SCS bandit camp can be a lot of fun for warriors. It has plenty of action, very little magic and there's this feeling of urgency about it. For me, it usually kick-starts the pace of the game - after wandering more or less aimlessly around the Sword Coast - which does not seem slow down til Sarevok's death.
Here's Amaruq just before entering the main tent. The buffs were Stone Giant Strength, Mind Focusing, Cold Resist, Oil of Speed, Regeneration, Absorption (potions), Shield (amulet) and Resist Fire/Cold (spell). She was wearing Girdle of Piercing, Cloak of Displacement, the Claw and Boots of Avoidance, effectively making it a crit only fight with the archers.
She opens (without Invisibility) with Darts of Stunning on Venkt. Britik buffs with Stone Giant Strength, but being slow as he is, he shouldn't pose a real threat. Raemon is hasted with Oil of Speed.
Amaruq moves across the tent to trigger the lighting trap, dealing couple of quick blows with Aule's on Venkt and Hakt in the process. You may see Venkt's reduced HP from the second dart. He was stunned already with the first one, however, I must have missed the effect notification (maybe because of that simultaneous Mirror Image pre-buff) and therefore gave it a second try.
The trap did not connect, so we have to do this by ourselves. First, Armor of Faith -> finish Venkt.
Speedy Raemon was next. Say hello to our two-handed weapon style.
With his failed morale, Hakt would not make a decent movie villain. Btw, note the dwindling number of Darts of Stunning - it shows how persistent I was (foolishly) about my of idea of stunning Britik, making this whole thing a bit more expensive than necessary.
There, sling was a much better idea.
With our Potion of Regeneration still running, there was more fun to be had outside. Amaruq refreshes Resist Cold/Fire and Armor of Faith and rolls into the camp. Everyone present? Good, time for Wand of Sleep.
Now fire it up a bit with Necklace of Missiles.
Amaruq picks the bandits one by one and then summons a nymph to assist with Taurgosh and healing.
After a considerable time not posting due to RL issues here is a continuation of the life of Æthelthryth. Note that the spoiler tags do not hide genuine spoilers, but are to hide images.
Journal of Æthelthryth
I was pleased that I was able to re-unite Rufie with his owner without much difficulty.
I then went to help prism, but was attacked by Greywolf. He appeared to be stronger than I so I lured him towards the mines where I had the guards as allies. I then lured him away from them when he was badly hurt.
I then killed Greywolf using my crossbow.
I then fought and defeated caldo and Krumm.
In transit I fought a winter wolf, being well protected from cold.
After clearing the ankheg I went to the FAI where I was attacked by a mage who I subsequently killed.
I then joined up with Gavin and went in search of Bassilus whom we killed quite easily.
We then killed Tristan unt Isolde.
We then started killing sirene but were asked to return to the Beregost Temple before completing the job.
On arrival there we were asked to kill Mutamin and on the way had to deal with powerful wolves.
In the basilisk area we were attacked by some who thought of themselves as adventurers.
We then fought basilisks and medusae before finally killing Mutamin.
After fulfilling that quest, we returned to the sirene area. Sil proved to be friendly and gave us a cloak to protect us from the wintry nights. However some golems proved to be less friendly.
We then fought and defeated Droth and his mate.
Gavin was badly hurt, but we quickly put that right. We then fought and killed Lady Valeria and her cohorts, but had to flee from numberless hobgoblins.
We then visited the gnolls' stronghold where the gnolls were the least of our problems. Assassins who attacked by stealth, were FAR more dangerous.
However we did have to kill numerous gnolls before we were able to rescue Dynaheir.
We then went down the mines where we rescued Xan.
Upon leaving the mines we killed the Revenant as well as an ankheg and Narcillicus.
In transit we were attacked by Morvin et al. We killed them all, but not before they killed Xan. Xan was raised. They weren't.
We then fought a party of ogres including an ogre/mage before killing no fewer than three winter wolves. (I took the image at the wrong time so only two showed here.)
Near the Friendly Arms Inn we fought Necardian and his cohorts. His cohorts were easily dispatched. However Necardian cast chaos which caused me to kill Xan and Dynaheir. He then cast confusion which only left Vynd in control of himself. However, he excelled himself by firstly killing Necardian, but by also keeping Tenya alive until she could heal herself. Raising the mages was expensive, but we gained some good loot.
We then tried to find Lethe at the Firewine ruins. To our horror Lethe attacked us, but we prevailed.
In Beregost we killed both Silke and Karlat. Vynd pickpocketted some potions from those that we had rescued as additional payment for helping them.
We then went to the bandit camp where we defeated a veritable horde of enemies much to our relief.
We find Nym outside Sendai's enclave, the elf who started a war between elves and dwarves and sold weapons to evil orc hordes. I hate him, especially because you can't kill him in IWD or IWD2, but I buy five Protection from Magic scrolls and a Wand of Polymorphing from him even though I don't plan on using any of them.
We have to deal with the Chosen of Cyric. I'm a little concerned that...
Well, actually, no. I'm terrified that we're going to have to fight Venduris after meeting with Cyric. I know what Venduris and his gang are capable of. I make sure the party is buffed with double Wish Hardiness.
But as it turns out...
...the Chosen of Cyric mod does not actually modify the original Chosen of Cyric. These are just ordinary backstabbers.
They don't even merit a screenshot.
To get to Balthazar, we have to slaughter dozens of his guards, two of which are high-level mages (are there any other kind in BG2?). But the Frag Grenades and Power Attack can stun them despite whatever defenses they might possess. And also kill them.
Balthazar agrees to fight alongside us, and summons Melissan for an early confrontation in the same chamber. She's a high-level mage, and her weapon immunities seem to last forever, blocking both nonmagical and +5 weapons...
...but she never seems to actually do anything to us before her immunities run out.
All we have left are some last-minute optimizations. I have to use the console to replicate some crafting stuff, though.
More importantly, Frisk is at 6 million XP and gets the final Slayer form, which lets you turn into the Ravager.
Once we beat the actual Ravager, we should have 75% physical damage resistance. Which is not too difficult, because the Ravager has no helmet and is therefore vulnerable to the Martyr's Morningstar. The critical hit effect bypasses its immunity to +3 weapons and below.
Only one fight left before Melissan. One of my mods, maybe Wheels of Prophecy, adds a single demon-heavy fight to the first area of ToB. I don't actually know why they're there, but they are. Frisk uses Psionic Invisibility to get around the demons' ability to see through normal invisibility and Maneira actives Power Attack, hoping to stun the cambion mage with some Frag Grenades.
The cambion gets Time Stop off the ground. I'm not too worried; none of the mages so far in ToB have done anything particularly impressive with their Time Stops.
Then, to my absolute horror, the cambion attacks during Time Stop.
No.
No!
The whole party is helpless. Frisk is helpless! This cambion has massive damage output and it's only been a few seconds since Time Stop began. Psionic Invisibility is going to run out!
If he targets Frisk, he could end the entire run in a matter of seconds. And there's absolutely nothing I can do but watch.
His text target is Wraith Sarevok, and for a moment, I think Frisk might be in the clear. But Wraith Sarevok falls in a matter of seconds--his massive HP pool is no defense against level drain.
It barely even registers that Wraith Sarevok has been chunked; I'm too terrified for Frisk.
The cambion is not done. It moves on to the next target, and through sheer luck, it happens to be the second Ancient Vampire. And just as the vampire dies, Time Stop ends.
Frisk makes their getaway. Our party is in shambles.
Gorky casts Time Stop. We desperately need to preempt any new Time Stop spells from the cambion. But the Cambion is invisible when Gorky finishes casting.
Gorky can't target him. And that invisibility is probably going to last for another 15 rounds or so. Desperate to somehow run out the duration of the cambion's invisibility, Gorky deploys the Wand of Lightning trick, despite my finally forswearing it for the rest of the game just moments before. With the Robe of Vecna speeding up scroll casting in EE, all it does is take 2 rounds out of the cambion's buffs, but I'm terrified that allowing the cambion to survive this Time Stop will end up with Frisk dead and the run over.
Gorky keeps casting Time Stop, hoping something will change. The cambion flickers in and out of view for a fraction of a second--maybe a single frame--and I struggle to pause on that exact moment so Gorky can target the cambion with a Protection from Magic scroll.
Then, in the last few rounds of Gorky's main Time Stop spells, the cambion's Mislead clone vanishes--and the cambion itself finally becomes visible.
Gorky hits the cambion with a Protection from Magic scroll and butchers it.
I would later learn that the cambion only had a single Time Stop spell, making the entire effort unnecessary.
Wraith Sarevok is easily our least valuable party member, barely any more useful than the Rajah waiting for us in the Pocket Plane (actually, maybe even less useful, now that I think about it), but per my normal rules, I can get him back if I win this fight, twice. I don't know why I don't just disable chunking outright; it's a lot easier than my workaround.
