Now up to level 7 Freya thought that the Doomsayer should be manageable without resorting to consumables or resting. She persuaded Laryssa to attack it, but she probably did no more damage to it than the magic missile that killed Laryssa would have done anyway. However, a combination of skull traps, magic missiles and running round in a series of webs proved just enough.
At Durlag's Tower similar tactics disposed of a couple of battle horrors. Algernon's Cloak was used to charm skeletons on the walls in order to get at the battle horror and doom guard there, but a moment's inattention ended the run before they could be dealt with. There were only 2 skeletons left guarding the battle horror and Freya nipped up onto the wall and charmed one of them before coming back down thinking that the skeletons would fight each other. However, the remaining enemy chose to run away from its erstwhile friend and followed Freya downstairs just as she'd started casting invisibility. The sensible thing to do would have been to break off casting and run - the chances were high she would have been able to get out of range while taking only one shot by the time the skeleton switched weapons. However, I chose to try and complete the invisibility spell and paid the penalty ...
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.
As sad as it is to see Aestica fall, it was great following your adventures so far.
Have a save trip and know that you are always welcome back here, friend.
Successfully made it out of the Chateau and now stepping into Amn for the first time.
A close call was had when the duergar mage in the smithy furnace (i) Hold Personed Khael and (ii) Charmed Minsc in back-to-back rounds! Imoen used two scrolls in a hurry: Dispel Magic (which released Minsc before he could chunk charname, though charname remained undispelled from Hold) and Summon Monsters I which provided a brief buffer between the Duergars.
(I am maintaining two separate installs at the moment: Khael is continuing a SCS-only BG2 run while I built also a IR+SR+SCS+tweaks install thanks to @Arctodus which I will use with a separate character.)
The Crusaders descend upon the Coalition Camp, but they come in relatively manageable waves. I pick the Dwarves of Dumathoin to help us against the trolls, but with a Wand of Fire, the basilisk's gaze, and Maneira and Gorky's high melee damage output, the trolls aren't a big problem for us. As for the mages, I pick the Wizard Slayers (I find it weird that they even let you choose somebody else). But the Wizard Slayers are also largely unnecessary, because we can get right past the mages' defenses with the basilisk's gaze and Sunfire. The last group, the paladins, also falls to fire damage and the basilisk's gaze, though it doesn't go quite as well, because another enemy appears to carry the mirror that bounces gaze attacks. Luckily, we saved up some Stone to Flesh scrolls. Though I thought I'd be using them when the Lesser Basilisk accidentally petrified Maneira or something; not when the basilisk petrified itself.
For the final group of enemies, the named ones, I distract them with a Wand of Monster Summoning for a few rounds, with Maneira throwing a trap from afar, then decide I don't want to rely on summons like I normally do. Gorky throws out Greater Malison and Maneira heads out to land a backstab. Maneira drinks a Potion of Invisibility, which I almost never use for offensive purposes, and Gorky manages to land Chaos on two of the enemies. Maneira lands another fatal backstab. Maneira switches to melee combat and scores another kill in short order. The Lesser Basilisk does, too, once more with its gaze attack. Another one goes down, leaving only two confused spellcasters. Confusion prevents them from casting any spells, so they don't last long. That was weirdly easy. I guess that first batch of monsters absorbed the worst of the enemy's pressure, Chaos prevented the rest, and Maneira's traps, backstabs, and melee attacks killed the most dangerous fighters before they had a chance to hurt us.
The Siege of Dragonspear Castle itself, as usual, is dominated by Wands of Fire. Since I'm a little worried about getting overwhelmed if things go wrong--my party is not very durable--I rig auto-pause to trigger when targets die, ensuring that my characters are always using ranged weapons, but still giving me control over their targets. I don't fight Ashatiel, since Frisk isn't supposed to kill anybody and I'm not sure if Haiass would spawn in a duel with Ashatiel. Plus, Frisk is awfully easy to kill, and I don't want to lose the run to Ashatiel of all people.
The nearest group of enemies has decent defenses, but Sunfire takes out their first spell and they don't last long after that. Gorky saves a Chaos spell for the fight with Ashatiel herself, and disables a surprising number of enemies. Maneira gets blinded, but the Duergar Cleric can cure it. Gorky remains at the front, using Sunfire in lieu of the Wand of Fire to deal some extra damage. Gorky zeros in on Ashatiel, and while we've got some new enemies storming in from the north, the basilisk can land automatic hits on them with Arrows of Detonation. The final battle approaches. Gorky is the only one who can cast SI: Abjuration, but I still have everyone buff with lots of potions despite the threat of Remove Magic on round one. This is what our party looks like:
Frisk, Seducer Notice the lack of any kills. So far, she's abided by the rules of the pacifist run.
Gorken Bloodaxe, "Conjurer" (I removed his divination spells and gave him +1 spells per level, but never gave him the actual conjurer kit, so he doesn't get any bonuses from it) Taking over a third of the party's kills, Gorky has always been our best character. Notice his favorite spell, "Lay on Hands," a custom spell I used to simulate resting (which is why my main characters never get all of their Bhaalspawn powers in BG1).
Duergar Cleric, Cleric of Talos/Thief I thought having a cleric in the party would help our defenses, but with those thief levels dragging him down, he never got enough spell slots to be useful.
Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter Almost as deadly as Gorky, the only reason she didn't outdo his kill count is because Gorky got his STR up to 22 and used an upgraded Dagger of Venom to get another +1 APR.
Armored Skeleton, Barbarian Mostly just here as a meat shield, despite having no meat on its bones.
Lesser Basilisk, Berserker Notice the abnormally low kill count. Although the basilisk's gaze can instantly kill the target, it only has 1.5 APR, limiting its power.
Unwilling to lose all of our buffs to the enemy's introductory Remove Magic spell, I pull back every party member but Gorky. Everyone holds onto their buffs. Since this is an EET install, all items are standardized, which means Protection from Magic scrolls can be used on enemies, unlike my previous installs. Hephernaan loses his defenses much faster than normal, and dies early. We close in on Belhifet. He goes invisible and sneaks off to the southwest, but Maneira can easily reveal him. With Maneira and Gorky applying massive pressure to Belhifet, his HP starts draining fast. We apply Lower Resistance, but there's not much need. Bellyfat tries to hide once more, only for Maneira to reveal him yet again. Our two best damage dealers finally put him down. Siege of Dragonspear is over!
Well, not quite. We still have some chores to deal with before we reach Chateau Irenicus. First is getting framed for Skie's murder--which is especially egregious because Frisk did not even kill even the illusory version of her. Haiass did, because he even spawns in dream sequences. EET removes everyone but the Lesser Basilisk from my party for some reason, but I get them back using the multiplayer import/export trick (since, unlike chunking, I can't reverse this bug using a reload). We defend ourselves at the trial, slip out of prison, and meet with Imoen and the gang.
The ambush happens again, but there is a disturbing change. What's going on here? We were supposed to get a cutscene! Now we're actually getting attacked!
It says "nonlethal damage," but I'm not sure I trust it. A single point of lethal damage could finish off anyone in the party.
Frisk goes invisible while the rest of the party falls. To my horror, the enemy kills the Armored Skeleton. No, this does not seem like a nonlethal ambush. What happens if they get to Frisk? I know we're supposed to be captured, but how do I know I can't be killed in this fight when I've already seen them kill one party member?
I keep Frisk invisible and wait to see if Shadows of Amn begins on its own, but there is no cutscene. Nor does anyone in the party wake up to keep fighting. I have no choice.
I have Frisk break invisibility. They get knocked out shortly.
To my relief, the enemy doesn't kill them. Shadows of Amn begins. The irony of escaping from lawful imprisonment only to get randomly kidnapped fills us with determination.
Finally, we've reached Shadows of Amn. This is where the run will really, seriously diverge from my previous Seducer run, which heavily relied on the level drain trick to land Seduction on some incredibly overpowered critters.
EET does some weird stuff to the game transitions. It doesn't crash or anything, but it does remove everyone from the party but the Lesser Basilisk again, and we are able to walk around and stuff during Jon-bon's cutscene. I resist the urge to try to petrify him, because I'm afraid I'll cause a crash or something. Notice that Imoen came to rescue us before Irenicus showed up.
The cutscene plays out and Jon-bon leaves us here. Turns out we're locked in here forever. Nothing CTRL-J can't fix. But to get our party back, we have to go through the motions of the multiplayer import/export trick again.
It's worth it, because petrifying enemies is hilarious. The Lesser Basilisk has an unusually large circle and can't fit through tight spaces, but we can still get around without Relair's Mistake. We can actually push the basilisk through doorways. In the fight with the duergar, we get a disturbing reminder that due to EE's file sharing behavior across games, the iron crisis also plagues Amn. Even if we go all the way south to Amkethran out in Calimshan, full plate mail will still have a 1% chance of shattering on impact.
Fun fact: judging from the item files in Near Infinity, that 1% chance doesn't apply every time you get hit; it applies whenever you equip the armor. So if you equip the armor, get hit, and it doesn't break, it will never break unless you take it off. But if you do take it off and get unlucky with that 1d100, it will break the instant you get hit.
Anyway, the nice thing about petrification is that so few critters are immune to it. Even Berserkers have to make saving throws against it. Fun fact: the Lesser Basilisk's gaze can bypass PFMW.
Maneira backstabs a Mephit Portal to death and makes short work of the rest. I notice there's a new container in this room, on Khalid. What kind of loot might he be carrying?
Oh.
Outside, Haiass rejoins us! He's the overpowered wolf companion who's been butchering people left and right since we left Candlekeep. I've actually wondered if I really want him around, taking all of our kills and making the game easier than it should be, but I don't think I can actually get rid of him. Tweaking my BWS install would be dangerous, I can't kill him, and if I tell him to stay put, I might lose track of him forever--and I might change my mind later.
Dissatisfied with the performance of the Duergar Cleric and the Armored Skeleton, I kick both of them out of the party. Without the level drain trick, Frisk will need much higher levels to seduce stronger critters, and we can't afford to waste any XP.
We bankrupt the party donating to charity and buying new scrolls for Gorken Bloodaxe. On a visit to the Adventurer Mart, I see a very welcome sight. I've been playing with Item Randomizer so long. But now I finally know where stuff actually is.
Then I see a more unpleasant sight. It appears that I accidentally engaged Frisk in melee somewhere in Chateau Irenicus, and they landed the final blow on one of Jon-bon's duergar minions.
It's not worth ending the run, but I'm upset that it happened. I erase the name via EEKeeper for cosmetic reasons, but I won't be able to call the SoA portion of this tetralogy run a "true pacifist" run. Still, I'll try to keep Frisk from hurting anybody else for the rest of the run.
Fun fact: the only reason Frisk had a weapon in the first place is because enemies get +4 to hit and damage against party members who don't have a melee weapon equipped.
We take care of the slavers, though Maneira comes perilously close to murdering a child when she fails a save against Confusion. She probably could have made an attack roll through that wall, but she never did.
We stop by the Umar Hills, and in the spirit of the pacifist run, we do not kill the chickens to grab the Beljuril gem.
We just make the chickens kill themselves with their inexplicable acid attack. We grab Relair's Mistake outside the Temple Ruins so the basilisk can get around easier. Most of the enemies here are no problem, except for two: Greater Mummies, who can paralyze from a distance on a failed save, and Aerial Servants. Who can apparently go invisible immediately after attacking you and dealing massive damage with every hit. Even Maneira, with a speed factor of 0 and 5 APR, cannot land a single hit on them before they go invisible. They're just that fast. Unfortunately, I prefer to roll with nonfatal bugs, which means we have to deal with the Aerial Servants, near-constant invisibility and all. The process is not particularly fun. The Shade Lord is simple: Sunstone Bullet on the altar, heavy pressure on Shadow Patrick, and Pierce Magic and Breach for the Shade Lord himself, with SI: Necromancy to keep Gorky from getting level drained. Maneira gets too close and nearly dies to Black Blade of Disaster, but with the Shade Lord's defenses down, we can finish him off before Maneira crumples. We get the Cloak of Stars, one of my absolute favorite items, and one I haven't seen in quite some time due to all the Item Randomizer and Item Revisions that has kept it away from me. I missed you, sweetie.
Of course, I never actually wear the cloak. I stuff it in a Bag of Holding and then cheat in a stack of its +5 darts so I don't have to keep using it. Those darts will be a massive boon for Maneira, who already has pips in them (though Gorky would actually have better THAC0 with them). Those darts can bypass even SCS' Improved Mantle, and combined with nonmagical darts, a dart thrower can use them to get past any weapon immunities short of a lich's or demon's PFMW or Absolute Immunity.
The Lesser Basilisk has a similar property as long as Gorky keeps Enchanted Weapon on hand. Although the gaze attack strikes as a nonmagical weapon, Gorky can upgrade it when we're dealing with dangerous foes who are immune to normal weapons. Time to deal with the Mae'Var questline! Ray-Ray dies much faster than anticipated. Traps, a backstab, a double Melf's Acid Arrow Minor Sequencer, and a quick extra poke finish him off before our basilisk can even try to petrify him. We do all of Mae'Var's chores, gather the documents proving whatever, and hand them over to Renal Bloodscalp, who sends us back to wipe out the guild.
For some reason, Anishai isn't yet hostile. I backstab her anyway...
...and the unthinkable happens. How? Why? Why was Arkanis Gath here?
Arkanis Gath is the guy who instantly kills you if you turn any of the Shadow Thieves hostile before siding with Bodhi. But he doesn't show up if you're killing Mae'Var on Renal Bloodscalp's orders.
I did talk to Renal, didn't I?
I load up my old save and stop by Mae'Var, who is also not hostile. But to my relief, a quick look at my journal confirms that I did in fact get Renal's last assignment. It seems that a bug prevented Mae'Var's guild hall from going hostile, which also meant Arkanis Gath appeared despite Renal's orders. Mae'Var won't even speak to us. Afraid of triggering another visit from Arkanis Gath but with no idea how to fix the bug, I CTRL-Y Mae'Var and scoot back to Renal Bloodscalp. Do not pass GO, do not collect loot or XP.
We have another horrible scare in the skinner quest, when I foolishly assumed that I could keep Frisk safe from the Rune Assassin's backstabs just by keeping them near the back. I just barely get Frisk upstairs before the backstabbers finish them off, and discover that I can enter the bottom floor with only some party members, ensuring that the others do not get hurt!
Naturally, the assassins are carrying those stupid mirrors, which means we lose another Stone to Flesh scroll to recover our poor basilisk. Over at the Den of the Seven Vales, I bungle an attempt to get Brennan Risling to backstab Sorcerous Amon, but Smelly Porkslicer compensates by butchering the poor backstabber himself. We charm Pooky, who charms Amon, who gets blown to pieces by Mencar Pennypincher. This is the kind of silly stuff that happens when you play an aggressive Seducer. But Frisk is safely hidden behind a wall (their spells can go through walls; they ignore line of sight).
We smash the barbarian, confuse the dwarf and chop him up, and petrify Pooky. Our basically can petrify basically everything, from Spirit Trolls... ...to the basilisk itself. Again. I don't know how this basilisk keeps getting petrified and somehow never gets shattered. We kill the Yuan-ti Mage with some lingering poison damage traps from Maneira (Frisk, as a Seducer, can never set any traps).
