I'm not that much into no-reloading nowadays, but I just wanted to stop by and say, it's a delight to see all the old Bioware veterans here and contributing so much life to our forum community.
Well, that was certainly an intense session of playing Baldur's Gate.
Because some of the various sub-areas of the Underground River are where I've previously struggled even on core rules, I thought of a strategy for every single fight before engaging in combat, and I even skipped some battles - with varying degrees of success.
Our party started with the shadow cave. We used basically the same strategy as we did against the shadow cellar in Dead Man's Pass. Of course, there are more opponents here, and the first shadow group didn't allow itself to get distracted by summons, so I had to do a lot of moving around, spreading the strength drain, while the party took care of the unsleeping guardian. Finally, we got rid of the shadows that had engaged the party in melee combat:
After that, it was easy to distract the remaining foes with additional summons. No level drains for our party this time! The second encounter was against the Blind Albino Wyrmlings. As these, unlike all the other dragons and dragonlike in SoD, don't do poison damage, but acid damage, I had six protection from acid scrolls prepared just for this cave. That turned out to be a bit of a waste, as the first couple of wyrmlings went down rather fast, without offering any resistance:
Only the last one of our foes used its breath weapon on a party member, but the damage turned out to be very low:
Next, we decided to clear all of the enemy groups near the corrupted druid grove - those include shambling mounds, dark treants, myconids, spiders, and, most importantly, corrupted nymphs and hamadryads. We made full use of our summons, the malison + slow combo, haste spells and kiting, swapping around rings of free action and the helm of charm protection etc.:
At one point, I even remembered that Voghiln had a musical instrument capable of removing confusion effects with him and he used it for the very first time:
We ended up taking down the evil druid with relative ease - even after his buffs fired, he didn't get to cast any more spells.
I mentioned scary places in the previous post, and Kanaglym is certainly one of those. To the right, we had to deal with the last big undead group in the game, involving skeleton warriors, shadowed souls, lots of skeleton archers etc. - but at this point, I had a pretty good idea what do do about SoD undead, especially with easy resting available thanks to invisibility 10' radius. We went for summons, malison + double web and wands of fire - first, our summons + Arbogast and Nahema (protected against our own webs) had to take out the skeleton warrior, while the rest of the opposing force was webbed. After that, we shot wand of fire charges into the back line to take out the relatively low hp skeleton archers and shadowed souls:
A very smooth battle. Now, for Kherriun and his legion of mages. We have to bring down Kherriun as soon as humanly possible, otherwise his enslaved dragon will completely annihilate our back line. We finally bring out or saved up arrows of dispelling for this (and they will see heavy use during the rest of the session) - while we have oracle and breach ready, the arrows are the fastest way to bring down any protections:
Kherriun dies in time, and it looks like the dragon will join us. Meanwhile, one of the dark magicians throws a fireball at the party. At this point, I should have been drinking fire protection potions for my more vulnerable characters (Arbogast was perfectly fine, I had him cast protection from fire on himself prior to the battle), but I didn't think this was needed, as my plan was to retreat immediately and let the dragon take care of things. However, the dragon for some reason went neutral right away, engaged in conversation and left - and another fireball hit us, killing Voghiln:
We managed to retreat from the battle. Meanwhile, it turned out that, while the dark magicians were deadly foes for our party, they just weren't able to take out our remaining summons - so we could watch them win this fight for us:
I should mention that I decided to skip the fight against Strunk and his elementals. I did this because in my previous playthrough, when I started this battle, multiple crusaders joined in and surrounded the party - a position I really can't afford to be in in LoB. I know we will have to kill him eventually, but I'd rather fight him in different surroundings.
Now, it was time to make our way to the dreaded Dragonspear Castle Basement. Right away, we have to fight against a tough group of crusaders. We can't get enough druidic summons ready before they engage, so we use a wand charge - meanwhile, Nahema does her malison + chaos thing with decent success:
However, when the fight was almost over, a confused crusader scout randomly backstabbed Minsc, killing him with one blow - the game didn't even tell me the damge amount, but at least he wasn't chunked:
Nahema spooks the scount so it can't go invisible again, should the chaos effect run out. However, dispel magic from an opposing spellcaster hits. Still, we kill the scout before it can do anything dangerous:
Always feels strange to get only 420 xp for an opponent capable of oneshotting every party member.
Now, Nahema and Voghiln poison food and water supplies at the same time, and I plan to flee right away -fighting Hephernaan and his army of spellcasters would propably be a bad idea. However, I discover that it's actually not possible to leave the area right away - and a group of crusaders, including a mage, spawns in front of us on the elevator. We use another dispelling arrow to bring down the mage, while some spirit animals and the rest of the party try to take down the remaining crusaders. Meanwhile, we send out a spirit lion so Hephernaan won't run to us right away, otherwise we are propably doomed. While we clear the remaining crusaders, Arbogast sends out more summons to keep Hephernaan occupied - we can see that he's nearby thanks to the combat log, and his army is big and scary. Suddenly, the elevator is usable once again. We run!
On our way out, we free the ogres and set up the explosives. Our plan is to retreat under haste and invisibility 10' radius. The crusaders are hostile by now, and our final haste spell runs out. Things get really bad when we run into two spellcasters. One of them uses a divination spell, we try to retreat, but two of us are revealed. Two invisibility potions later, and we try to pass - but the other spellcaster, a priest, uses true sight! Now we are screwed - However, I remember I have a haste scroll in one of my scrollbags and use it while the party is losing hitpoints. That way, we almost make it to the entrance while drinking healing potions, but Voghiln gets stuck and is trapped - we have to sacrifice him and pick up his gear via the EE quickloot option:
However, at this point I seem to have made a crucial mistake. It seems like I only remembered to loot Voghilns weapons and his containers. Though I was quite sure I looted everything, the other equipment was simply not in my bag of holding when I had him resurrected at camp. It was relatively easy to equip him with slightly inferior gear, though we lost some great items (including the ring of the tiny fiend and an amulet of protection +2). Another big blow for the party. When I checked the caverns later, the gear was gone.
Finally, we waged the battle for the flaming fist camp - and what a battle it was.
First wave: I don't have any screenshots here, but this one was a bit messy. I used the archers against the trolls, and our own archers (Nahema, Corwin, Minsc) prepared their arrows of detonation - up to this point, this party had never used an arrow of detonation, so I still had all of them (in fact, I kept them for this very event). Though the trolls and their allies lost hp quickly, at one point, the archers shot at one close to our party - and we got hit by our own detonation arrows. While the arrows were in flight, I realised my mistake, and two of my three non fire-resistant party members managed to drink protection potions - but Corwin failed. Luckily, by now, I carried scrolls of raise dead with me, so I used one and had everyon drink healing potions to get to max hp before engaging the second wave with the help of the wizard slayers. Same strategy here: Fire lots of arrows of detonation before the mages get their mGOI's up:
By now, I had Corwin drink a fire protection potion as well, just in case something like the troll fiasco would happen again, though I was very careful with aiming every single arrow now. Still, the protection turned out to be a great idea when our party was hit with an opposing wizard's fireball. Meanwhile, Corwin took down all the crucial enemy protections with arrows of dispelling, and our party triumphed:
Third wave: We take along our battlemages for this one. Our detonation arrows are of great use here, but two warpriests survive and heal up under sanctuary:
However, as soon as they try to attack, they are shot down by our party.
Now, for the final fight of this event, we still had dwarves and thieves left. This one didn't offer a good context to use detonation arrows (fewer, but high hp and well-protected enemies, and we would kill our own allies as well). Instead, Arbogast managed to cast a crucial insect plague that hit all opposing spellcasters - but at the same time, I made the same mistake with Voghiln that I had previously made with Ifirn - I forgot to unselect him for an attack command and sent him into combat with his melee weapon, resulting in very swift death.
However, even fatigued and without a skald, our thac0 was still good enough to take down everyone, using two more dispelling arrows to bring down protections. Brother Deepvein also provided us with some nice healing and additional buffs:
With this battle won, we will attempt the literal Siege of Dragonspear Castle next time. It certainly won't be easy, as there are named thieves and lots of high level spellcasters around.
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate
Part 1
Since my previous run was not continuous per the normal rules, I have decided to try my hand at completing the whole tetralogy in one single narrative. If I die somewhere along the way, I'll have to start over all the way back at Candlekeep.
Like my last run, I'll be running a "solo" Seducer, but there are three important differences that will make this run much more challenging:
1. I won't be using the level drain trick to bring dragons and balors and mind flayers and beholders and epic-level mages into the party. I'll be working within the original limitations of the Seducer kit: Seduction only works on critters up to half the Seducer's level.
2. I will not be dual-classing my Seducer into a mage. They will stay a single-classed thief for the whole game--which is actually horribly dangerous, because Seducers have by far the weakest defenses of any class in the game. Nor can thieves use mage scrolls in my new install.
3. As this is a pacifist run, my main character is not allowed to kill anyone. Only party members and summons are allowed to kill enemies.
I'm running EET, installed via BWS, and I will not be using any mod-introduced items except crafting-related ones. My WeiDu file is so large I can't put it in a spoiler; it's attached in a .txt file.
Our Charname this time is... Frisk! Because I just adore Frisk. They are just too cute and too sweet.
We start out by pickpocketing some Potions of Extra Healing from a mod NPC named Alec in Candlekeep. Alec is a really sweet guy who won't even get mad at you if he catches you trying to rob him blind. And, um...
Well...
Here's the thing. I actually somehow deleted every single screenshot from the entirety of BG1. I don't have a single picture to show for the whole game; I had to re-load the starting save game just to post that shot of Frisk's Record screen.
Fortunately, this run didn't differ too much from Mollyboo's BG1 run. Since the primary change in this run is the fact that I'm no longer using the level drain trick, the gameplay is pretty much identical up until Siege of Dragonspear starts up. So losing all the screenshots for BG1 isn't actually that big of a loss.
Anyhoo, after stealing hundreds of gold's worth of potions from Alec, Frisk charmed Phlydia, brought her over to the rat area, and after several restarts due to fatal backstabs, Frisk managed to get Phlydia to confuse Mendas, causing him to break his invisibility by attacking a rat and exposing him to Phlydia's Flame Arrow spells. It was extremely difficult because Domination only lasts 1d3 rounds and offers a save every time (with a +4 bonus at level 1), but eventually we got rid of Mendas and the rats, allowing Frisk to seduce one of the cats.
Like in Mollyboo's run, our cat came with 1 HP, 9 in each ability score, and 90% physical damage resistance, which made it basically helpless at level 1, but an incredible tank (if nothing else) at level 3 and up. But the cat got horribly overshadowed by Haiass.
Who's Haiass? Apparently, one of my mods gave Charname a wolf companion for some reason. A wolf who has over 100 HP. And 3.5 APR with subzero THAC0 and 2d3+4 damage per hit. And lots of resistances. And immunity to basically every disabler.
And upgrades as you gain levels.
And, as I would eventually realize, cannot die. He actually reappears if he dies. He's an immortal summons with better damage output than many fighters. Haiass could probably solo the game (and obviated the need for seducing a Huge Spider from Beregost).
We got Frisk to level 6, and the cat to level 3, by killing the Sirines of the Beregost temple among other minor quests and some ankhegs (who killed the cat killed several times). With Frisk at level 6, we could finally seduce Gorken Bloodaxe, the mod-introduced Korgan Bloodaxe ripoff with 2.5 APR, 5 THAC0, ridiculous stats, and who is erroneously coded as a mage, essentially making him a high-end fighter/mage who gains levels as fast as a single-classed mage. He'll be incredibly overpowered even late into Throne of Bhaal.
Some mod adds him to the Naskhel Mines, along with some other duergar, including a pair of Duergar Clerics (actually cleric/thieves, who, unlike most enemy thieves, actually have skill points assigned to them) with 2 APR each. We seduced the one with a pip in hammers so he could use Ashideena. Or Borok's Fist. Or whatever Bassilus' hammer is called.
During a stop by the Beregost manor, we discovered that in EET, Wands of Lightning are the BG2-style kind, with 6 targets, even in BG1. Which meant Gorkan Bloodaxe can combine it with a Strength tome to boost his STR from a mediocre 16 to a ludicrous 22.
I keep planning on not using the Wand of Lightning trick, but I keep finding new uses for it, and I hate to abandon a trick before I've explored it fully.
The trick also let us blow up a Zombie Lord who nearly wiped out the party at the gnoll stronghold. Even Haiass couldn't kill the Zombie Lord, because it summoned ghasts and Fell Ghasts every round, infinitely. Unwilling to come back later to smash it after we've gained some levels, I just threw a bunch of Fireballs at the Zombie Lord using a Wand of Lightning-boosted Wand of Fire. And even then it took many charges.
The Zombie Lord actually got trapped behind some invisible wall (an annoyingly common bug in EE), making it impossible for us to even target it. We just bombed the ghasts, relying on Haiass' inexplicable 100% fire resistance to absorb it.
