Trio Update (Corey_Russell, Grond0, Gate70) Corthief XIV - elven thief (protagonist, controlled by Corey_Russell) Berk - dwarven berserker, controlled by Grond0 Stinkimo - dwarven defender, controlled Gate70
The save game name was take out Kirian - but things did not to go to plan. Corthief XIV tried to backstab Kirian, but missed. Corthief XIV ran south, and the dwarves tried to distract the enemies, but only managed to get themselves killed. After running all over the map, Corthief XIV managed to hide. Corthief XIV picked up the important pieces of his buddies' armor and equipment and then went to a temple to raise them. After buying what we needed in Beregost, we continued the quest.
Stinkimo wanted Bjornin's shield, so we did that real quick without much difficulty. We also took down Melium and Molkar's group. We also defeated the sirines in Shoal's area. Often times, Stinkimo gets held or confused, but so far the others have been able to keep him safe.
Corthief XIV decided now was a good time to work on the main quest. Nashkel Mines were pretty straightforward, with Berk once again keeping a caster busy while Corthief XIV peppered Mulahey with arrows. We also took down the Amazons. Stinkimo got held, but was far enough away to stay safe. We also took down Tranzig, he wasn' able to do much.
While we were at it, we took down the battle horrors/doom guards at the Durlag's Tower and obtained the wisdom tome here. Corthief XIV used acid arrows to speed up the kills plus be able to attack the battle horrors/doom guards at range.
We also took down Vax and Zal for their bracers, took down Krumm and his brother, and took down the ogres trying to extort us for crossing their bridge.
The dwarves welcomed the gauntlets of dexterity. While here we also picked up the charisma tome without much happening in the process.
By this point, we have two tomes we need identified, so went to High Hedge - but ran out of time so saved our session here.
Since I've been resting much more than usual in this run and I don't feel quite comfortable with doing that, I challenged myself to at least clear the City of Caverns, a relatively easy area, without any rests. While this resulted in my party taking some damage, I eventually succeeded and killed every single Sahuagin:
Our first mind flayer group int-drained one of my hasted skeleton warriors, but fell quickly after that:
The remaining skeletons were destroyed when fighting the first drow group, thanks to a death spell, which left me without fodder, so my party retreated:
Another group of summons (this time fire elementals + aerial servants) was called upon, but they eventually got death spelled as well. Only the third group of summons (spirit animals and item-based summons) took down all of the drow. The second drow group, lacking in spellcasters, was beaten right away though:
My last run ended at the magical prison, with Raevilin Strathi. This time, we didn't give any quarter - he was attacked as soon as he spawned and died before initiating dialogue:
Alchra Diagott, the lich, surivived our first volley of attacks and managed to get his protections up. I got out of sight for the inevitable time stop, and our summons were death spelled once again. However, Alchra was near death already, so a single spirit lion was enough to get through his stoneskins and defeat him:
Next, we completed Vithal's quest. After being done with it, I had Imoen (who had been drinking 3 potions of master thievery) steal all of his stuff - we want those scrolls:
Finally, we had to get rid of a balor for the deep gnomes. Skeleton warriors, 6x death ward, 6x cc and various other buffs (including our first use of improved haste, as we found/bought scrolls now) made this a safe and easy battle:
Next time, we shall try to explore the three outlying areas of the underdark - the Kuo-Toa Caves, the Illithid City and the Beholder Tunnels. This is where SoA usually starts to get really dangerous for me.
I have to admit that it's only my second time around SoD, where the first one was with a solo fighter on LoB. 'Twas a bit crazy, but still managed to finish the game (with plenty of reloads though). So, that's my first real attempt to no-reload SoD. For that reason, I'll probably use a very defensive approach with Miluiel. We'll see what will happen...
The starting dungeon in SoD is not a cakewalk. If the first floor was cleaned up easily through a bit of fighting and talking, the second floor was harder. Since I decided to set the difficulty at Insane, I had to face plenty of undeads on the very first wave. And they were hitting really hard. Too hard actually : I forgot to check the "don't add difficulty base damage" option. So, as a consequence, we lost both Xan and Branwen on the first undead wave. Ouchy.
After having set the real difficulty I was aiming for, undeads were less dangerous, but still problematic. Every fight on the second floor was more difficult than they should have been. I think I was a tiny bit condescending toward SoD, thinking it would be easier since SCS has little effect on it. I just can't think that way. It's welcoming lack of concentration which I believe is the main reason people fail their no-reload. I have to keep my shit together, man...
