shot left in my glasses now) then wack him hard, round 2 = he says "thanks for saving me" as we wack him again... on the third round he will kill me unless I get him first and this time I won.
I have the dragon to help me kill off the last evil mages and Neera is very happy with her powerful new threads + I level up for a single 5th level spell. party; Neera ... my mage | romance interest Voghiln ... magic and dance Corwin ... a lucky ranger is a deadly ranger! Safana ... currently friend zoned but still my thief Sarah ... My conscience and tank
M'khiin ... executed for morale of the troops Khalid ... died so no myconids this time
New run with the same Hammer of Moradin Paladin kit.
At least Krumm and Caldo have got their comeuppance after ending my last two runs. However, upon levelling up to the point where I should have two Hammer of Moradin innate spells, they don't appear on the innate spell button. He is level 4. When he only had one spell it worked after a fashion, but I don't think that the weapon was as powerful as it should have been.
I went into EE Keeper, and everything is OK there so I am unable to solve the problem.
Does anyone know which mod the kit is from so that I can inform them and perhaps get a solution?
Baroque and company: Nimbul's fairly safe to fight even in SCS, as long as you're not solo: all his tricks are now Invisibility-based, and if I'm not mistaken the weapon he uses is a throwing axe that he can't backstab with anyways. The worst that can happen is that he stays invisible and doesn't fight, but we have Detect Illusions the Thief skill and the spell.
Ankhegs are easily dealt with, and a bowl is returned to Tenya after a bit of shopping at Ulgoth's Beard, with the Greenstone Amulet and Sandthief's Ring being the main purchases here, along with some Bolts of Lightning. With said amulet on Sebastian and two more Skeletons, the Sirines are dealt with almost painlessly, but Alina gets Dire Charm'd despite her Elven resistances, and she gets a critical onto her fellow Archer. Both Vista and Baroque are invisible, the former one Detecting Illusions to dispel the Sirine's IIs, the latter singing as usual. But now that we have the Cloak of the Wolf, we can basically keep fighting forever as it gives +1 HP per 2 rounds. We're no longer tied to CLW and potions to keep our HP totals up.
Time to bait out the ambushes: Sebastian attempts an Invisibility Purge to stop the first two backstabs while Vista, Cato, and Alina try to stop the Clerics from casting. I... can't remember what exactly happened after that. I think Sebastian was interrupted while one of the Clerics was blinded, and I know Vista got hit several times by Darts of Woundin g, but nothing actually deadly for us. None of their spells were of consequence, and everyone died an arrow-y death. Molkar and company were slightly more successful, managed to Hold Alina, but two of their melee fighters insisted on chasing Vista around in a circle, and Cato eventually shot all aggressors to death. Onto Ulcaster.
A mod introduces some kind of ghost on the first level that insta-casts Horror and Animate Dead, and can kill anything (?) in exactly two hits. I had trouble here with an undocumented run, not knowing about the horror, but this time I come prebuffed with Remove Fear. Magic ammunition spells the ghost's demise. The Wolf of Ulcaster's only real success was when I sloppily didn't move Alina (Always her. I dunno why it's always her.) away from the summoned ghouls. She was paralyzed, but a Wand of Fire charge from Vista killed two of the three ghouls, and Cato cleared the third. Two skeletons and a Web spell kept the left flank clear of Dread Wolves and eventually we pile enough damage onto the Wolf before he does anything horrendous.
Bandit camp! I prefer to fight outsider rather than inside, mostly due to the lack of movement allowed in the tent. And the lack of summons we can have. Also, I have an arcane spellcaster besides my Skald, so I get to use one of my favorite tricks here! We e travel to the southwest of the camp before beginning the engagement, and Vista immediately casts from a scroll, and Baroque casts a Web near the same area. Behold, Cloudkill.
Also, behold my one and only screenshot. I thought I took more, but it seems the program I used for screenshots stopped working for whatever reason. The Cloudkill forces all the bandits to come from the southeast rather than getting a large concave on the northeast, so Wand of Fire charges absolutely wreck the gathered archers. My own archers easily clean up the wounded remainders. Notable for Cato, the Dead Shot bow now gives criticals on 18-20, increasing his damage output which was already silly to even sillier levels.
At the Cloakwood, we help Aldeth against the Druids, looking for his quest later in Baldur's Gate. All the Web traps are disarmed triggered invisibly by Vista, and we plow through all comers. The singular Wand of Frost charge from Centeol essentially does nothing but slow Cato, but Alina is well and fine and shooting bolts.
Drasus and co. is led off by an out-of-sight Silence spell, catching neither of the Fighters but both of the Mages. We engage. Both Mages cast Vocalize. Two Wand of Fire charges are used to attempt to interrupt their spells while we kill Drasus, and Drasus falls. Stoneskin, Mirror Images and Invisibility are now being run by their mages: Vista goes invisible herself and begins to Detect Illusions in their last known locations. Alina and Cato swap to their elemental arrows, and both mages end up falling without a single offensive cast. Genthore is the last to fall, as he's been uselessly trading blows with Sebastian this entire time.
Into the mines themselves! Hareishan is also dealt with with tactical ammunition, though she gets off a Chaos and a Charm spell. The Chaos only hit Vista, and the Greenstone amulet was enough to stop its effects. The Charm is directed at Baroque, and again the Greenstone amulet prevails. The next mage, though... Urgh. I made a mistake of not drinking Potions of Freedom and ended up with both Sebastian and Cato dead in my own Web while the mage laughed under her MGoI. Vista and Alina finish off the fight, though, and we're now returning to the FAI for a couple Raise Deads.
Current stats: Baroque, Half-elf Skald 7, 56 HP (6 from Familiar), 0 kills Sebastian, Human Painbearer of Ilmater 6, 41 HP, 65 kills, 1 death. Most powerful vanquished: Greater Basilisk. Alina, Human Archer 6, 69 HP, 222 kills, 0 deaths. Most powerful vanquished: Greater Basilisk. Cato, Elf Archer 6, 64 HP, 265 kills, 1 death. Most powerful vanquished: Battle Horror Vista, Gnome Illusionist/Thief 5/6, 35 HP, 69 kills, 2 deaths. Most powerful vanquished: Mustard Jelly
We wake up in the duchal palace, and I have to say: These are some weak assassins. Anything that we can kill in LoB by simply attacking it with melee weapons isn't really worth consideration:
As it turns out, I can't get Aikar and Ifirn back until the next chapter - there doesn't seem to be any way to resurrect someone in the SoD version of the city. Anyway, I completed all of the various fetchquests, generally choosing non-violent solutions. There was a short fight at Sorcerous Sundries, won by Nahema and some skeletons:
And this group tried to rob me, but they weren't prepared for my spirit animals:
So all in all, nothing we couldn't handle with just 3 party members.
Now, at the Coast Way Crossing, we reunited with our fallen comrades and added Corwin to the party, so we once again have an archer, though her stats don't exactly compare to Firun's. Against most random monster groups around here, we were able to just use the summons + ranged weapons approach. Spiders are especially easy to deal with by now. Our first major combat was against Teleria - I decided to split our damage. The summons kill the golem, the party shoots down the mage's protections. Once Corwin hit with an arrow of biting, her fate was sealed:
The next engagement was the battle at the bridge. I previously mentioned an invisibility based waiting-tactic for this fight, and this run is where it originated - it was a bit risky, as I had no idea how many divination spells would await me. Here's Nahema disrupting the first and only one the opponents would use:
She went invisible again right after using the wand charge. The timer on the battle ran out, and we moved on to the Coast Way Forest.