Once we got Gorky to level 4, we could cast Invisibility and travel without worrying about ambushes. We stomped on Mulahey and busted out the basilisk XP loop to crank Frisk all the way up to level 10 (which involved removing the cleric and cat from the party, so only Frisk and Gorky would gain XP).
With Frisk at level 10, we could use Seduction on Maneira, a fighter/thief with 5 attacks per round (!) from one of the post-mines ambushes. A bug prevented us from seducing her in the ambush area itself, but when I spawned her in a separate area, we confirmed that she was indeed vulnerable. She took the place of our kitty cat, keeping our party at 4 characters.
We gave Maneira the Bounty Hunter kit (one of my mods lets you give any party member a kit) and made the Duergar Cleric into a cleric of Talos due to alignment restrictions (even though the mod actually lets you ignore such restrictions). Maneira came with 3 pips in short swords to complement her 5 APR, so she had crazy damage output despite her low STR. She also had pips in darts, but equipping them actually decreased her APR from 5 to 3.
There was a miserable fiasco at the bandit camp when I tried to fight everyone outside without properly buffing the party (or setting any traps). I actually thought we might fail, but we just barely managed to survive long enough to bring down Venkt and the other higher-level goons from the main tent.
Domination won us the fight against Hareishan and the other mages of the Cloakwood mines, but we struggled against some Skeleton Warrior thingies that had massive stats and lots of immunities. Domination played an important role in taking them down as well: we didn't really have the melee power to tear down the skeletons on our own, but Frisk managed to turn them against each other and bring the survivor down to Near Death.
(I believe a Domination spell also finished off Davaeorn, but it may have just been us applying a bunch of melee pressure, since the party has such abnormally high APR.)
We played a little more intelligently in the Iron Throne fight than I normally do, stunning some of the enemies with a Wand of Paralyzation and handling enemy pressure using Chaos and Greater Malison.
Then something truly weird happened. On the way to Candlekeep, some guy walked up to us and stole the History of the Nether scrolls, the book you need to enter the library. The journal gives you a vague hint that he was heading "south," but there's absolutely no way to know where you're supposed to find him again so you can take back the book. I looked it up and found a seven-year-old forum post saying he appears either at the Friendly Arm Inn, Nashkel, the carnival, or the Nashkel Mines...
...but he wasn't in any of those places. I searched the entire map for each location, and there was simply no one there. Whatever mod it was, it stole a plot-critical item from us and broke the entire main quest line.
I added the book via the console, treating the case as if I had uninstalled the mod (which you're not supposed to do in a BWS install due to uninstallation risks). It's just as well, because apparently, if that mod had been working properly, we'd have had to fight our way through hordes of drow (for some godforsaken reason) who had filled up the Nashkel mines.
I normally roll with bugs, both good and bad, but I have no patience for bugs that make the game impossible to complete.
In the Candlekeep catacombs, I mismanaged some traps and got both Gorky and the Duergar Cleric killed. Maneira and Frisk used Potions of Invisibility to escape, ignoring all the doppelgangers, Prat, and the Medusas that took the place of the basilisks.
As the endgame approached, Frisk hit level 12, because I disabled the XP cap and that basilisk XP loop gave Frisk such a huge boost earlier on. Frisk could finally seduce level 6 critters.
Such as Lesser Basilisks.
I seduce the very same basilisk we had been using for the basilisk XP loop much earlier in the game. Unlike the stronger variant, Lesser Basilisks only get 1 attack per round, but their gaze attacks hits automatically, strikes as a nonmagical weapon, bypassing PFMW (and, of course, can be bumped up to +3 using Enchanted Weapon if necessary), and petrifies the target on a failed save vs. death at -4, bypassing spell protections but not magic resistance.
Plus, by coincidence, I installed a mod that causes petrification to remove all of the victim's items, preventing them from getting shattered. I only installed that mod to save myself a headache if somebody in the party got shattered, but it has the unintentional benefit of letting us petrify basically anybody without worrying about losing loot.
Like in my previous runs, I recruited Schlumpsa (he's only level 2), turned him into a wolf using Relair's Mistake, and then took advantage of his immunity to missile damage by sending him into the final battle alone, buffed with fire resistance and haste, so the rest of the party could fire Arrows of Detonation at him, smoking Diarmid and bringing Tazok to Near Death.
It took several tries because Frisk had poor THAC0 and Maneira had no pips in bows, but we managed to hit Angelo and Semaj using Arrows of Dispelling and Biting and Acid Arrows. Late in the battle, I realized that, for some reason, Sarevok was not doing any damage on the rare occasions he landed a hit on Schlumpsa while the sewer king was running away from him (which explained why Schlumpsa had been drinking so few potions). Too lazy to reload or figure out what was wrong with Sarevok (not that I even cared), I just boxed him in with the Wand of Monster Summoning so we could whomp him when the last of his allies crumpled.
Current party: Frisk, Seducer Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage Duergar Cleric, Cleric of Talos/Thief Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter Lesser Basilisk, Berserker Schlumpsa the Sewer King, Fighter
Not having to post several hundred screenshots documenting our travels fills us with determination.
Aestica, Halfling Fighter v Illasera, The Quick (or Licensed to Ill)
Let me tell you about two things that suck:
1) Being the second best ranged fighter in the Realms. Because eventually you meet the best ranged fighter in the Realms and you have a bad time. Ask Illasera all about that.
2) Playing in a BP Ascension/SCS install and being unsure whether the SCS script or the BP scripts are controlling. Ask me all about that.
So, here's the plan. I'm going to tell you about Illasera, and how we killed her. Then, I'm going to keep on playing, and I'm going to ask you, dear reader, to tell me which scripts we're seeing in the Ascension fights. I've played a lot of Ascension, and I've played a lot of Ascension with SCS, but my experience with BP Ascension is nil, and my experience with SCS v30 Ascension is minimal. I need you to tell me what I'm seeing here. It looks BP to me, but I'm not certain.
Ok. To the Illasera fight. Ascension Illasera can be incredibly hard or incredibly easy, depending on your character and game plan. For Aestica, a ranged fighting warrior with The Reflex, she was incredibly easy.
Yeah, girl, we're going to see soon enough...
Illasera attacks on a large outdoor map. That makes her susceptible to separation via Smite. Our plan had been to Smite Illasera, knocking her to the edge of the map and separating her from her allies. We'd then pursue and kill her in peace. Good plan. It would have been an even better plan if it worked.
Due to my rustiness, I had forgotten that Illasera's Etherealness abilities give her a round or two of immunity to weapons. And since you can't Smite what you can't smack, we weren't able to Smite.
Or at least we couldn't Smite her. We just flipped the plan around, and Smited her allies instead of her. It's not like we had anything else to do with the round, seeing as how we couldn't touch Illy.
(Btw, note the mage: He's under buffed, and he never tossed his Sphere of Chaos of said "praeses"- that worries me. BP behavior?)
By the time our Smite ended, the Black Reaver clan had been wiped away. What's the time? It's time to get Ill.
And the finish- in the presence of the two, hapless phasing Black Reavers, who had clicked their heels back to our Kansas.
Okay, let's get this going. Here's Amaruq before entering the Candlekeep Inn: Profs: 2x staff, 2x sling
We started as usual by collecting the three rings (of Protection +1, of Wizardy and Joia's) and by using the funds to obtain the potion case, potion starter pack (Freedom, Mirrored Eyes) and Wand of Sleep from Thalantyr. Girdle of Piercing (together with the shield and ProRing) helped us thwart the initial bandit ambush en route to FAI.
Shoal, Marl (1-1-3-3-1) and the spider case then provided the early levels. Moving on, Amaruq did the delivery service for Mirianne, Zhurlong and Perdue (leaving Karlat for later) and helped Viccy with the local law enforcement (earning our first decent armor in the process).
Her spell casting abilities are nothing to write home about yet, but at least we can kill some time with Charm.
Okay, so you've beaten Zargal but what about the chicken, you ask. *drumroll*
Mmm, chicken...that part made us hungry. So very hungry. Yum-yum.
But wait, what about that fancy green plate there? Yes, yes, I admit - we did that Nashkel temple-bar crawl with Barge and woke up on a damned farm field. Hazy memories at best. Anyway, that bloke at the carnival sold us the green ProPetrification scroll so we felt like going basilisk hunting. Kirian&Co are avoided, and instead, we venture north to Ulgoth's Beard to buy Cloak of Displacement and Aule's (lacking the funds to get the other local souvenirs at the moment, unfortunately).
Superb reach and speed of our new weapon, as well as our now improved spells, allowed us to conclude some outstanding business in Beregost.
Amaruq then travelled south to check out the fastest far... I mean *dart* thrower in the west.
BG1 Sendai was finished in style...
...and poor Caldo became the victim of a family feud.
Finally, a quick visit to the Grill Fortress marks the end of this first post.
It's quite a while since I had a go at Freya, so thought I would dust her off. She's completed BG1 several times before I think, so in theory everything there should be simple. Of course when it comes to no-reload play I'm definitely in the General von Clausewitz school "Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult".
Freya had no familiar at the start so used other means to grab her levels: - up to level 3 by kiting Shoal.
- acquiring Algernon's Cloak allowed the sirines in the Beregost Temple to be charmed to get to level 4.
- with invisibility now available it was easy to go to the lighthouse and charm more sirines to get to level 5.
- a trip to Ulgoth's Beard provided a ring of free action to be able to play safely with webs. Up to that point the gameplay had been pretty fast (at least by LoB standards), but taking something over 250 attempts to charm Dushai slowed things down a bit . - with web now available it was possible to web and then blind ankhegs without danger.
Clearing the nest of those was enough for level 6.
- did some reputation quests to ensure CLW would be gained as a Bhaal power. The Ardrouine quest bugged out, but reputation points from Charleston Nib and Brage still saw that safely up to 10 on arrival in Nashkel. - with another level approaching Freya got the required XP by running around Meilum and then Greywolf inside webs.
There's been no consumption of resources so far and with the extra power from MM and skull traps at level 7 Freya should be able to kill battle horrors and the like just with her own spells now (that could already have been done if I were prepared to rest in the same area as injured creatures - with LoB they only recover 100 HPs when you rest).
So, the Davaeorn fight. My basic strategy was to hit him with Cause Critical Wounds from invisibility with Branwen. Under SR, CCW deals 4d8 + 4/per level damage, which bypass Magic Resistance. Thanks to NI, I know that Davey has 45 hp. Branwen, being level 7, will deal an average of 44 damage with this spell. So, I need a slightly better than average roll to kill him outright. There's also a chance of rolling a critical miss, but with her solid thac0 after buffs, that should be a minimal concern. Also, in the past, I tried to approach Davey under invisibility, but he would sometimes spot the invisible character, trigger his Stinking Could/Web sequencer and go invisible anyway. So, from experience, anything can happen.
For instance, if Branwen gets near him and the hit lands but doesn't kill him outright, Davey will go invisible and heal himself. So I have to plan a back-up strategy. It mainly revolves around buffs. Since I want my bard to dispel Davey's MGoI with Spell Thrust, I can't safely tuck her under a Scroll of Magic Protection. She always wear Dushai's ring of Free Action, so scrolls of prot. from Cold/Fire were used on her, with a potion of Clear Thought on hand if needed (we'll see if I use it when the fight start). All other were buffed using my standard routine, with three back-up ideas specific for the Davey fight. Alora kept an IR potion of Evasion, which let her evade AoE damage spell outright, in case of a Fireburst (Sunfire in vanilla). I have Kivan ready to fire the two arrows of Dispelling I found in Durlag's Tower, but they probably won't work : under IR, AofD allow a save vs spell to avoid the effect. That's a big nerf for those arrows. A high level mage with Improved Invisibility will be immune to those arrows outright. They're not the great equalizer for fighters they usually are in vanilla. Still, I'm willing to try to dispel Davey if things go wrong, perhaps after a Greater Malison from Xan (GM only gives a -2 penalty to saves under SR though). Another back-up strat also involve Branwen. She has a potion of Power at hand, which gives a boost of 2 caster level among other thac0 and damage boost under IR. That would put her effective casting level at 9, which would give me a better chance of a successful Dispel spell on Davey. Xan and Jaheira (and her summons) are going to man-up the front door, while the rest of us will take care of Davey and his Battle Horrors. We're buffed, we're ready.
Hm. Well, that was bit anti-climatic. I wasted a bit of resources on nothing, but it's better to be safe than sorry in no-reload.
So, the city of Baldur's Gate is open to us. Just before entering, I had to fight a no-so kind lady, a bounty hunter hired by (revived) Tazok to kill Kivan. She just couldn't do it though. That fight netted me a beautiful Elven Chain mail for Miluiel, who now rocks a cool green color.
After a few easy quests around BG (Scar, Aldeth Sashenstar, gathering Balduran's stuff...), I decided to tackle the Iron Throne fight head on. This is where I lost my last attempt with my Undead Hunter. My paladin was abiding by pnp rules, which limit the number of magic items a paladin can have to 10, so prebuffing was minimal then. Miluiel doesn't care about that. She and her team buffed as much as they wanted. Then, we went in.