This is why I said to myself that it's time to stop slacking off on the prebuff. Before the Korlasz fight, I got back to my old routine. Which is probably why the fight was really easy. It's perhaps also because of SR : under it, Mirror Images doesn't protect against AoE spells, which, if my memory of vanilla is not too bad, is still the case in the EE. Three fireballs from wands/spell/arrows were sufficient to deal enough damage to Korlasz to make her surrender. This took about two second. A bit anti-climatic again.
So, that's it for the team that carried me through BG1. I'm a bit sad to see them go, because I think that's the team with which I had the most fun going through the first game ever. I'll show what they looked like fully buffed before any significant fight (except for the first picture of Miluiel, which was taken before all the buffs were up).
Miluiel (gained tome of dex, cha and wis) :
Branwen :
Jaheira (gained tome of con) :
Xan (gained tome of int) :
Kivan (gained tome of strength) :
Alora :
All in all, it was a strong team with plenty of magic power to boot. Fun, it was.
So, I proceeded to Baldur's Gate, where I started to gather new teammates. Safana was hired, but perhaps will be replaced by Glint. Not sure though, 'cause I like myself some pure class thief very much. I also hired Dynaheir and Minsc. And you know what ? The crazy ranger did came with a nice lil' Greenstone Amulet. OH. YEAH. Finally... Now, Miluiel is protected by Mind Shield and Free Action permanently. Strong stuff. I'm cautiously confident about SoD. Let's do this !
@Grond0: Why did you take a Bounty Hunter in your LoB run? I love Bounty Hunters, but I wouldn't think they'd be optimal for LoB mode. I think of them as a source of party-friendly Fireballs from BG1 to Spellhold, then as a source of crowd-control Maze traps after Spellhold. Since their burst damage traps only make a dent in enemies in LoB mode, I'd have thought they wouldn't really be useful until level 21.
@Enuhal: Looks like Greater Mummies have a save vs. death of 2. The IMoD has a save penalty of -4, bumping that up to 6, but LoB bonuses will bump it back down to 1, giving them guaranteed saves. Greater Malison, Doom, and Chant would be necessary to disrupt them in LoB mode.
Interestingly enough, vampires have rather terrible saves vs. death. Ancient Vampires have a save vs. death of 3, which amounts to a 5% chance of disruption per hit in LoB mode, but most vampires, including a lot of the named ones, have saves vs. death around 10!
A quick update, sadly something went wrong with my screenshots though. Initially we visited an area associated with Sirene, and then did Kulyok's Reunion sidequest, meeting another sibling and some of his demon helpers without incident.
On to Abazzy's lair. Here I was slightly distracted by a conversation with my daughter and didn't finish buffing. As a result poor Xan got melted by Draconis just as I noticed his belt of fortitude hadn't been activated and started moving him back. Sigh... just as he was starting to lighten up.
We interviewed one or two candidates for the resulting vacancy, but Sarevok pipped Ajantis on sheer bastardy, meat shieldery, and killing power. He's rather underleveled however. The rest of the lair was unproblematic, except that Abazigal's transformation was bugged. For some reason CLUAing us all to a different location (this was to our disadvantage as it happens as he was originally surrounded by summons) cleared up the problem. The ensuing battle was fairly simple except that I forgot Abazigal is immune to timestop and so Kelsey got to watch Sarevok being thrown around like a toy. Eh, that's what he's here for anyway...
The second pocketplane challenge was a little more dangerous. First Cromarty got badly hurt by his alterego- I later realised that his resistances were slightly bugged and set too low- and then he ventured into a pool of lava...and stayed there during Kelsey's timestop.... but despite his yelps of pain his fire resistance was high enough to remain self. Sarevok had the pleasure of vorpalising evil Cromarty, hm maybe even too much pleasure...
Then it was time to drop in on Sendai, and after clearing out the trash in the world above they've been parked in her lair for now. The lack of dialogue is grating on me slightly, Xan was never less than chatty... Of the rest Valygar is perpetually glaring at Kelsey, Yvette is finding new lines in her skin and on the verge of vanishing away, Sirene is finding new ways to suffer for Ilmater (ironic that a Gallant should so often be watching her suffer...), and Sarevok just hates everyone. A happy band are we!
Oh, and thanks to Gate70. With his help my computer seems to be handling some of the spell effects better w/ an updated driver, though it's never quite smooth.
@Grond0: Why did you take a Bounty Hunter in your LoB run? I love Bounty Hunters, but I wouldn't think they'd be optimal for LoB mode. I think of them as a source of party-friendly Fireballs from BG1 to Spellhold, then as a source of crowd-control Maze traps after Spellhold. Since their burst damage traps only make a dent in enemies in LoB mode, I'd have thought they wouldn't really be useful until level 21.