There, we had some summons deal with an orc group - Corwin went in stealthed to observe the fight and direct our allies:
However, she failed her next stealth check and was unable to leave before getting pierced by numerous arrows - another resurrection to pay for:
I didn't make the same mistake against the vampire and his wolves. For this battle, my entire party just stayed invisible, no tricks, no nonsense:
We returned to the previous map for the dwarven dig site (and I love Arbogast's new dart, Biter +2 - it will be great for the trolls we are going to meet later!). The groups in the first level are slow, and a combination of summons, malisons, slow spells and webs allowed us to clear it with only one rest in between:
However, the Repository of Undeath deserves a separate post, as its basically Korlasz's Tomb 2.0 (with the major difference that you can leave the Repository at any time).
I guess I did something funky with my original post. If something ends up being doubled up I apologize.
This is my first time doing a no reload solo with SCS on Core. Critique is welcome and appreciated. If you think I did something poorly or wrong...I probably didn't know any better and I need to address it.
I took a F/M/T elf as my opening attempt after doing a couple of rounds of regular reload. I had a struck of luck her. A 91 on the 7th reroll. Very solid for my first attempt and honestly great to see as I often times don't have the patience to wait around for a massive number like that.
It started off like all adventures with me doing the candlekeep little quests, buying needed supplies and stealing/selling the sapphire.
After leaving candlekeep and the death of Gorion I dumped Imoen and made my way to Shoal. We killed her easily for some quick exp and level up.
After that we kited the ogres to the south around. I find that positioning the slower moving Ogrillons I can stutter the faster moving ogres and Ogre beserkers and can more safely kite them as well.
After that we go back to sell things at Beregost and pick up a wand of lightning as well. This is were things went bad however. A misclick on a building saw me chug a health potion on accident. That was bad enough but then I went down too far into the street and triggered the fight with Neera...and me tapped out of spells and sporting a whopping 14 hit points after my skirmish with shoal and the Ogres.
I ran, Kited the two guards, Neera bites the dust almost immediately but drawing off the mage long enough for me to take care of his henchmen I was kiting.
I move to reengage thinking he has blown most of his spells on Neera. His grease spell( I think thats what that is, it didn't stop me like web) Slows me down and he pelts me with a fire arrow which I lucked out that it did very low damage. A couple of lucky, well placed arrows finally remove him.
After that me and my new buddy Korax went Basilisk hunting. I dropped a protection from petrifaction on myself just to be on the safe side. We slayed the whole map except for Kiran who I accidentally triggered before I was buffed and ready. As such I chose the dialogue in which he leaves but taunts me. I think this is my biggest mistake so far as the magic Items they carry are very useful, however I feel as though it was the safe route and I did not want to end my run so quickly. Something for me to bear in mind for my next run.
We finally finish Mutamin and basilisks but Unfortunately, shortly after I am forced to slay my new found friend.
Last we make our way to the Friendly arm inn to sell loot and kill Tarnesh.
A well placed arrow disrupts his mirror image but gets off the horror which I fail against. I loose control and thought that he was sure to kill me. Apparently his spell pool is not to deep. He hits with 2 magic missile rounds and then switches to melee. unable to bypass most of my Ac he only lands a few blows before I regain control and end his life.
My character currently sits on these stats and equipment.
The easiest way is to highlight the text you want in the spoiler and then click the format button (to the left of the smiley face button) and select spoiler from the sub-menu.
This is my first time doing a no reload solo with SCS on Core. Critique is welcome and appreciated. If you think I did something poorly or wrong...I probably didn't know any better and I need to address it.
After that we kited the ogres to the south around. I find that positioning the slower moving Ogrillons I can stutter the faster moving ogres and Ogre beserkers and can more safely kite them as well.
After that we go back to sell things at Beregost and pick up a wand of lightning as well. This is were things went bad however. A misclick on a building saw me chug a health potion on accident. That was bad enough but then I went down too far into the street and triggered the fight with Neera...and me tapped out of spells and sporting a whopping 14 hit points after my skirmish with shoal and the Ogres.
Well done for staying alive so far @RVNS - long may that continue .
For a mage character you might want to consider sleeping that group of ogres to reduce the kiting required.
If you don't intend to recruit Neera you could just kill her as soon as you get to Beregost (by shooting her from range before she talks) to avoid triggering that encounter accidentally.
Put the image into this: <div class="Spoiler"></div>
Baroque, Pacifist Skald, update 2: The worst part about raising Sebastian and Cato is that they had like 390 lb carrying capacity combined, and shuffling items to deal with this meant that I spent ~10 minutes trying to figure out a carrying strategy that didn't involve dumping any items. Even though I could just put it into one of the many chests in the mines. I'm stubborn. In the end, I managed to do it with all 3 living members Encumbered and Slowed but moving. We raise the two loadbearers, and head back for the mines.
The ogre mage is killed pretty painlessly after using Sebastian's Invisibility Purge and then elemental ammunition to interrupt his spells. Favored Enemy: Ogre on one of my Archers didn't hurt either. Well, it did hurt, just not me.
The plan for Davaeorn is fairly simple. Alina gets a Protection From Magic Scroll, the potion case, and the Boots of Cheetah Speed, and goes for Davaeorn. Sebastian and two Skeleton Warriors clog up the entrance, and Vista and Cato snipe from the back. Baroque, of course, sings. The plan succeeds, as well: the hardest thing is that my graphics card absolutely hates Fire animations and the Cloud spells, and everything is running at 1/3 speed or lower. And having to kite away from the Battle Horrors constantly. They're killed first after Davaeorn casts a Sunfire too close to them, and a combination of two Potions of Explosions and a Scorcher charge from Vista kill the other two. The Talons and guards on the other side never get a chance to accumulate more than 5 before they're summarily mowed down with the others. Finally, Alina gets the final blow.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XIV - There are no temples in Baldur's Gate
As it turns out, I can't get Aikar and Ifirn back until the next chapter - there doesn't seem to be any way to resurrect someone in the SoD version of the city.
the flaming fist healer at the start will sell you some 'raise dead' scrolls that Viconia could read... in thierry even Minsc could but I assume Boo needs to translate?
We did relatively fine in the Respository of Undeath, but it took me around 3 hours to clear the damned thing. A lot of that time was spent walking back to camp and resting. I did have various strategies in place when dealing with my foes, but skeletal undead still give me a lot of trouble, especially when aided by shadowed souls and skeletal mages. As an example, let's look at the fight against the big undead group in the northern room, where you can also find the throne. Ready to go with buffs and summons, my party managed to snipe two shadowed souls - one by themselves, one was only killed via summons:
I had to retreat rather quickly, as I can't afford to a) get blocked by my enemies and b) fight against hasted opponents. Our enemies follow us to the entrance, we get out and rest. Returning with new buffs, we throw down some webs, but one enemy makes it past them. We use the web duration to snipe all the bonebats with wand of the heavens charges:
Currently, our biggest problem is the remaining skeletal mage. To deal with him, we rest again and set up a distraction with Sybia summoning skeletal fodder and Ifirn ready to use her wand of monster summoning if needed. Meanwhile, the rest of the party + druidic summons find and kill the mage:
While the remaining bladed skeletons are tough, without any support from bonebats, mages or souls, we can easily deal with them.
A different battle with different foes nearby: This time, its shadowed souls, but for the first time, drowned in blood and the bg2 version of skeleton warriors. It soon turns out that killing drowned in blood with ranged weapons isn't exactly feasible, and my initial disabling plans fail thanks to the high magic resisance of skeleton warriors (I thought they were armored skeletons at first - same model, very different opponent). Trying to kill a relatively isolated skeleton warrior while we flee doesn't turn out well for Corwin - two hits, 84 damage, dead archer:
We resurrect her and, entering once again, find out that the skeleton warrior is still pretty isolated. With a full set of buffs and summons, we can take it down before any more foes arrive:
With our buffs still going strong, we rush forward and take down the shadowed souls. Only drowned in blood and the other skeleton warrior remain. Time for our fire elemental and invisibility 10' radius:
The other fights, while still somewhat difficult, went relatively well. Of course, by far the easiest was the actual bossfight in this place - attack, use "the secret revealed", attack:
With the boots of speed and haste, Nahema (with 100 fire resistance thanks to Arbogast) quickly destroyed the phylactery, so I didn't have to fight the lich again.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XIV - There are no temples in Baldur's Gate
As it turns out, I can't get Aikar and Ifirn back until the next chapter - there doesn't seem to be any way to resurrect someone in the SoD version of the city.
the flaming fist healer at the start will sell you some 'raise dead' scrolls that Viconia could read... in thierry even Minsc could but I assume Boo needs to translate?