A first wave of Fireballs from wands and potions of Explosions dispatched the two thieves with ease. After that, Spell Thrust took the mage's MGoI down, Confusion from Xan and summons wrecked their meleers. At the end of the day, we won without any casualties. Cool.
I regret to inform you that Aestica's has journey has come to an end. It happened in Nyalee's glade, in the SCS Improved Minor Encounters battle with the undead party. I have no one to blame but myself- myself and sleep deprivation.
Seeking to avoid facing a planetar, I instructed Aestica to execute Smite->Power Attack on the skeleton mage. Unfortunately, the knock back led to unexpected behavior -behavior I've never quite seen before. It pushed the mage through the wall and off the edge of the map, not to be seen again until we returned to the opposite end of the area, the entrance. That was unexpected. Odd though it was, it wasn't a problem in and of itself. The problem was me.
With my plan thwarted, I absent-mindedly targeted the skeleton cleric, for lack of anything else to do. Just after the sling bullet left us, the cleric's buffs fired. Physical Mirror was among them. Instantly, I knew what would happen: the bullet, still carrying the Smite effect, would come back at Aestica. I equipped the Reflex to prevent that. We fought on.
Flash forward, many rounds later. We had been tagged with Doom. Our save v spells was at -4. I found myself concerned that we could be vulnerable to a specialists -4 (-6). Chaos was in the air, and we didn't know the kit on our opponent. Now, if I had my wits about me, I would have recognized that something was off. Aestica's save v spell should be -6 post Doom, not -4. I had -astonishingly- neglected to re-equip her Guard's Ring, which had been swapped out for a Ring of Fire Resistance in the fire giant area. Instead of recognizing that, though, I sought to equip the Shield of Harmony. Mistake upon mistake.
Before I unequipped the Reflex, I found myself wondering whether Aestica's sling bullet was still bouncing back and forth off the cleric's Physical Mirror. Without any rational justification, I lazily thought, "nah" and unequipped. I was so confident in my drowsy, senseless judgement, that I didn't even bother to equip the Sword of Arvoreen as a precaution. Surely you can guess what happened next. A full ten rounds or so after flicking our sling bullet, I had Smited Aestica, through an improbable chain of events. And so it ended:
I'm sorry everyone. Truly sorry. I know that a good number of people were following this adventure and I have most spectacularly dropped ball. I usually don't lament the end of a run, but this one is hard to accept- the toughest one yet.
Since I don't have time to complete another run between now and my departure date, I won't be starting another character. And since I have a number of RL adventures planned, including a trip to South East Asia and a six month hike, you probably won't see me again until October 2018.
It's been a fun ride. Thank you for your interest. I'm sorry it had to end this way
Best of luck to the active challengers! Good hunting!
@Alesia_BH Sad to see you and Aestica go... You're really a highly contributing member of this community when you're around. I hope to see you tackle the challenge next year !
@Alesia_BH We certainly have enjoyed your contributions. I too will be going to SE Asia next year only for me it will be the India - Bhutanese border as a friend of mine from over there invited me for a while. I am thinking of combining it with a visit to my friends in Pokhara and Bharatpur in Nepal as I am missing them too. I was delighted when we received an invitation to dal bhat with a Nepali friend in the UK. That is only 2 weeks away. The people from that area are so welcoming no matter what their cultural background.
@Alesia_BH Now that's a bummer. It's kind of heartbreaking to see Aestica's run come to untimely end. At the same time, there seems to be little room for greif with all the exciting adventures ahead!
@Alesia_BH Is it a dream? A bad dream?.. I'm so sorry to see Aestica end just like that... Nonetheless, thanks for sharing her adventures and I wish you to get best of your RL trip!
Sorry to see your run coming to an end @Alesia_BH - that's a rather unconventional and frustrating way to go out. I had no idea the physical mirror vs. reflex interaction would go on forever.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XXIII - Trying to end a war with a couple of darts
Our approach to the Dragonspear battle was initially the same as the one we used for Bridgefort: Stay in the back, assist with ranged damage and let the army do most of the work. However, I soon realized that this wasn't going to be enough for this one - water elementals kept coming in (I'm not sure if Strunk can summon more of them, but it certainly seemed that way - I didn't bother checking the combat log because it got so incredibly messy), the allied forces kept losing more and more soldiers - I wanted to keep a good front line in place for later, when it would be time to fight Ashatiel's party - so Nahema went to the east for some heroics, using dispelling arrows to bring Strunk's protections down:
She had no stoneskins because they got breached, by the way. While Strunk wasn't dead yet, he was also busy renewing his protections, so we could deal with the other opponents for a bit. However, a fireball forced the entire party to retreat (and drink some protection potions in case of a repeat):
A dangerous backline of crusader mages meant that our soldiers were in big trouble, so Corwin stepped forward, taking down their protections and lives one after the other, with Nahema assisting her:
Meanwhile, Arbogast started to finally deploy his summons (I didn't want to use them right away, because I wanted them to be still alive for Ashatiel's party). With their help, the main battlefield was eventually conquered:
Now, we got the mission to seek out Ashatiel to stop the constant respawn of crusaders. Nahema made her way to the enemy, declined the duel and started to shoot arrows of detonation while retreating back to our main army:
It took some time, an insect plague and various dispelling arrows, but we took out Ashatiel's party - except for Ashatiel herself:
It seems like, on LoB (she didn't do this in my previous run on core rules), she hides somewhere to the north-west, forcing the player to fight their way through even more crusaders. Oh, great. I sent an invisible Corwin forward to look for Ashatiel - Arbogast used find traps to make sure we would avoid those, but he should've been exploring further north-west. Turns out there are even more traps than I expected - aaand we lost Corwin. That's really, really bad for us, as she does by far the most damage in the group:
So we started to carefully fight our way towards Ashatiel's presumed location (there aren't many other places she could've gone to), dealing with loads of respawning crusaders - including lots of thieves, mages and clerics. We used lots of monster summoning charges and it was incredibly tedious to constantly make sure we didn't step on any of the traps (the find traps spell never was this useful before), but we made progress. However, at this point the game performance kept getting choppier and choppier, and as we were in constant battle, we couldn't save. Eventually, the game just crashed.
I was horrified at the prospect of fighting the entire battle again. My first attempt took a very long time and was a pretty grueling experience - especially once we had to deal with the traps. It turns out, however, that the game creates an auto save (for some reason, it's called a final save, despite being relatively far from the finale) when you first talk to Ashatiel. Now, I should propably bring up that in the Bioware Forums, as far as I'm aware, our rule was that if the game crashes, you are not forced to recreate the results of anything that happened between your last save and the crash. I must confess that this rule provided me with a great advantage at this point (Corwin was still alive at the point of the final save), but I wasn't inclined to just kill Corwin again. If anyone disagrees with this approach, feel free to do so - it's certainly not an easy decision to make. Because I didn't want to deal with the tedious process of fighting my way through to Ashatiel (with another chance to have my game crash) once again, I took a very risky approach the second time around: Right after loading the final save, I had Arbogast drink a potion of magic shielding, and he agreed to fight a duel with her. That might seem crazy, but I thought that my potion bag might give me enough of an advantage, and I could always go invisible in case I was about to lose (I had multiple potions of magic shielding at the ready, so getting disabled was pretty much out of the question).
First round, first action:
Well, that was a nice start. It turns out I was able to keep Ashatiel stunned during the entire battle - I have no idea why, but she doesn't seem to be very good at saving against darts of stunning - every time I tried to re-apply the stun, I succeeded right away. Maybe she just got incredibly unlucky. To speed things up, I summoned an ankheg via the amulet and applied a poison effect to my foe:
There was still a named group of crusaders far to the north-west remaining, but I saw no reason to risk fighting them. Instead, the party entered the castled and spent all their remaining money on scrolls and potions to prepare for Avernus. While I planned to stop playing here, I couldn't resist trying out my planned approach for the first area: As fighting against all those imps would propably cost me a lot of clarity potions (and I might need these for Belhifet if he's able to dispell my chaotic command scrolls), I just went with invisibility 10' radius, haste, and running towards the stairs:
Most of the devils were still distracted by the crusaders, and only the named one (apparently able to see through invisibility) took a shot on one of my party members, but we easily escaped and successfully skipped this fight.
Next time, we won't be able to skip any battles. It's time. We will fight for our lives in the dephts of Avernus.
I'm going to try to motivate myself to continue her game, culminating with an insane Ascension attempt (allowing reloads).
If and when I do that, I'll post on the final battle and the final battle only. Since she is no longer a trilogy no reload candidate, I'll share over in the Adventurer's Lounge to avoid confusion.
@Enuhal: I've never felt the need to re-create events that happened in between a save and a crash. In fact, when my characters erroneously get chunked, I use reloads specifically to re-do the fight in question without them getting chunked--but only if I win the fight the first time around, when the chunking actually happened.
Although I've never decided what happens if I experience a chunking, win the fight, reload, and then somehow lose the re-play. I don't know if that would count as an actual death or not. Is the official fight the first one or second? I don't know.
@Alesia_BH: You will be missed, but I'm glad you've been able to stop by for as long as you have.
I've always wondered--what is your job? What are you up to in Asia?
Hey @Alesia_BH, haven't read your post yet but sorry about Aestica. Thankfully you'll be doing real, prolonged adventuring soon, even more thrilling (by a large margin) than no-reloading Baldur's Gate imo, so I'm not too sorry Enjoy East Asia!!
You shouldn't be. You hold yourself to an incredibly high standard, but I'm sure no-one else does. As a firm believer myself in "it's not the winning, it's the taking part" - thanks for taking part .
Now, I should propably bring up that in the Bioware Forums, as far as I'm aware, our rule was that if the game crashes, you are not forced to recreate the results of anything that happened between your last save and the crash.
That's the Bioware rule, yes: If a crash occurs, you go back to the last save. You have no obligation to recreate events. This is a rule of convenience, since recreating events can be problematic.
We trust that players will not exploit the rule by courting crashes if and when they find themselves in a disadvantageous position.
@Enuhal: I've never felt the need to re-create events that happened in between a save and a crash. In fact, when my characters erroneously get chunked, I use reloads specifically to re-do the fight in question without them getting chunked--but only if I win the fight the first time around, when the chunking actually happened.
Although I've never decided what happens if I experience a chunking, win the fight, reload, and then somehow lose the re-play. I don't know if that would count as an actual death or not. Is the official fight the first one or second? I don't know.
On the Bioware forums, we would not allow a reload to recover a chunked character, regardless of whether we had installed options that we had hoped would mitigate risk of chunking. We'd hold to that even if we strongly suspected -but could not conclusively prove- that a bug had caused the permanent death. An example would be Serg's Avatars run. One of his characters, Cassia, based on USSNorway, was permanently killed by a Sphere of Chaos, despite having 100% magic resistance. Upon inspection of the .spl file, we discovered that the disintegration effect was flagged bypass resistance. We suspected that this was a bug -we still suspect that it is a bug- but the evidence did not and does not meet our threshold for a justified bug reload.
Consequently, we've never encountered a situation like the one you've described, exactly. If you wish to keep playing the way you have in relation to permanent death, then you'll have to come up with personal rules that satisfy you, I guess.
I'll note, though, that if we die after a justified bug reload, by our standards our character is dead- no question. A bug meeting evidentiary standards or a crash nullifies all actions since the last save. The resumed run becomes the run, the post save pre-crash/bug events irrelevant. Dead is dead, irrespective of what happened in our "dream."
You shouldn't be. You hold yourself to an incredibly high standard, but I'm sure no-one else does. As a firm believer myself in "it's not the winning, it's the taking part" - thanks for taking part .</p>
Now things get more interesting. With proper characters with real classes instead of ghouls and carrion crawlers with terrible stats, the party is considerably stronger than it was at the beginning of my previous SoD run. But my party is not going to scale so dramatically as it did before, because I will not be able to seduce Darskhelin or Morentherene. So no mind flayers or dragons in our party this time.
More importantly, we have a basilisk in the party. And although it only has a pitiful 1.5 attacks per round, and its gaze effects offers a saving throw, being able to petrify enemies at will is just plain fun. Schlumpsa the Sewer King isn't nearly as entertaining, but he is immune to nonmagical weapons and has all the normal immunities to disablers that all undead have, which makes him a great tank for traps, especially thanks to his moderate MR. Of course, Maneira and the Duergar Cleric (actually a cleric/thief) can disarm any trap in the game, so Schlumpsa doesn't actually need to do this. He spends most of his in wolf form being useless because his natural form uses the ooze animation, making him horribly, horribly slow.
This is my only screenshot of Korlasz. The fight does not last long. One of my mods let me upgrade the Dagger of Venom to a +3 weapon that grants +1 APR, giving Gorken Bloodaxe 3.5 APR before haste, with about zero THAC0. Korlasz cannot function with Gorky poisoning her constantly.
Schlumpsa has 4 APR when not in wolf form, but with his THAC0 about 15, that's just not good enough for late-game SoD. Instead, we seduce an Armored Skeleton from the second dungeon after nearly killing it by accident. The skeleton has no magic resistance; it's more of an IWD Armored Skeleton than a BG2-style Skeleton Warrior. But it does have the typical undead immunities and the typical skeleton's 50% resistance to slashing damage, which will make it very, very resilient to the final boss of SoD.