The basilisk makes short work of the numerous trolls, Maneira breaks down the golems, and we head downstairs to confront TorGal. With a Greater Malison on the enemy and a Remove Magic on the Lesser Basilisk, our basilisk proves itself to be a fragile but reliable glass cannon. Even when Maneira and Gorky's Invisible Stalkers fail their saves against Chaos, the basilisk and its rage immunities pulls through, petrifying both enemy mages as well as TorGal himself. On to the Druid Grove! Petrification speeds things up with the trolls, and even lands us an early kill on Ihtafeer. But due to some lucky saving throws, the enemy survived long enough to deal lots of damage before they fell. We lost a fair number of potions taking down Ihtafeer's buddies.
We had a brief scare when the basilisk got confused close to Cernd, but it didn't petrify him. After blasting the last batch of druids with a Skull Traps... ...we finished up the Trademeet questline and gathered enough gold to complete Chapter 2.
Normally, single-classed thieves cannot side with Bodhi. But it seems that one of my mods lets you talk Bodhi into it. Flirting with creepy vampire babes fills us with determination.
Now, about those devils. We have two fights to win before we can take on Belhifet (plus the fights in the elevator, but those are easy). As Voghiln keeps 14 scrolls of chaotic command in his scroll case, I decide that we can just go all out and use six of these scrolls right away. Combine that with resist fear, and suddenly, the devils don't do all that much (yes, invisible hellcats are still annoying, but since most opponents spam charm, hold and fear spells, that's a big part of the danger gone). We also use our summons, a haste spell and some of the potions we know we're not going to need for the final battle to make things even easier:
First battle done. During the second battle, the devils manage to take down our summons, though a monster summoning charge provides further distractions:
We answer a riddle to get a great +3 longsword:
And now, let's go for an elevator ride that's even longer than the ones in Mass Effect 1. Before we enter, though, we go all out with buffs - our plan is to dodge the initial dispel magic with everyone but one party member. The most important buffs include chaotic commands and PfE (from scrolls) for everyone, resist fear, 100 fire resist via scrolls and potions, high strength and dexterity scores, potions of invulnerability, defense and heroism, oils of speed, absorption (one type of devil summoned by Belhifet uses lightning bolts) and some defensive spell-based buffs (mostly ironskins and stoneskins, with blur, MI and spirit armor for Nahema). We have also decided to have our arcane spellcasters use three of their level 4 spellslots for "enchant weapon" (+3 weapons are needed to hit Belhifet) - the targets are Arbogast (I don't have any +3 bullets - there are some in the game, but without a thief I couldn't easily get to them), Aikar (who has the new +3 longsword, but he will propably have to stay away from melee range quite often - this allows him to use his +1 throwing daggers) and Minsc (who has no +3 weapons because I screwed up the Rashemen Duo sidequest completely, and +3 arrows are very limited - Corwin, the best archer, is going to use most of those).
I actually did some testing for this fight - I loaded up a save from my very first SoD run, turned on difficulty based extra damage (it was on insane difficulty, but without that) and watched Belhifet, Hephernaan and their summons do what they do without damaging them, just to refresh my memory and look what their most dangerous abilites would be. Thus, I formulated two possible strategies. For both, good movement is absolutely crucial - without it, both will definitely fail on LoB. And movement on this platform is somewhat difficult, as quite often, at certain borders of the area, you can't move around as freely as you might think (characters tend to get stuck or trapped quite easily).
Approach 1 requires a combination of movement and endurance - this would be trying to kill Hephernaan, the summons and after that, always bring down the gated summons right away as soon as Belhifet spawns new ones. I wasn't sure how much time that would leave me to actually deal damage to Belhifet between his gate spells (thanks to ridiculous demon hp on LoB), and I also feared that the 1 hour buffs, possibly even the 2 hours buffs, would run out if I went with this approach. Approach 2 requires even more movement and also great DPS - this would involve trying to ignore/kite the summons and go for the main boss right away. Seems very risky on LoB, but I eventually decided to go with this strategy for two reasons: a) This is a damage focused party. We have an archer and a kensai, both quite squishy, but deadly. Nahema is our only real tank - Arbogast can be tanky, but shouldn't put himself into dangerous situations because he's the Bhaalspawn. Voghiln's ability to tank will be sacrificed, as I intend to have him take Belhifet's dispel magic (during my testing with the other party, I noticed he seems to always target the party member closest to him shortly after the battle starts) - so endurance isn't our biggest strength. b) We are actually low on some crucial consumables thanks to bad shopping decisions in BG1 and low money during the entirety of SoD. If our 1 hour buffs run out, we have no oils of speed left and have to use haste - which doesn't last very long either and will give us fatigue (plus, it requires our party to actually be in one place, which seems like a tough task to ask). Thus, we have to end the battle quickly.
Let's go! Voghiln runs right at and past Belhifet, and as predicted, the devil dispels all of his buffs - while everyone else is fine:
Right away, our skald drinks magic shielding to protect against charm, hold, fear and all the other bad things that could happen to him. His next few actions will be: Stoneskin from a scrolls, oil of speed (our final one), fire protection potion and fire protection scroll. After that, he will mostly sing. The other thing that happens right away: Arbogast starts summoning spirit lions. They are immune to the various annoying effects here (every non spirit summon would propably get feared, except for the lesser stone golems) and can take attention away from our party. While Caelar starts to get very low, our party finds decent positions (Corwin is very safe and our best damage dealer with her 80 void-tipped arrows, Aikar can only be hit by one opponent, which is fine right now (his ac is good thanks to invulnerability), everyone else isn't actually being attacked thanks to Caelar and the summons, so Nahema and Minsc can go for melee damage) - we bring Belhifet to injured:
Things get messy when our spirit animals go down (though Caelar is still up, constantly drinking healing potions). Our attempt to provide more fodder fails as summoned monsters get feared and ignored. An erinye starts shooting at Corwin, so she has to move:
Meanwhile, Arbogast has been casting true sight, to counter Belhifet's constant use of improved invisibility. The devil disappears again right after a tick of the spell, so we don't know his position for a while - we scatter to avoid taking too much damage, and Caelar dies. Belhifet is revealed and uses his aoe fire spell (which does nothing). By now, I have to keep three of my party members moving (though they can shoot, sometimes, if my control is good). However, Corwin still has a good position, and the same is true for Arbogast. Plus, Nahema doesn't even seem to care about all the demons - and Belhifet takes some damage from his own minions:
We have to drink a lot of healing potions, mainly on Minsc and Aikar. Aikar's throwing daggers actually deal a ton of damage to Belhifet, and the void-tipped arrows are amazing as well. The demon disappears - and makes a crucial mistake: He teleports to the western corner of the map, FAR away from all of his devils that could potentially protect him - and my party is in a great position, as true sight removes his II and Corwin had previously brought him to near death:
However, near death is still a ton of hp on LoB, and with more and more devils being spawned in, things could get dicey. We use our time before getting swarmed again to deal as much damage as possible:
The devils close up to the party again, and we have nothing to distract them. Time to kite as many of them as possible - they go for Arbogast and Minsc (who has to use Durlag's Goblet to stay alive), but I get Corwin and Aikar in great positions while Nahema melees Belhifet - and Voghiln even starts to contribute with his song:
Our positioning advantage is so huge at this point - if Belhifet doesn't teleport away once again, he's doomed. All the devils except for the newest one gated in still follow the less relevant party members, trying to catch up - eventually they all go for Minsc, so Arbogast joins in again - and delivers the final hit:
Pretty much all of the initial buffs are still going strong - this battle took quite a while to play, mostly because I had to pause so much to constantly correct everyones's movement, but I guess not that many ingame rounds have actually passed.
The devils despawn - except for Hephernaan:
Come on now - I've killed your master, do you seriously think you stand a chance?
Hephernaan's devil form is really quite weak.
Arbogast, Aikar and Nahema complete the epilogue:
And we're done with SoD. That was incredibly challenging for me. Those freaking LoB thieves... Many deaths, many chunkings, but in the end, Arbogast never died (never got very close to it, really), and he's the one who counts. I'm very happy with the performance of Nahema in particular - of course, it's no secret that fighter/illusionists are incredibly strong, so I shouldn't be surprised.
Some thoughts on LoB in BG1 and SoD: I didn't like the experience of playing LoB in early BG1 - everything is so slow and tedious, and the game balance feels wrong - supposedly powerful mages are still almost as easy to kill as they are in vanilla, but random groups of hobgoblins can destroy your entire party with a couple of arrows. Things get a bit better in later BG1, to be sure. For SoD, LoB offers an entirely new experience, at least for me - on core or insane, the most efficient way to deal with most groups revolves around throwing as many fireballs as possible at them. This only works against the very weakest of groups in LoB, so new approaches have to be found. For me, it was mostly either invisibility + summons (against enemies with normal weapons) or some kind of mass disable (mostly web, sometimes chaos, generally mixed with greater malison and slow). Still, these approaches didn't work for every encounter or had to be executed in very different ways depending on context, so in general, I felt like gameplay was a bit more varied compared to my previous runs. In conclusion, while I can't really recommend LoB for BG1, I would say that giving it a try for SoD might certainly be worth it (if one can get past Korlasz's Tomb, which provides this game with a somewhat ridiculous difficulty curve).
With Bodhi at our side, we don't have to deal with any nasty vampires. Instead, we have to deal with massive hordes of backstabbers combined with spellcasters with divination spells.
Which, considering our main character is a single-classed thief, was actually a pretty stupid decision on my part.
But there is one upside, which turns out to be a very big deal indeed. In Bodhi's lair, we find Meredath. Who just so happens to a level 8/8 fighter/thief. Like Maneira, she is best off being made into a Bounty Hunter. I've been planning on bringing a vampire into the party, but not for level drain. Unfortunately, the better vampires--who have more than Meredath's pathetic 1 APR--will require much, much higher levels than we currently possess, and I'm not even sure I'll be able to get the kind I want before ToB rolls around.
We actually had to use a workaround to get Meredath to function. See, SCS gives vampires four different weapons in each quick weapon slot, but fighter/thieves only get two. Normally this has no effect, but it means she can't level up. I fix it by rigging the last two items to be droppable (though the better solution would just be to remove them via EEKeeper).
Meredath can never equip a main-hand weapon, as her natural weapons already fill up her only slots. But they are very nice. The first is a +2 weapon that drains 2 levels per hit; the second is a +4 weapon that drains 3 Constitution per hit for 50 rounds.
Note that Ascension Melissan and the Five are immune to Intelligence drain. But not any other form of stat drain.
We have a few things to do before confronting Aran Linvail. For one thing, Maneira happens to have a Staff of Striking now. We stop by the Unseeing Eye lair just to get the Gauntlets of Dexterity to compensate for our basilisk's terrible stats. Despite my earlier decision not to use the Wand of Lightning to bomb stuff anymore, I just don't have the patience for Fireballs and Cloudkills and Special Snares and whatever. You can actually just bomb those beholders indefinitely. They'll come around the corners and can get pretty close, but they'll never follow you all the way across the bridge.
Beholders are best handled indirectly. Traps are a good solution. Our Lesser Basilisk has less luck, because, as I've mentioned before in a different context, Berserkers don't get immunities to petrification. I think I'm in a good position to deal with the Unseeing Eye despite only being in Chapter 3, so I go ahead and tackle him. Meredath lands an early kill on one of the Death Tyrants. But our immunities are very spotty indeed. The Lesser Basilisk stays in good condition, but Meredath gets webbed and Maneira is petrified. Gorky runs in and saves her before she gets shattered. The Unseeing Eye casts PFMW, but apparently it's also immune to normal weapons. Our basilisk can't touch it. Worse yet, a Death Ray puts down our vampire, and the enemy petrifies Maneira once again. An Invisible Stalker takes down the second Death Tyrant, but the Unseeing Eye is still immune to everything we might throw at it. And it takes advantage of Gorky's low HP when he tries to bail out Maneira again. Gorky perishes as another Death Ray strikes the party. Frisk deploys the Rod of Resurrection, as I'm not sure how else they could get out of this alive. Gorky cures Maneira's petrification, but he can't talk to her while she's webbed. Frisk resurrects Meredath as well, but things are looking ugly, as Gorky gets charmed before he can actually bring Maneira back into the party. With his excellent save vs. spell, Gorky automatically makes his save against Dispel Charm, returning him to our control. But he gets webbed--Dispel Charm is at +5 and easy to make, but Web is at -2 and is much more difficult. Meredath tries to pitch in, but traps are not yet her specialty. Finally, our basilisk recovers, but it's in very bad condition. Gorky puts up a small layer of defenses, but it's not enough. The Unseeing Eye kills him in two hits, in one round. Growing desperate, and anxious about our poor THAC0 without Maneira and Gorky around, I have the basilisk try a Potion of Firebreath. It deals a bit of damage, but the Unseeing Eye punishes it with PW: Kill. Meredath finally speaks to Maneira, bringing her back into the party and giving her some supplies so she can heal herself. But this leaves the Unseeing Eye to wander, and it floats right into Frisk's room, endangering our main character. Stealth is impossible due to the Unseeing Eye's True Sight spell, so Frisk downs our only Potion of Magic Shielding.
Maneira and Meredath come to the rescue. Our Efreeti launches a Fireball to minimal effect, while Maneira runs right into another fatal Flame Arrow. Meredath engages the Unseeing Eye on her own, but to my frustration, Haiass takes the final blow. Still, the Unseeing Eye is dead, and that's what's important. We resurrect the fallen and finish up the questline, bumping Gorky up to level 14 and giving us access to the Teleport spell, which lets us visit any previously visited location in SoA, from almost any area.
Despite our struggles with the Unseeing Eye, I think we're equipped to deal with the Planar Sphere, a potentially deadly side quest. Since this is a solo run, in the sense that we can't create characters or recruit NPCs, Valygar is out of luck. NPCs are easy to kill in my install because they start at level 1.
Before I enter the Planar Sphere, I decide to see if I can get two Rings of the Ram out of Tolgerias. We charm him, lure him outside, and have him empty his spellbook using Improved Alacrity. This is just in case things go wrong. But in the end, we get the ring without using violence. Maneira obliterates the halfling cannibals. The Lesser Basilisk proves useful, too. Tolgerias is a little trickier, since he'll turn hostile if we get too close. But we manage to get two important HLAs out of him before he goes red. I manage to take control of him again later on, but foolishly use PW: Kill on his Magical Sword instead of himself. I should have known better, since I once charmed Kangaxx with a Control Circlet and made him kill himself with PW: Kill.
Tolgerias remains hostile, but the Fallen Planetar is on hand to deal with the stuff he throws out. Eventually, I send out Maneira and have her set a normal trap, which proves to be an important detail several rounds later. Level 11 traps are easily the best. The process continues as we dance around him, setting traps whenever he's out of Maneira's sight, until eventually, he fails a saving throw against the odds. To my disappointment, Tolgerias drops no Ring of the Ram. We only get to use one.
Lavok is easier, because we keep control of him for three rounds instead of just one. We empty his entire spellbook using Improved Alacrity, just like we did with the first Tolgerias. Lavok survives several rounds afterward, but PFMW is an imperfect defense against Maneira, and Lavok is out of ammo. When Lavok collapses, the only threat left is the Tanar'ri. We put it down, but after seeing Gorky failing a save against Death Gaze, I decide that we don't need to do any more demon hunting. We've had several close calls, but the next area is far worse. We now have to storm the Shadow Thief headquarters and endure the numerous dangers that one of my mods introduces to Aran Linvail's lair.
The moment we go down the stairs, the whole complex is on lockdown, shutting off our escape. The sound of the alarm fills us with determination.
What with all the talk of chunking going on, instead of posting a full update I'll just suffice with informing you that Slythe stabbed Autumn to death with a critical. Don't be sorry. My heart wasn't really in playing anyway, and it hasn't been in recent times. Possibly burned out on Baldur's Gate (and thus gaming), I might attempt an Enuhal-style SCS/LoB run soonish - btw amazing work friend, hats off to you! - or not. In the latter case I intend to check in occasionally to read and comment on recent events.