Mh, I propably should have bought some of those - but my flaming fist healer died rather quickly (in her third battle), so I didn't have the opportunity for long. I will remember it for the future, though.
the flaming fist healer at the start will sell you some 'raise dead' scrolls that Viconia could read... in thierry even Minsc could but I assume Boo needs to translate?
You need 9 INT to use scrolls, Minsc only has 8...
Hey there, hi there everyone! It's nice to be back and to find that I've missed over 700 posts in this thread in my absence haha. I haven't caught up but I can already say I'm very impressed with @Enuhal's work. Congrats on your progress so far man! I've never beaten BG1 with a full party on LoB difficulty, and your progress with the undead in SoD looks very good too. (My latest, undocumented attempt failed when some of the Ogre Mages that ambush the party in front of the Candlekeep gates, secretly followed my party inside; one of the Mages cast a Chromatic Orb from invisibility that killed my Archer.) @Alesia_BH, it's always a pleasure both to see your characters in action, and to have your cheerful presence grace the forums. Good luck to you and to Aestica, and good luck to all the other old and new faces here!
My new character is Autumn:I usually look for portraits that appeal to me and let them help me decide the character I'm going to play, their race, class, personality etc. Autumn is no exception, though I considered playing her as Half-Elf Stalker. Amazing roll didn't take too long to get, possibly thanks to high minimum stats in STR, DEX, and CHA. All thieving points in HiS/MS and weapon profs are daggers and short bows.
I've looked into Shadowdancers on the forums but didn't find much information. Most people probably know to hide, press one of the buttons (except stealth) in the action bar, wait for the hide button to light up again, attack, and immediately hide again for safe, repeated backstabbing (as long your stealth values are high enough). I believe @Gotural or @Grum came up with this. Other than that, I haven't seen the kit explored much, which is hardly a surprise as most forum topics are about dual-classing. How can the most be made of the Shadowstep ability with all its limitations (compared to the Time Stop spell or a Time Trap)? What good are the Shadowdancer specific HLAs? Do the Shadowdancer abilities make up for the loss of traps? How can a Shadowdancer, especially at higher levels, where many foes see through invisibility, reliably defeat enemies? (My expectation is that a high level Shadowdancer with UAI plays much like a Bard without a spell book, but with some special abilities.) Lots of questions. I hope Autumn will live long enough to answer them.
In order to play a Shadowdancer the way they were designed to be played, I'm playing on core difficulty rather than LoB difficulty (though I think they won't necessarily play very differently until HLAs and ToB). I'm playing with mods like SCS with full prebuffing and Ascension, and probably some Tactics components. I say "probably" because I'll have to do a re-install of BG2EE. While mods like Rogue Rebalancing's items, Thalantyr Item Upgrades, and in BG2EE, Weimer Item upgrades will somewhat reduce the challenge of this run, role-playing restrictions may actually increase it. An example: as you can see in the portrait, Autumn dresses in black, so she'll use the Shadow Armor even though unenchanted studded leather with a ring or cloak of protection +2 will be more convenient, especially with Autumn being a high CON shorty with good saves that might be made fail-proof against certain spells. Also, no evil actions. Autumn is True Neutral in the sense that she's no altruist but not out there to harm innocents for her own gain either. I see her as a mercenary with a conscience.
Thank you @Blackraven ! I'm very much looking forward to your run, as my previous run was a halfling shadowdancer as well (no SCS though, and I failed in the underdark). I doubt I can give you any tips you're not aware of anyway, I'll just say something that's propably obvious: Always keep a shadowstep in reserve, just in case you need to escape.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XVI - Three ambushes in one update!
I posted a lengthy update, hit the wrong button and - everything gone. So this will be the short version:
Last thing to do in this chapter: Triggering the ambush with the troll cave. We get all our enemies to gather into one group, throw in our AoE crowd control spells, done (in truth, it was a bit more tricky than this, but that's the general idea):
Next, we clear the Troll Claw Forest map, with the help of our trusty flaming fist soldiers:
There's also the second troll cave - we run in to snipe the spellcaster and run out again before anything can hit us.
We enter again under invisibility, search for a safe spot, start summoning and shooting:
We get ambushed again on the way to the Forest of Wyrms. While fighting an army of goblins, Arbogast gets caught in our own web (the low dart range keeps messing up my movement), goblins shoot down his ironskins, but Nahema saves him with invisibility:
The party goes downstairs to fight some myconids, Nahema is immune to confusion thanks to her helm, our party rolls decent saves - only Ifirn ever gets affected by anything. Still, our strategy feels too risky:
With two major mistakes under my belt, I decide to stop playing for now - I just want to finish travelling to the Forest of Wyrms. However, we get ambushed once again - but even on LoB, its only 2 hill giants against one baby dragon, so we just buff with bless, chant and haste, as all we need is damage. We take down the hill giants to get the +1 agility ioun stone for Corwin:
And, for the first time in this run, my reports have caught up to the point I'm actually at in the game right now, so even I have no idea what will happen next
I posted a lengthy update, hit the wrong button and - everything gone. So this will be the short version:
That's what "Save Draft" button for. You might continue to write your post after computer restart and even from another computer at a later time. Just log into the forum and you are ready to continue.
@Blackraven : 'Tis nice to see you back in action, safe travels!
Those of you who are familiar with early English will know that my name means of Champion of Azuth. The name was given to me by a visiting Priest of Azuth when I responded to his call. Most call me Agla though, which is OK by me, just so long as they all know that Azuth is the god that I champion. I feel that a major aim of my life is to weed out the misuse of magic and Azuth has given me the tools to do just that.
In Candlekeep three upgraded assassins were killed. The battle with Mendas was particularly gratifying as he has foiled many a run. Investing in a heavy crossbow was certainly worthwhile.
In transit, I was attacked by a swarm of hobgoblins. None of them escaped.
After calming down Marl and taking a tome to Firebead, I headed north where my crossbow was more than a match for an ogre with a belt-fetish.
South of Beregost ogrillons met a similar fate.
I then delivered a letter to Sister Sapienta:
At High Hedge we helped Melicamp get back into shape and afterwards used a guril berries antidote to try and do the same for a were-wolf. I was unsuccessful.
I posted a lengthy update, hit the wrong button and - everything gone. So this will be the short version:
That's what "Save Draft" button for. You might continue to write your post after computer restart and even from another computer at a later time. Just log into the forum and you are ready to continue.
@Enuhal I've done that a time or two myself . In addition to Serg's advice there are a couple of things that sometimes save me: - if you accidentally delete your work you will probably be able to undo the deletion (ctrl+z works if running Windows). - if you accidentally change the web page you can use the back button on the browser to get back to your post (with it still intact).
I wasn't actually intending to have another go at this immediately, but having read @Enuhal's desire to see a high-level shaman in action I thought I'd test it out a bit more (as you might guess I'm something of a sucker for the old Civilization cry of "just one more turn").
I had a couple more goes in the nature of experiments - neither run actually ending in death, but just being abandoned when I thought there was room for a bit more optimization. For this attempt I'll see if I could put good intentions into practice . I've also tweaked the starting weapon proficiencies of the team a bit - that involved removing a duplicated proficiency in spears for two of the characters that was a mistake originally and giving everyone sling proficiency to start with to avoid the need to distinguish so much between the characters when micro-managing their movement around summons.