Making it a Dwarven Defender via our kit mod thingy would be optimal, but I'm not willing to exploit my way around the racial restriction, so I just make him a Barbarian to compensate for his middling STR.
I have a mod-introduced level 5 spell that creates area-effect versions of Melf's Minute Meteors, which Gorky tries out against the local undead. The fire damage erroneously offers a save to negate the damage, instead of a save for half, and the missile damage is only 1d6, so I decide not to use the spell. It would be amazing in the hands of a character with on-hit effects, like a Wizard Slayer->Mage, but Gorky is more dangerous with his dagger than these explosives.
One of the disadvantages of the Seduction spell is that, while it gives a fighter class to critters who have no valid character class, it also imposes a 50% XP penalty on them. This means they're about a level behind a normal fighter on average, and low-level characters tend to suffer against stuff like Cloudkill. The good news is that a different mod let me make our basilisk into a Berserker. But those rage immunities only kick in if you remember to activate Enrage. Gorky has Resist Fear, but the party is unbuffed and unprepared for this many enemies at once. But we have a solution: Maneira falls back and throws some traps into the fray from a safe distance, dealing a bunch of party-friendly missile damage and thinning the herd. Just for fun, I try out the Wand of Lightning trick with the Secret Revealed. It's totally unnecessary against the local lich, but it does save us a few Stone to Flesh scrolls outside. Turns out that you can re-visit BG1 areas in SoD if you're playing EET. It might cause some plot-relevant time delays if you do it later in the plot, however, so I won't be stopping by Durlag's Tower. Nor can you re-visit Baldur's Gate itself, which would cause some plot issues.
I don't like trolls much in SoD since there are so few fire weapons on hand, but the basilisk makes fighting them a breeze. Without the level drain trick, seducing Morentherene is not an option. She does horrible things to the party with her breath weapon... ...but SCS does not boost her HP, despite her being a dragon, which means that Gorky is strong enough to slay her almost on his own, though the Armored Skeleton lands the final blow. I don't like Ziatar and her Sanctuary healing spells, so I blast her with the Wand of Fire. Next up, the Neothelid. Easily the most intimidating monster in the series, the Neothelid has some weird attacks, including Mordenkainen's Sword, a poisonous breath weapon, and several psionic spells.
But we have a trump card. Gorky lands a Greater Malison despite the Neothelid's magic resistance, and after one or two tries, our basilisk manages to petrify it. 20,000 XP in the space of a few seconds. Very nice.
But, uh... we're not quite done with the Neothelid. Not yet. Gorky has just freed the Neothelid with a Stone to Flesh scroll, allowing it to attack the party once more. Gorky narrowly avoids getting charmed as the Neothelid vanishes. The Neothelid reappears, exposing itself to the basilisk's gaze once more. We don't have very many Stone to Flesh scrolls since we used so many in BG1, and I don't want to use our whole supply since there's always a chance that our basilisk might get confused or charmed and petrify somebody in the party. But I'm willing to fight the Neothelid several times, despite its deadly powers... ...if it will earn us some levels. With only a few scrolls left, we decide to put the Neothelid down for good. Four party members gained levels during this fight, which is a nice boost, if not a game-changer like the basilisk XP loop was in BG1.
Darskhelin and his goons are very dangerous, so I make a point of approaching them with a couple of Skeleton Warriors from Gorky (not to be confused with the Armored Skeleton, a party member) so the rest of the party doesn't get blasted with a bunch of disablers all at once. Gorky lands a Chaos spell on the enemy cleric and shuts down the enemy mage with the upgraded Dagger of Venom, giving us a solid early advantage. The enemy doesn't have the durability to make a comeback later. Our early advantage translates into several early kills, including Darskhelin himself. I know the Shadow Aspect can be extremely dangerous, so I set up a series of traps outside its chamber and throw one inside before approaching. But it seems Maneira can take down its Mislead spell with Detect Illusions, allowing us to slay it before it lands one of its gruesome backstabs. Maneira now has the Fractal Blade, an important find because she has 3 pips in short swords and she needs a +3 weapon to deal with the final boss.
On the way out, we clear out the spider nest. This place can be extremely dangerous if you don't come buffed against poison, but we bought lots of Protection from Poison scrolls. And between Maneira's traps and the Wand of Fire, the fight doesn't last long anyway. Area-effect spells and weapons are especially useful in SoD due to the large hordes.
The assault on Bridgefort can get very hectic, so I usually prefer to let the Flaming Fist absorb the initial wave. We attack from afar using ranged weapons (the basilisk's gaze is a nice addition) and then send in Gorky alone to poison one of the mages. There's a second wave to the north with some nastier enemies. I decide to see if the Wand of Lightning trick works with Sunfire in EET, only to accidentally ruin the difficulty. We stomp on the Barghest and move on to the bridge, where the Dagger of Venom proves instrumental once again. Gorky has been our MVP since the moment we got him back in Nashkel.
We use the Spectacles of Spectacle to summon Nazramu, the djinni in the Coalition Camp, and take advantage of his unusually generous prices to recharge some wands, buy some high-powered new items, and still end up with 60,000 more gold than we had before.
We run into the dead magic zone. I decide not to engage the enemy, knowing that a backstab could prove fatal for Frisk. Before we go, I bomb them with the Wand of Fire. I think I'll cut back on this Wand of Lightning nonsense. It's not like Gorky really needs the help.
Gorky could easily solo the game, I think--his only struggle would be against the final boss--and Maneira's 5 APR just makes things even faster. The basilisk chips in a little bit, too, but the Duergar Cleric and Armored Skeleton are basically dead weight. The only reason I don't ditch them is because we don't need the extra XP, nor can we find superior replacements.
Maneira has recently hit level 9 and gets the 4x backstab multiplier you can achieve in SoD without going over the XP cap (which Frisk has done, but Seducers don't get higher than 2x). With both backstabs, traps, and unnaturally high damage output, Maneira has been taking a huge share of the party's kills. Of course, Maneira has some disadvantages, including some very lousy saving throws and no immunities whatsoever. She's easy to charm or disable. And her save vs. spell is around 10, which means she doesn't even have a guaranteed save against Frisk's Dispel Charm ability. It takes multiple tries for us to remove the charm effect on our most dangerous melee brute.
The basilisk is much harder to disable due to its Berserker immunities. But again, those immunities don't count for much if you forget to activate Enrage. How do we deal with a confused basilisk when no one has Protection from Petrification active? Easy. We just drink a bunch of Potions of Mirrored Eyes. It's not like we need to save them for future fights; the basilisk is the only source of petrification I know of going forward.
In the fight with Kherriun, Gorky opens with Sunfire. This time, we don't use the Wand of Lightning trick, but Sunfire is devastating even without it. The enemy debuffs Gorky, forcing him to focus on his defenses for several rounds at the expense of tackling the enemy. The rest of the party is busy wrestling with the weaker enemy cluster to the west. Gorky's defenses are finally back on track, more or less, allowing him to switch gears and tackle Kherriun. She doesn't last long after that. Time to finish up this area and confront Hephernaan. Somehow I bungle sneaking into the next area--I don't remember how I got past it before--so I end up fighting my way through. The next batch of enemies, at the top of the elevator, has gobs of HP, but otherwise no special abilities. All they do is soak up a few charges from the Wand of Fire and slow us down for a few rounds. Notice Maneira using the nearby wall to hide in shadows and land backstabs. This is actually largely pointless, because Maneira already has 5 APR and her backstabs aren't much stronger than basic melee attacks.
Hephernaan is pretty tough, and with only a single mage in the party, I don't think we have what it takes to break down his defenses. Instead, I just let Hephernaan fuss with some critters from the Wand of Monster Summoning while the rest of the party handles the Crusaders. Hephernaan wastes an extremely important spell on an extremely unimportant target. Heifer and his two mage buddies aren't the only spellcasters around. Turns out that Gorky's Minor Spell Deflection somehow cannot block a Breach spell. Minor Spell Turning can only block level 4 spells and below, but Minor Spell Deflection is supposed to absorb up to level 7 spells.
Finally Heifer and Olvenaun make their way into the main area. Gorky poisons the latter, who, as I expected, has no PFMW to block the Dagger of Venom. Esserin, another mage, joins the fight. Gorky fires off a Chaos spell, but the three mages have excellent saves vs. spell. I'm not sure our defenses are in good shape, but I simply don't have enough time to erect all the defenses I want. Instead, I focus on bringing down Olvenaun. Mercifully, Hephernaan wastes a Breach spell on Gorky, removing a single crummy Stoneskin when Gorky was under no other enemy melee pressure. What about Esserin? We can poison her, too, but the basilisk gets to her first, petrifying her mere seconds after it targeted her. Now that I know (or rather, suspect) that the basilisk's gaze isn't going to get bounced back at it from a spell turning effect, I can also petrify the nameless mage to the east. Hephernaan wastes another magic attack on Gorky, who has no defenses that Heifer can remove. It buys us enough time for Maneira to dispel Heifer's Mirror Images and strike through his Stoneskins. Shorn of his defenses and with his allies in shambles, Hephernaan flees the scene. Then I see the basilisk somehow get petrified. The battle is basically over, fortunately, so we have little trouble using a scroll on it before it can get shattered. I would eventually realize that one of my mods adds a special, undroppable mirror to the off hand of various enemies, a mirror that has a 25% chance of bouncing gaze attacks back at the attacker. Due to how the engine handles things, it actually means the user has a 25% chance of bouncing all future gaze attacks, and a 75% chance of never bouncing them.
That's horrible news for our basilisk. But more importantly, it's horrible for Frisk, who will be in our party long after the basilisk is gone. A Seducer's psionics all use the gaze projectile--not because it's supposed to be a gaze attack (Seducer spells can actually go through walls), but because I thought the gaze projectile looked pretty. For every enemy that's been assigned this strange mirror shield, there's a 25% chance that we can never, ever land Domination on them. I might change the projectile in a future release of the Seducer kit, but for now, I've decided to roll with the bug.
We recharge the Greenstone Amulet at Nazramu's store, go out to parley with Caelar's group, and basically just press "1" and "Enter" over and over again, knowing that the outcome is the same either way. We head back to the Coalition Camp.
The sound of the incoming Crusader army fills us with determination.
0:44 Romance rebuffed 7:45 Sirens slaughtered 9:45 "This cave is a butt." 12:24 Imoen springs a Hold Person trap. 14:10 More sirens slaughtered 15:52 Flesh Golems fought 17:17 Black Alaric's Treasure reclaimed 20:02 Did you know that Garrick has a different mourning line for female fatalities? 28:21 "Let's join the bambits. (Bambits?)" 35:10 - 43:40 THE BANDIT CAMP (OUTSIDE) 45:40 I half-bake a decent plan for Tazok's tent 49:27 I put the plan back in the oven to finish cooking 54:11 "No, I don't want you to leave. Stop asking me that." 55:00 TAZOK'S TENT (Also it turns out that the potion of stone form did more harm than good here, but I didn't realize this until afterward) 1:00:42 The Inventory Management Song! Also an odd bug that occurs if you change the marching order while in the inventory menu. 1:04:03 "That's probably the cheesiest map crossing I've ever done!" 1:06:24 Requisite Character Information page ending view
Stealing @semiticgod's lines to allude to my means of victory fills us with determination.
On the Bioware forums, we would not allow a reload to recover a chunked character, regardless of whether we had installed options that we had hoped would mitigate risk of chunking. We'd hold to that even if we strongly suspected -but could not conclusively prove- that a bug had caused the permanent death. An example would be Serg's Avatars run. One of his characters, Cassia, based on USSNorway, was permanently killed by a Sphere of Chaos, despite having 100% magic resistance. Upon inspection of the .spl file, we discovered that the disintegration effect was flagged bypass resistance. We suspected that this was a bug -we still suspect that it is a bug- but the evidence did not and does not meet our threshold for a justified bug reload.
Consequently, we've never encountered a situation like the one you've described, exactly. If you wish to keep playing the way you have in relation to permanent death, then you'll have to come up with personal rules that satisfy you, I guess.
The SCS component is supposed to prevent chunking in all circumstances--the fact that it doesn't always work is itself the bug.
In fact, while poking around in EEKeeper, I discovered the reason why the SCS component was not working 100% of the time, the way that @Tresset's does: because SCS erroneously applied two effects, one which prevents permanent death in all cases except for cold- and petrification-related chunking...
...and another opcode, which completely overrode and negated the previous opcode. According to their labels in Near Infinity and EEKeeper, one of them is "Apply Non Permanent Death" and the other is "Remove Non Permanent Death." The first one is supposed to apply if you've installed the no-chunking component of SCS; the second one is supposed to remove it. You can see them in Near Infinity, SPIN668.spl and SPIN669.spl.
If you install the no chunking component, both spells are applied, instead of just the one. And the "Remove Non Permanent Death" one is applied afterward, negating the intended effect.