Long-life challenge - cleric dualling to thief (update 1)
I thought I would have a break from LoB for a bit and have another go at this challenge, which has seen no progress in recent months. I have had a few attempts at that with a mage every now and then, but didn't fancy another of those now, so decided to roll up another character. The random selection for that gave me a cleric that duals to a thief. I've set the starting character up as a Priest of Lathander and am minded to dual at level 11, i.e. he would have to survive Siege of Dragonspear as a cleric.
After getting the normal fast start by shooting Shoal I went to Beregost and got Algernon's Cloak - only to accidentally sell that rather than identifying it . However, the basilisk area provided enough XP to reach level 6 with silence proving useful against Mutamin and Kirian.
Skeletons made mincemeat of the sirines and provided enough distraction for me to kill the first 2 golems, despite using a non-proficient melee weapon (getting to level 7 there).
That gave the skeletons a boost, so they could deal with the 3rd golem themselves.
After another group of sirines further up the coast, Durlag's Tower offered more quick XP. With the help of skeletons I cleared the inside upper tower (including the ghost that I normally don't do),
before sneaking upstairs to sort out the basilisks - now up to level 7.
Inside the Nashkel Mine Mulahey had nothing to say for himself before being shot down.
That meant no silence was available for the amazons - so a few brief screams were heard there.
Nimbul was also silenced with more skeletons ensuring an instant death for him before Rasaad could sniff the chance for a kill.
In this unmodded game Tranzig doesn't speak without being spoken to - meaning he has no defence against a general attack.
On the way up to the Bandit Camp I picked up an ogre's belt and saw off a silenced Tarnesh (though he did manage to get a hit with his staff) before picking up the pantaloons.
Summons made a nasty mess of the inhabitants of an ankheg nest before I finally arrived at the Bandit Camp. The standard bandits were no match for skeletons, but Taurgosz was a different matter. He refused to be commanded, but eventually fell to a buffed sling-shot.
Inside Tazok's tent more enemies were struck dumb - and, shortly, struck dead.
Sarah has survived bg! I almost lost the run against some early jelly ... then we settled down and ambushed a certain drow. the rest of the run went by the numbers with 'web' to keep the palace assassins limited and invisibility to get through the maze quickly.
cannon party; Viconia, + 3 wisdom Jaheira, Minsc and Dynaheir
After zipping through the Cloakwood Drasus and co provided almost no obstacle.
Sanctuary provided a quick route down to Davaeorn where summons led the way.
Up to that point I'd done very few reputation quests and hence was able to rest and get a second Bhaal horror ability. With that in the bank though a quick tour of the maps bumped reputation up to 20 and I did some shopping. The Greenstone Amulet then allowed me to recover the tome from Durlag's Tower.
I rushed through work in the City, looking for the tomes, Helm & Cloak of Balduran, 2 Necklaces of Missiles, nymph cloak and the Shield of the Falling Stars. There was a case of more haste less speed though after I had talked to Jalantha once. I accidentally talked to her again and this time ignored what the options said - assuming the quest would remain active. However, that wasn't the case when I got to the temple (which was bad news for my fellow cleric ).
After donating at another temple and doing a few extra quests, reputation was back up to 20 and I nipped back to Beregost to buy Algernon's Cloak back (the penny-pinching sod hadn't even identified it). I also decided to get another source of magical damage, though the chances of making much use of that vary from slim to none based on my prior experience.
Back in Baldur's Gate I wanted the ring of free action, so took on the Iron Throne. A single silence shut everyone important up and allowed buffed skeletons to clear the field.
Rather than report back immediately to Duke Eltan though I remembered I hadn't yet picked up the violet potion - which is the only means available to obtain the strength tome. With that in the bag it didn't take long to deal with Candlekeep, though it is slightly worrying when your constitution drops to 1 (due to also wearing the Claw of Kazgaroth). Silence once more ruled there over Prat's gang (it really is an incredibly vicious spell in BG1 ).
With nothing left worth buying I went straight after Slythe. He saved against 2 silences, but was out-classed in a hacking match with skeletons anyway.
At the palace I gave the dopplegangers a chance by taking them all on at once. Two Bhaal horrors only affected one of them, but buffed skeletons helped finish things off with both dukes still alive.
The enemies in the maze didn't make much of a showing and the skeletons took out the Undercity party as well with something in hand.
In the temple I used sanctuary to activate Sarevok and get Semaj to teleport out into some skeletons. He made one of the classic no-reload mistakes there by trying to cast lightning bolt at close quarters without electricity immunity .
Sarevok was then pulled out and briefly occupied with skeletons. I cast sanctuary as he was killing the last of those in order to get some animal replacements and the few seconds they lasted was enough to get Sarevok to near death. Rather than indulge in any item use I just kited him round until he'd had enough.
That's the easy bit over - I don't suppose Siege of Dragonspear will be so straight-forward (although looking at my character record on transfer it looks like I've got a bit of a head-start there ).
What with all the talk of chunking going on, instead of posting a full update I'll just suffice with informing you that Slythe stabbed Autumn to death with a critical. Don't be sorry. My heart wasn't really in playing anyway, and it hasn't been in recent times. Possibly burned out on Baldur's Gate (and thus gaming), I might attempt an Enuhal-style SCS/LoB run soonish - btw amazing work friend, hats off to you! - or not. In the latter case I intend to check in occasionally to read and comment on recent events.
Thank you very much, though I should mention, to avoid any confusion, that my current run isn't SCS/LoB, but rather vanilla LoB, as stated in my opening post - the only SCS-like part is SoD, which automatically employs SCS-like scripts on higher difficulty levels (and SCS, in its current form, doesn't have any further impact on them). While I think myself capable of combining the BG1 part of such a run with SCS, I couldn't say the same for BG2/ToB, as I have very limited experience when it comes to SCSII, in no small part thanks to a constant barrage of technical difficulties that have been plaguing me for a very long time.
Now that we're in Amn, we can relax for a bit - most enemies early on won't be able to deal with our summons (especially the fire elementals) at all. We make our way out of the dungeon and go for the Umar Hills + Temple Ruins right away, only stopping to pick up two of our new companions (Anomen and Jan) - oh, and Jan steals Daystar while the city gates lich is still busy trying to stop time.
We complete our party with Mazzy and watch our fire elementals do their thing. When taking the sun gem, a couple of shadows and shadow fiends actually decide to completely ignore our summons for once and go straight for Arbogast. While his ironskins protect him from damage, his strength gets drained down to 4, and Jan tries to save him with II. Jan himself gets interrupted and stunned, but Nahema starts casting invisibility 10' radius to save both characters. Meanwhile, Aikar uses sunray to kill some of the threatening shadows:
Nahema's spell works, and Jan can safely detect illusions to reveal the remaining opponents once again (as invisibility 10' radius hits both allies and enemies alike) - this time, they have no choice but to face our summons. The only opponent in the first level capable of hurting our elementals is the bone golem, but it fails to do much of anything:
We make our way to the shade lord, throwing around some random buffs, including some death wards - he does like his necromancy spells. Sunray does decent damage, but no instant kills:
Anomen's true sight proves to be very useful when the shade lord triggers three defenses at once - all of them illusion based. With no protection left, he simply dies:
We get back to the city, now with a complete party. Arbogast buys a magic license, and we get ambushed. These aren't undead, but after Nahema's greater malison hits, sunray blinds most of the group, making this fight trivial:
To get our hands on the ring of human influence for better shopping, we do the circus tent quest, employing true sight once again:
With our 18 charisma, what do we buy? A limited wish scroll of course! We want that throwing dagger for Aikar as soon as possible! Jan reads the scroll for us, he has enough wisdom to get the quest option. On our way to the bridge district, we get ambushed once again:
During our search for Roger the Fence, we obtain the Cloak of the Sewers:
Invisibility 10' radius helps us to get to Grae without any further battles:
We use the spell again to get to the ogre, and once more to leave the map. Now, Aikar is a force to be reckoned with.
The third ambush is dealt with via greater malison + chaos:
During the long LoB battles, you need lots of ammunition. That's why we go for WK level 1 right away to get the Crimson Dart +3 and the quiver/case of plenty. However, we run into some vampiric wraiths, and they ignore our summons in order to go right after our party. Nahema casts haste and we run away for now:
After resting, Mazzy's NPC quest starts, so we have to deal with that first:
Now, let's return to WK and buff up - we can take these vampiric wraiths. The first one happens to be isolated from his ally, right at the entrance:
Four of us get level drained, but that's nothing Anomen can't fix. Summons, with our party out of sight, kill the second wraith, and we clear the first WK level except for the statues. Next up are the Windspear Hills - I just want to deliver the acorns and obtain an ankheg plate for Arbogast, but Jan's NPC quest starts, so we finish that one as quickly as possible:
While we're doing NPC quests anyway, Mazzy completes her second one - we cheat by throwing her an oil of speed and her bow, so she can easily kite her opponent:
Finally, we complete the first part of the slaver questchain:
With the money, we buy The Army Scythe for Jan and the Sling of Seeking for Anomen. Now we always have multiple ranged weapons available, even if we run out of ammunition: The Crimson Dart for Arbogast, the Boomerang Dagger for Aikar, the Sling of Seeking for Anomen, Tuigan Bow + Quiver of Plenty for Mazzy, Army Scythe and Case of Plenty for Jan. Nahema doesn't have anything specific yet, but she can handle melee combat anyway.
Well, here we go. Aran Linvail's lair, buffed with a bunch of Clay Golems with Cursed Wound effects and a horde of spellcasters and Kensai->Thieves. Not to mention a lot of new traps and a much deadlier fight with Aran Linvail himself.
Here is our party so far:
Frisk, Seducer
Gorken Bloodaxe, Conjurer
Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Meredath, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Lesser Basilisk, Berserker
While Haiass gnaws on the first batch of enemies, Maneira sneaks around disarming the numerous traps that another mod added to the Shadow Thief hideout. Notice the trap recovery string. Disarming the traps in this area lets you pick up a very small number of Arrows of Dispelling and Detonation.
The Priests of Mask in this area like to summon Aerial Servants, which are bugged to be near-perpetually invisible at all times, even if you use Detect Illusions on them. Even with extremely high APR and a low speed factor, it's almost always impossible to hit them before they go invisible again. Eventually I give up and keep Meredath out of harm's way, letting Haiass deal with the Aerial Servant. I have no idea why Haiass is allowed to target the Aerial Servant but I'm not.
I send out Meredath to deal with the Clay Golems to the north, but there are some things that only Maneira can handle. Meredath can't use missile weapons, for one thing, nor can she disarm traps. I was worried about this area, but it seems that there's at least one thing I don't need to worry about. Most of the enemies here use nonmagical weapons, which means Meredath can tank almost everyone. Dedral, unfortunately, is draining a lot of our potions; Meredath's defenses aren't great once you get past her weapon immunities. Frisk charms Dedral to decrease the pressure on Meredath, and it works better than I expected. It's a disturbing sign, though. If these guys can deal 100+ damage backstabs on an attack roll of 3 against a well-armored opponent, I don't see how anyone besides Gorky could survive against them. It's a good thing we have Meredath.
My happiness is short-lived, however. Another Priest of Mask summons another Aerial Servant, and just like before, it can go invisible immediately after attacking. It hardly seems fair, considering the Aerial Servant never had to tackle the Twisted Rune to get that kind of power. Meredath repeatedly fails to even get an attack roll on the Aerial Servant, and eventually I just down a Potion of Invisibility and let the immortal Haiass chomp it. There's a special rod that lets you deactivate some of the golems in this area... ...but the golems next to Haz himself cannot be disabled. Meredath tackles them on her own, and discovers that the Cursed Wound ability is bugged: instead of making the target immune to healing spells, it casts Farsight. We use it to spy on Haz. Haz bombs us when we engage him, but he can't follow up because Maneira is applying pressure with nonmagical darts, bypassing his PFMW and forcing him to re-cast Stoneskin instead of attacking us. His PFMW wears off, his invisibility is dispelled, and potions keep us safe from his damage spells until we do him in with Darts of Wounding. Time to confront Aran Linvail himself. With two Bounty Hunters in the group, we can dispatch the troublesome backstabbers in the hall before they have a chance to one-shot Frisk. Aran Linvail activates a very nasty Spell Trigger and butchers Meredath's Vhailor's Helm clone, but CON drain kills him shortly after. But Aran Linvail comes back, and I discover, to my amazement, that the heavily buffed Aran Linvail with the Fire Shields and everything was his clone. The real one had no such buffs active--the exact opposite of a normal Mislead spell. And for some reason, he's still invisible even though the death of his clone should have ended Mislead.
Gorky launches Greater Malison from the hallway, prompting one of the backstabbers to give chase, only to run right into the last of our traps. Meredath runs down Aran Linvail and tries to kill him with CON drain. Aran Linvail responds with a backstab... ...despite being 15 feet away, fully visible, and facing the wrong direction.
What the hell is going on? I already killed one heavily-buffed Aran Linvail, there's a second blue one running around, and now there's a constantly invisible third Aran Linvail landing backstabs with every hit.
The first one was a Simulacrum? Aran Linvail isn't high enough level to cast Simulacrum, and I saw no notice of him casting the spell or using a scroll. And his Simulacrum gets pre-buffs?
Meredath keeps chasing the blue Aran, hoping to finally expose the real one, but the clone stays on the move. The Lesser Basilisk tries to petrify it, but both Meredath and the basilisk get punished for their efforts. The Lesser Basilisk can't get through the doorway, so the only way to keep it safe is to pull it back into the hallway, exposing the rest of the party to enemy pressure by inviting the real Aran Linvail to come in. We lose our buffs to the enemy priest's Remove Magic, but the basilisk lands an early kill on the backstabber. We desperately need to get rid of that Mislead clone. It's already at Near Death, but Gorky can't reach it in time to save Meredath from two backstabs in rapid succession. Aran Linvail is finally visible, reducing his damage output by 80% and granting us a moment of safety. The basilisk hides with a Potion of Invisibility, though it doesn't stay hidden long, and Gorky helps Maneira work over the other remaining backstabber. Wary of the enemy priest, Gorky bombs her and takes away a spell. But to my disbelief, Maneira's nonmagical darts cannot bypass Aran Linvail's PFMW, and to my frustration, the priest summons another buggy Aerial Servant. Both the priest and the backstabber vanish, so I have Gorky focus on taking down Aran Linvail's defenses instead. But despite a Slow spell, the Aerial Servant lands a heavy blow on Maneira, and before she can react, the Kensai->Thief nails her. The Lesser Basilisk petrifies the backstabber, finally putting an end to his mischief, but we're not in the clear yet. We burn a charge from the Rod of Resurrection to bring back Meredath while the basilisk soaks up damage from Aran Linvail and the Aerial Servant. Gorky pulls out a Spell Sequencer to scatter the enemy, but the action clouds his aura, leaving him unable to drink our only Potion of Clarity before Aran Linvail hits him with Chaos. Against the odds, Gorky fails his save. Aran Linvail kills the basilisk and Frisk flees to the east in search of safety. Meredath gets badly hurt despite Gorky's Teleport Field. The situation deteriorates. With Aran Linvail buffed by PFMW and no Maneira in sight, we cannot apply enough pressure to keep Aran Linvail on the defensive. He Slows Gorky and stuns Meredath. He kills Meredath in short order. Our only remaining party member is Gorky, who will be confused for the next several rounds. In the likely event that he gets killed before he recovers, Frisk will be all alone, and I don't know if they can handle this on their own.