@semiticgod I thought a thief would be useful for dispel illusion, apart from the traps. As you say the traps do party-friendly area damage, but at lower levels they also have a chance to slow the enemies, which is quite a significant benefit even in LoB. I was expecting to be able to throw them, which not only helps quite a bit in combat, but also enables you to stack traps in advance in some situations where stealth is not enough. I'd forgotten though that the EE had removed the ability to throw those traps - I can't remember what the rationale for that was, I always thought it was reasonable enough to allow that as a special feature of the bounty hunter.
A nasty combination of bad play and computer cheating saw the end of this run.
There was another death at the start of the session in the ankheg nest. Summons were making light work of the ankhegs and there was no apparent danger when Misty suddenly fell dead. She had her missile weapon equipped with plenty of ammunition, but somehow she'd apparently managed to get right next to the ankheg - possibly buffeted by the summons as they charged to the attack in the twisting passage. At least the trip to the temple also allowed them to carry more ankheg shells for sale. After finishing off the ankhegs they were travelling back to Beregost again, but no longer bothering to stick to daytime. Some bandits attempted to take advantage of that, but Misty and Melody both hastily put on suits of plate armour as the bandits appeared and everyone survived.
At the Valley of the Tombs the fight with the Revenant took rather longer than any other in this run to date. Spell damage didn't do too much and the Revenant would switch targets from summons as soon as a character attacked. In the end though persistence told off when it was blinded, making it vulnerable to attack by 2-handed weapons. Narcillicus' mustard jellies were pulled away before the mage was silenced. That didn't stop him from using a potentially deadly minor sequencer, but fortunately that was only loaded with ray of enfeeblement.
Melody had got another thief level since being at Durlag's originally, so the WIP returned there to finish looting the tower. They also surrounded Riggilo, preventing him from attacking Melody until Whistle could reveal him and the spirit bears eventually scared him to death. On that level summons were also sent to deal on their own with the ghost and did so quite nicely. My suspicion was that Kirinhale (with a large number of HPs and ability to go ethereal) would be very difficult to kill and she was left again.
While nearby they took the opportunity to loot the halfling houses at Gullykin and get another +1 sling. Then they moved on to the Lake area where some gnolls kindly handed over Drizzt's equipment.
Gathering their courage they had a go at the Red Wizard area. The web traps were prospected invisibly before producing summons and working through the spiders - blind again performing well against the largest group of those. However, things did not go well against the Red Wizards: 1) I misjudged exactly where Denak was and didn't lead with a stealth character - resulting in activating the wizards prematurely. 2) I retreated to the map edge, but rather than run immediately pulled out a couple of summons. One of the mages appeared as that was happening and cast hold person at Whistle. That seemed harmless, so Whistle just ran away a bit as Artemis handed him the ring of free action. 3) The mages were throwing MMMs around, which are vicious in LoB and it was no surprise that Melody was an early casualty of those. What had been a surprise though was Artemis being affected by the hold person at Whistle. That was despite Whistle being far further than 5' away when the projectile hit - I've marked his position on the screenshot. I haven't noted hold person as subject to that sort of effect before, so am really not sure what was going on there.
4) With their best archer out of action and no ability to retreat the others were always up against it and Misty became another MMM victim.
However, just after that they did manage to kill one of the mages and by that time spirit snakes were attacking both the others (Denak himself having not shown up). 5) Things were actually looking quite promising with both mages out of shot and being chased by snakes & skeletons, while the mages' own summons were under control and Artemis was about to be released from her hold effect. At that point though both mages used dimension door to reappear. One of them cast a horror, causing Artemis to run just as she regained control, while the other finished off Perky with a chromatic orb.
Artemis still had her full HPs, so could potentially have survived the odd spell, but another chromatic orb spelled instant death to her as well.
Wow Grond0. I avoid these goons even on Core difficulty....
On core you can kill them with fireballs before they know what's hit them. Even on LoB I think they should have been easy enough, but I'll test that notion out soon enough ...
I felt I couldn't let the game get away with the dodgy ending for the previous run, so started the WIP off once more. However, in response to the game's cheesiness I indulged in a bit more of my own - deciding to reset proficiencies of Artemis and Whistle to scimitars without rerolling them.