I don't know if it was an in-game script or a WeiDu error of some sort, but the SCS chunking fix actually does absolutely nothing whatsoever. It doesn't make chunking less likely; it literally does nothing. This is in fact a bug: it applies an effect that prevents chunking, and then removes the same effect. Unless it used to work properly in a previous version of SCS, nearly every chunking ever experienced by SCS players over the years, in no-reload runs and otherwise, has been due to a bug.
If the SCS component were working properly, it would prevent all forms of chunking except for those caused by petrification and cold damage.
The SCS component is supposed to prevent chunking in all circumstances--the fact that it doesn't always work is itself the bug.
I don't think so... From SCS readme: Make party members less likely to die irreversibly
This component tries to prevent "chunking", the annoying permanent death of your character when you're reduced below -10 hp. Characters who get reduced to 0 hp or below just die in the usual fashion and can be resurrected. It isn't possible to prevent quite all forms of chunking (massive damage from fire, in particular, still seems to cause chunking fairly reliably), but this component should make it a rarer occurrence. This may be useful in the later stages of the game, when melee opponents often do 30-40 hp damage per blow - that 10 hp safety margin starts to feel slender.
And I've checked my characters with NearInfinity - all of them except main character have Disable Permanent Death (295) Effect active (Stat value =1). Maybe in Cassia's case since all characters were not a NPCs but created by real people those characters were all *main* and thus didn't have this effect applied.
Comments
I hope to see you back in the action someday!
Best,
A.
Aestica's game is on hold due to an install issue. We can talk about it over in the lounge.
Best,
A.
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
Part XVI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905032/#Comment_905032
Part XVII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905184/#Comment_905184
Part XVIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905354/#Comment_905354
Part XIX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905559/#Comment_905559
Part XX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905700/#Comment_905700
Part XXI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906131/#Comment_906131
Well, that was certainly an intense session of playing Baldur's Gate.
Because some of the various sub-areas of the Underground River are where I've previously struggled even on core rules, I thought of a strategy for every single fight before engaging in combat, and I even skipped some battles - with varying degrees of success.
Our party started with the shadow cave. We used basically the same strategy as we did against the shadow cellar in Dead Man's Pass. Of course, there are more opponents here, and the first shadow group didn't allow itself to get distracted by summons, so I had to do a lot of moving around, spreading the strength drain, while the party took care of the unsleeping guardian. Finally, we got rid of the shadows that had engaged the party in melee combat:
After that, it was easy to distract the remaining foes with additional summons. No level drains for our party this time!
The second encounter was against the Blind Albino Wyrmlings. As these, unlike all the other dragons and dragonlike in SoD, don't do poison damage, but acid damage, I had six protection from acid scrolls prepared just for this cave. That turned out to be a bit of a waste, as the first couple of wyrmlings went down rather fast, without offering any resistance:
Only the last one of our foes used its breath weapon on a party member, but the damage turned out to be very low:
Next, we decided to clear all of the enemy groups near the corrupted druid grove - those include shambling mounds, dark treants, myconids, spiders, and, most importantly, corrupted nymphs and hamadryads. We made full use of our summons, the malison + slow combo, haste spells and kiting, swapping around rings of free action and the helm of charm protection etc.:
At one point, I even remembered that Voghiln had a musical instrument capable of removing confusion effects with him and he used it for the very first time:
We ended up taking down the evil druid with relative ease - even after his buffs fired, he didn't get to cast any more spells.
I mentioned scary places in the previous post, and Kanaglym is certainly one of those. To the right, we had to deal with the last big undead group in the game, involving skeleton warriors, shadowed souls, lots of skeleton archers etc. - but at this point, I had a pretty good idea what do do about SoD undead, especially with easy resting available thanks to invisibility 10' radius. We went for summons, malison + double web and wands of fire - first, our summons + Arbogast and Nahema (protected against our own webs) had to take out the skeleton warrior, while the rest of the opposing force was webbed. After that, we shot wand of fire charges into the back line to take out the relatively low hp skeleton archers and shadowed souls:
A very smooth battle.
Now, for Kherriun and his legion of mages. We have to bring down Kherriun as soon as humanly possible, otherwise his enslaved dragon will completely annihilate our back line. We finally bring out or saved up arrows of dispelling for this (and they will see heavy use during the rest of the session) - while we have oracle and breach ready, the arrows are the fastest way to bring down any protections:
Kherriun dies in time, and it looks like the dragon will join us. Meanwhile, one of the dark magicians throws a fireball at the party. At this point, I should have been drinking fire protection potions for my more vulnerable characters (Arbogast was perfectly fine, I had him cast protection from fire on himself prior to the battle), but I didn't think this was needed, as my plan was to retreat immediately and let the dragon take care of things. However, the dragon for some reason went neutral right away, engaged in conversation and left - and another fireball hit us, killing Voghiln:
We managed to retreat from the battle. Meanwhile, it turned out that, while the dark magicians were deadly foes for our party, they just weren't able to take out our remaining summons - so we could watch them win this fight for us:
I should mention that I decided to skip the fight against Strunk and his elementals. I did this because in my previous playthrough, when I started this battle, multiple crusaders joined in and surrounded the party - a position I really can't afford to be in in LoB. I know we will have to kill him eventually, but I'd rather fight him in different surroundings.
Now, it was time to make our way to the dreaded Dragonspear Castle Basement. Right away, we have to fight against a tough group of crusaders. We can't get enough druidic summons ready before they engage, so we use a wand charge - meanwhile, Nahema does her malison + chaos thing with decent success:
However, when the fight was almost over, a confused crusader scout randomly backstabbed Minsc, killing him with one blow - the game didn't even tell me the damge amount, but at least he wasn't chunked:
Nahema spooks the scount so it can't go invisible again, should the chaos effect run out. However, dispel magic from an opposing spellcaster hits. Still, we kill the scout before it can do anything dangerous:
Always feels strange to get only 420 xp for an opponent capable of oneshotting every party member.
Now, Nahema and Voghiln poison food and water supplies at the same time, and I plan to flee right away -fighting Hephernaan and his army of spellcasters would propably be a bad idea. However, I discover that it's actually not possible to leave the area right away - and a group of crusaders, including a mage, spawns in front of us on the elevator. We use another dispelling arrow to bring down the mage, while some spirit animals and the rest of the party try to take down the remaining crusaders. Meanwhile, we send out a spirit lion so Hephernaan won't run to us right away, otherwise we are propably doomed.
While we clear the remaining crusaders, Arbogast sends out more summons to keep Hephernaan occupied - we can see that he's nearby thanks to the combat log, and his army is big and scary. Suddenly, the elevator is usable once again. We run!
On our way out, we free the ogres and set up the explosives. Our plan is to retreat under haste and invisibility 10' radius. The crusaders are hostile by now, and our final haste spell runs out. Things get really bad when we run into two spellcasters. One of them uses a divination spell, we try to retreat, but two of us are revealed. Two invisibility potions later, and we try to pass - but the other spellcaster, a priest, uses true sight! Now we are screwed - However, I remember I have a haste scroll in one of my scrollbags and use it while the party is losing hitpoints. That way, we almost make it to the entrance while drinking healing potions, but Voghiln gets stuck and is trapped - we have to sacrifice him and pick up his gear via the EE quickloot option:
However, at this point I seem to have made a crucial mistake. It seems like I only remembered to loot Voghilns weapons and his containers. Though I was quite sure I looted everything, the other equipment was simply not in my bag of holding when I had him resurrected at camp. It was relatively easy to equip him with slightly inferior gear, though we lost some great items (including the ring of the tiny fiend and an amulet of protection +2). Another big blow for the party. When I checked the caverns later, the gear was gone.
Finally, we waged the battle for the flaming fist camp - and what a battle it was.
First wave: I don't have any screenshots here, but this one was a bit messy. I used the archers against the trolls, and our own archers (Nahema, Corwin, Minsc) prepared their arrows of detonation - up to this point, this party had never used an arrow of detonation, so I still had all of them (in fact, I kept them for this very event). Though the trolls and their allies lost hp quickly, at one point, the archers shot at one close to our party - and we got hit by our own detonation arrows. While the arrows were in flight, I realised my mistake, and two of my three non fire-resistant party members managed to drink protection potions - but Corwin failed. Luckily, by now, I carried scrolls of raise dead with me, so I used one and had everyon drink healing potions to get to max hp before engaging the second wave with the help of the wizard slayers.
Same strategy here: Fire lots of arrows of detonation before the mages get their mGOI's up:
By now, I had Corwin drink a fire protection potion as well, just in case something like the troll fiasco would happen again, though I was very careful with aiming every single arrow now. Still, the protection turned out to be a great idea when our party was hit with an opposing wizard's fireball. Meanwhile, Corwin took down all the crucial enemy protections with arrows of dispelling, and our party triumphed:
Third wave: We take along our battlemages for this one. Our detonation arrows are of great use here, but two warpriests survive and heal up under sanctuary:
However, as soon as they try to attack, they are shot down by our party.
Now, for the final fight of this event, we still had dwarves and thieves left. This one didn't offer a good context to use detonation arrows (fewer, but high hp and well-protected enemies, and we would kill our own allies as well). Instead, Arbogast managed to cast a crucial insect plague that hit all opposing spellcasters - but at the same time, I made the same mistake with Voghiln that I had previously made with Ifirn - I forgot to unselect him for an attack command and sent him into combat with his melee weapon, resulting in very swift death.
However, even fatigued and without a skald, our thac0 was still good enough to take down everyone, using two more dispelling arrows to bring down protections. Brother Deepvein also provided us with some nice healing and additional buffs:
With this battle won, we will attempt the literal Siege of Dragonspear Castle next time. It certainly won't be easy, as there are named thieves and lots of high level spellcasters around.
Enuhal
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Baldur's Gate
Part 1
Since my previous run was not continuous per the normal rules, I have decided to try my hand at completing the whole tetralogy in one single narrative. If I die somewhere along the way, I'll have to start over all the way back at Candlekeep.Like my last run, I'll be running a "solo" Seducer, but there are three important differences that will make this run much more challenging:
1. I won't be using the level drain trick to bring dragons and balors and mind flayers and beholders and epic-level mages into the party. I'll be working within the original limitations of the Seducer kit: Seduction only works on critters up to half the Seducer's level.
2. I will not be dual-classing my Seducer into a mage. They will stay a single-classed thief for the whole game--which is actually horribly dangerous, because Seducers have by far the weakest defenses of any class in the game. Nor can thieves use mage scrolls in my new install.
3. As this is a pacifist run, my main character is not allowed to kill anyone. Only party members and summons are allowed to kill enemies.
I'm running EET, installed via BWS, and I will not be using any mod-introduced items except crafting-related ones. My WeiDu file is so large I can't put it in a spoiler; it's attached in a .txt file.
Our Charname this time is... Frisk!
Because I just adore Frisk. They are just too cute and too sweet.
We start out by pickpocketing some Potions of Extra Healing from a mod NPC named Alec in Candlekeep. Alec is a really sweet guy who won't even get mad at you if he catches you trying to rob him blind. And, um...
Well...
Here's the thing. I actually somehow deleted every single screenshot from the entirety of BG1. I don't have a single picture to show for the whole game; I had to re-load the starting save game just to post that shot of Frisk's Record screen.
Fortunately, this run didn't differ too much from Mollyboo's BG1 run. Since the primary change in this run is the fact that I'm no longer using the level drain trick, the gameplay is pretty much identical up until Siege of Dragonspear starts up. So losing all the screenshots for BG1 isn't actually that big of a loss.
Anyhoo, after stealing hundreds of gold's worth of potions from Alec, Frisk charmed Phlydia, brought her over to the rat area, and after several restarts due to fatal backstabs, Frisk managed to get Phlydia to confuse Mendas, causing him to break his invisibility by attacking a rat and exposing him to Phlydia's Flame Arrow spells. It was extremely difficult because Domination only lasts 1d3 rounds and offers a save every time (with a +4 bonus at level 1), but eventually we got rid of Mendas and the rats, allowing Frisk to seduce one of the cats.
Like in Mollyboo's run, our cat came with 1 HP, 9 in each ability score, and 90% physical damage resistance, which made it basically helpless at level 1, but an incredible tank (if nothing else) at level 3 and up. But the cat got horribly overshadowed by Haiass.
Who's Haiass? Apparently, one of my mods gave Charname a wolf companion for some reason. A wolf who has over 100 HP. And 3.5 APR with subzero THAC0 and 2d3+4 damage per hit. And lots of resistances. And immunity to basically every disabler.
And upgrades as you gain levels.
And, as I would eventually realize, cannot die. He actually reappears if he dies. He's an immortal summons with better damage output than many fighters. Haiass could probably solo the game (and obviated the need for seducing a Huge Spider from Beregost).