Worse yet, our Rod of Resurrection is in Gorky's hands. I can't resurrect Maneira or Meredath or even the basilisk until Gorky recovers from Chaos or dies. There's only one thing Frisk can do to even the odds.
But it works. It doesn't last long enough for us to disable Aran Linvail in any way, but it does buy Gorky enough time to recover from Chaos, if not Slow. While Aran is busy trying to kill Haiass, Gorky downs an Oil of Speed and follows up with an SI: Abjuration spell. Soon both Maneira and Meredath are back on their feet, and though Maneira cannot put on any armor (Meredath doesn't need it; her base AC is low), she can still drink a Potion of Invulnerability. We might be in miserable shape, but finally Aran Linvail is no longer Misled, no longer bolstered by Kensai->Thieves or Aerial Servants, and has run out of PFMW spells. Gorky buffs Maneira to finish off Aran Linvail before he has a chance to recover. Aran Linvail crumples. But we're still trapped. I poke around and discover the culprit: the Aerial Servant, who escaped the room via our Teleport Field spell. Apparently all enemies need to die before that door opens. Rather than wait out the Aerial Servant's duration, I just kill it. The door is unlocked! We trudge back to Bodhi and inform her that we're not ready to leave yet. We really need to get another couple of levels for Frisk.
Screwing around with side quests while Imoen languishes in Spellhold fills us with determination.
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.
It may be somewhat hard to figure out without thoroughly inspecting the scripts, so I should probably clarify - if you refuse to duel then she goes into retreat mode and walks back behind the crusader lines. It can be interrupted when a character is under direct attack, but unless they feel endangered they'll ignore the battle around and go about their business. Difficulty doesn't affect this.
Thank you very much, though I should mention, to avoid any confusion, that my current run isn't SCS/LoB, but rather vanilla LoB, as stated in my opening post - the only SCS-like part is SoD, which automatically employs SCS-like scripts on higher difficulty levels (and SCS, in its current form, doesn't have any further impact on them). While I think myself capable of combining the BG1 part of such a run with SCS, I couldn't say the same for BG2/ToB, as I have very limited experience when it comes to SCSII, in no small part thanks to a constant barrage of technical difficulties that have been plaguing me for a very long time.
Doesn't matter to me. You beat SoD on LoB difficulty, which is simply brilliant in my view
Yuppers. As someone who hasn't played SoD yet, and is avoiding spoilers, I haven't been reading Enuhal's posts. I have noticed out of the corner of my eye, though, that he's doing outstanding work.
Ok, I have a confession to make. I'm playing, and not with the late Aestica.
Her name is Abigail. She's a cleric. She's based on an old Ascension Solo Challenge character by the same name. Her boob armor is ridiculous.
She's currently in the Cloakwood, kicking spider ass and taking names- stacking boons (not boobs) on Relair's Mistake
I probably won't post on this run, since I almost certainly won't have time to finish, but it's possible -possible- that Abigail will make an appearance. We'll see.
In any case, best wishes to the active challengers!
After having dealt with the Iron Throne top floor, we went in search of a Stoneskin scroll. There's two in my setup : one in Neera's quest, the other is at the end of the Ice Island quest. We went for the latter. We hid under invisibility all the way through Dezkiel, who, in Unfinished Business, is in a bonus ice cave and flanked by two Snow Golem (it's actually also the same map as the cave below Candlekeep). We buffed and went in. We killed Dezkiel, his Snow Golem and a few summons without too much problem.
It was time to go into Candlekeep. Since I'm trying to find the Greenstone Amulet, which gives permanent Mind Shield protection instead of having charges under IR, but can't find it because Item Randomizer, I decided to fight the Rieltar and his gang. Maybe they have it, you never know. Not much to say about the actual fight : an opening backstab from Alora, a bunch of fireballs, a few traps and melee power trashed them. No picture needed, really. They didn't have the Greenstone Amulet, sadly.
Then, Prat and his gang were taken care of. It was a bit more complicated : Prat's team was killed quickly, but he himself was more elusive. After having killed his goons, he hid somewhere I couldn't find. I went to sleep in the catacombs, thinking I would just forget about him. He showed up when I came back into the cave. He then managed to hold Kivan, who was later killed by bunch of spiders that were activated by him while running around the cave. After a bit of hide and seek, we managed to take him down.
At this point, we were all well below the level cap. Since I'm not sure I want to go to Balduran's Island, I decided to clear the first underground level of Durlag's Tower. After having fetched all ques items, we fought the four Warders. Kivan died again, because I forgot that Fear can stun target. He was quickly killed by the warders after that.
Then, Branwen was charmed. Since she's the only one who can cast Break Enchantment, I tried to charm her back. She however resisted one Dire Charm and two Charm Person from Xan (an enchanter...) as well as the three Domination charges from Miliuel's harp. That's unlucky. Branwen was trying to attack Jaheira, but since the latter had rock-bottom AC (at this point of the game at least), the former couldn't do much attacking us until the charm wore off.
Avarice was backstabbing Alora, but never managed to take her down. We then dealt good damage on him before he vanished in thin air for a while. Love and Fear were then taken out by melee power. Avarice showed up again, only to get killed for good this time. Pride, who I was working on at the same time, died the last.
We then went into the next underground basements, only to stop before the Chess fight, which I won't be doing. It's a good run, so I won't be poking the bear uselessly. We sold a bunch of stuff then got back into Baldur's Gate. I couldn't find the Greenstone Amulet yet, but I don't care anymore. I'll press on now. We're slowly approaching the end of BG1...
@JuliusBorisov: I can't move these comments to an existing discussion; only to a new one. Could you move these last few posts to the lounge?
I can do the same as what you can do. The way to solve such situations:
1) move comments you want to the new discussion 2) merge that new discussion with the one you want to have the comments in 3) delete the comment by System
@Alesia_BH Condolences on your run and good luck in your trip!
Rest assured, you are always welcome here, and with you the forum is a better place! Already looking forward to any story you will share in the future, be it about Asia or Faerun!
Re/Reloading - I find myself unable to continue with characters killed because of bugs, because, you know, characters were still killed and it just doesn't work in my head.
Her name is Abigail. She's a cleric. She's based on an old Ascension Solo Challenge character by the same name. Her boob armor is ridiculous.
Haha, that is some serious male fantasy in play there!
The funny thing is that the portrait is from vanilla Icewind Dale, which has been praised specifically because most of its portraits were pretty modest by typical fantasy standards.
Stalking and playing: condolences to Alesia and Blackraven and Grond0 for your losses, and sorry to see semiticgod's Pacifist break the rule. I was hoping at least one of us would make it through... Good luck to everyone not mentioned yet!
Baroque and company, first SoA post. Relevant mods: Item revisions, Divine Remix, SCS (no prebuffs), Rogue Rebalancing. I don't have initial screenshots, but here's the created cast: Baroque, Human Skald, LN and my CHARNAME. Supposed to take no kills the entire series. Sebastian, Human Painbearer of Ilmater. Kit can lay on hands once every 5 levels, and use Ilmater's Endurance which doubles HP, adds +2 to all saves, and prevents forced movement (Smite, Wing buffet, so on) for rounds equal to his level. Alina, Human Archer specializing in crossbows. Note that either DR or IR allows dual and multi-classed Clerics to use their old weapons, though after the dual is complete, you can never put more than half than your usual number of points. So after Alina duals, she can get at most 2 pips in any bow, but will still be able to use her crossbow GM. Vista, Gnome Illusionist/Thief. Find Traps and Pick Locks are already maxed, and Detect Illusions and Set Traps are the next two on my agenda.
The game starts off buggy, which is never a good sign. An imported Vista is supposed alive, but she's nowhere to be found. A reload of the very beginning fixes the situation, where Vista is apparently imported as dead as she was against Sarevok. One CTRL-R later, and we're set. Vista, grateful, decides to level almost instantly.
We release Minsc and Jaheira, taking both with us: additional APR is always handy with a Skald. The early tasks are soon complete, relieving Rieliv, preventing him from reliving, and killing the Jailkeep golem. Alina fights the Otyugh using stealth and a spear, and takes no damage from the fight. Returning some acorns also gives Baroque his first level in SoA.
We kill the Cambion, and then try to stealth through the Mephit Plane of Death with Alina. She makes it there successfully the first time, but fails a check on the way back and is tagged by a few mephits. Minsc and Sebastian wade in and kill two of them, and Alina's safe after that. The Mephit portals aren't too much more trouble: Sebastian and Vista use a few summon spells to distract the mephits while the large group slaughters the portals. We fight the Duergar, the doppelganger, and finally, Ulvaryl as well:
Fun fact: I actually spelled it right for the first time in forever. I usually miss the first 'l'.
Before too long, though, we're out. We send Minsc on his merry way, and proceed to the tent.
Where there's another bug waiting for us. Not a good sign at all. Note Aerie's sprite. I have no idea how this one failed.
She's a bad fit for a Skald party anyways, but it's still curious and annoying. The circus is put in order quickly, but Aerie's still stuck as an Ogre. Oh well, I guess we can't win them all. Baroque triggers the Cowled Wizard warning with a casting of Friends in the Adventurer's Mart, but that's going to be largely irrelevant. We leave for the Slums, where we quickly go through Gaelan's dialogue menu several times, and laugh at his suggestion to go do the Planar Prison questline first. Thanks but no thanks. We instead head for the Copper Coronet for our first quest and slaughter: the slavers.
Today's Freedom Sunday, according to the International Justice Mission, so I guess this is mildly appropriate? Even Nalia decides to get into the action.
The Sewers are cleared with little problem: the worst part was fighting the Mustard Jelly with two (?) weapons that could even affect it. We rest, and enter the slaver stockade invisibly and hasted. Game plan is to have Sebastian soak the aggression while Vista hits a Confusion spell, and the others sing or shoot stuff, depending on their classes. The spell has 100% success:
And the rest is relatively simple. The two mages waste a few spells on summons before they get close enough, and are shot to death, and Vista stocked up on Burning Hands to finish off the two Trolls in the compound. Returning to Hendak gives Alina level 9, and grand mastery in crossbows, not that it's gonna matter for awhile. She duals to Cleric instantly.
The reason I still have Jaheira with us is that she's invaluable in early SoA, at the very least: Pixie Dust is safe from the Cowled Wizards' detection, so I can actually turn the ambushes against the ambushers. Suna Suni has a bad time as half her squad ends up immobilized, with my own summons keeping the others occupied. It was a very clean win.
I don't have a screenshot of the second ambush, but it was just as underwhelming. We proceed with the Xzar and the Harper questline, though I still don't have access to my arcane spells. No matter: Level 5 Druid spells are great for other things other than invisibility...
Though invisibility's great as well.
Our destination's Umar Hills, since I want a replacement Bow user, and Mazzy's the obvious choice. My plan was going to be Mazzy and Imoen at this point, but I'm thinking that Jaheira's going to permanently occupy the 6th slow now. Also, Umar Hills has two Regeneration items under IR, so no more having to rest for Cure Light Wounds spells. Alina's given a Free Action for the Mimic, and Vista makes her save and joins for the kill. Acid still stings.
We head to the Temple Ruins, grab the Cloak of the Wolf (+1 HP per 2 rounds), win the initial fight, and recruit Mazzy. While walking along, I realize that Baroque wasn't singing: he's been carrying Arbane's for the immunities, and I have a horrid feeling. I check my record screen.
Well. Neither pacifist is officially a pacifist anymore, though I too will keep going. The rest of the fights go pretty smoothly, the worst one being against Shadow Patrick with his bow. Sebastian Turns a number of shadows, and the others shoot the altar or Patrick alternatively. Finally, the Shade Lord is killed after 20 or so minutes of shooting an arrow, moving out of range, shooting another arrow, triggering the Shadow Mantle, Vista Detecting Illusions to remove the MI and then waiting 3 rounds for the PFMW to end... Jaheira, in the end, is the one to snag the kill.
In Trademeet, Baroque takes a quick snooze and comes back with two Pro. Petrification spells and a Haste, given to Mazzy and Sebastian, while he himself is safely under Invisibility. The Genies meet their end rather quickly, with a failed save speeding up his doom even faster.
I hadn't decided fully on Mazzy yet: I think I was thinking Jaheira and Imoen, but I buy Tansheron's bow anyways for the upcoming troll fights, and it's a good +3 weapon regardless. The trolls are surprisingly not much trouble at all, with even the Spirit Trolls failing to do anything of importance. In the Troll Mound, a Slow spell does a ton of work and no potions are used. Now for the Druids: the first group is simply Silenced while fighting. Fair? Not really. Effective? Very.
Insect plague takes care of the second group, but I'm running a bit low on spells for the third. Not wanting to rest, I simply have everyone pile onto Kyland. He falls, but the melee Adherant is doing a ton of damage, and our own casters were hit by an Insect Plague as well. I had to use a Potion of Invisibility to stop Jaheira from being our first casualty, but in the end, all that's left is Faldorn.
Who falls as she can't target the Improved Invisible Jaheira, and Mazzy's Guard action is allowing her to shoot through walls. Props to whoever posted that bit in the "Did you know?" thread. Trademeet is essentially done, but I take one more fight: Ihtafeer. It's not much to talk about, simply throwing tons of APR and magic weapons at them as three Cloudkills fill the air. My processor slows down so much during this fight that I don't have any clue how many rounds this fight actually took. The Periapt against Poison is our reward, a nice thing to have for fighting Iron Golems.
Back in Athkatla, we pay our dues to the Shadow Thieves.
We also fight Rejeik's minions. To avoid deadly backstabs, I send Vista down alone, invisibly, under Stoneskin and Mirror Image. She soaks all their invisibility potions, and only then does the rest of the party engage. Fun fact: Detect Illusions, as far as I know, does not work against scripted invisibility. So if someone starts in an area invisible, you'll have to use a divination spell, but it works against any other type of invisibility, potion of spell. Bone golems still hurt, though.
Finally, after running two quick quests for Aran...
It's not showing on the screen, but Sebastian levels to 11, and gains another use of Lay on Hands, Ilmater's Endurance, and a level 6 spell. Time for him to dual to Fighter. Next up: tomb raiding, troll hunting, Maevar killing, in some vague order.
Stats: Baroque, level 13 Skald, 83 HP (May be erroneous? I think I shouldn't have 6 of these, to be honest.) 1 kill, Shadow. Sebastian, Level 11 Painbearer of Ilmater/1 Fighter. 77 HP, 0 deaths, 43 kills, Otyugh Jaheira, 9/12 Fighter/Druid. 76 HP, 0 deaths, 65 kills, Shade Lord Alina, 9 Archer/9 Cleric. 106 HP, 0 deaths, 84 kills, Shadow Patrick Mazzy, 10 Fighter, 93 HP, 0 deaths, 48 kills, Bone Golem Vista, 10/11 Illusionist Thief. 60 HP, 0 deaths, 31 kills, Stone Golem. Max Find Traps, Open Locks, Detect Illusions, and 85 Set Traps
The funny thing is that the portrait is from vanilla Icewind Dale, which has been praised specifically because most of its portraits were pretty modest by typical fantasy standards.
I'm aware of the source, although that second point somehow eludes me ...
Especially in the context of the "cold North" setting
Interesting Quartz video on the physics of boob armor. The conclusion is that it never existed, and if it did, it wouldn't have worked, since it would have funneled blows to the sternum
Her name is Abigail. She's a cleric. She's based on an old Ascension Solo Challenge character by the same name. Her boob armor is ridiculous.
Haha, that is some serious male fantasy in play there!
The funny thing is that the portrait is from vanilla Icewind Dale, which has been praised specifically because most of its portraits were pretty modest by typical fantasy standards.