We still have to worry about the Fallen Solar and a whole bunch of other demons. Maneira has incredible damage output, but her defenses are terrible by ToB standards. Our Fallen Planetar isn't enough to win this fight, either.
The Fallen Solar teleports somewhere, but I have no idea where.
We need our Ancient Vampires. Gorky manages to resurrect them via Wish, though it leaves him vulnerable to an Implosion spell.
Potions and a Rod of Resurrection charge bring our vampires up to speed while Maneira keeps the nearest enemies distracted. A second Fallen Planetar, meanwhile, has been keeping the other demons busy to the northeast.
Gorky spams some Wish scrolls for a few boosts to the party, but it proves unnecessary. The enemy is divided, and without a cambion to kill half the party with a single Time Stop spell, they don't have much to throw at us before we chop them up.
The fight is won, but to get Wraith Sarevok back (until now, I didn't really consider just replacing him with the Rajah instead), I have to win the fight again. As it happens, the cambion's Mislead spell one again keeps him safe during Gorky's Time Stop, but when the cambion does successfully cast Time Stop, the only party member in his sight is Wraith Sarevok.
The cambion doesn't bother attacking Wraith Sarevok for whatever reason, so Gorky just casts Time Stop, takes down the cambion's Improved Mantle and Stoneskins using the Staff of the Magi, and chops him up with Firetooth and Gnasher.
Balthazar appears, we agree once more to fight Melissan together, and he vanishes, promising to meet us at the Throne of Bhaal. A game-breaking bug of some sort makes it impossible to escape the area...
...but it's nothing the console can't fix. We teleport back to the Pocket Plane, reorganize our inventory and Gorky's spellbook, and step through the doorway and onto the Throne of Bhaal. All that stands between us and victory is Melissan.
I saw @JuliusBorisov posting that he was going to do an SCS / LoB party run and that sounded like a good idea . Normally my parties are groups of a single class, but this time I fancied being able to make use of synergies from different classes so rolled a group of those up.
I've realised though after playing for a bit there were a couple of errors in character creation. (i) Misty took sleep as one of her starting spells, which is entirely useless (though that's only a minor problem for a mage). (ii) I'd forgotten that the EE nerfed bounty hunters so they can no longer throw special traps (which was the main motivation for including one of those in this party). Oh well, there are other cheesy tactics I can resort to if desired.
Levels for a party of 6 are hard come by if you're choosing to fight gnolls and hobgoblins and a couple of the party had already had to rely on L1 protection to stay alive when a hobgoblin ambush made sure of Misty by targeting her with several arrows.
In response the WIP went in search of something that could get them levels rather quicker and watched as Artemis shot down a number of basilisks from the cover of a green scroll (Melody did know PfP, but knowing my record for leaving statues dotted around the place Artemis chose to rely on a longer-lasting spell). With the green scroll nearing expiry Korax was recruited with the aim of guiding him in using stealth to attack Mutamin. Whistle's misguided attempt to throw a trap in resulted in Mutamin being activated a bit earlier than desired,
but Korax still managed to corner the mage and paralyse him along with the last 2 basilisks.
The sensible thing to do would have been to leave at that point, but the WIP were determined to demonstrate to Shar-Teel that she was not the only woman who could show a man a thing or two.
After the casters were silenced, combinations of doom and blindness worked well while the group were occupied with a spirit bear, such that Peter was the only one with sight remaining.
He resisted a couple of hold persons though, which could have been nasty as his holy smite would have had a good chance of chunking someone. However, Tawny managed to charm the blinded Lindin and with him joining the attack Peter was killed as he was trying to cast his smite.
Baerin had remained close and was quickly shot down before the WIP went in search of Kirian - managing to track her down while she was still blind.
Good luck, @Grond0 ! It'll be cool to read about your playthrough as I'm attempting mine... Although I opted against going for basilisks right from the start, preferring to fully experience battles against hobgoblins, xvarts and the like (Blindness helps greatly here). I also plan to play it as a completionist run. I'll be sure to share the tale when I have a chance.
I thought about doing one last update to put us up-to-date with Amaruq's game progress.
You remember the triplets, right? And I did say something about putting them againts Kirian. Here you go.
We did not take any buffs, although Amaruq pre-casts Far Sight to have a better control over the battlefield. The nymphs take positions and Amaruq initiates the unpleasant dialogue...
Round 1: We open with 1x Mental Domination (Baerin) and 2x Hold Monster (Kirian, Peter). Kirian gets away with her own Charm Person. Amaruq counters with Potion of Magic Blocking.
Round 2: All of our spells have landed - we're looking good.
Content warning: The following image is graphic in nature.
Apologies for the short post, but there's nothing else left to cover at the moment and I'm not expecting to progress any further before next week Wednesday or so.
No mod items. No Wand of Lightning trick. No reloads. And no party members except for those Frisk has seduced: Gorken Bloodaxe, a Conjurer; Maneira, a Fighter/Bounty Hunter; Wraith Sarevok, a dual-classed Berserker(15)->Thief who never regained his Berserker levels; and two Ancient Vampires, both of which are Fighter/Swashbucklers.
Maneira opens with a Time Stop scroll courtesy of Gorky's scroll scribing. I want those Fallen Solars gone.
It's not enough. I really should have cast Improved Haste beforehand. Frisk uses Psionic Invisibility, fearing the Fallen Solars' swords and arrows, while Gorky stops time himself.
Jon Irenicus is invisible, but Gorky reveals him by killing his Mislead clone. The real Irenicus shows up to the east, where Gorky puts him down.
Bodhi dies during Time Stop and the Fallen Solars collapse when they become visible and the party descends upon them. Now we have to deal with the demon spawns around the pools. The whole party gets rested when you activate the pools the second time, so I want to beat all three of these fights without using a single rest. With three thieves in the party (not counting Frisk, who is really only half a thief), traps play a critical role in shortening the fights.
When a vampire gets stunned in the next fight, Gorky hauls out Time Stop to kill the demons before they can finish her off.
For the final fight, Maneira pre-sets a Time Trap while Gorky casts a Time Stop once hers runs out.
We can rest three times before bringing the Five onto the battlefield, which means we can set a fair number of traps (though we don't want to use too many, lest we kill someone on the first round and trigger Melissan's arrival before we're ready), cast a lot of buffs, summon a lot of critters, and drink a lot of potions. It also means we can use CON drain to boost the Ancient Vampires' HP.
Gorky can also get in some Wish-rests with a bit of luck. He uses Improved Alacrity to speed up his spellcasting, just to eke a few extra rounds out of our buffs. Notice the use of a Neutralize Poison scroll (only possible thanks to Use Any Item) to cure a blindness effect that lasted longer than I expected.
We set a limited number of traps, boost the party's damage resistances to 100% with Wish Hardiness, and cast the last of our buffs.
We activate the final pool and bring the Five onto the map, triggering our traps to deal some light damage. The first round is the most critical--not because of the traps, but because we need to use a Protection from Magic scroll on Sendai to stop her healing spells and on Abazigal so he won't cast Time Stop on us.
Notice Abazigal's buffs triggering after the scrolls hit, a minor setback. I also planned on using a Control Circlet on Sarevok (not to be confused with Wraith Sarevok, our party member), since he's the only enemy on the map vulnerable to charm, but he's wounded enough that it doesn't really matter.
But now I have a problem. I want to kill either Illasera or Abazigal first because Illasera inflicts spell failure and Abazigal has crazy damage output, but with all the summons on the map, it's nearly impossible to control our own damage output. Gromnir dies early.
Melissan doesn't appear for a few seconds, and in the meantime, we kill Sendai--also by accident, since it would have been better to kill her while Melissan was around, so Sendai's death would disable Melissan for a few seconds.
The plan is to hit Melissan with a Protection from Magic scroll to remove her Absolute Immunity, stun her with Smite or Power Attack, and then send in our Ancient Vampires to land a CON drain kill in the first round.
Just as the scroll hits, I hear an alteration spell. I consider using Psionic Invisibility, but Focus would be safer.
I also consider waiting to use Focus so it wouldn't trigger until right before Melissan cast Time Stop, but I decide not to risk it. I begin casting Focus.
To my horror, Frisk does not cast it instantly. It seems it has a casting time of 1. And Melissan's Time Stop has a casting time of 3. Frisk finishes casting it barely a second before Melissan stops time, leaving me shaken. I didn't realize the window was so incredibly short--if I hesitated just for a moment, Frisk would be doomed.
Instead, the Ancient Vampire will suffer Melissan's wrath. But what Melissan fails to understand is that the Ancient Vampire's 500 HP will last it through the entire Time Stop.
Frisk, sensing an opportunity, throws a few bullets at Sarevok using the Sling of Arvoreen. Not enough to kill him, but enough to bring him to Near Death.