We got Frisk to level 6, and the cat to level 3, by killing the Sirines of the Beregost temple among other minor quests and some ankhegs (who killed the cat killed several times). With Frisk at level 6, we could finally seduce Gorken Bloodaxe, the mod-introduced Korgan Bloodaxe ripoff with 2.5 APR, 5 THAC0, ridiculous stats, and who is erroneously coded as a mage, essentially making him a high-end fighter/mage who gains levels as fast as a single-classed mage. He'll be incredibly overpowered even late into Throne of Bhaal.
Some mod adds him to the Naskhel Mines, along with some other duergar, including a pair of Duergar Clerics (actually cleric/thieves, who, unlike most enemy thieves, actually have skill points assigned to them) with 2 APR each. We seduced the one with a pip in hammers so he could use Ashideena. Or Borok's Fist. Or whatever Bassilus' hammer is called.
During a stop by the Beregost manor, we discovered that in EET, Wands of Lightning are the BG2-style kind, with 6 targets, even in BG1. Which meant Gorkan Bloodaxe can combine it with a Strength tome to boost his STR from a mediocre 16 to a ludicrous 22.
I keep planning on not using the Wand of Lightning trick, but I keep finding new uses for it, and I hate to abandon a trick before I've explored it fully.
The trick also let us blow up a Zombie Lord who nearly wiped out the party at the gnoll stronghold. Even Haiass couldn't kill the Zombie Lord, because it summoned ghasts and Fell Ghasts every round, infinitely. Unwilling to come back later to smash it after we've gained some levels, I just threw a bunch of Fireballs at the Zombie Lord using a Wand of Lightning-boosted Wand of Fire. And even then it took many charges.
The Zombie Lord actually got trapped behind some invisible wall (an annoyingly common bug in EE), making it impossible for us to even target it. We just bombed the ghasts, relying on Haiass' inexplicable 100% fire resistance to absorb it.
Once we got Gorky to level 4, we could cast Invisibility and travel without worrying about ambushes. We stomped on Mulahey and busted out the basilisk XP loop to crank Frisk all the way up to level 10 (which involved removing the cleric and cat from the party, so only Frisk and Gorky would gain XP).
With Frisk at level 10, we could use Seduction on Maneira, a fighter/thief with 5 attacks per round (!) from one of the post-mines ambushes. A bug prevented us from seducing her in the ambush area itself, but when I spawned her in a separate area, we confirmed that she was indeed vulnerable. She took the place of our kitty cat, keeping our party at 4 characters.
We gave Maneira the Bounty Hunter kit (one of my mods lets you give any party member a kit) and made the Duergar Cleric into a cleric of Talos due to alignment restrictions (even though the mod actually lets you ignore such restrictions). Maneira came with 3 pips in short swords to complement her 5 APR, so she had crazy damage output despite her low STR. She also had pips in darts, but equipping them actually decreased her APR from 5 to 3.
There was a miserable fiasco at the bandit camp when I tried to fight everyone outside without properly buffing the party (or setting any traps). I actually thought we might fail, but we just barely managed to survive long enough to bring down Venkt and the other higher-level goons from the main tent.
Domination won us the fight against Hareishan and the other mages of the Cloakwood mines, but we struggled against some Skeleton Warrior thingies that had massive stats and lots of immunities. Domination played an important role in taking them down as well: we didn't really have the melee power to tear down the skeletons on our own, but Frisk managed to turn them against each other and bring the survivor down to Near Death.
(I believe a Domination spell also finished off Davaeorn, but it may have just been us applying a bunch of melee pressure, since the party has such abnormally high APR.)
We played a little more intelligently in the Iron Throne fight than I normally do, stunning some of the enemies with a Wand of Paralyzation and handling enemy pressure using Chaos and Greater Malison.
Then something truly weird happened. On the way to Candlekeep, some guy walked up to us and stole the History of the Nether scrolls, the book you need to enter the library. The journal gives you a vague hint that he was heading "south," but there's absolutely no way to know where you're supposed to find him again so you can take back the book. I looked it up and found a seven-year-old forum post saying he appears either at the Friendly Arm Inn, Nashkel, the carnival, or the Nashkel Mines...
...but he wasn't in any of those places. I searched the entire map for each location, and there was simply no one there. Whatever mod it was, it stole a plot-critical item from us and broke the entire main quest line.
I added the book via the console, treating the case as if I had uninstalled the mod (which you're not supposed to do in a BWS install due to uninstallation risks). It's just as well, because apparently, if that mod had been working properly, we'd have had to fight our way through hordes of drow (for some godforsaken reason) who had filled up the Nashkel mines.
I normally roll with bugs, both good and bad, but I have no patience for bugs that make the game impossible to complete.
In the Candlekeep catacombs, I mismanaged some traps and got both Gorky and the Duergar Cleric killed. Maneira and Frisk used Potions of Invisibility to escape, ignoring all the doppelgangers, Prat, and the Medusas that took the place of the basilisks.
As the endgame approached, Frisk hit level 12, because I disabled the XP cap and that basilisk XP loop gave Frisk such a huge boost earlier on. Frisk could finally seduce level 6 critters.
Such as Lesser Basilisks.
I seduce the very same basilisk we had been using for the basilisk XP loop much earlier in the game. Unlike the stronger variant, Lesser Basilisks only get 1 attack per round, but their gaze attacks hits automatically, strikes as a nonmagical weapon, bypassing PFMW (and, of course, can be bumped up to +3 using Enchanted Weapon if necessary), and petrifies the target on a failed save vs. death at -4, bypassing spell protections but not magic resistance.
Plus, by coincidence, I installed a mod that causes petrification to remove all of the victim's items, preventing them from getting shattered. I only installed that mod to save myself a headache if somebody in the party got shattered, but it has the unintentional benefit of letting us petrify basically anybody without worrying about losing loot.
Like in my previous runs, I recruited Schlumpsa (he's only level 2), turned him into a wolf using Relair's Mistake, and then took advantage of his immunity to missile damage by sending him into the final battle alone, buffed with fire resistance and haste, so the rest of the party could fire Arrows of Detonation at him, smoking Diarmid and bringing Tazok to Near Death.
It took several tries because Frisk had poor THAC0 and Maneira had no pips in bows, but we managed to hit Angelo and Semaj using Arrows of Dispelling and Biting and Acid Arrows. Late in the battle, I realized that, for some reason, Sarevok was not doing any damage on the rare occasions he landed a hit on Schlumpsa while the sewer king was running away from him (which explained why Schlumpsa had been drinking so few potions). Too lazy to reload or figure out what was wrong with Sarevok (not that I even cared), I just boxed him in with the Wand of Monster Summoning so we could whomp him when the last of his allies crumpled.
Current party:
Frisk, Seducer
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Duergar Cleric, Cleric of Talos/Thief
Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Lesser Basilisk, Berserker
Schlumpsa the Sewer King, Fighter
Not having to post several hundred screenshots documenting our travels fills us with determination.
Let me tell you about two things that suck:
1) Being the second best ranged fighter in the Realms. Because eventually you meet the best ranged fighter in the Realms and you have a bad time. Ask Illasera all about that.
2) Playing in a BP Ascension/SCS install and being unsure whether the SCS script or the BP scripts are controlling. Ask me all about that.
So, here's the plan. I'm going to tell you about Illasera, and how we killed her. Then, I'm going to keep on playing, and I'm going to ask you, dear reader, to tell me which scripts we're seeing in the Ascension fights. I've played a lot of Ascension, and I've played a lot of Ascension with SCS, but my experience with BP Ascension is nil, and my experience with SCS v30 Ascension is minimal. I need you to tell me what I'm seeing here. It looks BP to me, but I'm not certain.
Ok. To the Illasera fight. Ascension Illasera can be incredibly hard or incredibly easy, depending on your character and game plan. For Aestica, a ranged fighting warrior with The Reflex, she was incredibly easy.
Yeah, girl, we're going to see soon enough...
Illasera attacks on a large outdoor map. That makes her susceptible to separation via Smite. Our plan had been to Smite Illasera, knocking her to the edge of the map and separating her from her allies. We'd then pursue and kill her in peace. Good plan. It would have been an even better plan if it worked.
Due to my rustiness, I had forgotten that Illasera's Etherealness abilities give her a round or two of immunity to weapons. And since you can't Smite what you can't smack, we weren't able to Smite.
Or at least we couldn't Smite her. We just flipped the plan around, and Smited her allies instead of her. It's not like we had anything else to do with the round, seeing as how we couldn't touch Illy.
(Btw, note the mage: He's under buffed, and he never tossed his Sphere of Chaos of said "praeses"- that worries me. BP behavior?)
By the time our Smite ended, the Black Reaver clan had been wiped away. What's the time? It's time to get Ill.
And the finish- in the presence of the two, hapless phasing Black Reavers, who had clicked their heels back to our Kansas.
One down. I'll post on Gromnir within the hour.
Best,
A.
It think its an add on to the Dsotsc
You do have to fight drow and a matron mother... but its not Bg2 standard Drows - they are significantly nerfed.
I found the person in Nashkel or the carneval - but its must be 8-10 years since I played so my memory may be a bit hazy..
Good luck to all the no reloaders, and thank you for posting - insightfull stuff.
Difficulty: Core
Mods: SCS (all tactical challenges, slightly limited enemy pre-buffs [option no. 4])
Version: 2.3
Okay, let's get this going. Here's Amaruq before entering the Candlekeep Inn:
Profs: 2x staff, 2x sling
We started as usual by collecting the three rings (of Protection +1, of Wizardy and Joia's) and by using the funds to obtain the potion case, potion starter pack (Freedom, Mirrored Eyes) and Wand of Sleep from Thalantyr. Girdle of Piercing (together with the shield and ProRing) helped us thwart the initial bandit ambush en route to FAI.
Shoal, Marl (1-1-3-3-1) and the spider case then provided the early levels. Moving on, Amaruq did the delivery service for Mirianne, Zhurlong and Perdue (leaving Karlat for later) and helped Viccy with the local law enforcement (earning our first decent armor in the process).
Her spell casting abilities are nothing to write home about yet, but at least we can kill some time with Charm.
Okay, so you've beaten Zargal but what about the chicken, you ask. *drumroll*
Mmm, chicken...that part made us hungry. So very hungry. Yum-yum.
But wait, what about that fancy green plate there? Yes, yes, I admit - we did that Nashkel temple-bar crawl with Barge and woke up on a damned farm field. Hazy memories at best. Anyway, that bloke at the carnival sold us the green ProPetrification scroll so we felt like going basilisk hunting. Kirian&Co are avoided, and instead, we venture north to Ulgoth's Beard to buy Cloak of Displacement and Aule's (lacking the funds to get the other local souvenirs at the moment, unfortunately).
Superb reach and speed of our new weapon, as well as our now improved spells, allowed us to conclude some outstanding business in Beregost.
Amaruq then travelled south to check out the fastest far... I mean *dart* thrower in the west.
BG1 Sendai was finished in style...
...and poor Caldo became the victim of a family feud.
Finally, a quick visit to the Grill Fortress marks the end of this first post.
See ya!
It's quite a while since I had a go at Freya, so thought I would dust her off. She's completed BG1 several times before I think, so in theory everything there should be simple. Of course when it comes to no-reload play I'm definitely in the General von Clausewitz school "Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult".
Freya had no familiar at the start so used other means to grab her levels:
- up to level 3 by kiting Shoal.
- with web now available it was possible to web and then blind ankhegs without danger.
- with another level approaching Freya got the required XP by running around Meilum and then Greywolf inside webs.
There's been no consumption of resources so far and with the extra power from MM and skull traps at level 7 Freya should be able to kill battle horrors and the like just with her own spells now (that could already have been done if I were prepared to rest in the same area as injured creatures - with LoB they only recover 100 HPs when you rest).
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3Notable mods
- SCS
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalance
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Item Randomizer
So, the Davaeorn fight. My basic strategy was to hit him with Cause Critical Wounds from invisibility with Branwen. Under SR, CCW deals 4d8 + 4/per level damage, which bypass Magic Resistance. Thanks to NI, I know that Davey has 45 hp. Branwen, being level 7, will deal an average of 44 damage with this spell. So, I need a slightly better than average roll to kill him outright. There's also a chance of rolling a critical miss, but with her solid thac0 after buffs, that should be a minimal concern. Also, in the past, I tried to approach Davey under invisibility, but he would sometimes spot the invisible character, trigger his Stinking Could/Web sequencer and go invisible anyway. So, from experience, anything can happen.
For instance, if Branwen gets near him and the hit lands but doesn't kill him outright, Davey will go invisible and heal himself. So I have to plan a back-up strategy. It mainly revolves around buffs. Since I want my bard to dispel Davey's MGoI with Spell Thrust, I can't safely tuck her under a Scroll of Magic Protection. She always wear Dushai's ring of Free Action, so scrolls of prot. from Cold/Fire were used on her, with a potion of Clear Thought on hand if needed (we'll see if I use it when the fight start). All other were buffed using my standard routine, with three back-up ideas specific for the Davey fight. Alora kept an IR potion of Evasion, which let her evade AoE damage spell outright, in case of a Fireburst (Sunfire in vanilla). I have Kivan ready to fire the two arrows of Dispelling I found in Durlag's Tower, but they probably won't work : under IR, AofD allow a save vs spell to avoid the effect. That's a big nerf for those arrows. A high level mage with Improved Invisibility will be immune to those arrows outright. They're not the great equalizer for fighters they usually are in vanilla. Still, I'm willing to try to dispel Davey if things go wrong, perhaps after a Greater Malison from Xan (GM only gives a -2 penalty to saves under SR though). Another back-up strat also involve Branwen. She has a potion of Power at hand, which gives a boost of 2 caster level among other thac0 and damage boost under IR. That would put her effective casting level at 9, which would give me a better chance of a successful Dispel spell on Davey. Xan and Jaheira (and her summons) are going to man-up the front door, while the rest of us will take care of Davey and his Battle Horrors. We're buffed, we're ready.