As much as I appreciate scantily clad female characters, I'd say it's merely a poor attempt at trying to combine realistic and fantasy designs, so it just hits the uncanny valley of attractiveness (for me, at least).
@Neverused: Frisk is still going. I only tacked on the pacifist requirement because that's how I normally play my Charnames; it wasn't the goal of this run. I'm just going to call the SoA portion "almost pacifist, except for that one dude I wasted."
When you think about it, it's hardly a pacifist run anyway when Frisk is seducing people and ordering them to murder their enemies.
(To be perfectly honest, this run is just for the Hall of Heroes, since Melissan kept Frisky Bits, our previous Seducer, out of it. The pacifist thing, the ban on mod items, the ban on the level drain trick--all that stuff is just to keep things interesting, so I wouldn't be replicating a run that everyone's already seen.)
We just completed some minor battles in Athkatla and surrounding areas, no major questlines. First, Mencar and his friends - we call our summons, buff up and send the spirits and elementals to deal with the two spellcasters while we take out the melee fighters with Nahema tanking:
The sewer party: We start invisible, forcing Gaius to open with true sight. He's half dead when his buffs fire. Nahema uses breach, Arbogast casts insect plague - he doesn't stand a chance. Meanwhile, Jan's greater malison helps out our spirit wolf stun lock:
Zorl is the last one to fall:
We return to the Umar Hills to complete the minor quests there. Turns out the chicken quest is unavailable once you've dealt with the temple ruins mainquest. Too bad. We had a rather bad encounter with a killer mimic in SoD, resulting in three deaths. This won't happen again: Everyone gets CC or Free Action.
Back in Athkatla, there are some bridge district quest we'd like to do. We save a kidnapping victim and fight Neb - a simple battle with Jan detecting illusions:
Finally, we solve the murder cases. For the battle downstairs, we employ a flesh golem and a spirit lion as targets for the rune assassins, with our non-stoneskinned characters waiting upstairs:
No reason to give these LoB thieves any opportunity to chunk another character.
That's it for today. From now on, my updates will be much less frequent and propably shorter compared to the last couple of weeks, as I have a ton of RL stuff coming up!
Comments
Now up to level 7 Freya thought that the Doomsayer should be manageable without resorting to consumables or resting. She persuaded Laryssa to attack it, but she probably did no more damage to it than the magic missile that killed Laryssa would have done anyway. However, a combination of skull traps, magic missiles and running round in a series of webs proved just enough.
At Durlag's Tower similar tactics disposed of a couple of battle horrors. Algernon's Cloak was used to charm skeletons on the walls in order to get at the battle horror and doom guard there, but a moment's inattention ended the run before they could be dealt with. There were only 2 skeletons left guarding the battle horror and Freya nipped up onto the wall and charmed one of them before coming back down thinking that the skeletons would fight each other. However, the remaining enemy chose to run away from its erstwhile friend and followed Freya downstairs just as she'd started casting invisibility. The sensible thing to do would have been to break off casting and run - the chances were high she would have been able to get out of range while taking only one shot by the time the skeleton switched weapons. However, I chose to try and complete the invisibility spell and paid the penalty ...
Have a save trip and know that you are always welcome back here, friend.
Successfully made it out of the Chateau and now stepping into Amn for the first time.
A close call was had when the duergar mage in the smithy furnace (i) Hold Personed Khael and (ii) Charmed Minsc in back-to-back rounds! Imoen used two scrolls in a hurry: Dispel Magic (which released Minsc before he could chunk charname, though charname remained undispelled from Hold) and Summon Monsters I which provided a brief buffer between the Duergars.
(I am maintaining two separate installs at the moment: Khael is continuing a SCS-only BG2 run while I built also a IR+SR+SCS+tweaks install thanks to @Arctodus which I will use with a separate character.)
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 3
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906475/#Comment_906475
The Crusaders descend upon the Coalition Camp, but they come in relatively manageable waves. I pick the Dwarves of Dumathoin to help us against the trolls, but with a Wand of Fire, the basilisk's gaze, and Maneira and Gorky's high melee damage output, the trolls aren't a big problem for us.
As for the mages, I pick the Wizard Slayers (I find it weird that they even let you choose somebody else). But the Wizard Slayers are also largely unnecessary, because we can get right past the mages' defenses with the basilisk's gaze and Sunfire.
The last group, the paladins, also falls to fire damage and the basilisk's gaze, though it doesn't go quite as well, because another enemy appears to carry the mirror that bounces gaze attacks.
Luckily, we saved up some Stone to Flesh scrolls. Though I thought I'd be using them when the Lesser Basilisk accidentally petrified Maneira or something; not when the basilisk petrified itself.
For the final group of enemies, the named ones, I distract them with a Wand of Monster Summoning for a few rounds, with Maneira throwing a trap from afar, then decide I don't want to rely on summons like I normally do. Gorky throws out Greater Malison and Maneira heads out to land a backstab.
Maneira drinks a Potion of Invisibility, which I almost never use for offensive purposes, and Gorky manages to land Chaos on two of the enemies. Maneira lands another fatal backstab.
Maneira switches to melee combat and scores another kill in short order. The Lesser Basilisk does, too, once more with its gaze attack.
Another one goes down, leaving only two confused spellcasters. Confusion prevents them from casting any spells, so they don't last long.
That was weirdly easy. I guess that first batch of monsters absorbed the worst of the enemy's pressure, Chaos prevented the rest, and Maneira's traps, backstabs, and melee attacks killed the most dangerous fighters before they had a chance to hurt us.
The Siege of Dragonspear Castle itself, as usual, is dominated by Wands of Fire. Since I'm a little worried about getting overwhelmed if things go wrong--my party is not very durable--I rig auto-pause to trigger when targets die, ensuring that my characters are always using ranged weapons, but still giving me control over their targets.
I don't fight Ashatiel, since Frisk isn't supposed to kill anybody and I'm not sure if Haiass would spawn in a duel with Ashatiel. Plus, Frisk is awfully easy to kill, and I don't want to lose the run to Ashatiel of all people.
The nearest group of enemies has decent defenses, but Sunfire takes out their first spell and they don't last long after that. Gorky saves a Chaos spell for the fight with Ashatiel herself, and disables a surprising number of enemies.
Maneira gets blinded, but the Duergar Cleric can cure it. Gorky remains at the front, using Sunfire in lieu of the Wand of Fire to deal some extra damage.
Gorky zeros in on Ashatiel, and while we've got some new enemies storming in from the north, the basilisk can land automatic hits on them with Arrows of Detonation.
The final battle approaches. Gorky is the only one who can cast SI: Abjuration, but I still have everyone buff with lots of potions despite the threat of Remove Magic on round one.
This is what our party looks like:
Frisk, Seducer
Notice the lack of any kills. So far, she's abided by the rules of the pacifist run.
Gorken Bloodaxe, "Conjurer" (I removed his divination spells and gave him +1 spells per level, but never gave him the actual conjurer kit, so he doesn't get any bonuses from it)
Taking over a third of the party's kills, Gorky has always been our best character. Notice his favorite spell, "Lay on Hands," a custom spell I used to simulate resting (which is why my main characters never get all of their Bhaalspawn powers in BG1).
Duergar Cleric, Cleric of Talos/Thief
I thought having a cleric in the party would help our defenses, but with those thief levels dragging him down, he never got enough spell slots to be useful.
Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Almost as deadly as Gorky, the only reason she didn't outdo his kill count is because Gorky got his STR up to 22 and used an upgraded Dagger of Venom to get another +1 APR.
Armored Skeleton, Barbarian
Mostly just here as a meat shield, despite having no meat on its bones.
Lesser Basilisk, Berserker
Notice the abnormally low kill count. Although the basilisk's gaze can instantly kill the target, it only has 1.5 APR, limiting its power.
Unwilling to lose all of our buffs to the enemy's introductory Remove Magic spell, I pull back every party member but Gorky. Everyone holds onto their buffs.
Since this is an EET install, all items are standardized, which means Protection from Magic scrolls can be used on enemies, unlike my previous installs. Hephernaan loses his defenses much faster than normal, and dies early.
We close in on Belhifet.
He goes invisible and sneaks off to the southwest, but Maneira can easily reveal him.
With Maneira and Gorky applying massive pressure to Belhifet, his HP starts draining fast. We apply Lower Resistance, but there's not much need.
Bellyfat tries to hide once more, only for Maneira to reveal him yet again. Our two best damage dealers finally put him down.
Siege of Dragonspear is over!
Well, not quite. We still have some chores to deal with before we reach Chateau Irenicus. First is getting framed for Skie's murder--which is especially egregious because Frisk did not even kill even the illusory version of her. Haiass did, because he even spawns in dream sequences.
EET removes everyone but the Lesser Basilisk from my party for some reason, but I get them back using the multiplayer import/export trick (since, unlike chunking, I can't reverse this bug using a reload). We defend ourselves at the trial, slip out of prison, and meet with Imoen and the gang.
The ambush happens again, but there is a disturbing change.
What's going on here? We were supposed to get a cutscene! Now we're actually getting attacked!
It says "nonlethal damage," but I'm not sure I trust it. A single point of lethal damage could finish off anyone in the party.
Frisk goes invisible while the rest of the party falls. To my horror, the enemy kills the Armored Skeleton.
No, this does not seem like a nonlethal ambush. What happens if they get to Frisk? I know we're supposed to be captured, but how do I know I can't be killed in this fight when I've already seen them kill one party member?
I keep Frisk invisible and wait to see if Shadows of Amn begins on its own, but there is no cutscene. Nor does anyone in the party wake up to keep fighting. I have no choice.
I have Frisk break invisibility. They get knocked out shortly.
To my relief, the enemy doesn't kill them. Shadows of Amn begins.
The irony of escaping from lawful imprisonment only to get randomly kidnapped fills us with determination.
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Shadows of Amn
Part 4
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906475/#Comment_906475
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906551/#Comment_906551
Finally, we've reached Shadows of Amn. This is where the run will really, seriously diverge from my previous Seducer run, which heavily relied on the level drain trick to land Seduction on some incredibly overpowered critters.
EET does some weird stuff to the game transitions. It doesn't crash or anything, but it does remove everyone from the party but the Lesser Basilisk again, and we are able to walk around and stuff during Jon-bon's cutscene.
I resist the urge to try to petrify him, because I'm afraid I'll cause a crash or something. Notice that Imoen came to rescue us before Irenicus showed up.
The cutscene plays out and Jon-bon leaves us here. Turns out we're locked in here forever.
Nothing CTRL-J can't fix. But to get our party back, we have to go through the motions of the multiplayer import/export trick again.
It's worth it, because petrifying enemies is hilarious.
The Lesser Basilisk has an unusually large circle and can't fit through tight spaces, but we can still get around without Relair's Mistake. We can actually push the basilisk through doorways.
In the fight with the duergar, we get a disturbing reminder that due to EE's file sharing behavior across games, the iron crisis also plagues Amn.
Even if we go all the way south to Amkethran out in Calimshan, full plate mail will still have a 1% chance of shattering on impact.
Fun fact: judging from the item files in Near Infinity, that 1% chance doesn't apply every time you get hit; it applies whenever you equip the armor. So if you equip the armor, get hit, and it doesn't break, it will never break unless you take it off. But if you do take it off and get unlucky with that 1d100, it will break the instant you get hit.
Anyway, the nice thing about petrification is that so few critters are immune to it. Even Berserkers have to make saving throws against it.
Fun fact: the Lesser Basilisk's gaze can bypass PFMW.
Maneira backstabs a Mephit Portal to death and makes short work of the rest. I notice there's a new container in this room, on Khalid. What kind of loot might he be carrying?
Oh.
Outside, Haiass rejoins us! He's the overpowered wolf companion who's been butchering people left and right since we left Candlekeep.
I've actually wondered if I really want him around, taking all of our kills and making the game easier than it should be, but I don't think I can actually get rid of him. Tweaking my BWS install would be dangerous, I can't kill him, and if I tell him to stay put, I might lose track of him forever--and I might change my mind later.
Dissatisfied with the performance of the Duergar Cleric and the Armored Skeleton, I kick both of them out of the party. Without the level drain trick, Frisk will need much higher levels to seduce stronger critters, and we can't afford to waste any XP.
We bankrupt the party donating to charity and buying new scrolls for Gorken Bloodaxe. On a visit to the Adventurer Mart, I see a very welcome sight.
I've been playing with Item Randomizer so long. But now I finally know where stuff actually is.
Then I see a more unpleasant sight.
It appears that I accidentally engaged Frisk in melee somewhere in Chateau Irenicus, and they landed the final blow on one of Jon-bon's duergar minions.
It's not worth ending the run, but I'm upset that it happened. I erase the name via EEKeeper for cosmetic reasons, but I won't be able to call the SoA portion of this tetralogy run a "true pacifist" run. Still, I'll try to keep Frisk from hurting anybody else for the rest of the run.
Fun fact: the only reason Frisk had a weapon in the first place is because enemies get +4 to hit and damage against party members who don't have a melee weapon equipped.
We take care of the slavers, though Maneira comes perilously close to murdering a child when she fails a save against Confusion.
She probably could have made an attack roll through that wall, but she never did.
We stop by the Umar Hills, and in the spirit of the pacifist run, we do not kill the chickens to grab the Beljuril gem.
We just make the chickens kill themselves with their inexplicable acid attack.
We grab Relair's Mistake outside the Temple Ruins so the basilisk can get around easier. Most of the enemies here are no problem, except for two: Greater Mummies, who can paralyze from a distance on a failed save, and Aerial Servants. Who can apparently go invisible immediately after attacking you and dealing massive damage with every hit.
Even Maneira, with a speed factor of 0 and 5 APR, cannot land a single hit on them before they go invisible. They're just that fast. Unfortunately, I prefer to roll with nonfatal bugs, which means we have to deal with the Aerial Servants, near-constant invisibility and all. The process is not particularly fun.
The Shade Lord is simple: Sunstone Bullet on the altar, heavy pressure on Shadow Patrick, and Pierce Magic and Breach for the Shade Lord himself, with SI: Necromancy to keep Gorky from getting level drained.
Maneira gets too close and nearly dies to Black Blade of Disaster, but with the Shade Lord's defenses down, we can finish him off before Maneira crumples.
We get the Cloak of Stars, one of my absolute favorite items, and one I haven't seen in quite some time due to all the Item Randomizer and Item Revisions that has kept it away from me.
I missed you, sweetie.
Of course, I never actually wear the cloak. I stuff it in a Bag of Holding and then cheat in a stack of its +5 darts so I don't have to keep using it. Those darts will be a massive boon for Maneira, who already has pips in them (though Gorky would actually have better THAC0 with them). Those darts can bypass even SCS' Improved Mantle, and combined with nonmagical darts, a dart thrower can use them to get past any weapon immunities short of a lich's or demon's PFMW or Absolute Immunity.
The Lesser Basilisk has a similar property as long as Gorky keeps Enchanted Weapon on hand. Although the gaze attack strikes as a nonmagical weapon, Gorky can upgrade it when we're dealing with dangerous foes who are immune to normal weapons.
Time to deal with the Mae'Var questline! Ray-Ray dies much faster than anticipated. Traps, a backstab, a double Melf's Acid Arrow Minor Sequencer, and a quick extra poke finish him off before our basilisk can even try to petrify him.
We do all of Mae'Var's chores, gather the documents proving whatever, and hand them over to Renal Bloodscalp, who sends us back to wipe out the guild.
For some reason, Anishai isn't yet hostile. I backstab her anyway...
...and the unthinkable happens.