This time round I was aiming to get up to level 2 before doing any travelling away from Beregost. That intention quickly took a knock though when I miscalculated how many HPs a charmed Silke had left and she died of spider venom. Things got worse when one of the sirines at the temple was killed by an exceptionally lucky bear (which survived around a couple of dozen shots at it while at near death), so the shamans accepted they would need to do some travelling to get their first level.
They headed up to the FAI (during the daytime to try and baffle any bandits lurking near the road) and got to level 2 by returning a bowl to Tenya.
Continuing on to Ulgoth's Beard they've just done their reputation further damage by tearing Dushai's ring off his finger.
Oh my, oh my, it's such a pleasure to see the thread rolling like this. Veterans, new faces, exciting fresh runs, fully progressed action (btw great work there @Enuhal) - we seem to have it all .
I'll continue stalking for now but I sure hope to hop-in at some point in the future (just got the idea for a character today).
@RVNS Welcome and have a lot of no-reloady fun! By way of advice (since you've requested us to do so), I'd drop two minor tips, which I've collected from the senior players and found useful:
1. Save-or-else effects (such as enemy spells, enemy abilities, traps) are probably one of the most common game-enders, especially when playing solo. Therefore, I would encourage you not to take chances by relying on making the save, no matter how probable that may be (unless, of course, your saving throws are in the negative "safe zone" which would give you a zero chance of failure). Instead, it is often possible to counter the entire effect with immunities (Resist Fear, Protection from Petrification etc.), resistances (magic, elemental) or otherwise (e.g. Sleep spell does not affect characters with lvl 5+).
2. Interrupting enemy spellcasters with your damage may be an efficient way of foiling their plans, however, it is once again a game of chance and therefore it shouldn't be relied upon without having a back-up plan. For example, if I was to try and disrupt a cleric's Hold Person cast with a ranged attack, I wouldn't do so without being prepared to take a Potion of Invisibility or Potion of Freedom in case it goes awry.
I have a question for where to proceed from here. I was thinking of going to do the quick and easy little quests in beregost then going to proceed to the sirines and then to greywolf for Varscona and then to mulahey. On Mulahey and Greywolf I have never fought them in scs. Anything I need to be concerned with or should watch out for? I am level 5 thief, level 4 mage, level 4 fighter and I am hoping to level fighter and mage to level 5 before proceeding there. Thoughts and tactics are appreciated here. Alternatively if someone thinks I should go grab loot from an area before I try this or if I should hold off just let me know. As I have said before I am not very familiar with scs.
Comments
Best,
A.
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 first postNotable mods
- SCS
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalance
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Item Randomizer
Well, I'll take the time to introduce the no-reload game I'm working on right now. Here's Miluiel, an elven bard. Yeah, I EEKeepered my bard into an elf, because I just can't stomach the fact that elves, who are renowned for their love of arts and nature, can't be druids and bards in AD&D. So, here she is :
I had a fantastic roll with her, because recently, I decided to forbid stat redistribution on my character. I think rolling character is more fun this way. So, having 18 int and 17 dex while having a decent wisdom and no penalty to other score is awesome. She's a pureclass bard, but with a little twist : she has the IWD bard songs (through IWDification) instead of the regular one. After having read a bit about the regular unkitted bard song, I'm not sure I took the most powerful option, because a bonus to luck seems to be very powerful at higher level. From the look of it, I'm trading power for flexibility, which is not necessarily a bad thing... She's also kinda dear to me, because I gave her my wife's name in Elvish.
So, she started alone to level up a bit. She made all the little chores around Beregost to get a few levels, then she recruited Branwen. Branwen is rocking the Battleguard of Tempus kit, dual wielding warhammers. Without a shield and with only 13 strength, she actually needs loads of buffing to be good at meleeing, but she offers the power of a single class cleric in BG1, which is pretty high.
With Branwen, they decided to tackle Tarnesh. A simple Shield spell offsetted much of his offense, because Branwen was meleeing him with the guards. He fell soon enough. Inside FAI, I took Jaheira with me, but gently asked Khalid to stay at the inn. He kindly did so. After that, I recruited Kivan and kitted him into an archer. It does make him much more powerful, but I plan to use him in BG2 through a mod in which he is an archer. So yeah, for the sake of consistency, I kitted him.
With the foursome, I tackled the Mines. Not much to say : we're about at level 5, so nothing's a real threat. Against Mulahey, we went into his lair and Jaheira casted Entangle to slow down his crew. After Entangle, we focused on Mulahey, who fell soon enough, but not after being able to slip in a Hold Person that got Miluiel. It was more a nuisance than anything else, because I managed to wipe the rest of Mulahey's goons not long after.
In the Mines, I also recruited Xan. I toyed with the idea of making him a fighter/mage multi, but decided to make him in an illegal fighter3 --> enchanter. He can then use him sword decently, but not at a high APR. I'll do the same thing in BG2, because I also plan to use him through a mod there. Actually, if I would have made him into a multi f/m, he would have been much stronger as the game progress. I just want him to be able to use him sword somewhat, not necessarily be a powerhouse with it.
A small detour in Gullykin allowed me to recruit another awesome lady : Alora. Now that her rabbit foot is working properly, she's an absolutely delightful thief. And guess what, there's also a mod for her in BG2. So, she'll also be there.
With my team complete, we decided to tackle Bassilus. He went down without problem : between magis missiles from me and Alora, he was constently disrupted, so he went down without dealing any damage.
I'll post more later, but I have to stop now.
See ya !
Edit : Something's really weird... I try to place the first spoiler tag after the description of the fight with Mulahey, but it's always replaced before it. Someone had something like that happened before ?
Edit 2 : Resolved. Thanks @Grond0 !
Previoust posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
Warning: This is going to be a long post.
Korlasz's Tomb. I hate this place. Clearing this area on LoB has to be the most annoying thing I ever did in the entire BG series, including fighting multiple groups of tactics spirit trolls with the more annoying trolls SCS-option installed right out of chateau irenicus and with a good-aligned party. If this is any indication for what SoD is going to be like for this party, it's going to be a rough ride - though I generally think that Korlasz's Tomb is one of the hardest parts of the expansion anyway, so it might get easier.
Now, I know there are relatively easy ways around the tomb if you a) play solo or with a smaller group and have enough protection from undead scrolls and b) you don't mind skipping most fights. I do mind - this is a completionist run after all.
First off, we get a reminder that our opponents have kits now, and they like to use their special abilites. Imagine my shock when this happened: "Timestop? In SoD?" - but it turned out to be shadowstep:
Regardless - with the smarter AI, our foes quickly decided to simply ignore our summons and go straight for the most vulnerable party members. I wasn't ready for this. I had no way to detect a hidden-in-plain-sight shadowdancer, and Ifirn doesn't have stoneskins yet, as we only found the one scroll that Nahema used.
With the help of the flaming fist, some spirit bear fear and Nahema's tanking abilities, the first group of opponents was eventually defeated:
The flaming fist healer even resurrected Ifirn for free. For Porios' group, Nahema approached, and I was trying to have him stand down. Seems like her charisma wasn't high enough, or I chose the wrong conversation option - a battle started, and luckily, two spirit bears quickly rendered the mage ineffective:
Meanwhile, the rest of my party stayed far, far away. Still, those enemies that couldn't hurt spirit animals due to their normal weapons searched around for new targets - and I didn't realize it was possible to shoot across the chasm. The 1 hp Ifirn, freshly resurrected, was hit by an opposing archer and died once again. While I was able to win this fight with relative ease by blocking the bridge with summoned monsters, this time, I had to pay for the resurrection.