The Ancient Vampire tries to drink Durlag's Goblet, but her aura isn't clear. And Melissan cuts her down to 55 HP using a double-strength Globe of Blades spell that I'm not even sure is supposed to deal that much damage.
Abazigal gets a new PFMW spell via Contingency and Gorky's Fallen Planetar bails out the Ancient Vampire before it can drink from Durlag's Goblet.
Unable to harm Abazigal except using a nonmagical short sword from Maneira, we put down Yaga-Shura and Sarevok. Our summons speed up the process and even get a few hits on Melissan, but they're getting in the way of my vision and choking up the battlefield. I had a precise plan for this fight, but it has sensitive timing and I'm not sure the disruption is worth the extra damage. An Ancient Vampire tries to stun Melissan with Power Attack, but its THAC0 isn't reliable and Melissan makes her saves against any hits the Ancient Vampire might have landed.
Only Abazigal is left. Knowing that he'll survive for a couple more rounds at least, I decide to pin down Melissan with Psionic Lock in the hopes that we can kill her before Frisk's ever-important immunity to Time Stop runs out.
It buys us 6 seconds and bypasses all immunities and defenses, but unfortunately it cannot be chain-cast, because Frisk's aura does not refresh during Psionic Lock; it delays their next aura by a full 6 seconds.
It gives Gorky enough time to land a Wish-rest, which allows our Ancient Vampire to re-use Critical Strike. Just for good measure, Gorky removes Melissan's Stoneskins using the Staff of the Magi.
But for some reason, the Ancient Vampires can't touch her.
It's a +4 weapon; Melissan should not be immune. I hazard a guess that she won't become vulnerable to +4 weapons until Abazigal is dead, but that brief delay means that we wasted a Critical Strike.
Only one Ancient Vampire has any HLAs, and she only has a single Critical Strike. That's a major loss, because our Ancient Vampires only have about a 50% hit chance on Melissan. She still has a Smite spell, but I'm concerned that the knockback will cause problems. First, though Maneira needs to focus on finishing off Abazigal.
Anxious about Melissan pulling some new trick on us, Frisk locks her again.
It buys Maneira enough time to finish off Abazigal. Melissan is alone!
Then I see an ominous message. Even after Abazigal is dead, Melissan is still immune to +4 weapons like the Ancient Vampires' CON drain attacks. Only +5 weapons can touch her.
We can damage her, certainly, but damage is entirely curable; Melissan has Heal spells. CON drain is irreversable.
Then I see an encouraging message. Abazigal's death finally registered!
Melissan is healed, but it doesn't matter to use as long as the Ancient Vampires can land a few hits. We activate Smite and Melissan summons a ring of enemies to protect her.
I keep our own summons at bay; I can't afford to let any of them displace our Ancient Vampires.
Finally, one of the vampires lands a hit.
It's working! It's finally working! CON drain is piling up, and no one is rolling to hit--she must be stunned!
We have automatic hits on Melissan for two whole rounds. And with Improved Haste active, our two vampires combined can drain over 50 Constitution in a single round. Melissan is doomed.
The Solar arrives to announce the end. Melissan doesn't deliver her normal line; she's already dead.
But we're not stuck; we can trigger the next dialogue just by speaking with the Solar. Frisk chooses mortality.
It's over.
It's over!
We had some horrible close calls over the course of this run. If our luck had been just a little bit worse, Frisk might have died to a Rune Assassin in the skinner quest; the party could have been broken in Aran Linvail's lair; we might have been worn down by Kangaxx; Frisk might have been killed by the cambion mage at the end of ToB; and there were numerous times where we could have permanently lost a party member to petrification. Poor judgment also could have been fatal in many other places, notably the first round after Melissan appeared at the Throne of Bhaal (or when we opted not to fight Venduris).
I don't think this run truly qualifies as a solo run--not because we had party members exactly (since Seduction is just a way of implementing a permanent charm effect across areas, and we neither created our own party members nor recruited any), but simply because it was mechanically similar to a conventional party run. The primary reason for the increased difficulty of solo runs is that the player's aura potential and party diversity drop down to 1/6 of its normal value, and the only reward is 6 times the normal XP per party member. Even if you count Gorky and the vampires and the basilisks and so forth as summoned or charmed critters rather than proper party members, the playstyle of this run and the type of difficulty matched a party run; not a solo run.
Frisk ended up with 2 kills instead of the 0 we planned, so we didn't quite make it a pacifist run per my original terms. Still, I'm happy with how things turned out. I got to try out some cool new critters without even resorting to the level drain trick. These are all of the critters who made a meaningful contribution to the success of the run:
Frisk Cat Gorken Bloodaxe Duergar Cleric Maneira Schlumpsa the Sewer King Lesser Basilisk Armored Skeleton Meredath Greater Basilisk Ancient Vampire Rajah Wraith Sarevok Ancient Vampire
Gorky in particular stands out, as he carried the party at almost every stage of the game, especially in ToB. Maneira was often useful, but she never truly filled a roll that no one else could have. The Lesser and Greater Basilisks deserve some extra credit for performing the basilisk XP loop, letting Frisk acquire the vampires unusually early and also getting Gorky some early HLAs. Finally, the Ancient Vampires, especially our first one with its Smite HLA, proved instrumental in slaying Melissan before she could cast a potentially fatal Time Stop spell.
One "solo" Seducer tetralogy no-reload run, complete.
Congrats, @semitigod! I was going to say that you're the first person to party with a pair of bloodsuckers and a reptile who gets everyone stoned, but then I realized we've pretty much all been there done that- at least in real life, if not in BG.
Gaming wise, I have no clue what to make of Frisk's run, honestly, but I'm super glad that you achieved what you set out to achieve and I'm also glad that people enjoyed reading it. To Frisk! Yay!
Congrats, @semitigod! I was going to say that you're the first person to party with a pair of bloodsuckers and a reptile who gets everyone stoned, but then I realized we've pretty much all been there done that- at least in real life, if not in BG.
Precisely (btw - in my language, a "reptile" IS actually an urban term for a street junkie).
We set out to complete the remaining non-stronghold quests and fights in Athkatla - first up are the fallen paladins, who failed to bring any +2 weapons with them:
Next we have Xzar's quest, which involves introducing his disciples to a little breach/insect plague fun:
Also, the slavers part II are dealt with:
That's it when it comes to quests, but we still want to clear the graveyard district of any hostile forces - which means the crypt king has to go:
Big swarms of weak enemies, like the fight for Kitthix, can be tough on LoB - my strategy is to disable the spiders as much as possible, and so we use greater malison, chaos, insect plague and slow, making them relatively harmless (though we still have to drink two antidotes to ensure everyone's survival - the poison is extremely deadly):
Finally, we slay some undead in Korgan's crypt, simply because we can:
With the non-stronghold quests done, it's time to get our very own druid grove for Arbogast. Trolls and spiders pose no threat to us, as we have dealt with much tougher groups of those in SoD already - and a couple of Rakshasa are easily tricked by entering and leaving their home as soon as they cast spells, while summons deal damage to them:
Mazzy gets some new bracers at the troll mound:
And finally, the duel for leadership: Arbogast versus Faldorn. We summon three spirit wolves and cast doom, Faldorn is held for most of the fight:
For our first stronghold quest, we have to fight the longest battle in the entirety of SoA so far - why is that? Because when the troll leader is killed, an army of diseased rats spawns - and they have rat resistances to physical damage (I think it's 90%?) plus LoB HP (3*their normal hitpoints + 80 - the +80 is the important part here). If you get close to them, they deal poison damage via diseases, so we actually have to be careful (though our spirit animals are immune to poison and can tank them). Takes quite a while to kill them all:
We complete Tiris' quest and resolve the familiy dispute in Trademeet to get to 20 reputation. After a couple of rests, its also time for the second druid quest (we can't do the third one yet, as Arbogast is still quite a bit away from reaching level 14). We easily defeat "Chaos":
I've simply forgotten what type of abilites this foe would have, so I didn't realize that full summons + buffs was very much complete overkill for this one. With all our hard-earned cash we buy all the good items from trademeet and a Robe of Vecna for Nahema. Shiny.
One last thing: I forgot to kill the bridge district party last time. We lure them outside so our summons can join in:
Which stronghold quest should we do next time? De'Arnise Keep, I think - we have already proven that trolls are no issue for this party.
Gaming wise, I have no clue what to make of Frisk's run, honestly, but I'm super glad that you achieved what you set out to achieve and I'm also glad that people enjoyed reading it. To Frisk! Yay!