How? Why? Why was Arkanis Gath here?
Arkanis Gath is the guy who instantly kills you if you turn any of the Shadow Thieves hostile before siding with Bodhi. But he doesn't show up if you're killing Mae'Var on Renal Bloodscalp's orders.
I did talk to Renal, didn't I?
I load up my old save and stop by Mae'Var, who is also not hostile. But to my relief, a quick look at my journal confirms that I did in fact get Renal's last assignment.
It seems that a bug prevented Mae'Var's guild hall from going hostile, which also meant Arkanis Gath appeared despite Renal's orders. Mae'Var won't even speak to us.
Afraid of triggering another visit from Arkanis Gath but with no idea how to fix the bug, I CTRL-Y Mae'Var and scoot back to Renal Bloodscalp. Do not pass GO, do not collect loot or XP.
We have another horrible scare in the skinner quest, when I foolishly assumed that I could keep Frisk safe from the Rune Assassin's backstabs just by keeping them near the back.
I just barely get Frisk upstairs before the backstabbers finish them off, and discover that I can enter the bottom floor with only some party members, ensuring that the others do not get hurt!
Naturally, the assassins are carrying those stupid mirrors, which means we lose another Stone to Flesh scroll to recover our poor basilisk.
Over at the Den of the Seven Vales, I bungle an attempt to get Brennan Risling to backstab Sorcerous Amon, but Smelly Porkslicer compensates by butchering the poor backstabber himself.
We charm Pooky, who charms Amon, who gets blown to pieces by Mencar Pennypincher.
This is the kind of silly stuff that happens when you play an aggressive Seducer. But Frisk is safely hidden behind a wall (their spells can go through walls; they ignore line of sight).
We smash the barbarian, confuse the dwarf and chop him up, and petrify Pooky.
Our basically can petrify basically everything, from Spirit Trolls...
...to the basilisk itself. Again.
I don't know how this basilisk keeps getting petrified and somehow never gets shattered. We kill the Yuan-ti Mage with some lingering poison damage traps from Maneira (Frisk, as a Seducer, can never set any traps).
The basilisk makes short work of the numerous trolls, Maneira breaks down the golems, and we head downstairs to confront TorGal. With a Greater Malison on the enemy and a Remove Magic on the Lesser Basilisk, our basilisk proves itself to be a fragile but reliable glass cannon.
Even when Maneira and Gorky's Invisible Stalkers fail their saves against Chaos, the basilisk and its rage immunities pulls through, petrifying both enemy mages as well as TorGal himself.
On to the Druid Grove! Petrification speeds things up with the trolls, and even lands us an early kill on Ihtafeer.
But due to some lucky saving throws, the enemy survived long enough to deal lots of damage before they fell. We lost a fair number of potions taking down Ihtafeer's buddies.
We had a brief scare when the basilisk got confused close to Cernd, but it didn't petrify him. After blasting the last batch of druids with a Skull Traps...
...we finished up the Trademeet questline and gathered enough gold to complete Chapter 2.
Normally, single-classed thieves cannot side with Bodhi. But it seems that one of my mods lets you talk Bodhi into it.
Flirting with creepy vampire babes fills us with determination.
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
Part XXIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906437/#Comment_906437
Now, about those devils. We have two fights to win before we can take on Belhifet (plus the fights in the elevator, but those are easy). As Voghiln keeps 14 scrolls of chaotic command in his scroll case, I decide that we can just go all out and use six of these scrolls right away. Combine that with resist fear, and suddenly, the devils don't do all that much (yes, invisible hellcats are still annoying, but since most opponents spam charm, hold and fear spells, that's a big part of the danger gone). We also use our summons, a haste spell and some of the potions we know we're not going to need for the final battle to make things even easier:
First battle done. During the second battle, the devils manage to take down our summons, though a monster summoning charge provides further distractions:
We answer a riddle to get a great +3 longsword:
And now, let's go for an elevator ride that's even longer than the ones in Mass Effect 1. Before we enter, though, we go all out with buffs - our plan is to dodge the initial dispel magic with everyone but one party member. The most important buffs include chaotic commands and PfE (from scrolls) for everyone, resist fear, 100 fire resist via scrolls and potions, high strength and dexterity scores, potions of invulnerability, defense and heroism, oils of speed, absorption (one type of devil summoned by Belhifet uses lightning bolts) and some defensive spell-based buffs (mostly ironskins and stoneskins, with blur, MI and spirit armor for Nahema). We have also decided to have our arcane spellcasters use three of their level 4 spellslots for "enchant weapon" (+3 weapons are needed to hit Belhifet) - the targets are Arbogast (I don't have any +3 bullets - there are some in the game, but without a thief I couldn't easily get to them), Aikar (who has the new +3 longsword, but he will propably have to stay away from melee range quite often - this allows him to use his +1 throwing daggers) and Minsc (who has no +3 weapons because I screwed up the Rashemen Duo sidequest completely, and +3 arrows are very limited - Corwin, the best archer, is going to use most of those).
I actually did some testing for this fight - I loaded up a save from my very first SoD run, turned on difficulty based extra damage (it was on insane difficulty, but without that) and watched Belhifet, Hephernaan and their summons do what they do without damaging them, just to refresh my memory and look what their most dangerous abilites would be. Thus, I formulated two possible strategies. For both, good movement is absolutely crucial - without it, both will definitely fail on LoB. And movement on this platform is somewhat difficult, as quite often, at certain borders of the area, you can't move around as freely as you might think (characters tend to get stuck or trapped quite easily).
Approach 1 requires a combination of movement and endurance - this would be trying to kill Hephernaan, the summons and after that, always bring down the gated summons right away as soon as Belhifet spawns new ones. I wasn't sure how much time that would leave me to actually deal damage to Belhifet between his gate spells (thanks to ridiculous demon hp on LoB), and I also feared that the 1 hour buffs, possibly even the 2 hours buffs, would run out if I went with this approach.
Approach 2 requires even more movement and also great DPS - this would involve trying to ignore/kite the summons and go for the main boss right away. Seems very risky on LoB, but I eventually decided to go with this strategy for two reasons: a) This is a damage focused party. We have an archer and a kensai, both quite squishy, but deadly. Nahema is our only real tank - Arbogast can be tanky, but shouldn't put himself into dangerous situations because he's the Bhaalspawn. Voghiln's ability to tank will be sacrificed, as I intend to have him take Belhifet's dispel magic (during my testing with the other party, I noticed he seems to always target the party member closest to him shortly after the battle starts) - so endurance isn't our biggest strength. b) We are actually low on some crucial consumables thanks to bad shopping decisions in BG1 and low money during the entirety of SoD. If our 1 hour buffs run out, we have no oils of speed left and have to use haste - which doesn't last very long either and will give us fatigue (plus, it requires our party to actually be in one place, which seems like a tough task to ask). Thus, we have to end the battle quickly.
Let's go! Voghiln runs right at and past Belhifet, and as predicted, the devil dispels all of his buffs - while everyone else is fine:
Right away, our skald drinks magic shielding to protect against charm, hold, fear and all the other bad things that could happen to him. His next few actions will be: Stoneskin from a scrolls, oil of speed (our final one), fire protection potion and fire protection scroll. After that, he will mostly sing.
The other thing that happens right away: Arbogast starts summoning spirit lions. They are immune to the various annoying effects here (every non spirit summon would propably get feared, except for the lesser stone golems) and can take attention away from our party. While Caelar starts to get very low, our party finds decent positions (Corwin is very safe and our best damage dealer with her 80 void-tipped arrows, Aikar can only be hit by one opponent, which is fine right now (his ac is good thanks to invulnerability), everyone else isn't actually being attacked thanks to Caelar and the summons, so Nahema and Minsc can go for melee damage) - we bring Belhifet to injured:
Things get messy when our spirit animals go down (though Caelar is still up, constantly drinking healing potions). Our attempt to provide more fodder fails as summoned monsters get feared and ignored. An erinye starts shooting at Corwin, so she has to move:
Meanwhile, Arbogast has been casting true sight, to counter Belhifet's constant use of improved invisibility. The devil disappears again right after a tick of the spell, so we don't know his position for a while - we scatter to avoid taking too much damage, and Caelar dies. Belhifet is revealed and uses his aoe fire spell (which does nothing). By now, I have to keep three of my party members moving (though they can shoot, sometimes, if my control is good). However, Corwin still has a good position, and the same is true for Arbogast. Plus, Nahema doesn't even seem to care about all the demons - and Belhifet takes some damage from his own minions:
We have to drink a lot of healing potions, mainly on Minsc and Aikar. Aikar's throwing daggers actually deal a ton of damage to Belhifet, and the void-tipped arrows are amazing as well. The demon disappears - and makes a crucial mistake: He teleports to the western corner of the map, FAR away from all of his devils that could potentially protect him - and my party is in a great position, as true sight removes his II and Corwin had previously brought him to near death:
However, near death is still a ton of hp on LoB, and with more and more devils being spawned in, things could get dicey. We use our time before getting swarmed again to deal as much damage as possible:
The devils close up to the party again, and we have nothing to distract them. Time to kite as many of them as possible - they go for Arbogast and Minsc (who has to use Durlag's Goblet to stay alive), but I get Corwin and Aikar in great positions while Nahema melees Belhifet - and Voghiln even starts to contribute with his song:
Our positioning advantage is so huge at this point - if Belhifet doesn't teleport away once again, he's doomed. All the devils except for the newest one gated in still follow the less relevant party members, trying to catch up - eventually they all go for Minsc, so Arbogast joins in again - and delivers the final hit:
Pretty much all of the initial buffs are still going strong - this battle took quite a while to play, mostly because I had to pause so much to constantly correct everyones's movement, but I guess not that many ingame rounds have actually passed.
The devils despawn - except for Hephernaan:
Come on now - I've killed your master, do you seriously think you stand a chance?
Hephernaan's devil form is really quite weak.
Arbogast, Aikar and Nahema complete the epilogue:
And we're done with SoD. That was incredibly challenging for me. Those freaking LoB thieves... Many deaths, many chunkings, but in the end, Arbogast never died (never got very close to it, really), and he's the one who counts. I'm very happy with the performance of Nahema in particular - of course, it's no secret that fighter/illusionists are incredibly strong, so I shouldn't be surprised.
Some thoughts on LoB in BG1 and SoD: I didn't like the experience of playing LoB in early BG1 - everything is so slow and tedious, and the game balance feels wrong - supposedly powerful mages are still almost as easy to kill as they are in vanilla, but random groups of hobgoblins can destroy your entire party with a couple of arrows. Things get a bit better in later BG1, to be sure.
For SoD, LoB offers an entirely new experience, at least for me - on core or insane, the most efficient way to deal with most groups revolves around throwing as many fireballs as possible at them. This only works against the very weakest of groups in LoB, so new approaches have to be found. For me, it was mostly either invisibility + summons (against enemies with normal weapons) or some kind of mass disable (mostly web, sometimes chaos, generally mixed with greater malison and slow). Still, these approaches didn't work for every encounter or had to be executed in very different ways depending on context, so in general, I felt like gameplay was a bit more varied compared to my previous runs. In conclusion, while I can't really recommend LoB for BG1, I would say that giving it a try for SoD might certainly be worth it (if one can get past Korlasz's Tomb, which provides this game with a somewhat ridiculous difficulty curve).
Next time, we're going to Amn!
Some final stats for BG1+SoD:
Arbogast, level 12 totemic druid, 228 kills
Voghiln, level 11 skald, 33 kills
Aikar, level 10 kensai, 639 kills
Nahema, level 9/10 fighter/illusionist, 463 kills
Corwin, level 9 archer, 230 kills
Minsc, level 9 ranger, 23 kills
Enuhal
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Shadows of Amn
Part 5
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906475/#Comment_906475
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906551/#Comment_906551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906569/#Comment_906569
With Bodhi at our side, we don't have to deal with any nasty vampires. Instead, we have to deal with massive hordes of backstabbers combined with spellcasters with divination spells.
Which, considering our main character is a single-classed thief, was actually a pretty stupid decision on my part.
But there is one upside, which turns out to be a very big deal indeed. In Bodhi's lair, we find Meredath. Who just so happens to a level 8/8 fighter/thief. Like Maneira, she is best off being made into a Bounty Hunter.
I've been planning on bringing a vampire into the party, but not for level drain. Unfortunately, the better vampires--who have more than Meredath's pathetic 1 APR--will require much, much higher levels than we currently possess, and I'm not even sure I'll be able to get the kind I want before ToB rolls around.
We actually had to use a workaround to get Meredath to function. See, SCS gives vampires four different weapons in each quick weapon slot, but fighter/thieves only get two. Normally this has no effect, but it means she can't level up. I fix it by rigging the last two items to be droppable (though the better solution would just be to remove them via EEKeeper).
Meredath can never equip a main-hand weapon, as her natural weapons already fill up her only slots. But they are very nice. The first is a +2 weapon that drains 2 levels per hit; the second is a +4 weapon that drains 3 Constitution per hit for 50 rounds.
Note that Ascension Melissan and the Five are immune to Intelligence drain. But not any other form of stat drain.
We have a few things to do before confronting Aran Linvail. For one thing, Maneira happens to have a Staff of Striking now.
We stop by the Unseeing Eye lair just to get the Gauntlets of Dexterity to compensate for our basilisk's terrible stats. Despite my earlier decision not to use the Wand of Lightning to bomb stuff anymore, I just don't have the patience for Fireballs and Cloudkills and Special Snares and whatever.
You can actually just bomb those beholders indefinitely. They'll come around the corners and can get pretty close, but they'll never follow you all the way across the bridge.
Beholders are best handled indirectly. Traps are a good solution. Our Lesser Basilisk has less luck, because, as I've mentioned before in a different context, Berserkers don't get immunities to petrification.
I think I'm in a good position to deal with the Unseeing Eye despite only being in Chapter 3, so I go ahead and tackle him. Meredath lands an early kill on one of the Death Tyrants.
But our immunities are very spotty indeed. The Lesser Basilisk stays in good condition, but Meredath gets webbed and Maneira is petrified.
Gorky runs in and saves her before she gets shattered. The Unseeing Eye casts PFMW, but apparently it's also immune to normal weapons. Our basilisk can't touch it.
Worse yet, a Death Ray puts down our vampire, and the enemy petrifies Maneira once again.
An Invisible Stalker takes down the second Death Tyrant, but the Unseeing Eye is still immune to everything we might throw at it. And it takes advantage of Gorky's low HP when he tries to bail out Maneira again.
Gorky perishes as another Death Ray strikes the party. Frisk deploys the Rod of Resurrection, as I'm not sure how else they could get out of this alive.
Gorky cures Maneira's petrification, but he can't talk to her while she's webbed. Frisk resurrects Meredath as well, but things are looking ugly, as Gorky gets charmed before he can actually bring Maneira back into the party.
With his excellent save vs. spell, Gorky automatically makes his save against Dispel Charm, returning him to our control. But he gets webbed--Dispel Charm is at +5 and easy to make, but Web is at -2 and is much more difficult. Meredath tries to pitch in, but traps are not yet her specialty.
Finally, our basilisk recovers, but it's in very bad condition. Gorky puts up a small layer of defenses, but it's not enough. The Unseeing Eye kills him in two hits, in one round.
Growing desperate, and anxious about our poor THAC0 without Maneira and Gorky around, I have the basilisk try a Potion of Firebreath. It deals a bit of damage, but the Unseeing Eye punishes it with PW: Kill.
Meredath finally speaks to Maneira, bringing her back into the party and giving her some supplies so she can heal herself.