At this point, I decided that the most promising strategy for level 2 of the dungeon might be to let summons do all the work while the party is invisible (just being far aways obviously isn't enough, they will always find me) - so I needed to learn invisibility 10' radius (it just so happens there is a scroll right in Ammon's room). Of course, this requires resting, but resting gets interrupted all the time down here, and by very tough groups of skeletons (none of my fighters have their blunt weapon proficiencies yet - I knowingly sacrificed my ability to deal with skeletons in favor of +3 weapons for this run). The flaming fist soldiers were quite helpful here:
However, I discovered a way to make resting a bit easier after that: playing around with doors, line of sight and haste, I ran away from a monster spawn, rested again nearby, and this time, it worked. So we go downstairs, invisble:
The first level was just "trying to get used to SoD again" - the second level was hell. One of main reasons: Bonebats. They have the innate ability to see through invisibility, they count as skeletal undead, so I can barely hurt them at all (especially with LoB hp), and they even paralyze on hit. Bonebats foiled most of my plans - the other half of my plans was foiled by the fact that there were always enough undead who could hit even fire elementals, no problem (which isn't the case at all in SoA - fire elementals are basically immune to anything but vampires and liches).
Other really dangous enemies: Skeletal mages. They are protected my mirror images, use spells like stinking cloud, and, most importantly, they cast haste on their entire undead army. And they know to stay far back, so it's not exactly easy to snipe them (plus, they are skeletons, so ranged weapons barely do any damage).
My previous tactics for such foes prevented me from being aware of most of the relevant information here - bombing everything with fireballs doesn't exactly allow you to study enemy behaviour. But fireballs barely do any damage in LoB, so that's not going to be an option.
I learned most of this in the first room, but it took quite a bit longer until I really internalized everything - my summons were quickly defeated, and stinking cloud hit multiple party members. My only way to get them out of trouble: Another invisibility 10' radius. We barely had enough time to save Sybia and Ifirn. Meanwhile, Arbogast, assisted by the flaming fist, used his wand of the heavens to take out the bonebats:
I was eventually able to stabilize the situation with multiple wand of monster summoning charges, while a spirit bear tried to go after the opposing archer line:
Finally, we chased down the final archer. To deal any significant damage at all, I mostly had to rely on my wand of the heavens charges - rebuying the wands turned out to be quite a good investment after all.
As we had so much trouble with even the first hostile group, it was time to drink some healing potions and bring out the big guns: Our two remaining protection from undead scrolls. With the rest of the party remaining invisible, Sybia (because she can also disarm traps and uses a blunt weapon) and Aikar (our best damage dealer) started trying to kill as many foes as possible. They only managed to take out the next two groups before the durations ran out - so that's a group of zombies:
And a group of shadows. However, the group of shadows looked a little bit small to me - and I turned out to be right. As my party walked up to their original position, multiple invisible foes suddenly attacked us - including three wraiths and a greater shadow:
The ensuing level drains left Aikar at level 4 (ouch!) and Sybia at levels 5/6 (at least she can still summon some skeletons). With all the flaming fist dead, including the healer, and Sybia unable to cast level 4 cleric spells, we had no way to regain our levels right now. We also really had to rest by now. I decided to try it right at the stairs back to level 1 (to be able to flee upstairs if needed), and this turned out to be a great move: While the game told me that my rest was disrupted, the skeletal hordes either didn't actually spawn, or they spawned somewhere else, maybe because there simply wasn't enough space for them to appear. So at least I have my spells back.
Now, for the next group of mercenaries. I started the battle with double-web and summons, taking out at least the most dangerous foes (including a mage) asap. However, the web durations were soon over, and I was forced to flee. Nahema, the only one tanky enough to stand up to these opponents, took a few stabs at exposed foes:
I also had her use my remaining potion buffs - no reason to save them for anything else, we can buy plenty of potions if we make it out of this tomb. I eventually made my stand near the entrance to the level, blocking off the tunnel with wand summons once again, allowing my party to use their ranged weapons to win this fight.
The next group of skeletal undead (in the rooms to the east of the mercenaries, on the way to the restless spirit quest) was the hardest one for me. They had shadowed souls, who spam a lifedrain spell that can a) deal tons of very hard to block damage and b) heal their allies. They also had a bladed skeleton, which deals tons of damage and can easily kill a fire elemental. When it turned out that my initial summons didn't stand a chance, I tried to invisibly flee back to the entrance once again, but Aikar was caught by a hasted bonebat - and this is where I learned about their paralyzation ability:
Nahema ran in to save her ally, but she was too late - and with no resurrections available, we are down to 4:
We managed to get away and rest, which doensn't exactly reset enemy position, but the enemies are usually a bit further back. With a new summoned army, we brought our opponents down to 1 bonebat. However, this last one was able to catch Ifirn, and a save by invisibility (which wouldn't have worked anyway, but would have at least stopped the bladed skeleton) failed - down to 3:
Luckily, Sybia and Arbogast managed to burn down the final bonebat with their wands while Nahema provided fodder via monster summoning charges. Thus, we were able to rely on invisiblity against our remaining foes - with Nahema usually fighting in melee combat or kiting, while wand charges did most of the damage:
There was still one group of undead left, though: The guardians in the secret room. At this point, I had learned a lot about the various undead, their abilites, strengths and weaknesses, and I had also managed to rest again, using the stairs to level 1. This fight went so much better for my party: Starting off with greater malison and webs, we used free action items to take out the skeletal mage and the shadowed souls. After that, web timers ran out (even after renewing the webs), but we managed to get out in time and keep the remaining foes busy with wand summons:
Our tactis included a slow retreat with constant wand of the heavens usage to take out the bonebats, and some buffed Nahema heroics - here's the death of the final bonebat:
Time for Korlasz herself. But first, another rest.
Compared to the undead, Korlasz had a major disadvantage: None of her servants have the +2 weapons needed to hit a fire elemental, and she doesn't have bonebats to counter our invisibility. I opened up with malison, slow and webs plus skeletons:
Korlasz surrenders if you bring her to low hp, or at least she's supposed to, that's why I had my summons attack her right away. Meanwhile, Nahema had to deal with a cleric casting hold person on her, so she used a greenstone amulet charge:
At the same time, Arbogast had been replacing fallen skeletons with spirit bears and his fire elemental. Some opponents here had at least +1 weapons, so they did in fact attack the spirit bears and didn't all go looking for my party. Still, Nahema provided Arbogast with another invisibility, and Sybia went in under sanctuary (she previously had to reveal herself as one opponent was getting too annoying for Nahema) to direct the fight as soon as our fire elemental, previously confused by Korlasz, was free again:
Eventually, Korlasz didn't have any protections left, and the summons simply killed her. She didn't try to surrender, maybe because there were no visible party members nearby.
Anyhow, with our fire elemental now truly invincible (as Korlasz was the only one able to affect it in any way), it just cleared up any remaining opponents, and we gather all the loot (which was kind of a problem, as we had to carry the gear of Aikar and Ifirn as well).
Now, we can finally relax for a bit in the duchal palace. I can tell you, getting out of this dungeon took a lot of time, a lot of wand charges, a lot of potions, a lot of nerves. Still, we survived. As it turns out, if there's anything I'm good at, its keeping druids out of trouble, no matter the fate of the other party members.
Enuhal
Skull (Half-elf Totemic Druid, Grond0); Ern (Human Bard, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904615/#Comment_904615
Today's session commenced with a visit to the Bandit Camp. There was pretty serene progress outside until Taurgosz appeared, when a couple of archers hit Ern with criticals. That meant he was taking a bit of a risk in continuing to hang around in the midst of the action, but he did so successfully - to Taurgosz's cost.