In the early stages I prioritised safety rather than speed and by the time a character was first hit
(Misty escaping death by the skin of her teeth on that occasion) they'd got several levels under their belts. The sirines at the lighthouse (though not the golems) were also taken down, while reputation was pushed up to 19. The first death of the run occurred at High Hedge trying to make that 20. I had explored several potential spawning points for skeletons without finding any when a group of gnolls attacked. Retreating from those I of course found a group of skeletons waiting at the point crossed over a few seconds earlier. That complicated things, but I still had hopes of getting a skull so continued a fighting retreat. A couple of gnolls had already been charmed to help slow down the attack when a second group of skeletons appeared out of the woods as the WIP retreated to the south east corner of the map. With success now unlikely they should really have run away, but I was in the middle of trying to charm another gnoll and didn't quite manage to move Whistle far enough away - a critical one-shot the result there.
When they finally did get a skull Melicamp failed his system check anyway, so the WIP went down to Greywolf to get their final rep point.
@Grond0 Sad to read about your 2 defeats. I play slowly, and most likely for me the amazon ambush will not happen in the nearest future. As for the Red wizards (and Kahrk, btw), I don't think I'll face them before reaching lvl 10 spirit animals.
@Mantis37 Good to hear your laptop experience is better now for the EEs.
The group set off for Nashkel. On the North Nashkel Road they found only hobgoblins and bandits (no vampiric wolf, unlike @Enuhal ), which were easy to deal with using a sprit summon and Blindness.
The first natural thing to do in Nashkel was (and no, it was not picking up an ankheg armor) visiting a tavern, of course. There the group met the third assassin. Neira saved against first round of Blindness attempts, and seeing her finishing casting a spell the adventurers left the tavern just in case (Unholy Blight could easily end the run), then reentered and this time blinded the priest.
From Nashkel, the group decided to travel to the west in order to reach the Gnoll Stronghold. Helping the Dryad of the Cloud Peaks resulted in the first level up, - the totemic druid got 7 (from 9 possible) HPs.
This is why when the group approached Ludrug he challenged Sigyn. In normal (non-LoB) games I usually find it difficult not to kill Ludrug accidently during the duel. But the long duration of the fight on the LoB difficulty made me realize how it works (at least, in the EE)– your character just stops attacking Ludrug, and Ludrug stops attacking your strongest party member when his HPs hit the threshold. The screenshots below show the difference betwee the battling pose of Sigyn and her standing still not actively attacking (I didn’t order her to do that – she stopped herself). Also, the party blocked Ludrug’s way so that Sigyn could attack without the need to run in circles.
Gnarl and Hairtooth were blinded like all other critters, and fighting another pack of xvarts brought a new level for the archer (who got 10 HPs from 10 available).
The group saved Dynaheir without any troubles – the amount of gnolls on their way was not big (if compared to the time @Enuhal visited the same area) – maybe the fact the main character was still of the 1st level had to do with the amount of spawns. After the gnolls were killed the sorcerer got his level up (3 HPs from 5). Bringing freedom to Dynaheir gave the new level to the fighter/thief (3 HPs).
The Tome of CHA was given to the sorcerer, so he now had 12 CHA, and with the Friends spell (which I chose for him in addition to Blindness during the Character creation) he now could buy items and interact with key NPCs at 18 CHA. The Bracers of Dexterity were given to the C/M, as everyone else had 17 DEX, and 1 point of this attribute didn’t improve their ranged THAC0, while the difference in AC didn’t mean anything at this stage of the game on LoB.
we traveled to the river map where the mushroom sack was waiting for us and I defeated two chickens and cleared the traps before attacking the stronghold. inside the cave we set a trap (actually five) for a pussycat then I almost lost Viconia to some albino critters and talked to juhanijackshapur about finding some lost kids but my traps saved me any hassle getting my new threads... 'even in my colour' ... and the ghost dragon helped tidy up.
on the way out I was surprised to see the guardian (I normally take the glasses off after killing the lich) and boy was he pissed at me but fortunately we all still had +3 weapons and the loot is a very nice crossbow... ok thats Mine!.
Carrying on from the previous session the WIP cleared the ankheg area - by leading with a spirit summons and dooming & blinding the ankhegs they could normally kill about 3 with the single summons they had available initially. Perky got up to level 5 before the nest was finished though, allowing her to produce skeletons to help out.
At Durlag's Tower the battle horrors all died pretty easily, but the doom guard was more of a problem. It managed to kill the summons while still only at badly wounded. Perky, with the best AC of -5 tried to engage, but despite being doomed and blinded the doom guard managed to take out her 35 HPs with a single swing and Perky had to leave it to the others to take revenge with the help of a few stealth attacks.
Inside, they killed all the ghasts before I tried once more to leave it to summons to deal with the ghost. The rest of the party remained on the lower floor while Artemis used hide in shadows to direct the summons to attack the ghost. That worked well last time, but not this time. One skeleton warrior had been killed and the remaining one and a spirit snake were attacking when this happened: I have noted before that enemies do sometimes seek out the remaining party using area transitions if they can't see a party member in the current area, so I suppose I should have been prepared for that - but I wasn't .