Hm. Well, that was bit anti-climatic. I wasted a bit of resources on nothing, but it's better to be safe than sorry in no-reload.
So, the city of Baldur's Gate is open to us. Just before entering, I had to fight a no-so kind lady, a bounty hunter hired by (revived) Tazok to kill Kivan. She just couldn't do it though. That fight netted me a beautiful Elven Chain mail for Miluiel, who now rocks a cool green color.
After a few easy quests around BG (Scar, Aldeth Sashenstar, gathering Balduran's stuff...), I decided to tackle the Iron Throne fight head on. This is where I lost my last attempt with my Undead Hunter. My paladin was abiding by pnp rules, which limit the number of magic items a paladin can have to 10, so prebuffing was minimal then. Miluiel doesn't care about that. She and her team buffed as much as they wanted. Then, we went in.
A first wave of Fireballs from wands and potions of Explosions dispatched the two thieves with ease. After that, Spell Thrust took the mage's MGoI down, Confusion from Xan and summons wrecked their meleers. At the end of the day, we won without any casualties. Cool.
That's it for now.
I regret to inform you that Aestica's has journey has come to an end. It happened in Nyalee's glade, in the SCS Improved Minor Encounters battle with the undead party. I have no one to blame but myself- myself and sleep deprivation.
Seeking to avoid facing a planetar, I instructed Aestica to execute Smite->Power Attack on the skeleton mage. Unfortunately, the knock back led to unexpected behavior -behavior I've never quite seen before. It pushed the mage through the wall and off the edge of the map, not to be seen again until we returned to the opposite end of the area, the entrance. That was unexpected. Odd though it was, it wasn't a problem in and of itself. The problem was me.
With my plan thwarted, I absent-mindedly targeted the skeleton cleric, for lack of anything else to do. Just after the sling bullet left us, the cleric's buffs fired. Physical Mirror was among them. Instantly, I knew what would happen: the bullet, still carrying the Smite effect, would come back at Aestica. I equipped the Reflex to prevent that. We fought on.
Flash forward, many rounds later. We had been tagged with Doom. Our save v spells was at -4. I found myself concerned that we could be vulnerable to a specialists -4 (-6). Chaos was in the air, and we didn't know the kit on our opponent. Now, if I had my wits about me, I would have recognized that something was off. Aestica's save v spell should be -6 post Doom, not -4. I had -astonishingly- neglected to re-equip her Guard's Ring, which had been swapped out for a Ring of Fire Resistance in the fire giant area. Instead of recognizing that, though, I sought to equip the Shield of Harmony. Mistake upon mistake.
Before I unequipped the Reflex, I found myself wondering whether Aestica's sling bullet was still bouncing back and forth off the cleric's Physical Mirror. Without any rational justification, I lazily thought, "nah" and unequipped. I was so confident in my drowsy, senseless judgement, that I didn't even bother to equip the Sword of Arvoreen as a precaution. Surely you can guess what happened next. A full ten rounds or so after flicking our sling bullet, I had Smited Aestica, through an improbable chain of events. And so it ended:
I'm sorry everyone. Truly sorry. I know that a good number of people were following this adventure and I have most spectacularly dropped ball. I usually don't lament the end of a run, but this one is hard to accept- the toughest one yet.
Since I don't have time to complete another run between now and my departure date, I won't be starting another character. And since I have a number of RL adventures planned, including a trip to South East Asia and a six month hike, you probably won't see me again until October 2018.
It's been a fun ride. Thank you for your interest. I'm sorry it had to end this way
Best of luck to the active challengers! Good hunting!
Cheers,
A.
Many thanks for sharing and see you around
Nonetheless, thanks for sharing her adventures and I wish you to get best of your RL trip!
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XXIII - Trying to end a war with a couple of darts
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
Part XVI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905032/#Comment_905032
Part XVII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905184/#Comment_905184
Part XVIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905354/#Comment_905354
Part XIX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905559/#Comment_905559
Part XX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/905700/#Comment_905700
Part XXI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906131/#Comment_906131
Part XXII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906257/#Comment_906257
Our approach to the Dragonspear battle was initially the same as the one we used for Bridgefort: Stay in the back, assist with ranged damage and let the army do most of the work. However, I soon realized that this wasn't going to be enough for this one - water elementals kept coming in (I'm not sure if Strunk can summon more of them, but it certainly seemed that way - I didn't bother checking the combat log because it got so incredibly messy), the allied forces kept losing more and more soldiers - I wanted to keep a good front line in place for later, when it would be time to fight Ashatiel's party - so Nahema went to the east for some heroics, using dispelling arrows to bring Strunk's protections down:
She had no stoneskins because they got breached, by the way. While Strunk wasn't dead yet, he was also busy renewing his protections, so we could deal with the other opponents for a bit. However, a fireball forced the entire party to retreat (and drink some protection potions in case of a repeat):
A dangerous backline of crusader mages meant that our soldiers were in big trouble, so Corwin stepped
forward, taking down their protections and lives one after the other, with Nahema assisting her:
Meanwhile, Arbogast started to finally deploy his summons (I didn't want to use them right away, because I wanted them to be still alive for Ashatiel's party). With their help, the main battlefield was eventually conquered:
Now, we got the mission to seek out Ashatiel to stop the constant respawn of crusaders. Nahema made her way to the enemy, declined the duel and started to shoot arrows of detonation while retreating back to our main army:
It took some time, an insect plague and various dispelling arrows, but we took out Ashatiel's party - except for Ashatiel herself:
It seems like, on LoB (she didn't do this in my previous run on core rules), she hides somewhere to the north-west, forcing the player to fight their way through even more crusaders. Oh, great.
I sent an invisible Corwin forward to look for Ashatiel - Arbogast used find traps to make sure we would avoid those, but he should've been exploring further north-west. Turns out there are even more traps than I expected - aaand we lost Corwin. That's really, really bad for us, as she does by far the most damage in the group:
So we started to carefully fight our way towards Ashatiel's presumed location (there aren't many other places she could've gone to), dealing with loads of respawning crusaders - including lots of thieves, mages and clerics. We used lots of monster summoning charges and it was incredibly tedious to constantly make sure we didn't step on any of the traps (the find traps spell never was this useful before), but we made progress. However, at this point the game performance kept getting choppier and choppier, and as we were in constant battle, we couldn't save. Eventually, the game just crashed.
I was horrified at the prospect of fighting the entire battle again. My first attempt took a very long time and was a pretty grueling experience - especially once we had to deal with the traps. It turns out, however, that the game creates an auto save (for some reason, it's called a final save, despite being relatively far from the finale) when you first talk to Ashatiel.
Now, I should propably bring up that in the Bioware Forums, as far as I'm aware, our rule was that if the game crashes, you are not forced to recreate the results of anything that happened between your last save and the crash. I must confess that this rule provided me with a great advantage at this point (Corwin was still alive at the point of the final save), but I wasn't inclined to just kill Corwin again. If anyone disagrees with this approach, feel free to do so - it's certainly not an easy decision to make.
Because I didn't want to deal with the tedious process of fighting my way through to Ashatiel (with another chance to have my game crash) once again, I took a very risky approach the second time around: Right after loading the final save, I had Arbogast drink a potion of magic shielding, and he agreed to fight a duel with her. That might seem crazy, but I thought that my potion bag might give me enough of an advantage, and I could always go invisible in case I was about to lose (I had multiple potions of magic shielding at the ready, so getting disabled was pretty much out of the question).
First round, first action:
Well, that was a nice start. It turns out I was able to keep Ashatiel stunned during the entire battle - I have no idea why, but she doesn't seem to be very good at saving against darts of stunning - every time I tried to re-apply the stun, I succeeded right away. Maybe she just got incredibly unlucky. To speed things up, I summoned an ankheg via the amulet and applied a poison effect to my foe:
There was still a named group of crusaders far to the north-west remaining, but I saw no reason to risk fighting them. Instead, the party entered the castled and spent all their remaining money on scrolls and potions to prepare for Avernus. While I planned to stop playing here, I couldn't resist trying out my planned approach for the first area: As fighting against all those imps would propably cost me a lot of clarity potions (and I might need these for Belhifet if he's able to dispell my chaotic command scrolls), I just went with invisibility 10' radius, haste, and running towards the stairs:
Most of the devils were still distracted by the crusaders, and only the named one (apparently able to see through invisibility) took a shot on one of my party members, but we easily escaped and successfully skipped this fight.
Next time, we won't be able to skip any battles. It's time. We will fight for our lives in the dephts of Avernus.
Enuhal
I was just tired. Stupid tired. I was playing when I should have been sleeping.
But, hey, we had fun. That's what counts. I wish we could have made it to the Throne, but these things happen. C'est la vie.
Best,
A.
I'm going to try to motivate myself to continue her game, culminating with an insane Ascension attempt (allowing reloads).
If and when I do that, I'll post on the final battle and the final battle only. Since she is no longer a trilogy no reload candidate, I'll share over in the Adventurer's Lounge to avoid confusion.
Best,
A.
Although I've never decided what happens if I experience a chunking, win the fight, reload, and then somehow lose the re-play. I don't know if that would count as an actual death or not. Is the official fight the first one or second? I don't know.
@Alesia_BH: You will be missed, but I'm glad you've been able to stop by for as long as you have.
I've always wondered--what is your job? What are you up to in Asia?
Best,
A.
We trust that players will not exploit the rule by courting crashes if and when they find themselves in a disadvantageous position.
Best,
A.
Consequently, we've never encountered a situation like the one you've described, exactly. If you wish to keep playing the way you have in relation to permanent death, then you'll have to come up with personal rules that satisfy you, I guess.
I'll note, though, that if we die after a justified bug reload, by our standards our character is dead- no question. A bug meeting evidentiary standards or a crash nullifies all actions since the last save. The resumed run becomes the run, the post save pre-crash/bug events irrelevant. Dead is dead, irrespective of what happened in our "dream."
Best,
A.
Best,
A.
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 2
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
Now things get more interesting. With proper characters with real classes instead of ghouls and carrion crawlers with terrible stats, the party is considerably stronger than it was at the beginning of my previous SoD run. But my party is not going to scale so dramatically as it did before, because I will not be able to seduce Darskhelin or Morentherene. So no mind flayers or dragons in our party this time.
More importantly, we have a basilisk in the party. And although it only has a pitiful 1.5 attacks per round, and its gaze effects offers a saving throw, being able to petrify enemies at will is just plain fun.
Schlumpsa the Sewer King isn't nearly as entertaining, but he is immune to nonmagical weapons and has all the normal immunities to disablers that all undead have, which makes him a great tank for traps, especially thanks to his moderate MR.
Of course, Maneira and the Duergar Cleric (actually a cleric/thief) can disarm any trap in the game, so Schlumpsa doesn't actually need to do this. He spends most of his in wolf form being useless because his natural form uses the ooze animation, making him horribly, horribly slow.
This is my only screenshot of Korlasz.
The fight does not last long. One of my mods let me upgrade the Dagger of Venom to a +3 weapon that grants +1 APR, giving Gorken Bloodaxe 3.5 APR before haste, with about zero THAC0. Korlasz cannot function with Gorky poisoning her constantly.
Schlumpsa has 4 APR when not in wolf form, but with his THAC0 about 15, that's just not good enough for late-game SoD. Instead, we seduce an Armored Skeleton from the second dungeon after nearly killing it by accident.
The skeleton has no magic resistance; it's more of an IWD Armored Skeleton than a BG2-style Skeleton Warrior. But it does have the typical undead immunities and the typical skeleton's 50% resistance to slashing damage, which will make it very, very resilient to the final boss of SoD.
Making it a Dwarven Defender via our kit mod thingy would be optimal, but I'm not willing to exploit my way around the racial restriction, so I just make him a Barbarian to compensate for his middling STR.
I have a mod-introduced level 5 spell that creates area-effect versions of Melf's Minute Meteors, which Gorky tries out against the local undead.
The fire damage erroneously offers a save to negate the damage, instead of a save for half, and the missile damage is only 1d6, so I decide not to use the spell. It would be amazing in the hands of a character with on-hit effects, like a Wizard Slayer->Mage, but Gorky is more dangerous with his dagger than these explosives.
One of the disadvantages of the Seduction spell is that, while it gives a fighter class to critters who have no valid character class, it also imposes a 50% XP penalty on them. This means they're about a level behind a normal fighter on average, and low-level characters tend to suffer against stuff like Cloudkill.