As usual there wasn't too much action in the Cloakwood, but Skull felt a bit bored running from all the ambushes and decided to take on a pair of wyverns. Ern may have felt a bit miffed by being expected to run around there, as he tried to finish off the 2 near-death beasts by targeting a skull trap on top of Skull's head - that wasn't really what I had in mind when I named him that
Inside the mine we were out of invisibility and Hareishan spotted us trying to get downstairs. With no decent quick-acting spells left we both resorted to a rare use of wands to persuade her to let us carry on.
In the City we quickly did our usual routine of collecting tomes and a few choice items - on this occasion that included the gauntlets of ogre power, which give a huge boost to Skull's normal attacks with strength of 9.
The Maulers found themselves severely overmatched and failed to inflict any damage, but there was no disgrace there as neither did the Iron Throne party.
And did those extra levels actually make Drizzt easier? Well, yes basically. He suffered the indignity of having magic resistance cast on him and was then held by a nymph.
We then spent a while doing various little quests to boost reputation back up to 20, before reporting in to Duke Eltan for duty in Candlekeep.
Skull, Totemic Druid 10, 72 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 109 kills
Ern, Bard 10, 71 HPs, 129 kills
PT-5,
the Fugue Plane,I returned to the old camp where Neera made her potion and Safana helped me find a spy then we survive an ambush and fulfill my dream of becoming a ogre leader... we can't do the myconids so we kick in the front door of the Crusader Encampment and kill an evil Druid to save the oak tree.
We don't really have the best lich hunting gear but Neera pops enchant weapon onto Corwin and Sarah, I pray for my holly sword and Safana places a stone golum... round 1 = unlock him (only one shot left in my glasses now) then wack him hard, round 2 = he says "thanks for saving me" as we wack him again... on the third round he will kill me unless I get him first and this time I won.
I have the dragon to help me kill off the last evil mages and Neera is very happy with her powerful new threads + I level up for a single 5th level spell.
party;
Neera ... my mage | romance interest
Voghiln ... magic and dance
Corwin ... a lucky ranger is a deadly ranger!
Safana ... currently friend zoned but still my thief
Sarah ... My conscience and tank
M'khiin ... executed for morale of the troops
Khalid ... died so no myconids this time
At least Krumm and Caldo have got their comeuppance after ending my last two runs. However, upon levelling up to the point where I should have two Hammer of Moradin innate spells, they don't appear on the innate spell button. He is level 4.
I went into EE Keeper, and everything is OK there so I am unable to solve the problem.
Does anyone know which mod the kit is from so that I can inform them and perhaps get a solution?
Nimbul's fairly safe to fight even in SCS, as long as you're not solo: all his tricks are now Invisibility-based, and if I'm not mistaken the weapon he uses is a throwing axe that he can't backstab with anyways. The worst that can happen is that he stays invisible and doesn't fight, but we have Detect Illusions the Thief skill and the spell.
Ankhegs are easily dealt with, and a bowl is returned to Tenya after a bit of shopping at Ulgoth's Beard, with the Greenstone Amulet and Sandthief's Ring being the main purchases here, along with some Bolts of Lightning. With said amulet on Sebastian and two more Skeletons, the Sirines are dealt with almost painlessly, but Alina gets Dire Charm'd despite her Elven resistances, and she gets a critical onto her fellow Archer. Both Vista and Baroque are invisible, the former one Detecting Illusions to dispel the Sirine's IIs, the latter singing as usual. But now that we have the Cloak of the Wolf, we can basically keep fighting forever as it gives +1 HP per 2 rounds. We're no longer tied to CLW and potions to keep our HP totals up.
Time to bait out the ambushes: Sebastian attempts an Invisibility Purge to stop the first two backstabs while Vista, Cato, and Alina try to stop the Clerics from casting. I... can't remember what exactly happened after that. I think Sebastian was interrupted while one of the Clerics was blinded, and I know Vista got hit several times by Darts of Woundin g, but nothing actually deadly for us. None of their spells were of consequence, and everyone died an arrow-y death. Molkar and company were slightly more successful, managed to Hold Alina, but two of their melee fighters insisted on chasing Vista around in a circle, and Cato eventually shot all aggressors to death. Onto Ulcaster.
A mod introduces some kind of ghost on the first level that insta-casts Horror and Animate Dead, and can kill anything (?) in exactly two hits. I had trouble here with an undocumented run, not knowing about the horror, but this time I come prebuffed with Remove Fear. Magic ammunition spells the ghost's demise. The Wolf of Ulcaster's only real success was when I sloppily didn't move Alina (Always her. I dunno why it's always her.) away from the summoned ghouls. She was paralyzed, but a Wand of Fire charge from Vista killed two of the three ghouls, and Cato cleared the third. Two skeletons and a Web spell kept the left flank clear of Dread Wolves and eventually we pile enough damage onto the Wolf before he does anything horrendous.
Bandit camp! I prefer to fight outsider rather than inside, mostly due to the lack of movement allowed in the tent. And the lack of summons we can have. Also, I have an arcane spellcaster besides my Skald, so I get to use one of my favorite tricks here! We e travel to the southwest of the camp before beginning the engagement, and Vista immediately casts from a scroll, and Baroque casts a Web near the same area. Behold, Cloudkill.
Also, behold my one and only screenshot. I thought I took more, but it seems the program I used for screenshots stopped working for whatever reason. The Cloudkill forces all the bandits to come from the southeast rather than getting a large concave on the northeast, so Wand of Fire charges absolutely wreck the gathered archers. My own archers easily clean up the wounded remainders. Notable for Cato, the Dead Shot bow now gives criticals on 18-20, increasing his damage output which was already silly to even sillier levels.
At the Cloakwood, we help Aldeth against the Druids, looking for his quest later in Baldur's Gate. All the Web traps are
disarmedtriggered invisibly by Vista, and we plow through all comers. The singular Wand of Frost charge from Centeol essentially does nothing but slow Cato, but Alina is well and fine and shooting bolts.Drasus and co. is led off by an out-of-sight Silence spell, catching neither of the Fighters but both of the Mages. We engage. Both Mages cast Vocalize. Two Wand of Fire charges are used to attempt to interrupt their spells while we kill Drasus, and Drasus falls. Stoneskin, Mirror Images and Invisibility are now being run by their mages: Vista goes invisible herself and begins to Detect Illusions in their last known locations. Alina and Cato swap to their elemental arrows, and both mages end up falling without a single offensive cast. Genthore is the last to fall, as he's been uselessly trading blows with Sebastian this entire time.
Into the mines themselves! Hareishan is also dealt with with tactical ammunition, though she gets off a Chaos and a Charm spell. The Chaos only hit Vista, and the Greenstone amulet was enough to stop its effects. The Charm is directed at Baroque, and again the Greenstone amulet prevails. The next mage, though... Urgh. I made a mistake of not drinking Potions of Freedom and ended up with both Sebastian and Cato dead in my own Web while the mage laughed under her MGoI. Vista and Alina finish off the fight, though, and we're now returning to the FAI for a couple Raise Deads.
Current stats: Baroque, Half-elf Skald 7, 56 HP (6 from Familiar), 0 kills
Sebastian, Human Painbearer of Ilmater 6, 41 HP, 65 kills, 1 death. Most powerful vanquished: Greater Basilisk.
Alina, Human Archer 6, 69 HP, 222 kills, 0 deaths. Most powerful vanquished: Greater Basilisk.
Cato, Elf Archer 6, 64 HP, 265 kills, 1 death. Most powerful vanquished: Battle Horror
Vista, Gnome Illusionist/Thief 5/6, 35 HP, 69 kills, 2 deaths. Most powerful vanquished: Mustard Jelly
Previoust posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
We wake up in the duchal palace, and I have to say: These are some weak assassins. Anything that we can kill in LoB by simply attacking it with melee weapons isn't really worth consideration:
As it turns out, I can't get Aikar and Ifirn back until the next chapter - there doesn't seem to be any way to resurrect someone in the SoD version of the city. Anyway, I completed all of the various fetchquests, generally choosing non-violent solutions. There was a short fight at Sorcerous Sundries, won by Nahema and some skeletons:
And this group tried to rob me, but they weren't prepared for my spirit animals:
So all in all, nothing we couldn't handle with just 3 party members.