With our buffs from the balor fight still going, we moved into the western tunnels - kuo-toan's are easy to deal with as long as our summons make their saves against domination, and, with one exception, they always did. Imoen weakened the prince and the party killed him:
We needed to rest before taking on the demon knights, but Nahema took out the beholders on the way out. Now, we had the neccessary buffs prepared to minimze any risk during this battle: Protection from fire, remove fear, chaotic commands and death ward for everyone. The only thing to worry about would be getting those buffs dispelled - and there was indeed a dispel magic, though it only hit a couple of characters. Strangely enough, only haste and stoneskin got dispelled, with all the defensive cleric buffs still active, so we easily took out the demon knights one by one:
The illithid city just couldn't deal with our six chaotic command spells - we did have to rest two times, because I always wanted to fight with a full group of skeletons and haste, to maximize our damage output. Taking down the elder brain was easy, though an additional rest was required so we could summon our aerial servants and fire elementals to take out the brain golems:
For the southern tunnels, I had not only death wards and chaotic commands, but also protection from petrification spells ready, and I started with improved invisibility active to make the elder orb go for true sight instead of anything dangerous. I killed the beholder right away to reduce the chance of any anti-magic rays. After that, a quick breach on the elder orb allowed my party to win this battle:
As you can see, the elder orb was about to fire a potentially devastating spell trigger - dispel magic could've been absolutely brutal for our party. Luckily, while the trigger showed up in the combat log, it never actually happened. No anti-magic rays so far, so I quickly took out the nearby drow. Mazzy got our best strength belt and the Sling of Everard + Shield of Balduran to clear out the remaining beholders:
She tricked an elder orb to use his imprisonment on her simulacrum. The elder orb was still trying to get close to her, making me think that he might've had a second imprisonment spell at the ready, so I decided to kite him instead. It took quite a while, but eventually this threat was gone, and only normal beholders remained:
We left total mahem behind at the bandits' camp using web and fireballs to great effect. We then went to the FAI where we were attacked first by Najara and then by Vallius. We killed both of them quite easily.
We then headed south where we were attacked by Davenport and his allies.
In transit we were then attacked by Zeela and friends. All of them were killed.
We ended up just north of the FAI where once more we were attacked by numerous ankheg.
="" />
We then started hunting sirine before helping Drittz against some gnolls. He later helped us to find Dynaheir's journal.
We then used invisibility to sneak into the Section Stronghold. This went well until Xan was backstabbed by some hidden thieves. He was killed and we had to use invisibility once more to get him to a healer.
The most important thing we did in Ust'Natha was buying a new throwing dagger for Aikar - this will serve him well (by now, he is a grandmaster with daggers and does huge amounts of damage compared to everyone else in the party). Now, first quest: We have to deal with the underdark party. I knew the mage had at least one death spell, but it turned out to be two - but we still had summons left, and our party moved out with a couple of skeletons. The mage had only low level damage spells left by then:
When rescuing Phaere, things didn't turn out so well - Mazzy got surrounded and stuck between our enemies and our summons - she almost died, but I had her drink an invisibility potion in time:
This was the first major mistake I made since losing Jan at the planar prison. I'm trying to be even more careful about my movement from now on. Anyway, I had to obtain Quile's brain next, but with full buffs (which includes the triple combo for Anomen and improved haste for my fighters), spirit animals and breach, her mages didn't get to use any offensive spells:
Next, I decided to fight a couple of duels - Nahema did some shooting and running during the first one, eventually using her flesh golem to finish off the enemy:
Imoen dueled Chalinthra - for that purpose, I had her equip the Robe of Vecna + AoP (usually used by Nahema) and quickly summon a bunch of skeleton warriors:
Those also served her well in the three following mage duels. After Nahema killed another beholder, we dealt with the remaining Ust'Natha quests peacefully. Somewhere at this point, our first couple of characters got their very first HLAs! Eventually, we were called upon to deal with some slime cultists - these slimes are always more dangerous than they look, so we went in with summons and haste. Still, I used a couple of healing potions to keep everyone on high hp, as our summons were eventually defeated and not every enemy could be made to attack Nahema.
After Deirex wasted his timestop because my party simply ran away before it was finished, two skeleton warriors were enough to take him out - he simply had no way to deal with their MR:
Our first test for high physical damage encounters was against house Jae'llat. To that purpose, Nahema got into full tanking mode (with -18 ac, stoneskins, mirror images, negative saving throws etc.) while the others started to summon as many bodies as possible:
That turned out to be quite unneccessary - Nahema never got close to losing any of her protections or taking damage, and I still had PFMW ready in case it would be needed.