Mechanically, I think the biggest takeaway here is that even low-level enemies get some pretty crazy powers that the player does not--and yet, they really don't exploit them as much as they could. A good example is SCS Bodhi with the Tactics mod. If Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh simply bought a Wand of Monster Summoning, they could have cranked Chapter 6 Bodhi's HP over 1,000 by having her drink the blood of a bunch of summoned hobgoblins. And Bodhi could have negated the slow effect from the holy water by drinking an Oil of Speed--or having one of the mages cast Improved Haste on her.
There are all kinds of examples, actually. With her 5 APR, Maneira would be unstoppable if she simply had some decent potions and a suit of full plate mail. Clay Golems would be nearly invincible if you just gave them Roranach's Horn. There's no reason vampires couldn't wear armor, or drink Potions of Magic Shielding to ward off Sunray spells. Mutamin could take over an entire city with those basilisks of his. Firkraag would be a lot tougher if he simply drank a Potion of Clarity to avoid getting feebleminded. Melissan could obliterate any mage protagonist just by using a Protection from Magic scroll on them. Liches could deal with Protection from Undead scrolls just by keeping some non-undead allies around. Mages could chain-cast Time Stop spells, waiting out the player's PFMW spells and dual-wielding daggers to kill the player's fighters. Sarevok could have destroyed the player if he just had a few archers with some Arrows of Detonation. TorGal would be much tougher if those Yuan-ti Mages kept some Protection from Fire or Invisibility spells on hand for when their troll allies fell down.
Enemies have some incredible strengths, but they never patch their weaknesses. That's what separates them from the player.
Congrats @semiticgod - well done. Amazing speed..some of my runs take many months to get to the end.
Bear in mind that my posts usually detail events that happened in the recent past; I don't usually start posting on a run until it's got some momentum. I didn't complete the game as quickly as I posted it here.
Mechanically, I think the biggest takeaway here is that even low-level enemies get some pretty crazy powers that the player does not--and yet, they really don't exploit them as much as they could. A good example is SCS Bodhi with the Tactics mod. If Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh simply bought a Wand of Monster Summoning, they could have cranked Chapter 6 Bodhi's HP over 1,000 by having her drink the blood of a bunch of summoned hobgoblins. And Bodhi could have negated the slow effect from the holy water by drinking an Oil of Speed--or having one of the mages cast Improved Haste on her.
There are all kinds of examples, actually. With her 5 APR, Maneira would be unstoppable if she simply had some decent potions and a suit of full plate mail. Clay Golems would be nearly invincible if you just gave them Roranach's Horn. There's no reason vampires couldn't wear armor, or drink Potions of Magic Shielding to ward off Sunray spells. Mutamin could take over an entire city with those basilisks of his. Firkraag would be a lot tougher if he simply drank a Potion of Clarity to avoid getting feebleminded. Melissan could obliterate any mage protagonist just by using a Protection from Magic scroll on them. Liches could deal with Protection from Undead scrolls just by keeping some non-undead allies around. Mages could chain-cast Time Stop spells, waiting out the player's PFMW spells and dual-wielding daggers to kill the player's fighters. Sarevok could have destroyed the player if he just had a few archers with some Arrows of Detonation. TorGal would be much tougher if those Yuan-ti Mages kept some Protection from Fire or Invisibility spells on hand for when their troll allies fell down.
Enemies have some incredible strengths, but they never patch their weaknesses. That's what separates them from the player.
Maybe it's time for you to write a difficulty mods?
Frisk, the Seducer: @semiticgod BG1, SoD, SoA, ToB Notable mods: Enhanced Edition Trilogy, SCS v30, Ascension, Seducer Kit for Thieves v1.21 "Solo": No party members except those from Seduction Difficulty: Core Parts 1-14:
I think I may return to BGT for my full SCS run next, the EEs can get a little bit too laggy on my rustbucket.
Just our ot curiosity, what exactly is lagging for you in the EEs, or do you mean your device (a laptop?) runs the EEs with lags?
Congrats @semiticgod, I look forward to trying a Seducer sometime.
Thank you for your curiosity @JuliusBorisov, I am playing on a laptop which is 4-5 years old, and so it has trouble dealing with some graphical effects. During many battles I simply zoom into a blank point offscreen and keep an eye on the text messages to speed the process a little . (Not as off putting for me as for some people as I just completed a roguelike for the first time!) This is particularly pronounced when effects like cloudkill or entangle are around. By contrast I don't remember much slowdown when playing the Ascension battle with SCS- although there were more bugs to deal with in the old days!
Frisk, the Seducer: @semiticgod BG1, SoD, SoA, ToB Notable mods: Enhanced Edition Trilogy, SCS v30, Ascension, Seducer Kit for Thieves v1.21 "Solo": No party members except those from Seduction Difficulty: Core
Congrats semiticgod! I've also had graphical issues with a couple things: cloud spells and the burning-character animation. Both slow things to a crawl; an older post claimed modifying some files to display acid damage instead of fire animations helped, but didn't list which files he edited.
Don't know what my next run could be. I'm thinking either a poverty run or just a completionist run with all the mods I have installed.
Completionist because there are tons of quests I've seen but never started. Poverty because when I think about all the best strategies for no-reload runs in the series, they are all absolutely dependent on items. Problem is, I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with party deaths before a sorcerer gets Summon Planetar.
If somebody dies in BG1 or SoD, there are only two characters who can cast Raise Dead: level 9 clerics and level 10 Shamans. But those are pretty high levels to reach in BG1, and if the healer dies, we can't raise them until the first dungeon of SoD.
These are the characters I'm considering for a poverty run:
I now prefer to take rolls as they come, so creating a party for this run was a task itself. As I don't often play BG these days, I want everything in this party to suit my current mood the most. For the main character I went with a sorcerer - no cleric protections, but at least all needed arcane spells available further in SoD and BG2 (if I reach it) at will. You probably won't believe it, but I got nothing better than 17 DEX and 15 CON. High WIS (17) and INT (16) seemed like a true choice for an arcane caster.
For a fighter/illusionist I managed to get a decent roll, with 18/42 STR, 16 in DEX and CON, and 17 in INT.
During these attempts, a halfling fighter/thief didn't get 19 DEX, but 17 in all three fighting attributes seemed solid.
Looking at 2 fighters, I wanted my archer to get high STR, to carry heavy equipment, but for me it meant not getting 19 DEX on an archer as well. 18/98 STR, 17 DEX and 14 CON. Oh well, at that moment I remembered BG1 NPCs and their far from ideal stats. I imagined Kivan, Minsc, Khalid, or Jaheira - and my fighters' attributes started to look fine.
Rolling 4 characters process already took some time, so on my totemic druid I needed only 18 WIS, and I got it. 16 DEX and 15 CON were good additions.
For my cleric/mage, I too wanted 18 WIS, but in this case I also needed high INT. Managed to roll 17.
So, meet Jagen, Glod, Uzume, Cochrane, Sigyn and Dazbog (like semiticgod, I prefer certain pictures, so my characters often find themselves in different runs, with different classes, but the same personality (in my head). All characters (except for the druid, of course) are of the good alignment, as I keep find it difficult to RP evil actions.
Now when the creation process was over, I started with Candlekeep rats. There was a thread on Reddit not long ago about these rats, but I opted for fighing them, as there was no risk of dying because of their non-lethal attacks. Also, the completionist run, it will be! Here's brave Uzume taking a nap while the last rat is killed.
Shank and Carbos were first blinded (granted, the group had 3 spellcasters with Blindness memorized) and then finished from a distance.
For proficiencies, I decided to go with crossbows and two-handed swords on the fighter/illusionist (not optimal, I know, but it's been a while since I had chosen two-handed weapons, - mage buffs will help compensate the lack of defence and APR), short swords and short bows on the fighter/thief (she's a halfling, I think tiny weapons suit her), longbows and slings on the archer (I will use slings mainly because of his STR for damage, longbows are needed for using special arrows, - plus it breaks a habit of using mainly bows on my archers), hammers and slings on the C/M, slings on the sorcerer and daggers on the druid.
So, we decided to hunt down Werewolves in Balduran Island, in search of the tasty Greenstone amulet. But, before doing so, we went underground to see how Slythe and Krystin were doing. Not good. After our usual prebuffs, Slythe saw us and thought that going melee was a good idea. Not quite. He didn't even managed to go invisible before dying. The picture was taken a bit after his actual death, but that's because it went a bit fast and I forgot to take a screenshot at the moment.
Then, it was the simple routine of using Spell Thrust and Invisibility Purge on Krystin and attack her with wands/melee/range weapons. Wizard's chess is MUCH simpler in BG1. She did managed to summon Shadows (a specific SR spell which summon the shadows you encounters in the Temple ruins in Umar Hills questline), but she died soon after anyway.