Now, at the Coast Way Crossing, we reunited with our fallen comrades and added Corwin to the party, so we once again have an archer, though her stats don't exactly compare to Firun's. Against most random monster groups around here, we were able to just use the summons + ranged weapons approach. Spiders are especially easy to deal with by now. Our first major combat was against Teleria - I decided to split our damage. The summons kill the golem, the party shoots down the mage's protections. Once Corwin hit with an arrow of biting, her fate was sealed:
The next engagement was the battle at the bridge. I previously mentioned an invisibility based waiting-tactic for this fight, and this run is where it originated - it was a bit risky, as I had no idea how many divination spells would await me. Here's Nahema disrupting the first and only one the opponents would use:
She went invisible again right after using the wand charge. The timer on the battle ran out, and we moved on to the Coast Way Forest.
There, we had some summons deal with an orc group - Corwin went in stealthed to observe the fight and direct our allies:
However, she failed her next stealth check and was unable to leave before getting pierced by numerous arrows - another resurrection to pay for:
I didn't make the same mistake against the vampire and his wolves. For this battle, my entire party just stayed invisible, no tricks, no nonsense:
We returned to the previous map for the dwarven dig site (and I love Arbogast's new dart, Biter +2 - it will be great for the trolls we are going to meet later!). The groups in the first level are slow, and a combination of summons, malisons, slow spells and webs allowed us to clear it with only one rest in between:
However, the Repository of Undeath deserves a separate post, as its basically Korlasz's Tomb 2.0 (with the major difference that you can leave the Repository at any time).
Enuhal
This is my first time doing a no reload solo with SCS on Core. Critique is welcome and appreciated. If you think I did something poorly or wrong...I probably didn't know any better and I need to address it.
I took a F/M/T elf as my opening attempt after doing a couple of rounds of regular reload. I had a struck of luck her. A 91 on the 7th reroll. Very solid for my first attempt and honestly great to see as I often times don't have the patience to wait around for a massive number like that.
It started off like all adventures with me doing the candlekeep little quests, buying needed supplies and stealing/selling the sapphire.
After leaving candlekeep and the death of Gorion I dumped Imoen and made my way to Shoal. We killed her easily for some quick exp and level up.
After that we kited the ogres to the south around. I find that positioning the slower moving Ogrillons I can stutter the faster moving ogres and Ogre beserkers and can more safely kite them as well.
After that we go back to sell things at Beregost and pick up a wand of lightning as well. This is were things went bad however. A misclick on a building saw me chug a health potion on accident. That was bad enough but then I went down too far into the street and triggered the fight with Neera...and me tapped out of spells and sporting a whopping 14 hit points after my skirmish with shoal and the Ogres.
I ran, Kited the two guards, Neera bites the dust almost immediately but drawing off the mage long enough for me to take care of his henchmen I was kiting.
I move to reengage thinking he has blown most of his spells on Neera. His grease spell( I think thats what that is, it didn't stop me like web) Slows me down and he pelts me with a fire arrow which I lucked out that it did very low damage. A couple of lucky, well placed arrows finally remove him.
After that me and my new buddy Korax went Basilisk hunting. I dropped a protection from petrifaction on myself just to be on the safe side. We slayed the whole map except for Kiran who I accidentally triggered before I was buffed and ready. As such I chose the dialogue in which he leaves but taunts me. I think this is my biggest mistake so far as the magic Items they carry are very useful, however I feel as though it was the safe route and I did not want to end my run so quickly. Something for me to bear in mind for my next run.
We finally finish Mutamin and basilisks but Unfortunately, shortly after I am forced to slay my new found friend.
Last we make our way to the Friendly arm inn to sell loot and kill Tarnesh.
A well placed arrow disrupts his mirror image but gets off the horror which I fail against. I loose control and thought that he was sure to kill me. Apparently his spell pool is not to deep. He hits with 2 magic missile rounds and then switches to melee. unable to bypass most of my Ac he only lands a few blows before I regain control and end his life.
My character currently sits on these stats and equipment.
For a mage character you might want to consider sleeping that group of ogres to reduce the kiting required.
If you don't intend to recruit Neera you could just kill her as soon as you get to Beregost (by shooting her from range before she talks) to avoid triggering that encounter accidentally.
<div class="Spoiler"></div>Baroque, Pacifist Skald, update 2:
The worst part about raising Sebastian and Cato is that they had like 390 lb carrying capacity combined, and shuffling items to deal with this meant that I spent ~10 minutes trying to figure out a carrying strategy that didn't involve dumping any items. Even though I could just put it into one of the many chests in the mines. I'm stubborn. In the end, I managed to do it with all 3 living members Encumbered and Slowed but moving. We raise the two loadbearers, and head back for the mines.
The ogre mage is killed pretty painlessly after using Sebastian's Invisibility Purge and then elemental ammunition to interrupt his spells. Favored Enemy: Ogre on one of my Archers didn't hurt either. Well, it did hurt, just not me.
The plan for Davaeorn is fairly simple. Alina gets a Protection From Magic Scroll, the potion case, and the Boots of Cheetah Speed, and goes for Davaeorn. Sebastian and two Skeleton Warriors clog up the entrance, and Vista and Cato snipe from the back. Baroque, of course, sings. The plan succeeds, as well: the hardest thing is that my graphics card absolutely hates Fire animations and the Cloud spells, and everything is running at 1/3 speed or lower. And having to kite away from the Battle Horrors constantly. They're killed first after Davaeorn casts a Sunfire too close to them, and a combination of two Potions of Explosions and a Scorcher charge from Vista kill the other two. The Talons and guards on the other side never get a chance to accumulate more than 5 before they're summarily mowed down with the others. Finally, Alina gets the final blow.
Baldur's Gate is next.
Previoust posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
Part XIV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904934/#Comment_904934
We did relatively fine in the Respository of Undeath, but it took me around 3 hours to clear the damned thing. A lot of that time was spent walking back to camp and resting. I did have various strategies in place when dealing with my foes, but skeletal undead still give me a lot of trouble, especially when aided by shadowed souls and skeletal mages. As an example, let's look at the fight against the big undead group in the northern room, where you can also find the throne. Ready to go with buffs and summons, my party managed to snipe two shadowed souls - one by themselves, one was only killed via summons:
I had to retreat rather quickly, as I can't afford to a) get blocked by my enemies and b) fight against hasted opponents. Our enemies follow us to the entrance, we get out and rest. Returning with new buffs, we throw down some webs, but one enemy makes it past them. We use the web duration to snipe all the bonebats with wand of the heavens charges:
Currently, our biggest problem is the remaining skeletal mage. To deal with him, we rest again and set up a distraction with Sybia summoning skeletal fodder and Ifirn ready to use her wand of monster summoning if needed. Meanwhile, the rest of the party + druidic summons find and kill the mage:
While the remaining bladed skeletons are tough, without any support from bonebats, mages or souls, we can easily deal with them.