We did the usual triple-cross, but instead of one person sneaking in to swap the eggs, we used our whole party (in order to kill the guards as quickly as possible) - we still regularily use invisibility 10' radius anyway (though mass invisibility is now available and will replace it for combat purposes):
After fleeing the drow city, I made sure to avoid any backstabs while Adalon took care of the drow guards - true sight and a distracting spirit animal helped:
And we made it back to the surface! Next time, we have lots of battles to fight - dragons, liches, high level mages - all the stuff we decided not to do yet in chapter 2/3. I just hope Firkraag doesn't manage to dispel my buffs again...
We got down to the bottom level of the Section HQ. It was tthere that I maade a number of errors of judgement. Web was not used soon enough with the result that a cleric using flamestrike killed both Dynaheir and Xan. That meant no webs or fireballs. Despite this Paul Wolfe was brought to near death, but he had so many potions of healing, fire giant strength and the like that he had more endurance than we. Gavin and Tenya were killed first and finally I was given a fatal wound leaving Vynd the onle evil member of the party to finish off Paul Wolfe. Whether he succeeded or not, I have no idea.
The duo consists of a Talonite Champion and a Talonite Fighter/Cleric the latter having a Stormbringer of Talos kit and the former an Initiate of Rust and Worm kit.
Strangely, whilst the pure Cleric version of the Stormbringer of Talos doesn't work, the fighter/cleric version does. That is a major reason for having a fighter / cleric. Both are Chaotic Neutral Dwarves. I have never tried either kit before, so I don't expect to advance far, but we'll have to wait and see. I am looking forward to a very different type of game as my characters tend to be good. These won't be.
Baroque and the slightly-smaller-company: Neera's quest is finished as simply as any quest full of SCS mages is going to be. I didn't realize Lanneth actually went behind a door into an inner sanctum, so I wasted a good 10 minutes trying to dispel her invisibility when she wasn't anywhere close. In the end, Insect Plague wrecks them.
We bid Neera farewell with Baroque about to level. Since our destination is Trademeet anyways, Neeber contributes a bit of experience.
Baroque can now cast level 6 spells, and importantly for a team heavy on physical damage, Improved Haste. But we take on Rasaad's questline first before acquiring the scroll. There's 4 unique items in his quest, and I intend to sell three of them. Gold ahoy. The only thing to note is that Baroque doesn't have to kill the Invisible Stalkers himself in that one test: he used three summons to do the job for him, so his kill count is still a singular Shadow. The Monk fight has only a few spellcasters, and none high level enough to really worry about, and sheer physical damage is enough to overwhelm the d8+2 health of Monks, bonus AC vs Missiles notwithstanding. Jaheira still has her Ironskins up.
Last NPC to deal with: "Hexxat." And by that I mean Clara. No way am I doing Hexxat's quests: I've never touched them before.
Jaheira is finally summoned to the Harper's Hold, and one rest later, we start and end the fight.
And I decide to fight the Guarded Compound. And I didn't rest after Vista's Stoneskins were taken down, nor did I have True Sight running.
Well. We hightail it out of there. Vista's loss means mostly that I have no traps, and no Detect Illusions and I won't unless I recruit Jan. And I'm not trading one Gnome I/T for another just yet. We set sail to Spellhold with Yoshimo, mostly for his heart and one or two traps in Perth the Adept's home.
Speaking of Perth, he's taken care of by Improved Invisibility + Harm from Alina, fleeing his house, and waiting for his Mantle to expire before Mazzy takes a shot with an Acid Arrow at him.
Yoshimo gets us some extra experience by getting us into Deshirak's good graces. Or a trap. One or the other. Baroque gives up a point of Wisdom in the dream sequence, but Bhaal fails to follow him inside after trying around 15 times. A quick "C:CreateCreature("ppbhaal") fixes the issue, and a Skeleton Warrior and Kitthix win the fight. Onto Spellhold proper.
And Spellhold can be summed up in one phrase: I hate Yuan-ti mages. I didn't take a screenshot until the aftermath, but what happened is a Yuan-ti mage cast Flesh to Stone on Jaheira, and then a Fireball took her out. We clean up, but we're officially down to 5 for the entirety of Spellhold and the Underdark. I later see that this is standard: Pro. Petrification or Improved Invisibility is now going to be a regular on all my forces from now on.