So, onward to Wolfie Island ! After having cleared the lower floors of Balduran's wrecked Ship, I decided to split the forces of Karoug a bit by having Alora go upstairs to backstab wolfies. She couldn't because Karoug's mage casted Invisibility Purge, but she did managed to draw the mage downstairs, who was taken out in no time. After that, Alora retrieved Balduran sword and the Werebane dagger. I gave the sword to Kivan and the dagger to Jaheira, hasted them and buffed their strength to the max with potions and SR Strength of One from Branwen. In SR, SoO gives +2 to strength instead of setting it at 18/50. With two hasted fighters at 25 strength, having no proficiencies didn't matter. I didn't give the two weapons to a dual-wielding Kivan, because the WereBane dagger under IR is a throwing dagger that you can't use for melee. I understand the decision : it prevents that a +2 weapon would actually give a bonus attack per round in melee in BG1.
We went upstairs to meet Karoug and his melee grunts. After having cleared the floor of his remaining team, we all went berserk on Karoug. We were doing good work on his, until I decided to try something suggested by @Serg_BlackStrider, and it indeed worked : a single charge of the wand of Paralyzation rendered him helpless. He was cut down fast after.
When we came back in Ulgoth's Beard, we had to fight Mendas/Salaad. We did. I prebuffed then went in. I had Jaheira and Kivan take care of his acolyte, and the rest attacking Salaad. Salaad started with Shadow Door, which is a neat spell under IR : it has a small AoE which maze enemies around the mage for a short while on a failed save vs spell. Luckily, Alora and Branwen both made their save against it. After that, it was the Spell Thrust/Invisibility Purge combo to take down his biggest defense. We killed his acolyte and hurt him enough to trigger his next form not so long after. All of us against Salaad, he couldn't do much. I even had him held with a charge of WoP (thanks Serg !). Something was weird though : he couldn't be hurt even by the silver weapons we found on the island. He was still susceptible to elemental damage, so we took him down with WoH and WoL. Bye-bye Salaad !
Have I found the Greenstone Amulet ? Nope. Nowhere to be found. The only place left is the last floor of Durlag's Tower. But I won't go there. Even if I'm pretty confident that I could take on the Chess fight (I got arrows of Explosion to spare...), I'm not in the mood for it. We'll press on without the nice trinket. The next post will be about the end of BG1.
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Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4
SCS bandit camp can be a lot of fun for warriors. It has plenty of action, very little magic and there's this feeling of urgency about it. For me, it usually kick-starts the pace of the game - after wandering more or less aimlessly around the Sword Coast - which does not seem slow down til Sarevok's death.
Here's Amaruq just before entering the main tent. The buffs were Stone Giant Strength, Mind Focusing, Cold Resist, Oil of Speed, Regeneration, Absorption (potions), Shield (amulet) and Resist Fire/Cold (spell). She was wearing Girdle of Piercing, Cloak of Displacement, the Claw and Boots of Avoidance, effectively making it a crit only fight with the archers.
She opens (without Invisibility) with Darts of Stunning on Venkt. Britik buffs with Stone Giant Strength, but being slow as he is, he shouldn't pose a real threat. Raemon is hasted with Oil of Speed.
Amaruq moves across the tent to trigger the lighting trap, dealing couple of quick blows with Aule's on Venkt and Hakt in the process. You may see Venkt's reduced HP from the second dart. He was stunned already with the first one, however, I must have missed the effect notification (maybe because of that simultaneous Mirror Image pre-buff) and therefore gave it a second try.
The trap did not connect, so we have to do this by ourselves. First, Armor of Faith -> finish Venkt.
Speedy Raemon was next. Say hello to our two-handed weapon style.
With his failed morale, Hakt would not make a decent movie villain. Btw, note the dwindling number of Darts of Stunning - it shows how persistent I was (foolishly) about my of idea of stunning Britik, making this whole thing a bit more expensive than necessary.
There, sling was a much better idea.
With our Potion of Regeneration still running, there was more fun to be had outside. Amaruq refreshes Resist Cold/Fire and Armor of Faith and rolls into the camp. Everyone present? Good, time for Wand of Sleep.
Now fire it up a bit with Necklace of Missiles.
Amaruq picks the bandits one by one and then summons a nymph to assist with Taurgosh and healing.
That's it folks - we're moving on.
See ya!
Journal of Æthelthryth
I was pleased that I was able to re-unite Rufie with his owner without much difficulty.19558/uploads/editor/o7/4rm5plrxyh1p.jpg" alt="" />
I then helped Tenya And afterwards hunted Ankheg.
Journal of Æthelthryth
After clearing the ankheg I went to the FAI where I was attacked by a mage who I subsequently killed.We then started killing sirene but were asked to return to the Beregost Temple before completing the job.
On arrival there we were asked to kill Mutamin and on the way had to deal with powerful wolves.
In the basilisk area we were attacked by some who thought of themselves as adventurers.
We then fought basilisks and medusae before finally killing Mutamin.
After fulfilling that quest, we returned to the sirene area. Sil proved to be friendly and gave us a cloak to protect us from the wintry nights. However some golems proved to be less friendly.
Gavin was badly hurt, but we quickly put that right.
We then fought and killed Lady Valeria and her cohorts, but had to flee from numberless hobgoblins.
We then visited the gnolls' stronghold where the gnolls were the least of our problems. Assassins who attacked by stealth, were FAR more dangerous.
However we did have to kill numerous gnolls before we were able to rescue Dynaheir.
Upon leaving the mines we killed the Revenant as well as an ankheg and Narcillicus.
Near the Friendly Arms Inn we fought Necardian and his cohorts. His cohorts were easily dispatched. However Necardian cast chaos which caused me to kill Xan and Dynaheir. He then cast confusion which only left Vynd in control of himself. However, he excelled himself by firstly killing Necardian, but by also keeping Tenya alive until she could heal herself. Raising the mages was expensive, but we gained some good loot.
We then tried to find Lethe at the Firewine ruins. To our horror Lethe attacked us, but we prevailed.
We then went to the bandit camp where we defeated a veritable horde of enemies much to our relief.
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Throne of Bhaal
Part 13
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
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Part 13. Lucky, lucky 13.
We find Nym outside Sendai's enclave, the elf who started a war between elves and dwarves and sold weapons to evil orc hordes. I hate him, especially because you can't kill him in IWD or IWD2, but I buy five Protection from Magic scrolls and a Wand of Polymorphing from him even though I don't plan on using any of them.
We have to deal with the Chosen of Cyric. I'm a little concerned that...
Well, actually, no. I'm terrified that we're going to have to fight Venduris after meeting with Cyric. I know what Venduris and his gang are capable of. I make sure the party is buffed with double Wish Hardiness.
But as it turns out...
...the Chosen of Cyric mod does not actually modify the original Chosen of Cyric. These are just ordinary backstabbers.
They don't even merit a screenshot.
To get to Balthazar, we have to slaughter dozens of his guards, two of which are high-level mages (are there any other kind in BG2?). But the Frag Grenades and Power Attack can stun them despite whatever defenses they might possess. And also kill them.
Balthazar agrees to fight alongside us, and summons Melissan for an early confrontation in the same chamber. She's a high-level mage, and her weapon immunities seem to last forever, blocking both nonmagical and +5 weapons...
...but she never seems to actually do anything to us before her immunities run out.
All we have left are some last-minute optimizations. I have to use the console to replicate some crafting stuff, though.
More importantly, Frisk is at 6 million XP and gets the final Slayer form, which lets you turn into the Ravager.
Once we beat the actual Ravager, we should have 75% physical damage resistance. Which is not too difficult, because the Ravager has no helmet and is therefore vulnerable to the Martyr's Morningstar. The critical hit effect bypasses its immunity to +3 weapons and below.
Only one fight left before Melissan. One of my mods, maybe Wheels of Prophecy, adds a single demon-heavy fight to the first area of ToB. I don't actually know why they're there, but they are. Frisk uses Psionic Invisibility to get around the demons' ability to see through normal invisibility and Maneira actives Power Attack, hoping to stun the cambion mage with some Frag Grenades.
The cambion gets Time Stop off the ground. I'm not too worried; none of the mages so far in ToB have done anything particularly impressive with their Time Stops.
Then, to my absolute horror, the cambion attacks during Time Stop.
No.
No!
The whole party is helpless. Frisk is helpless! This cambion has massive damage output and it's only been a few seconds since Time Stop began. Psionic Invisibility is going to run out!
If he targets Frisk, he could end the entire run in a matter of seconds. And there's absolutely nothing I can do but watch.
His text target is Wraith Sarevok, and for a moment, I think Frisk might be in the clear. But Wraith Sarevok falls in a matter of seconds--his massive HP pool is no defense against level drain.
It barely even registers that Wraith Sarevok has been chunked; I'm too terrified for Frisk.
The cambion is not done. It moves on to the next target, and through sheer luck, it happens to be the second Ancient Vampire. And just as the vampire dies, Time Stop ends.
Frisk makes their getaway. Our party is in shambles.