The good news is that a different mod let me make our basilisk into a Berserker. But those rage immunities only kick in if you remember to activate Enrage.
Gorky has Resist Fear, but the party is unbuffed and unprepared for this many enemies at once. But we have a solution: Maneira falls back and throws some traps into the fray from a safe distance, dealing a bunch of party-friendly missile damage and thinning the herd.
Just for fun, I try out the Wand of Lightning trick with the Secret Revealed. It's totally unnecessary against the local lich, but it does save us a few Stone to Flesh scrolls outside.
Turns out that you can re-visit BG1 areas in SoD if you're playing EET.
It might cause some plot-relevant time delays if you do it later in the plot, however, so I won't be stopping by Durlag's Tower. Nor can you re-visit Baldur's Gate itself, which would cause some plot issues.
I don't like trolls much in SoD since there are so few fire weapons on hand, but the basilisk makes fighting them a breeze.
Without the level drain trick, seducing Morentherene is not an option. She does horrible things to the party with her breath weapon...
...but SCS does not boost her HP, despite her being a dragon, which means that Gorky is strong enough to slay her almost on his own, though the Armored Skeleton lands the final blow.
I don't like Ziatar and her Sanctuary healing spells, so I blast her with the Wand of Fire.
Next up, the Neothelid. Easily the most intimidating monster in the series, the Neothelid has some weird attacks, including Mordenkainen's Sword, a poisonous breath weapon, and several psionic spells.
But we have a trump card. Gorky lands a Greater Malison despite the Neothelid's magic resistance, and after one or two tries, our basilisk manages to petrify it.
20,000 XP in the space of a few seconds. Very nice.
But, uh... we're not quite done with the Neothelid. Not yet.
Gorky has just freed the Neothelid with a Stone to Flesh scroll, allowing it to attack the party once more. Gorky narrowly avoids getting charmed as the Neothelid vanishes.
The Neothelid reappears, exposing itself to the basilisk's gaze once more.
We don't have very many Stone to Flesh scrolls since we used so many in BG1, and I don't want to use our whole supply since there's always a chance that our basilisk might get confused or charmed and petrify somebody in the party. But I'm willing to fight the Neothelid several times, despite its deadly powers...
...if it will earn us some levels.
With only a few scrolls left, we decide to put the Neothelid down for good. Four party members gained levels during this fight, which is a nice boost, if not a game-changer like the basilisk XP loop was in BG1.
Darskhelin and his goons are very dangerous, so I make a point of approaching them with a couple of Skeleton Warriors from Gorky (not to be confused with the Armored Skeleton, a party member) so the rest of the party doesn't get blasted with a bunch of disablers all at once.
Gorky lands a Chaos spell on the enemy cleric and shuts down the enemy mage with the upgraded Dagger of Venom, giving us a solid early advantage.
The enemy doesn't have the durability to make a comeback later. Our early advantage translates into several early kills, including Darskhelin himself.
I know the Shadow Aspect can be extremely dangerous, so I set up a series of traps outside its chamber and throw one inside before approaching.
But it seems Maneira can take down its Mislead spell with Detect Illusions, allowing us to slay it before it lands one of its gruesome backstabs.
Maneira now has the Fractal Blade, an important find because she has 3 pips in short swords and she needs a +3 weapon to deal with the final boss.
On the way out, we clear out the spider nest. This place can be extremely dangerous if you don't come buffed against poison, but we bought lots of Protection from Poison scrolls. And between Maneira's traps and the Wand of Fire, the fight doesn't last long anyway.
Area-effect spells and weapons are especially useful in SoD due to the large hordes.
The assault on Bridgefort can get very hectic, so I usually prefer to let the Flaming Fist absorb the initial wave. We attack from afar using ranged weapons (the basilisk's gaze is a nice addition) and then send in Gorky alone to poison one of the mages.
There's a second wave to the north with some nastier enemies. I decide to see if the Wand of Lightning trick works with Sunfire in EET, only to accidentally ruin the difficulty.
We stomp on the Barghest and move on to the bridge, where the Dagger of Venom proves instrumental once again.
Gorky has been our MVP since the moment we got him back in Nashkel.
We use the Spectacles of Spectacle to summon Nazramu, the djinni in the Coalition Camp, and take advantage of his unusually generous prices to recharge some wands, buy some high-powered new items, and still end up with 60,000 more gold than we had before.
We run into the dead magic zone. I decide not to engage the enemy, knowing that a backstab could prove fatal for Frisk. Before we go, I bomb them with the Wand of Fire.
I think I'll cut back on this Wand of Lightning nonsense. It's not like Gorky really needs the help.
Gorky could easily solo the game, I think--his only struggle would be against the final boss--and Maneira's 5 APR just makes things even faster. The basilisk chips in a little bit, too, but the Duergar Cleric and Armored Skeleton are basically dead weight. The only reason I don't ditch them is because we don't need the extra XP, nor can we find superior replacements.
Maneira has recently hit level 9 and gets the 4x backstab multiplier you can achieve in SoD without going over the XP cap (which Frisk has done, but Seducers don't get higher than 2x). With both backstabs, traps, and unnaturally high damage output, Maneira has been taking a huge share of the party's kills.
Of course, Maneira has some disadvantages, including some very lousy saving throws and no immunities whatsoever. She's easy to charm or disable.
And her save vs. spell is around 10, which means she doesn't even have a guaranteed save against Frisk's Dispel Charm ability. It takes multiple tries for us to remove the charm effect on our most dangerous melee brute.
The basilisk is much harder to disable due to its Berserker immunities. But again, those immunities don't count for much if you forget to activate Enrage.
How do we deal with a confused basilisk when no one has Protection from Petrification active? Easy. We just drink a bunch of Potions of Mirrored Eyes.
It's not like we need to save them for future fights; the basilisk is the only source of petrification I know of going forward.
In the fight with Kherriun, Gorky opens with Sunfire. This time, we don't use the Wand of Lightning trick, but Sunfire is devastating even without it.
The enemy debuffs Gorky, forcing him to focus on his defenses for several rounds at the expense of tackling the enemy. The rest of the party is busy wrestling with the weaker enemy cluster to the west.
Gorky's defenses are finally back on track, more or less, allowing him to switch gears and tackle Kherriun. She doesn't last long after that.
Time to finish up this area and confront Hephernaan. Somehow I bungle sneaking into the next area--I don't remember how I got past it before--so I end up fighting my way through.
The next batch of enemies, at the top of the elevator, has gobs of HP, but otherwise no special abilities. All they do is soak up a few charges from the Wand of Fire and slow us down for a few rounds. Notice Maneira using the nearby wall to hide in shadows and land backstabs.
This is actually largely pointless, because Maneira already has 5 APR and her backstabs aren't much stronger than basic melee attacks.
Hephernaan is pretty tough, and with only a single mage in the party, I don't think we have what it takes to break down his defenses. Instead, I just let Hephernaan fuss with some critters from the Wand of Monster Summoning while the rest of the party handles the Crusaders. Hephernaan wastes an extremely important spell on an extremely unimportant target.
Heifer and his two mage buddies aren't the only spellcasters around. Turns out that Gorky's Minor Spell Deflection somehow cannot block a Breach spell.
Minor Spell Turning can only block level 4 spells and below, but Minor Spell Deflection is supposed to absorb up to level 7 spells.
Finally Heifer and Olvenaun make their way into the main area. Gorky poisons the latter, who, as I expected, has no PFMW to block the Dagger of Venom.
Esserin, another mage, joins the fight. Gorky fires off a Chaos spell, but the three mages have excellent saves vs. spell.
I'm not sure our defenses are in good shape, but I simply don't have enough time to erect all the defenses I want. Instead, I focus on bringing down Olvenaun. Mercifully, Hephernaan wastes a Breach spell on Gorky, removing a single crummy Stoneskin when Gorky was under no other enemy melee pressure.
What about Esserin? We can poison her, too, but the basilisk gets to her first, petrifying her mere seconds after it targeted her.
Now that I know (or rather, suspect) that the basilisk's gaze isn't going to get bounced back at it from a spell turning effect, I can also petrify the nameless mage to the east.
Hephernaan wastes another magic attack on Gorky, who has no defenses that Heifer can remove. It buys us enough time for Maneira to dispel Heifer's Mirror Images and strike through his Stoneskins.
Shorn of his defenses and with his allies in shambles, Hephernaan flees the scene. Then I see the basilisk somehow get petrified.
The battle is basically over, fortunately, so we have little trouble using a scroll on it before it can get shattered.
I would eventually realize that one of my mods adds a special, undroppable mirror to the off hand of various enemies, a mirror that has a 25% chance of bouncing gaze attacks back at the attacker. Due to how the engine handles things, it actually means the user has a 25% chance of bouncing all future gaze attacks, and a 75% chance of never bouncing them.
That's horrible news for our basilisk. But more importantly, it's horrible for Frisk, who will be in our party long after the basilisk is gone. A Seducer's psionics all use the gaze projectile--not because it's supposed to be a gaze attack (Seducer spells can actually go through walls), but because I thought the gaze projectile looked pretty. For every enemy that's been assigned this strange mirror shield, there's a 25% chance that we can never, ever land Domination on them. I might change the projectile in a future release of the Seducer kit, but for now, I've decided to roll with the bug.
We recharge the Greenstone Amulet at Nazramu's store, go out to parley with Caelar's group, and basically just press "1" and "Enter" over and over again, knowing that the outcome is the same either way. We head back to the Coalition Camp.
The sound of the incoming Crusader army fills us with determination.
Current party:
Frisk, Seducer
Gorkan Bloodaxe, Mage
Duergar Cleric, Cleric of Talos/Thief
Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Lesser Basilisk, Berserker
Armored Skeleton, Barbarian
"The Nobody of Parting"
"It's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like this, kids like you..."
0:44 Romance rebuffed
7:45 Sirens slaughtered
9:45 "This cave is a butt."
12:24 Imoen springs a Hold Person trap.
14:10 More sirens slaughtered
15:52 Flesh Golems fought
17:17 Black Alaric's Treasure reclaimed
20:02 Did you know that Garrick has a different mourning line for female fatalities?
28:21 "Let's join the bambits. (Bambits?)"
35:10 - 43:40 THE BANDIT CAMP (OUTSIDE)
45:40 I half-bake a decent plan for Tazok's tent
49:27 I put the plan back in the oven to finish cooking
54:11 "No, I don't want you to leave. Stop asking me that."
55:00 TAZOK'S TENT (Also it turns out that the potion of stone form did more harm than good here, but I didn't realize this until afterward)
1:00:42 The Inventory Management Song! Also an odd bug that occurs if you change the marching order while in the inventory menu.
1:04:03 "That's probably the cheesiest map crossing I've ever done!"
1:06:24 Requisite Character Information page ending view
Stealing @semiticgod's lines to allude to my means of victory fills us with determination.
In fact, while poking around in EEKeeper, I discovered the reason why the SCS component was not working 100% of the time, the way that @Tresset's does: because SCS erroneously applied two effects, one which prevents permanent death in all cases except for cold- and petrification-related chunking...
...and another opcode, which completely overrode and negated the previous opcode. According to their labels in Near Infinity and EEKeeper, one of them is "Apply Non Permanent Death" and the other is "Remove Non Permanent Death." The first one is supposed to apply if you've installed the no-chunking component of SCS; the second one is supposed to remove it. You can see them in Near Infinity, SPIN668.spl and SPIN669.spl.
If you install the no chunking component, both spells are applied, instead of just the one. And the "Remove Non Permanent Death" one is applied afterward, negating the intended effect.
I don't know if it was an in-game script or a WeiDu error of some sort, but the SCS chunking fix actually does absolutely nothing whatsoever. It doesn't make chunking less likely; it literally does nothing. This is in fact a bug: it applies an effect that prevents chunking, and then removes the same effect. Unless it used to work properly in a previous version of SCS, nearly every chunking ever experienced by SCS players over the years, in no-reload runs and otherwise, has been due to a bug.
If the SCS component were working properly, it would prevent all forms of chunking except for those caused by petrification and cold damage.
If memory serves, I had said something about creating music videos for Aestica. This is not the video I was hoping to make, but, well, here it is...
https://streamable.com/pz53s
Best,
A.
From SCS readme:
Make party members less likely to die irreversibly
This component tries to prevent "chunking", the annoying permanent death of your character when you're reduced below -10 hp. Characters who get reduced to 0 hp or below just die in the usual fashion and can be resurrected. It isn't possible to prevent quite all forms of chunking (massive damage from fire, in particular, still seems to cause chunking fairly reliably), but this component should make it a rarer occurrence. This may be useful in the later stages of the game, when melee opponents often do 30-40 hp damage per blow - that 10 hp safety margin starts to feel slender.
And I've checked my characters with NearInfinity - all of them except main character have Disable Permanent Death (295) Effect active (Stat value =1).
Maybe in Cassia's case since all characters were not a NPCs but created by real people those characters were all *main* and thus didn't have this effect applied.