Other close calls involve the Beholder that you can summon: an Antimagic ray was targeted at Baroque even with Improved Invisibility still running, so I high-tailed it out of there. Also, Sebastian was stunned and almost killed by an Ullithid in the dungeon.
Again the Clay golems fail to land a hit, leaving us all uncursed and healthy. Baroque is hidden behind a door so that he doesn't kill anyone during the Slayer transformation, while Sebastian charges ahead with the iMoD.
The battle with Sarevok is always nerve-wracking: we're stuck in a small room with a sorcerer throwing 9ths and capable of mass havoc with Chaos Sphere. The clones don't help either. We play a fighting defense to the south before the mages are overwhelmed by Irenicus. We all quaff invisibility potions, having no good illusion spells left.
We waste time and spells with summons and more invisibility potions, slowly killing our clones. Turns out that their AC is high enough that it's downright irritating trying to hit some of them, and Imoen's not really capable of mass damage yet, as she failed a lot of her spell scribes. 5 more potions are used in another transition, and we come across some interesting stuff in Jon's scripting. He's trying to remove his own spell protections.
Finally, he uses a divination spell: dunno why it took him so long. But that's our cue: all 4 of the damage dealers go for Irenicus, and the battle's ours.
True Seeing stops the thieves from doing anything too horrendous, and we're about to approach the Sahuaguin city. Also, Sebastian recovered his Cleric levels from the dual, so he can boost his damage with the trinity of cleric buffs! I'll get out stats once I load up the game.
I went ahead and decided to play hardcore like actual D&D, which means death = game over while also taking the first roll the game gives you - no reroll, no reallocating stats (and no backing out and restarting), Core-Rules, and taking whatever HP you get while leveling up, so I started the game and chose a Dragon Disciple (not very stat dependent and HD6 helps because hardcore level-ups) and was prepared to take whatever the game gives me and, wouldn't you know it...
Had I picked something that was stat-dependent I never would've gotten that roll. The game knows - it mocks me.
Anyway...
So it's obviously a lucky roll and I don't want to get killed and lose the character within 15 minutes. I'd like to try and make it into the second game. I took burning hands (RP reasons) and sleep (yes, it scales bad but I need it...hardcore).
Aside from that, I can use whatever advice you want to give - I'll be damned if I'm getting Ogre'd on the way to the FFI. Whatever advice is helpful - NPCs, what to knock out first, spell selection, etc. It would be much appreciated.
Welcome @Stormvessel and have fun. You asked about starting advice for this character. I would suggest the following would make things easy to begin with: - travel by day (to avoid the risk of archer ambushes) to the coast to find Shoal. - shoot her down without letting her get close enough to talk (or kiss ). Hey presto you've got to level 3. - use sleep to take down the ogre clan nearby. - a few more tasks around Beregost and you'll be up to level 4. If you choose invisibility you then have the option of safe travel / resting from then onwards.
Again demonstrating the triumph of hope over experience I decided to give this yet one more go. After further slight tweaking of starting proficiencies the girls were on their way.
One of them needed to rely on level 1 protection to survive early on, but no-one has actually died yet. They did the ankheg area as their first big target this time and followed up with the Lighthouse area before going to the basilisks. The levels gained by then meant they were able to protect everyone against petrification - thus reducing the chances of seeing death caused by accidentally selecting all.
The Doomsayer and the upper part of Durlag's Tower provided plenty more XP. This time I paid closer attention to what the ghost was doing, but it never tried to leave its floor.
Friends = money + summon familiar = hit points but the wand of frost (tree stump, top left mines map) = easly level up against the battle horrors guarding Durlag
Friends = money + summon familiar = hit points but the wand of frost (tree stump, top left mines map) = easly level up against the battle horrors guarding Durlag
Thanks. That's not a bad idea. There's also those lizards that turn you to stone where Sharteel is. I could use a resist pet scroll and level there, too. I have to wait until Nashkel to get Find Familiar (it's looted off of some assassin) because I'm a sorc and can't waste a spell slot on a use once spell. I'm probably going to take your advice and go after that wand.
Welcome @Stormvessel and have fun. You asked about starting advice for this character. I would suggest the following would make things easy to begin with: - travel by day (to avoid the risk of archer ambushes) to the coast to find Shoal. - shoot her down without letting her get close enough to talk (or kiss ). Hey presto you've got to level 3. - use sleep to take down the ogre clan nearby. - a few more tasks around Beregost and you'll be up to level 4. If you choose invisibility you then have the option of safe travel / resting from then onwards.
Awesome. Oh yea - that judas kiss...I don't know why the game developers would do that it's not fair in the least...I hope I can keep her away...I also thought about cheesing Drizzt but using an exploit kinda defeats the purpose. I'm still going fireball-the-fog crazy, though, because it's not my character's fault his enemies are stupid.