But this leaves the Unseeing Eye to wander, and it floats right into Frisk's room, endangering our main character. Stealth is impossible due to the Unseeing Eye's True Sight spell, so Frisk downs our only Potion of Magic Shielding.
Maneira and Meredath come to the rescue. Our Efreeti launches a Fireball to minimal effect, while Maneira runs right into another fatal Flame Arrow.
Meredath engages the Unseeing Eye on her own, but to my frustration, Haiass takes the final blow.
Still, the Unseeing Eye is dead, and that's what's important. We resurrect the fallen and finish up the questline, bumping Gorky up to level 14 and giving us access to the Teleport spell, which lets us visit any previously visited location in SoA, from almost any area.
Despite our struggles with the Unseeing Eye, I think we're equipped to deal with the Planar Sphere, a potentially deadly side quest. Since this is a solo run, in the sense that we can't create characters or recruit NPCs, Valygar is out of luck.
NPCs are easy to kill in my install because they start at level 1.
Before I enter the Planar Sphere, I decide to see if I can get two Rings of the Ram out of Tolgerias. We charm him, lure him outside, and have him empty his spellbook using Improved Alacrity.
This is just in case things go wrong. But in the end, we get the ring without using violence.
Maneira obliterates the halfling cannibals. The Lesser Basilisk proves useful, too.
Tolgerias is a little trickier, since he'll turn hostile if we get too close. But we manage to get two important HLAs out of him before he goes red.
I manage to take control of him again later on, but foolishly use PW: Kill on his Magical Sword instead of himself.
I should have known better, since I once charmed Kangaxx with a Control Circlet and made him kill himself with PW: Kill.
Tolgerias remains hostile, but the Fallen Planetar is on hand to deal with the stuff he throws out.
Eventually, I send out Maneira and have her set a normal trap, which proves to be an important detail several rounds later. Level 11 traps are easily the best.
The process continues as we dance around him, setting traps whenever he's out of Maneira's sight, until eventually, he fails a saving throw against the odds.
To my disappointment, Tolgerias drops no Ring of the Ram. We only get to use one.
Lavok is easier, because we keep control of him for three rounds instead of just one. We empty his entire spellbook using Improved Alacrity, just like we did with the first Tolgerias.
Lavok survives several rounds afterward, but PFMW is an imperfect defense against Maneira, and Lavok is out of ammo.
When Lavok collapses, the only threat left is the Tanar'ri. We put it down, but after seeing Gorky failing a save against Death Gaze, I decide that we don't need to do any more demon hunting.
We've had several close calls, but the next area is far worse. We now have to storm the Shadow Thief headquarters and endure the numerous dangers that one of my mods introduces to Aran Linvail's lair.
The moment we go down the stairs, the whole complex is on lockdown, shutting off our escape. The sound of the alarm fills us with determination.
Possibly burned out on Baldur's Gate (and thus gaming), I might attempt an Enuhal-style SCS/LoB run soonish - btw amazing work friend, hats off to you! - or not. In the latter case I intend to check in occasionally to read and comment on recent events.
I thought I would have a break from LoB for a bit and have another go at this challenge, which has seen no progress in recent months. I have had a few attempts at that with a mage every now and then, but didn't fancy another of those now, so decided to roll up another character. The random selection for that gave me a cleric that duals to a thief. I've set the starting character up as a Priest of Lathander and am minded to dual at level 11, i.e. he would have to survive Siege of Dragonspear as a cleric.
After getting the normal fast start by shooting Shoal I went to Beregost and got Algernon's Cloak - only to accidentally sell that rather than identifying it
Skeletons made mincemeat of the sirines and provided enough distraction for me to kill the first 2 golems, despite using a non-proficient melee weapon (getting to level 7 there).
After another group of sirines further up the coast, Durlag's Tower offered more quick XP. With the help of skeletons I cleared the inside upper tower (including the ghost that I normally don't do),
Inside the Nashkel Mine Mulahey had nothing to say for himself before being shot down.
In this unmodded game Tranzig doesn't speak without being spoken to - meaning he has no defence against a general attack.
Summons made a nasty mess of the inhabitants of an ankheg nest before I finally arrived at the Bandit Camp. The standard bandits were no match for skeletons, but Taurgosz was a different matter. He refused to be commanded, but eventually fell to a buffed sling-shot.
SP-1,
Sarah has survived bg!I almost lost the run against some early jelly ... then we settled down and ambushed a certain drow.
the rest of the run went by the numbers with 'web' to keep the palace assassins limited and invisibility to get through the maze quickly.
cannon party;
Viconia, + 3 wisdom
Jaheira, Minsc and Dynaheir
Previous updates
After zipping through the Cloakwood Drasus and co provided almost no obstacle.
Up to that point I'd done very few reputation quests and hence was able to rest and get a second Bhaal horror ability. With that in the bank though a quick tour of the maps bumped reputation up to 20 and I did some shopping. The Greenstone Amulet then allowed me to recover the tome from Durlag's Tower.
I rushed through work in the City, looking for the tomes, Helm & Cloak of Balduran, 2 Necklaces of Missiles, nymph cloak and the Shield of the Falling Stars. There was a case of more haste less speed though after I had talked to Jalantha once. I accidentally talked to her again and this time ignored what the options said - assuming the quest would remain active. However, that wasn't the case when I got to the temple (which was bad news for my fellow cleric
After donating at another temple and doing a few extra quests, reputation was back up to 20 and I nipped back to Beregost to buy Algernon's Cloak back (the penny-pinching sod hadn't even identified it). I also decided to get another source of magical damage, though the chances of making much use of that vary from slim to none based on my prior experience.
Back in Baldur's Gate I wanted the ring of free action, so took on the Iron Throne. A single silence shut everyone important up and allowed buffed skeletons to clear the field.
Rather than report back immediately to Duke Eltan though I remembered I hadn't yet picked up the violet potion - which is the only means available to obtain the strength tome. With that in the bag it didn't take long to deal with Candlekeep, though it is slightly worrying when your constitution drops to 1 (due to also wearing the Claw of Kazgaroth). Silence once more ruled there over Prat's gang (it really is an incredibly vicious spell in BG1
With nothing left worth buying I went straight after Slythe. He saved against 2 silences, but was out-classed in a hacking match with skeletons anyway.
The enemies in the maze didn't make much of a showing and the skeletons took out the Undercity party as well with something in hand.
That's the easy bit over - I don't suppose Siege of Dragonspear will be so straight-forward (although looking at my character record on transfer it looks like I've got a bit of a head-start there
Previous posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
SoD end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906579/#Comment_906579
Now that we're in Amn, we can relax for a bit - most enemies early on won't be able to deal with our summons (especially the fire elementals) at all. We make our way out of the dungeon and go for the Umar Hills + Temple Ruins right away, only stopping to pick up two of our new companions (Anomen and Jan) - oh, and Jan steals Daystar while the city gates lich is still busy trying to stop time.
We complete our party with Mazzy and watch our fire elementals do their thing. When taking the sun gem, a couple of shadows and shadow fiends actually decide to completely ignore our summons for once and go straight for Arbogast. While his ironskins protect him from damage, his strength gets drained down to 4, and Jan tries to save him with II. Jan himself gets interrupted and stunned, but Nahema starts casting invisibility 10' radius to save both characters. Meanwhile, Aikar uses sunray to kill some of the threatening shadows:
Nahema's spell works, and Jan can safely detect illusions to reveal the remaining opponents once again (as invisibility 10' radius hits both allies and enemies alike) - this time, they have no choice but to face our summons.
The only opponent in the first level capable of hurting our elementals is the bone golem, but it fails to do much of anything:
We make our way to the shade lord, throwing around some random buffs, including some death wards - he does like his necromancy spells. Sunray does decent damage, but no instant kills:
Anomen's true sight proves to be very useful when the shade lord triggers three defenses at once - all of them illusion based. With no protection left, he simply dies:
We get back to the city, now with a complete party. Arbogast buys a magic license, and we get ambushed. These aren't undead, but after Nahema's greater malison hits, sunray blinds most of the group, making this fight trivial:
To get our hands on the ring of human influence for better shopping, we do the circus tent quest, employing true sight once again:
With our 18 charisma, what do we buy? A limited wish scroll of course! We want that throwing dagger for Aikar as soon as possible! Jan reads the scroll for us, he has enough wisdom to get the quest option. On our way to the bridge district, we get ambushed once again:
During our search for Roger the Fence, we obtain the Cloak of the Sewers:
Invisibility 10' radius helps us to get to Grae without any further battles:
We use the spell again to get to the ogre, and once more to leave the map. Now, Aikar is a force to be reckoned with.
The third ambush is dealt with via greater malison + chaos:
During the long LoB battles, you need lots of ammunition. That's why we go for WK level 1 right away to get the Crimson Dart +3 and the quiver/case of plenty. However, we run into some vampiric wraiths, and they ignore our summons in order to go right after our party. Nahema casts haste and we run away for now:
After resting, Mazzy's NPC quest starts, so we have to deal with that first:
Now, let's return to WK and buff up - we can take these vampiric wraiths. The first one happens to be isolated from his ally, right at the entrance:
Four of us get level drained, but that's nothing Anomen can't fix. Summons, with our party out of sight, kill the second wraith, and we clear the first WK level except for the statues. Next up are the Windspear Hills - I just want to deliver the acorns and obtain an ankheg plate for Arbogast, but Jan's NPC quest starts, so we finish that one as quickly as possible:
While we're doing NPC quests anyway, Mazzy completes her second one - we cheat by throwing her an oil of speed and her bow, so she can easily kite her opponent:
Finally, we complete the first part of the slaver questchain:
With the money, we buy The Army Scythe for Jan and the Sling of Seeking for Anomen. Now we always have multiple ranged weapons available, even if we run out of ammunition: The Crimson Dart for Arbogast, the Boomerang Dagger for Aikar, the Sling of Seeking for Anomen, Tuigan Bow + Quiver of Plenty for Mazzy, Army Scythe and Case of Plenty for Jan. Nahema doesn't have anything specific yet, but she can handle melee combat anyway.
Enuhal
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Shadows of Amn
Part 6
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906475/#Comment_906475
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906551/#Comment_906551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906569/#Comment_906569
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906591/#Comment_906591
Well, here we go. Aran Linvail's lair, buffed with a bunch of Clay Golems with Cursed Wound effects and a horde of spellcasters and Kensai->Thieves. Not to mention a lot of new traps and a much deadlier fight with Aran Linvail himself.
Here is our party so far:
Frisk, Seducer
Gorken Bloodaxe, Conjurer
Maneira, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Meredath, Fighter/Bounty Hunter
Lesser Basilisk, Berserker
While Haiass gnaws on the first batch of enemies, Maneira sneaks around disarming the numerous traps that another mod added to the Shadow Thief hideout.
Notice the trap recovery string. Disarming the traps in this area lets you pick up a very small number of Arrows of Dispelling and Detonation.
The Priests of Mask in this area like to summon Aerial Servants, which are bugged to be near-perpetually invisible at all times, even if you use Detect Illusions on them. Even with extremely high APR and a low speed factor, it's almost always impossible to hit them before they go invisible again. Eventually I give up and keep Meredath out of harm's way, letting Haiass deal with the Aerial Servant.
I have no idea why Haiass is allowed to target the Aerial Servant but I'm not.
I send out Meredath to deal with the Clay Golems to the north, but there are some things that only Maneira can handle. Meredath can't use missile weapons, for one thing, nor can she disarm traps.
I was worried about this area, but it seems that there's at least one thing I don't need to worry about. Most of the enemies here use nonmagical weapons, which means Meredath can tank almost everyone.
Dedral, unfortunately, is draining a lot of our potions; Meredath's defenses aren't great once you get past her weapon immunities. Frisk charms Dedral to decrease the pressure on Meredath, and it works better than I expected.
It's a disturbing sign, though. If these guys can deal 100+ damage backstabs on an attack roll of 3 against a well-armored opponent, I don't see how anyone besides Gorky could survive against them. It's a good thing we have Meredath.
My happiness is short-lived, however. Another Priest of Mask summons another Aerial Servant, and just like before, it can go invisible immediately after attacking.
It hardly seems fair, considering the Aerial Servant never had to tackle the Twisted Rune to get that kind of power. Meredath repeatedly fails to even get an attack roll on the Aerial Servant, and eventually I just down a Potion of Invisibility and let the immortal Haiass chomp it.
There's a special rod that lets you deactivate some of the golems in this area...
...but the golems next to Haz himself cannot be disabled. Meredath tackles them on her own, and discovers that the Cursed Wound ability is bugged: instead of making the target immune to healing spells, it casts Farsight. We use it to spy on Haz.
Haz bombs us when we engage him, but he can't follow up because Maneira is applying pressure with nonmagical darts, bypassing his PFMW and forcing him to re-cast Stoneskin instead of attacking us.
His PFMW wears off, his invisibility is dispelled, and potions keep us safe from his damage spells until we do him in with Darts of Wounding.
Time to confront Aran Linvail himself. With two Bounty Hunters in the group, we can dispatch the troublesome backstabbers in the hall before they have a chance to one-shot Frisk.
Aran Linvail activates a very nasty Spell Trigger and butchers Meredath's Vhailor's Helm clone, but CON drain kills him shortly after.
But Aran Linvail comes back, and I discover, to my amazement, that the heavily buffed Aran Linvail with the Fire Shields and everything was his clone. The real one had no such buffs active--the exact opposite of a normal Mislead spell.
And for some reason, he's still invisible even though the death of his clone should have ended Mislead.
Gorky launches Greater Malison from the hallway, prompting one of the backstabbers to give chase, only to run right into the last of our traps.
Meredath runs down Aran Linvail and tries to kill him with CON drain. Aran Linvail responds with a backstab...
...despite being 15 feet away, fully visible, and facing the wrong direction.
What the hell is going on? I already killed one heavily-buffed Aran Linvail, there's a second blue one running around, and now there's a constantly invisible third Aran Linvail landing backstabs with every hit.
The first one was a Simulacrum? Aran Linvail isn't high enough level to cast Simulacrum, and I saw no notice of him casting the spell or using a scroll. And his Simulacrum gets pre-buffs?
Meredath keeps chasing the blue Aran, hoping to finally expose the real one, but the clone stays on the move. The Lesser Basilisk tries to petrify it, but both Meredath and the basilisk get punished for their efforts.
The Lesser Basilisk can't get through the doorway, so the only way to keep it safe is to pull it back into the hallway, exposing the rest of the party to enemy pressure by inviting the real Aran Linvail to come in. We lose our buffs to the enemy priest's Remove Magic, but the basilisk lands an early kill on the backstabber.
We desperately need to get rid of that Mislead clone. It's already at Near Death, but Gorky can't reach it in time to save Meredath from two backstabs in rapid succession.
Aran Linvail is finally visible, reducing his damage output by 80% and granting us a moment of safety. The basilisk hides with a Potion of Invisibility, though it doesn't stay hidden long, and Gorky helps Maneira work over the other remaining backstabber.
Wary of the enemy priest, Gorky bombs her and takes away a spell. But to my disbelief, Maneira's nonmagical darts cannot bypass Aran Linvail's PFMW, and to my frustration, the priest summons another buggy Aerial Servant.
Both the priest and the backstabber vanish, so I have Gorky focus on taking down Aran Linvail's defenses instead. But despite a Slow spell, the Aerial Servant lands a heavy blow on Maneira, and before she can react, the Kensai->Thief nails her.
The Lesser Basilisk petrifies the backstabber, finally putting an end to his mischief, but we're not in the clear yet. We burn a charge from the Rod of Resurrection to bring back Meredath while the basilisk soaks up damage from Aran Linvail and the Aerial Servant.