Gorky casts Time Stop. We desperately need to preempt any new Time Stop spells from the cambion. But the Cambion is invisible when Gorky finishes casting.
Gorky can't target him. And that invisibility is probably going to last for another 15 rounds or so. Desperate to somehow run out the duration of the cambion's invisibility, Gorky deploys the Wand of Lightning trick, despite my finally forswearing it for the rest of the game just moments before. With the Robe of Vecna speeding up scroll casting in EE, all it does is take 2 rounds out of the cambion's buffs, but I'm terrified that allowing the cambion to survive this Time Stop will end up with Frisk dead and the run over.
Gorky keeps casting Time Stop, hoping something will change. The cambion flickers in and out of view for a fraction of a second--maybe a single frame--and I struggle to pause on that exact moment so Gorky can target the cambion with a Protection from Magic scroll.
Then, in the last few rounds of Gorky's main Time Stop spells, the cambion's Mislead clone vanishes--and the cambion itself finally becomes visible.
Gorky hits the cambion with a Protection from Magic scroll and butchers it.
I would later learn that the cambion only had a single Time Stop spell, making the entire effort unnecessary.
Wraith Sarevok is easily our least valuable party member, barely any more useful than the Rajah waiting for us in the Pocket Plane (actually, maybe even less useful, now that I think about it), but per my normal rules, I can get him back if I win this fight, twice. I don't know why I don't just disable chunking outright; it's a lot easier than my workaround.
We still have to worry about the Fallen Solar and a whole bunch of other demons. Maneira has incredible damage output, but her defenses are terrible by ToB standards. Our Fallen Planetar isn't enough to win this fight, either.
The Fallen Solar teleports somewhere, but I have no idea where.
We need our Ancient Vampires. Gorky manages to resurrect them via Wish, though it leaves him vulnerable to an Implosion spell.
Potions and a Rod of Resurrection charge bring our vampires up to speed while Maneira keeps the nearest enemies distracted. A second Fallen Planetar, meanwhile, has been keeping the other demons busy to the northeast.
Gorky spams some Wish scrolls for a few boosts to the party, but it proves unnecessary. The enemy is divided, and without a cambion to kill half the party with a single Time Stop spell, they don't have much to throw at us before we chop them up.
The fight is won, but to get Wraith Sarevok back (until now, I didn't really consider just replacing him with the Rajah instead), I have to win the fight again. As it happens, the cambion's Mislead spell one again keeps him safe during Gorky's Time Stop, but when the cambion does successfully cast Time Stop, the only party member in his sight is Wraith Sarevok.
The cambion doesn't bother attacking Wraith Sarevok for whatever reason, so Gorky just casts Time Stop, takes down the cambion's Improved Mantle and Stoneskins using the Staff of the Magi, and chops him up with Firetooth and Gnasher.
Balthazar appears, we agree once more to fight Melissan together, and he vanishes, promising to meet us at the Throne of Bhaal. A game-breaking bug of some sort makes it impossible to escape the area...
...but it's nothing the console can't fix. We teleport back to the Pocket Plane, reorganize our inventory and Gorky's spellbook, and step through the doorway and onto the Throne of Bhaal. All that stands between us and victory is Melissan.
It seems our journey is finally over.
We are filled with DETERMINATION.
I saw @JuliusBorisov posting that he was going to do an SCS / LoB party run and that sounded like a good idea
(i) Misty took sleep as one of her starting spells, which is entirely useless (though that's only a minor problem for a mage).
(ii) I'd forgotten that the EE nerfed bounty hunters so they can no longer throw special traps (which was the main motivation for including one of those in this party). Oh well, there are other cheesy tactics I can resort to if desired.
Levels for a party of 6 are hard come by if you're choosing to fight gnolls and hobgoblins and a couple of the party had already had to rely on L1 protection to stay alive when a hobgoblin ambush made sure of Misty by targeting her with several arrows.
In response the WIP went in search of something that could get them levels rather quicker and watched as Artemis shot down a number of basilisks from the cover of a green scroll (Melody did know PfP, but knowing my record for leaving statues dotted around the place Artemis chose to rely on a longer-lasting spell). With the green scroll nearing expiry Korax was recruited with the aim of guiding him in using stealth to attack Mutamin. Whistle's misguided attempt to throw a trap in resulted in Mutamin being activated a bit earlier than desired,
The sensible thing to do would have been to leave at that point, but the WIP were determined to demonstrate to Shar-Teel that she was not the only woman who could show a man a thing or two.
Perky - Priest of Tyr L3, 27 HPs, 1 kills, 0 deaths
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L2/2, 20 HPs, 16 kills (+376 in BG1), 1 death
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L1/1/2, 12 HPs, 18 kills, 0 deaths
Artemis - Archer L3, 33 HPs, 17 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L3, 25 HPs, 4 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L4, 32 HPs, 7 kills, 0 deaths
Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
I thought about doing one last update to put us up-to-date with Amaruq's game progress.
You remember the triplets, right? And I did say something about putting them againts Kirian. Here you go.
We did not take any buffs, although Amaruq pre-casts Far Sight to have a better control over the battlefield. The nymphs take positions and Amaruq initiates the unpleasant dialogue...
Round 1:
We open with 1x Mental Domination (Baerin) and 2x Hold Monster (Kirian, Peter). Kirian gets away with her own Charm Person. Amaruq counters with Potion of Magic Blocking.
Round 2:
All of our spells have landed - we're looking good.
Round 3:
Time to knock out the fat Lindin.
Round 4:
Mayhem.
Round 5:
Sorry Baerin, consider yourself friend-zoned. Praeses, Alia, Fero!
Content warning: The following image is graphic in nature.
Apologies for the short post, but there's nothing else left to cover at the moment and I'm not expecting to progress any further before next week Wednesday or so.
So, until then!
Undergate Pacifist Run: A "Solo" Seducer in Throne of Bhaal
Part 14
Previous posts here:https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906323/#Comment_906323
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It's the end.
No mod items. No Wand of Lightning trick. No reloads. And no party members except for those Frisk has seduced: Gorken Bloodaxe, a Conjurer; Maneira, a Fighter/Bounty Hunter; Wraith Sarevok, a dual-classed Berserker(15)->Thief who never regained his Berserker levels; and two Ancient Vampires, both of which are Fighter/Swashbucklers.
Maneira opens with a Time Stop scroll courtesy of Gorky's scroll scribing. I want those Fallen Solars gone.
It's not enough. I really should have cast Improved Haste beforehand. Frisk uses Psionic Invisibility, fearing the Fallen Solars' swords and arrows, while Gorky stops time himself.
Jon Irenicus is invisible, but Gorky reveals him by killing his Mislead clone. The real Irenicus shows up to the east, where Gorky puts him down.
Bodhi dies during Time Stop and the Fallen Solars collapse when they become visible and the party descends upon them. Now we have to deal with the demon spawns around the pools. The whole party gets rested when you activate the pools the second time, so I want to beat all three of these fights without using a single rest. With three thieves in the party (not counting Frisk, who is really only half a thief), traps play a critical role in shortening the fights.
When a vampire gets stunned in the next fight, Gorky hauls out Time Stop to kill the demons before they can finish her off.
For the final fight, Maneira pre-sets a Time Trap while Gorky casts a Time Stop once hers runs out.
We can rest three times before bringing the Five onto the battlefield, which means we can set a fair number of traps (though we don't want to use too many, lest we kill someone on the first round and trigger Melissan's arrival before we're ready), cast a lot of buffs, summon a lot of critters, and drink a lot of potions. It also means we can use CON drain to boost the Ancient Vampires' HP.
Gorky can also get in some Wish-rests with a bit of luck. He uses Improved Alacrity to speed up his spellcasting, just to eke a few extra rounds out of our buffs. Notice the use of a Neutralize Poison scroll (only possible thanks to Use Any Item) to cure a blindness effect that lasted longer than I expected.
We set a limited number of traps, boost the party's damage resistances to 100% with Wish Hardiness, and cast the last of our buffs.
We activate the final pool and bring the Five onto the map, triggering our traps to deal some light damage. The first round is the most critical--not because of the traps, but because we need to use a Protection from Magic scroll on Sendai to stop her healing spells and on Abazigal so he won't cast Time Stop on us.
Notice Abazigal's buffs triggering after the scrolls hit, a minor setback. I also planned on using a Control Circlet on Sarevok (not to be confused with Wraith Sarevok, our party member), since he's the only enemy on the map vulnerable to charm, but he's wounded enough that it doesn't really matter.
But now I have a problem. I want to kill either Illasera or Abazigal first because Illasera inflicts spell failure and Abazigal has crazy damage output, but with all the summons on the map, it's nearly impossible to control our own damage output. Gromnir dies early.