A different battle with different foes nearby: This time, its shadowed souls, but for the first time, drowned in blood and the bg2 version of skeleton warriors. It soon turns out that killing drowned in blood with ranged weapons isn't exactly feasible, and my initial disabling plans fail thanks to the high magic resisance of skeleton warriors (I thought they were armored skeletons at first - same model, very different opponent). Trying to kill a relatively isolated skeleton warrior while we flee doesn't turn out well for Corwin - two hits, 84 damage, dead archer:
We resurrect her and, entering once again, find out that the skeleton warrior is still pretty isolated. With a full set of buffs and summons, we can take it down before any more foes arrive:
With our buffs still going strong, we rush forward and take down the shadowed souls. Only drowned in blood and the other skeleton warrior remain. Time for our fire elemental and invisibility 10' radius:
The other fights, while still somewhat difficult, went relatively well. Of course, by far the easiest was the actual bossfight in this place - attack, use "the secret revealed", attack:
With the boots of speed and haste, Nahema (with 100 fire resistance thanks to Arbogast) quickly destroyed the phylactery, so I didn't have to fight the lich again.
Next time, we're going to hunt some trolls.
Enuhal
My new character is Autumn:
I've looked into Shadowdancers on the forums but didn't find much information. Most people probably know to hide, press one of the buttons (except stealth) in the action bar, wait for the hide button to light up again, attack, and immediately hide again for safe, repeated backstabbing (as long your stealth values are high enough). I believe @Gotural or @Grum came up with this. Other than that, I haven't seen the kit explored much, which is hardly a surprise as most forum topics are about dual-classing.
How can the most be made of the Shadowstep ability with all its limitations (compared to the Time Stop spell or a Time Trap)? What good are the Shadowdancer specific HLAs? Do the Shadowdancer abilities make up for the loss of traps? How can a Shadowdancer, especially at higher levels, where many foes see through invisibility, reliably defeat enemies? (My expectation is that a high level Shadowdancer with UAI plays much like a Bard without a spell book, but with some special abilities.) Lots of questions. I hope Autumn will live long enough to answer them.
In order to play a Shadowdancer the way they were designed to be played, I'm playing on core difficulty rather than LoB difficulty (though I think they won't necessarily play very differently until HLAs and ToB). I'm playing with mods like SCS with full prebuffing and Ascension, and probably some Tactics components. I say "probably" because I'll have to do a re-install of BG2EE. While mods like Rogue Rebalancing's items, Thalantyr Item Upgrades, and in BG2EE, Weimer Item upgrades will somewhat reduce the challenge of this run, role-playing restrictions may actually increase it. An example: as you can see in the portrait, Autumn dresses in black, so she'll use the Shadow Armor even though unenchanted studded leather with a ring or cloak of protection +2 will be more convenient, especially with Autumn being a high CON shorty with good saves that might be made fail-proof against certain spells. Also, no evil actions. Autumn is True Neutral in the sense that she's no altruist but not out there to harm innocents for her own gain either. I see her as a mercenary with a conscience.
I hope I can post a first update tomorrow.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XVI - Three ambushes in one update!
Previous posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
Part XIV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904934/#Comment_904934
Part XV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904982/#Comment_904982
I posted a lengthy update, hit the wrong button and - everything gone. So this will be the short version:
Last thing to do in this chapter: Triggering the ambush with the troll cave. We get all our enemies to gather into one group, throw in our AoE crowd control spells, done (in truth, it was a bit more tricky than this, but that's the general idea):
Next, we clear the Troll Claw Forest map, with the help of our trusty flaming fist soldiers:
There's also the second troll cave - we run in to snipe the spellcaster and run out again before anything can hit us.
We enter again under invisibility, search for a safe spot, start summoning and shooting:
We get ambushed again on the way to the Forest of Wyrms. While fighting an army of goblins, Arbogast gets caught in our own web (the low dart range keeps messing up my movement), goblins shoot down his ironskins, but Nahema saves him with invisibility:
The party goes downstairs to fight some myconids, Nahema is immune to confusion thanks to her helm, our party rolls decent saves - only Ifirn ever gets affected by anything. Still, our strategy feels too risky:
With two major mistakes under my belt, I decide to stop playing for now - I just want to finish travelling to the Forest of Wyrms. However, we get ambushed once again - but even on LoB, its only 2 hill giants against one baby dragon, so we just buff with bless, chant and haste, as all we need is damage. We take down the hill giants to get the +1 agility ioun stone for Corwin:
And, for the first time in this run, my reports have caught up to the point I'm actually at in the game right now, so even I have no idea what will happen next
Enuhal
@Blackraven : 'Tis nice to see you back in action, safe travels!
Thanks for the advice! Any and all critique is welcome since I really don't know what I am doing.
Those of you who are familiar with early English will know that my name means of Champion of Azuth. The name was given to me by a visiting Priest of Azuth when I responded to his call. Most call me Agla though, which is OK by me, just so long as they all know that Azuth is the god that I champion. I feel that a major aim of my life is to weed out the misuse of magic and Azuth has given me the tools to do just that.
In Candlekeep three upgraded assassins were killed. The battle with Mendas was particularly gratifying as he has foiled many a run. Investing in a heavy crossbow was certainly worthwhile.
In transit, I was attacked by a swarm of hobgoblins. None of them escaped.
After calming down Marl and taking a tome to Firebead, I headed north where my crossbow was more than a match for an ogre with a belt-fetish.
South of Beregost ogrillons met a similar fate.
I then delivered a letter to Sister Sapienta:
At High Hedge we helped Melicamp get back into shape and afterwards used a guril berries antidote to try and do the same for a were-wolf. I was unsuccessful.
- if you accidentally delete your work you will probably be able to undo the deletion (ctrl+z works if running Windows).
- if you accidentally change the web page you can use the back button on the browser to get back to your post (with it still intact).
Previous documented run
I wasn't actually intending to have another go at this immediately, but having read @Enuhal's desire to see a high-level shaman in action I thought I'd test it out a bit more (as you might guess I'm something of a sucker for the old Civilization cry of "just one more turn").
I had a couple more goes in the nature of experiments - neither run actually ending in death, but just being abandoned when I thought there was room for a bit more optimization. For this attempt I'll see if I could put good intentions into practice
This time round I was aiming to get up to level 2 before doing any travelling away from Beregost. That intention quickly took a knock though when I miscalculated how many HPs a charmed Silke had left and she died of spider venom. Things got worse when one of the sirines at the temple was killed by an exceptionally lucky bear (which survived around a couple of dozen shots at it while at near death), so the shamans accepted they would need to do some travelling to get their first level.
They headed up to the FAI (during the daytime to try and baffle any bandits lurking near the road) and got to level 2 by returning a bowl to Tenya.
Lorbag - L2, 15 HPs, 13 kills
Chat - L2, 17 HPs, 9 kills, 0 deaths
Pretty Boy - L2, 15 HPs, 11 kills, 0 deaths
Grinch - L2, 18 HPs, 9 kills, 0 deaths
Grunt - L2, 20 HPs, 10 kills, 0 deaths
Toke - L2, 17 HPs, 7 kills, 0 deaths
I'll continue stalking for now but I sure hope to hop-in at some point in the future (just got the idea for a character today).
@RVNS Welcome and have a lot of no-reloady fun! By way of advice (since you've requested us to do so), I'd drop two minor tips, which I've collected from the senior players and found useful:
1. Save-or-else effects (such as enemy spells, enemy abilities, traps) are probably one of the most common game-enders, especially when playing solo. Therefore, I would encourage you not to take chances by relying on making the save, no matter how probable that may be (unless, of course, your saving throws are in the negative "safe zone" which would give you a zero chance of failure). Instead, it is often possible to counter the entire effect with immunities (Resist Fear, Protection from Petrification etc.), resistances (magic, elemental) or otherwise (e.g. Sleep spell does not affect characters with lvl 5+).
2. Interrupting enemy spellcasters with your damage may be an efficient way of foiling their plans, however, it is once again a game of chance and therefore it shouldn't be relied upon without having a back-up plan. For example, if I was to try and disrupt a cleric's Hold Person cast with a ranged attack, I wouldn't do so without being prepared to take a Potion of Invisibility or Potion of Freedom in case it goes awry.
Enough talk for me. See ya!
*puf*