Gorky pulls out a Spell Sequencer to scatter the enemy, but the action clouds his aura, leaving him unable to drink our only Potion of Clarity before Aran Linvail hits him with Chaos. Against the odds, Gorky fails his save.
Aran Linvail kills the basilisk and Frisk flees to the east in search of safety. Meredath gets badly hurt despite Gorky's Teleport Field.
The situation deteriorates. With Aran Linvail buffed by PFMW and no Maneira in sight, we cannot apply enough pressure to keep Aran Linvail on the defensive. He Slows Gorky and stuns Meredath.
He kills Meredath in short order. Our only remaining party member is Gorky, who will be confused for the next several rounds. In the likely event that he gets killed before he recovers, Frisk will be all alone, and I don't know if they can handle this on their own.
Worse yet, our Rod of Resurrection is in Gorky's hands. I can't resurrect Maneira or Meredath or even the basilisk until Gorky recovers from Chaos or dies. There's only one thing Frisk can do to even the odds.
But it works.
It doesn't last long enough for us to disable Aran Linvail in any way, but it does buy Gorky enough time to recover from Chaos, if not Slow. While Aran is busy trying to kill Haiass, Gorky downs an Oil of Speed and follows up with an SI: Abjuration spell.
Soon both Maneira and Meredath are back on their feet, and though Maneira cannot put on any armor (Meredath doesn't need it; her base AC is low), she can still drink a Potion of Invulnerability.
We might be in miserable shape, but finally Aran Linvail is no longer Misled, no longer bolstered by Kensai->Thieves or Aerial Servants, and has run out of PFMW spells. Gorky buffs Maneira to finish off Aran Linvail before he has a chance to recover.
Aran Linvail crumples.
But we're still trapped.
I poke around and discover the culprit: the Aerial Servant, who escaped the room via our Teleport Field spell.
Apparently all enemies need to die before that door opens. Rather than wait out the Aerial Servant's duration, I just kill it. The door is unlocked!
We trudge back to Bodhi and inform her that we're not ready to leave yet. We really need to get another couple of levels for Frisk.
Screwing around with side quests while Imoen languishes in Spellhold fills us with determination.
Well done, Enuhal!
Best,
A.
Her name is Abigail. She's a cleric. She's based on an old Ascension Solo Challenge character by the same name. Her boob armor is ridiculous.
She's currently in the Cloakwood, kicking spider ass and taking names- stacking boons (not boobs) on Relair's Mistake
I probably won't post on this run, since I almost certainly won't have time to finish, but it's possible -possible- that Abigail will make an appearance. We'll see.
In any case, best wishes to the active challengers!
A.
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4Notable mods
- SCS
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalance
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Item Randomizer
After having dealt with the Iron Throne top floor, we went in search of a Stoneskin scroll. There's two in my setup : one in Neera's quest, the other is at the end of the Ice Island quest. We went for the latter. We hid under invisibility all the way through Dezkiel, who, in Unfinished Business, is in a bonus ice cave and flanked by two Snow Golem (it's actually also the same map as the cave below Candlekeep). We buffed and went in. We killed Dezkiel, his Snow Golem and a few summons without too much problem.
It was time to go into Candlekeep. Since I'm trying to find the Greenstone Amulet, which gives permanent Mind Shield protection instead of having charges under IR, but can't find it because Item Randomizer, I decided to fight the Rieltar and his gang. Maybe they have it, you never know. Not much to say about the actual fight : an opening backstab from Alora, a bunch of fireballs, a few traps and melee power trashed them. No picture needed, really. They didn't have the Greenstone Amulet, sadly.
Then, Prat and his gang were taken care of. It was a bit more complicated : Prat's team was killed quickly, but he himself was more elusive. After having killed his goons, he hid somewhere I couldn't find. I went to sleep in the catacombs, thinking I would just forget about him. He showed up when I came back into the cave. He then managed to hold Kivan, who was later killed by bunch of spiders that were activated by him while running around the cave. After a bit of hide and seek, we managed to take him down.
At this point, we were all well below the level cap. Since I'm not sure I want to go to Balduran's Island, I decided to clear the first underground level of Durlag's Tower. After having fetched all ques items, we fought the four Warders. Kivan died again, because I forgot that Fear can stun target. He was quickly killed by the warders after that.
Then, Branwen was charmed. Since she's the only one who can cast Break Enchantment, I tried to charm her back. She however resisted one Dire Charm and two Charm Person from Xan (an enchanter...) as well as the three Domination charges from Miliuel's harp. That's unlucky. Branwen was trying to attack Jaheira, but since the latter had rock-bottom AC (at this point of the game at least), the former couldn't do much attacking us until the charm wore off.
Avarice was backstabbing Alora, but never managed to take her down. We then dealt good damage on him before he vanished in thin air for a while. Love and Fear were then taken out by melee power. Avarice showed up again, only to get killed for good this time. Pride, who I was working on at the same time, died the last.
We then went into the next underground basements, only to stop before the Chess fight, which I won't be doing. It's a good run, so I won't be poking the bear uselessly. We sold a bunch of stuff then got back into Baldur's Gate. I couldn't find the Greenstone Amulet yet, but I don't care anymore. I'll press on now. We're slowly approaching the end of BG1...
1) move comments you want to the new discussion
2) merge that new discussion with the one you want to have the comments in
3) delete the comment by System
@Alesia_BH Condolences on your run and good luck in your trip!
Rest assured, you are always welcome here, and with you the forum is a better place! Already looking forward to any story you will share in the future, be it about Asia or Faerun!
Re/Reloading - I find myself unable to continue with characters killed because of bugs, because, you know, characters were still killed and it just doesn't work in my head.
Baroque and company, first SoA post.
Relevant mods: Item revisions, Divine Remix, SCS (no prebuffs), Rogue Rebalancing.
I don't have initial screenshots, but here's the created cast:
Baroque, Human Skald, LN and my CHARNAME. Supposed to take no kills the entire series.
Sebastian, Human Painbearer of Ilmater. Kit can lay on hands once every 5 levels, and use Ilmater's Endurance which doubles HP, adds +2 to all saves, and prevents forced movement (Smite, Wing buffet, so on) for rounds equal to his level.
Alina, Human Archer specializing in crossbows. Note that either DR or IR allows dual and multi-classed Clerics to use their old weapons, though after the dual is complete, you can never put more than half than your usual number of points. So after Alina duals, she can get at most 2 pips in any bow, but will still be able to use her crossbow GM.
Vista, Gnome Illusionist/Thief. Find Traps and Pick Locks are already maxed, and Detect Illusions and Set Traps are the next two on my agenda.
The game starts off buggy, which is never a good sign. An imported Vista is supposed alive, but she's nowhere to be found. A reload of the very beginning fixes the situation, where Vista is apparently imported as dead as she was against Sarevok. One CTRL-R later, and we're set. Vista, grateful, decides to level almost instantly.
We release Minsc and Jaheira, taking both with us: additional APR is always handy with a Skald. The early tasks are soon complete, relieving Rieliv, preventing him from reliving, and killing the Jailkeep golem. Alina fights the Otyugh using stealth and a spear, and takes no damage from the fight. Returning some acorns also gives Baroque his first level in SoA.
We kill the Cambion, and then try to stealth through the Mephit Plane of Death with Alina. She makes it there successfully the first time, but fails a check on the way back and is tagged by a few mephits. Minsc and Sebastian wade in and kill two of them, and Alina's safe after that. The Mephit portals aren't too much more trouble: Sebastian and Vista use a few summon spells to distract the mephits while the large group slaughters the portals. We fight the Duergar, the doppelganger, and finally, Ulvaryl as well:
Fun fact: I actually spelled it right for the first time in forever. I usually miss the first 'l'.
Before too long, though, we're out. We send Minsc on his merry way, and proceed to the tent.
Where there's another bug waiting for us. Not a good sign at all. Note Aerie's sprite. I have no idea how this one failed.
She's a bad fit for a Skald party anyways, but it's still curious and annoying. The circus is put in order quickly, but Aerie's still stuck as an Ogre. Oh well, I guess we can't win them all. Baroque triggers the Cowled Wizard warning with a casting of Friends in the Adventurer's Mart, but that's going to be largely irrelevant. We leave for the Slums, where we quickly go through Gaelan's dialogue menu several times, and laugh at his suggestion to go do the Planar Prison questline first. Thanks but no thanks. We instead head for the Copper Coronet for our first quest and slaughter: the slavers.
Today's Freedom Sunday, according to the International Justice Mission, so I guess this is mildly appropriate? Even Nalia decides to get into the action.
The Sewers are cleared with little problem: the worst part was fighting the Mustard Jelly with two (?) weapons that could even affect it. We rest, and enter the slaver stockade invisibly and hasted. Game plan is to have Sebastian soak the aggression while Vista hits a Confusion spell, and the others sing or shoot stuff, depending on their classes. The spell has 100% success:
And the rest is relatively simple. The two mages waste a few spells on summons before they get close enough, and are shot to death, and Vista stocked up on Burning Hands to finish off the two Trolls in the compound. Returning to Hendak gives Alina level 9, and grand mastery in crossbows, not that it's gonna matter for awhile. She duals to Cleric instantly.
The reason I still have Jaheira with us is that she's invaluable in early SoA, at the very least: Pixie Dust is safe from the Cowled Wizards' detection, so I can actually turn the ambushes against the ambushers. Suna Suni has a bad time as half her squad ends up immobilized, with my own summons keeping the others occupied. It was a very clean win.
I don't have a screenshot of the second ambush, but it was just as underwhelming. We proceed with the Xzar and the Harper questline, though I still don't have access to my arcane spells. No matter: Level 5 Druid spells are great for other things other than invisibility...
Though invisibility's great as well.
Our destination's Umar Hills, since I want a replacement Bow user, and Mazzy's the obvious choice. My plan was going to be Mazzy and Imoen at this point, but I'm thinking that Jaheira's going to permanently occupy the 6th slow now. Also, Umar Hills has two Regeneration items under IR, so no more having to rest for Cure Light Wounds spells. Alina's given a Free Action for the Mimic, and Vista makes her save and joins for the kill. Acid still stings.
We head to the Temple Ruins, grab the Cloak of the Wolf (+1 HP per 2 rounds), win the initial fight, and recruit Mazzy. While walking along, I realize that Baroque wasn't singing: he's been carrying Arbane's for the immunities, and I have a horrid feeling. I check my record screen.
Well. Neither pacifist is officially a pacifist anymore, though I too will keep going. The rest of the fights go pretty smoothly, the worst one being against Shadow Patrick with his bow. Sebastian Turns a number of shadows, and the others shoot the altar or Patrick alternatively. Finally, the Shade Lord is killed after 20 or so minutes of shooting an arrow, moving out of range, shooting another arrow, triggering the Shadow Mantle, Vista Detecting Illusions to remove the MI and then waiting 3 rounds for the PFMW to end... Jaheira, in the end, is the one to snag the kill.
In Trademeet, Baroque takes a quick snooze and comes back with two Pro. Petrification spells and a Haste, given to Mazzy and Sebastian, while he himself is safely under Invisibility. The Genies meet their end rather quickly, with a failed save speeding up his doom even faster.
I hadn't decided fully on Mazzy yet: I think I was thinking Jaheira and Imoen, but I buy Tansheron's bow anyways for the upcoming troll fights, and it's a good +3 weapon regardless. The trolls are surprisingly not much trouble at all, with even the Spirit Trolls failing to do anything of importance. In the Troll Mound, a Slow spell does a ton of work and no potions are used. Now for the Druids: the first group is simply Silenced while fighting. Fair? Not really. Effective? Very.
Insect plague takes care of the second group, but I'm running a bit low on spells for the third. Not wanting to rest, I simply have everyone pile onto Kyland. He falls, but the melee Adherant is doing a ton of damage, and our own casters were hit by an Insect Plague as well. I had to use a Potion of Invisibility to stop Jaheira from being our first casualty, but in the end, all that's left is Faldorn.
Who falls as she can't target the Improved Invisible Jaheira, and Mazzy's Guard action is allowing her to shoot through walls. Props to whoever posted that bit in the "Did you know?" thread. Trademeet is essentially done, but I take one more fight: Ihtafeer. It's not much to talk about, simply throwing tons of APR and magic weapons at them as three Cloudkills fill the air. My processor slows down so much during this fight that I don't have any clue how many rounds this fight actually took. The Periapt against Poison is our reward, a nice thing to have for fighting Iron Golems.
Back in Athkatla, we pay our dues to the Shadow Thieves.
We also fight Rejeik's minions. To avoid deadly backstabs, I send Vista down alone, invisibly, under Stoneskin and Mirror Image. She soaks all their invisibility potions, and only then does the rest of the party engage. Fun fact: Detect Illusions, as far as I know, does not work against scripted invisibility. So if someone starts in an area invisible, you'll have to use a divination spell, but it works against any other type of invisibility, potion of spell. Bone golems still hurt, though.
Finally, after running two quick quests for Aran...
It's not showing on the screen, but Sebastian levels to 11, and gains another use of Lay on Hands, Ilmater's Endurance, and a level 6 spell. Time for him to dual to Fighter. Next up: tomb raiding, troll hunting, Maevar killing, in some vague order.
Stats: Baroque, level 13 Skald, 83 HP (May be erroneous? I think I shouldn't have 6 of these, to be honest.) 1 kill, Shadow.
Sebastian, Level 11 Painbearer of Ilmater/1 Fighter. 77 HP, 0 deaths, 43 kills, Otyugh
Jaheira, 9/12 Fighter/Druid. 76 HP, 0 deaths, 65 kills, Shade Lord
Alina, 9 Archer/9 Cleric. 106 HP, 0 deaths, 84 kills, Shadow Patrick
Mazzy, 10 Fighter, 93 HP, 0 deaths, 48 kills, Bone Golem
Vista, 10/11 Illusionist Thief. 60 HP, 0 deaths, 31 kills, Stone Golem. Max Find Traps, Open Locks, Detect Illusions, and 85 Set Traps
Sorry for the OT.
(And, yeah: OT)
When you think about it, it's hardly a pacifist run anyway when Frisk is seducing people and ordering them to murder their enemies.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XXVI - Poor Gaius
Previous posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
SoD end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906579/#Comment_906579
BG2 start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906698/#Comment_906698
We just completed some minor battles in Athkatla and surrounding areas, no major questlines. First, Mencar and his friends - we call our summons, buff up and send the spirits and elementals to deal with the two spellcasters while we take out the melee fighters with Nahema tanking:
The sewer party: We start invisible, forcing Gaius to open with true sight. He's half dead when his buffs fire. Nahema uses breach, Arbogast casts insect plague - he doesn't stand a chance. Meanwhile, Jan's greater malison helps out our spirit wolf stun lock:
Zorl is the last one to fall:
We return to the Umar Hills to complete the minor quests there. Turns out the chicken quest is unavailable once you've dealt with the temple ruins mainquest. Too bad. We had a rather bad encounter with a killer mimic in SoD, resulting in three deaths. This won't happen again: Everyone gets CC or Free Action.
Back in Athkatla, there are some bridge district quest we'd like to do. We save a kidnapping victim and fight Neb - a simple battle with Jan detecting illusions:
Finally, we solve the murder cases. For the battle downstairs, we employ a flesh golem and a spirit lion as targets for the rune assassins, with our non-stoneskinned characters waiting upstairs:
No reason to give these LoB thieves any opportunity to chunk another character.
That's it for today. From now on, my updates will be much less frequent and propably shorter compared to the last couple of weeks, as I have a ton of RL stuff coming up!
Enuhal