Melissan doesn't appear for a few seconds, and in the meantime, we kill Sendai--also by accident, since it would have been better to kill her while Melissan was around, so Sendai's death would disable Melissan for a few seconds.
The plan is to hit Melissan with a Protection from Magic scroll to remove her Absolute Immunity, stun her with Smite or Power Attack, and then send in our Ancient Vampires to land a CON drain kill in the first round.
Just as the scroll hits, I hear an alteration spell. I consider using Psionic Invisibility, but Focus would be safer.
I also consider waiting to use Focus so it wouldn't trigger until right before Melissan cast Time Stop, but I decide not to risk it. I begin casting Focus.
To my horror, Frisk does not cast it instantly. It seems it has a casting time of 1. And Melissan's Time Stop has a casting time of 3. Frisk finishes casting it barely a second before Melissan stops time, leaving me shaken. I didn't realize the window was so incredibly short--if I hesitated just for a moment, Frisk would be doomed.
Instead, the Ancient Vampire will suffer Melissan's wrath. But what Melissan fails to understand is that the Ancient Vampire's 500 HP will last it through the entire Time Stop.
Frisk, sensing an opportunity, throws a few bullets at Sarevok using the Sling of Arvoreen. Not enough to kill him, but enough to bring him to Near Death.
The Ancient Vampire tries to drink Durlag's Goblet, but her aura isn't clear. And Melissan cuts her down to 55 HP using a double-strength Globe of Blades spell that I'm not even sure is supposed to deal that much damage.
Abazigal gets a new PFMW spell via Contingency and Gorky's Fallen Planetar bails out the Ancient Vampire before it can drink from Durlag's Goblet.
Unable to harm Abazigal except using a nonmagical short sword from Maneira, we put down Yaga-Shura and Sarevok. Our summons speed up the process and even get a few hits on Melissan, but they're getting in the way of my vision and choking up the battlefield. I had a precise plan for this fight, but it has sensitive timing and I'm not sure the disruption is worth the extra damage. An Ancient Vampire tries to stun Melissan with Power Attack, but its THAC0 isn't reliable and Melissan makes her saves against any hits the Ancient Vampire might have landed.
Only Abazigal is left. Knowing that he'll survive for a couple more rounds at least, I decide to pin down Melissan with Psionic Lock in the hopes that we can kill her before Frisk's ever-important immunity to Time Stop runs out.
It buys us 6 seconds and bypasses all immunities and defenses, but unfortunately it cannot be chain-cast, because Frisk's aura does not refresh during Psionic Lock; it delays their next aura by a full 6 seconds.
It gives Gorky enough time to land a Wish-rest, which allows our Ancient Vampire to re-use Critical Strike. Just for good measure, Gorky removes Melissan's Stoneskins using the Staff of the Magi.
But for some reason, the Ancient Vampires can't touch her.
It's a +4 weapon; Melissan should not be immune. I hazard a guess that she won't become vulnerable to +4 weapons until Abazigal is dead, but that brief delay means that we wasted a Critical Strike.
Only one Ancient Vampire has any HLAs, and she only has a single Critical Strike. That's a major loss, because our Ancient Vampires only have about a 50% hit chance on Melissan. She still has a Smite spell, but I'm concerned that the knockback will cause problems. First, though Maneira needs to focus on finishing off Abazigal.
Anxious about Melissan pulling some new trick on us, Frisk locks her again.
It buys Maneira enough time to finish off Abazigal. Melissan is alone!
Then I see an ominous message. Even after Abazigal is dead, Melissan is still immune to +4 weapons like the Ancient Vampires' CON drain attacks. Only +5 weapons can touch her.
We can damage her, certainly, but damage is entirely curable; Melissan has Heal spells. CON drain is irreversable.
Then I see an encouraging message. Abazigal's death finally registered!
Melissan is healed, but it doesn't matter to use as long as the Ancient Vampires can land a few hits. We activate Smite and Melissan summons a ring of enemies to protect her.
I keep our own summons at bay; I can't afford to let any of them displace our Ancient Vampires.
Finally, one of the vampires lands a hit.
It's working! It's finally working! CON drain is piling up, and no one is rolling to hit--she must be stunned!
We have automatic hits on Melissan for two whole rounds. And with Improved Haste active, our two vampires combined can drain over 50 Constitution in a single round. Melissan is doomed.
The Solar arrives to announce the end. Melissan doesn't deliver her normal line; she's already dead.
But we're not stuck; we can trigger the next dialogue just by speaking with the Solar. Frisk chooses mortality.
It's over.
It's over!
We had some horrible close calls over the course of this run. If our luck had been just a little bit worse, Frisk might have died to a Rune Assassin in the skinner quest; the party could have been broken in Aran Linvail's lair; we might have been worn down by Kangaxx; Frisk might have been killed by the cambion mage at the end of ToB; and there were numerous times where we could have permanently lost a party member to petrification. Poor judgment also could have been fatal in many other places, notably the first round after Melissan appeared at the Throne of Bhaal (or when we opted not to fight Venduris).
I don't think this run truly qualifies as a solo run--not because we had party members exactly (since Seduction is just a way of implementing a permanent charm effect across areas, and we neither created our own party members nor recruited any), but simply because it was mechanically similar to a conventional party run. The primary reason for the increased difficulty of solo runs is that the player's aura potential and party diversity drop down to 1/6 of its normal value, and the only reward is 6 times the normal XP per party member. Even if you count Gorky and the vampires and the basilisks and so forth as summoned or charmed critters rather than proper party members, the playstyle of this run and the type of difficulty matched a party run; not a solo run.
Frisk ended up with 2 kills instead of the 0 we planned, so we didn't quite make it a pacifist run per my original terms. Still, I'm happy with how things turned out. I got to try out some cool new critters without even resorting to the level drain trick. These are all of the critters who made a meaningful contribution to the success of the run:
Frisk
Cat
Gorken Bloodaxe
Duergar Cleric
Maneira
Schlumpsa the Sewer King
Lesser Basilisk
Armored Skeleton
Meredath
Greater Basilisk
Ancient Vampire
Rajah
Wraith Sarevok
Ancient Vampire
Gorky in particular stands out, as he carried the party at almost every stage of the game, especially in ToB. Maneira was often useful, but she never truly filled a roll that no one else could have. The Lesser and Greater Basilisks deserve some extra credit for performing the basilisk XP loop, letting Frisk acquire the vampires unusually early and also getting Gorky some early HLAs. Finally, the Ancient Vampires, especially our first one with its Smite HLA, proved instrumental in slaying Melissan before she could cast a potentially fatal Time Stop spell.
One "solo" Seducer tetralogy no-reload run, complete.
Gaming wise, I have no clue what to make of Frisk's run, honestly, but I'm super glad that you achieved what you set out to achieve and I'm also glad that people enjoyed reading it. To Frisk! Yay!
Best of luck with your next run!
A.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XXVII - These diseased rats are incredibly tough!
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
Part XXVI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906798/#Comment_906798
We set out to complete the remaining non-stronghold quests and fights in Athkatla - first up are the fallen paladins, who failed to bring any +2 weapons with them:
Next we have Xzar's quest, which involves introducing his disciples to a little breach/insect plague fun:
Also, the slavers part II are dealt with:
That's it when it comes to quests, but we still want to clear the graveyard district of any hostile forces - which means the crypt king has to go:
Big swarms of weak enemies, like the fight for Kitthix, can be tough on LoB - my strategy is to disable the spiders as much as possible, and so we use greater malison, chaos, insect plague and slow, making them relatively harmless (though we still have to drink two antidotes to ensure everyone's survival - the poison is extremely deadly):
Finally, we slay some undead in Korgan's crypt, simply because we can:
With the non-stronghold quests done, it's time to get our very own druid grove for Arbogast. Trolls and spiders pose no threat to us, as we have dealt with much tougher groups of those in SoD already - and a couple of Rakshasa are easily tricked by entering and leaving their home as soon as they cast spells, while summons deal damage to them:
Mazzy gets some new bracers at the troll mound:
And finally, the duel for leadership: Arbogast versus Faldorn. We summon three spirit wolves and cast doom, Faldorn is held for most of the fight:
For our first stronghold quest, we have to fight the longest battle in the entirety of SoA so far - why is that? Because when the troll leader is killed, an army of diseased rats spawns - and they have rat resistances to physical damage (I think it's 90%?) plus LoB HP (3*their normal hitpoints + 80 - the +80 is the important part here). If you get close to them, they deal poison damage via diseases, so we actually have to be careful (though our spirit animals are immune to poison and can tank them). Takes quite a while to kill them all:
We complete Tiris' quest and resolve the familiy dispute in Trademeet to get to 20 reputation. After a couple of rests, its also time for the second druid quest (we can't do the third one yet, as Arbogast is still quite a bit away from reaching level 14). We easily defeat "Chaos":
I've simply forgotten what type of abilites this foe would have, so I didn't realize that full summons + buffs was very much complete overkill for this one.
With all our hard-earned cash we buy all the good items from trademeet and a Robe of Vecna for Nahema. Shiny.
One last thing: I forgot to kill the bridge district party last time. We lure them outside so our summons can join in:
Which stronghold quest should we do next time? De'Arnise Keep, I think - we have already proven that trolls are no issue for this party.
Enuhal
Best,
A.
There are all kinds of examples, actually. With her 5 APR, Maneira would be unstoppable if she simply had some decent potions and a suit of full plate mail. Clay Golems would be nearly invincible if you just gave them Roranach's Horn. There's no reason vampires couldn't wear armor, or drink Potions of Magic Shielding to ward off Sunray spells. Mutamin could take over an entire city with those basilisks of his. Firkraag would be a lot tougher if he simply drank a Potion of Clarity to avoid getting feebleminded. Melissan could obliterate any mage protagonist just by using a Protection from Magic scroll on them. Liches could deal with Protection from Undead scrolls just by keeping some non-undead allies around. Mages could chain-cast Time Stop spells, waiting out the player's PFMW spells and dual-wielding daggers to kill the player's fighters. Sarevok could have destroyed the player if he just had a few archers with some Arrows of Detonation. TorGal would be much tougher if those Yuan-ti Mages kept some Protection from Fire or Invisibility spells on hand for when their troll allies fell down.
Enemies have some incredible strengths, but they never patch their weaknesses. That's what separates them from the player.
Best,
A.
Could you give me a pasteable text block to ... err... paste?
By the way, congrats !
Frisk, the Seducer: @semiticgod
BG1, SoD, SoA, ToB
Notable mods: Enhanced Edition Trilogy, SCS v30, Ascension, Seducer Kit for Thieves v1.21
"Solo": No party members except those from Seduction
Difficulty: Core
Parts 1-14:
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906702/#Comment_906702
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906799/#Comment_906799
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906869/#Comment_906869
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906993/#Comment_906993
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907021/#Comment_907021
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907034/#Comment_907034
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907058/#Comment_907058
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907214/#Comment_907214
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907247/#Comment_907247
Thank you for your curiosity @JuliusBorisov, I am playing on a laptop which is 4-5 years old, and so it has trouble dealing with some graphical effects. During many battles I simply zoom into a blank point offscreen and keep an eye on the text messages to speed the process a little
I've also had graphical issues with a couple things: cloud spells and the burning-character animation. Both slow things to a crawl; an older post claimed modifying some files to display acid damage instead of fire animations helped, but didn't list which files he edited.
Completionist because there are tons of quests I've seen but never started. Poverty because when I think about all the best strategies for no-reload runs in the series, they are all absolutely dependent on items. Problem is, I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with party deaths before a sorcerer gets Summon Planetar.
If somebody dies in BG1 or SoD, there are only two characters who can cast Raise Dead: level 9 clerics and level 10 Shamans. But those are pretty high levels to reach in BG1, and if the healer dies, we can't raise them until the first dungeon of SoD.
These are the characters I'm considering for a poverty run:
Sorcerer
Shaman
Bounty Hunter
Totem Druid
Wizard Slayer->Cleric
And also
Cleric/Thief
Fighter/Druid
I now prefer to take rolls as they come, so creating a party for this run was a task itself. As I don't often play BG these days, I want everything in this party to suit my current mood the most. For the main character I went with a sorcerer - no cleric protections, but at least all needed arcane spells available further in SoD and BG2 (if I reach it) at will. You probably won't believe it, but I got nothing better than 17 DEX and 15 CON. High WIS (17) and INT (16) seemed like a true choice for an arcane caster.
For a fighter/illusionist I managed to get a decent roll, with 18/42 STR, 16 in DEX and CON, and 17 in INT.
During these attempts, a halfling fighter/thief didn't get 19 DEX, but 17 in all three fighting attributes seemed solid.
Looking at 2 fighters, I wanted my archer to get high STR, to carry heavy equipment, but for me it meant not getting 19 DEX on an archer as well. 18/98 STR, 17 DEX and 14 CON. Oh well, at that moment I remembered BG1 NPCs and their far from ideal stats. I imagined Kivan, Minsc, Khalid, or Jaheira - and my fighters' attributes started to look fine.
Rolling 4 characters process already took some time, so on my totemic druid I needed only 18 WIS, and I got it. 16 DEX and 15 CON were good additions.
For my cleric/mage, I too wanted 18 WIS, but in this case I also needed high INT. Managed to roll 17.
So, meet Jagen, Glod, Uzume, Cochrane, Sigyn and Dazbog (like semiticgod, I prefer certain pictures, so my characters often find themselves in different runs, with different classes, but the same personality (in my head). All characters (except for the druid, of course) are of the good alignment, as I keep find it difficult to RP evil actions.
Now when the creation process was over, I started with Candlekeep rats. There was a thread on Reddit not long ago about these rats, but I opted for fighing them, as there was no risk of dying because of their non-lethal attacks. Also, the completionist run, it will be! Here's brave Uzume taking a nap while the last rat is killed.
Shank and Carbos were first blinded (granted, the group had 3 spellcasters with Blindness memorized) and then finished from a distance.
For proficiencies, I decided to go with crossbows and two-handed swords on the fighter/illusionist (not optimal, I know, but it's been a while since I had chosen two-handed weapons, - mage buffs will help compensate the lack of defence and APR), short swords and short bows on the fighter/thief (she's a halfling, I think tiny weapons suit her), longbows and slings on the archer (I will use slings mainly because of his STR for damage, longbows are needed for using special arrows, - plus it breaks a habit of using mainly bows on my archers), hammers and slings on the C/M, slings on the sorcerer and daggers on the druid.
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Notable mods
- SCS
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalance
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Item Randomizer
So, we decided to hunt down Werewolves in Balduran Island, in search of the tasty Greenstone amulet. But, before doing so, we went underground to see how Slythe and Krystin were doing. Not good. After our usual prebuffs, Slythe saw us and thought that going melee was a good idea. Not quite. He didn't even managed to go invisible before dying. The picture was taken a bit after his actual death, but that's because it went a bit fast and I forgot to take a screenshot at the moment.
Then, it was the simple routine of using Spell Thrust and Invisibility Purge on Krystin and attack her with wands/melee/range weapons. Wizard's chess is MUCH simpler in BG1. She did managed to summon Shadows (a specific SR spell which summon the shadows you encounters in the Temple ruins in Umar Hills questline), but she died soon after anyway.
So, onward to Wolfie Island ! After having cleared the lower floors of Balduran's wrecked Ship, I decided to split the forces of Karoug a bit by having Alora go upstairs to backstab wolfies. She couldn't because Karoug's mage casted Invisibility Purge, but she did managed to draw the mage downstairs, who was taken out in no time. After that, Alora retrieved Balduran sword and the Werebane dagger. I gave the sword to Kivan and the dagger to Jaheira, hasted them and buffed their strength to the max with potions and SR Strength of One from Branwen. In SR, SoO gives +2 to strength instead of setting it at 18/50. With two hasted fighters at 25 strength, having no proficiencies didn't matter. I didn't give the two weapons to a dual-wielding Kivan, because the WereBane dagger under IR is a throwing dagger that you can't use for melee. I understand the decision : it prevents that a +2 weapon would actually give a bonus attack per round in melee in BG1.
We went upstairs to meet Karoug and his melee grunts. After having cleared the floor of his remaining team, we all went berserk on Karoug. We were doing good work on his, until I decided to try something suggested by @Serg_BlackStrider, and it indeed worked : a single charge of the wand of Paralyzation rendered him helpless. He was cut down fast after.
When we came back in Ulgoth's Beard, we had to fight Mendas/Salaad. We did. I prebuffed then went in. I had Jaheira and Kivan take care of his acolyte, and the rest attacking Salaad. Salaad started with Shadow Door, which is a neat spell under IR : it has a small AoE which maze enemies around the mage for a short while on a failed save vs spell. Luckily, Alora and Branwen both made their save against it. After that, it was the Spell Thrust/Invisibility Purge combo to take down his biggest defense. We killed his acolyte and hurt him enough to trigger his next form not so long after. All of us against Salaad, he couldn't do much. I even had him held with a charge of WoP (thanks Serg !). Something was weird though : he couldn't be hurt even by the silver weapons we found on the island. He was still susceptible to elemental damage, so we took him down with WoH and WoL. Bye-bye Salaad !
Have I found the Greenstone Amulet ? Nope. Nowhere to be found. The only place left is the last floor of Durlag's Tower. But I won't go there. Even if I'm pretty confident that I could take on the Chess fight (I got arrows of Explosion to spare...), I'm not in the mood for it. We'll press on without the nice trinket. The next post will be about the end of BG1.