Lastly, I forgot to mention another reason I chose Sorc is so that I don't lose out trying to learn spells. But I may have a mage in my party and am curious about the -15%. Is it applied before or after INT bonus? The reason I ask is because if I quaff a pot and get INT to 21, that should be like 97%. I'm not sure how that works. So it becomes 82%. I am starting to wonder if it's even worth it to get a mage if I'm going to have to chase down genius pots and worry about losing scrolls.
Oh, one more thing, I'm not going to be able to pickpocket back stuff I sell so money is going to be tight. Is there any way to farm unlimited money in this game?
I wouldn't worry about money, really - if you don't start skipping major parts of the game, you will eventually get enough of it. Theoretically, a good way to get lots of money - if you have characters with very high strength like Dorn in your party - is killing ankhegs, as you could rest in the ankheg lair to get more of them to spawn. Each ankheg shell is worth 500g when sold at the smithy in Beregost. Still, I wouldn't recommend it. It's kind of a cheap way to get experience and money and will ruin any kind of natural progression in a game where there's enough money and experience to go around anyway.
About the spell-learning chance for specialist mages: All I can tell you is that with 24 int (which is 100% success), you still have 100% success even if learning a spell not from your school, so the -15% doesn't seem to apply there. I usually only learn scrolls at about 3-4 points in the game (once after getting enough money to buy those from High Hedge/Feldpost's/Ulgoth's Beard, once after getting access to Sorcerous Sundries and once after completing Durlag's Tower) and use potions of genius to do so. Keep in mind that there are some very rare scrolls (like Stoneskin - unless you do Neera's quest, there is only one scroll) that you wouldn't want to miss out on, so unless you are fine with turning down difficulty to normal for scroll scribing (which I don't like to do), potions of genius are the way to go anyway (they can be bought at the FAI temple and Sorcerous Sundries - if you only have one mage, you will have enough of them, provided you act like I do and only scribe scrolls at certain points in the game).
Any other tips for starting? Well, once you have invisibility, I would recommend acquiring a couple of wands - there's the wand of fire (ankheg lair, though ankhegs can be killed via sleep anyway and a are a good source of early experience), the wand of monster summoning (in the south-eastern tomb at the mine exit area - some ghasts are in there, but you can either blind them or use protection from undead to kill them and all of the other tomb dwellers on the map) and the wand of paralyzation (flesh golem cave - beware of traps, you might want to have the greenstone amulet before going there) - the wand of frost has already been mentioned.
Basically, most of BG1 (including the final battle) can be completed with wands alone. They are really quite powerful and remain great in SoD.
Lurking around in this thread has inspired me to post a no-reload run. I hope its eligible
The setup is plain and simple. No mods and core (max hp on leveling up). It version 2.4 and the game is played on iPhone 6s. I am playing solo - besides picking up NPCs gear
My plan was to roll an unkitted human mage, with at least 90 in stats. It proved rather difficult... until a 95 came up. So here is Mage F95
He has pips in sling
He is LN because I like the ferrets pickpocket skill. I Chose find familiar and spook at creation, summoned my familar an ventured out..
With Deders oil of speed, a bless spell and two prot from evil I finished all quests in CK - besides stealing the third healing potions (damn you no reload restrictions..)
I picked up the diamond and a ring of prot +1. I had decided to leave shoal alone because I hadnt soloed her before. So I did som errands and tried sorting out the easy stuff by kiting... I had some close calls...
Did a lot of kiting and even more running.. after reaching my second level I decided to save melicamp. Kiting and depleating the wand og magic missiles enabled me to dispose of the wolf and a skeleton. If I had saved Melicamp I would reached my third level.
Double damn no reloading.
Instead I scraped through the lands helping Mirianne and Zhurlong - blindness would have been a better choice than spook btw. Talking to a bandit provided me with the last xp for third level
And a dual to fighter.. next up was shoal and some fighting gear
Comments
Corthief XIV - elven thief (protagonist, controlled by Corey_Russell)
Berk - dwarven berserker, controlled by Grond0
Stinkimo - dwarven defender, controlled Gate70
The save game name was take out Kirian - but things did not to go to plan. Corthief XIV tried to backstab Kirian, but missed. Corthief XIV ran south, and the dwarves tried to distract the enemies, but only managed to get themselves killed. After running all over the map, Corthief XIV managed to hide. Corthief XIV picked up the important pieces of his buddies' armor and equipment and then went to a temple to raise them. After buying what we needed in Beregost, we continued the quest.
Stinkimo wanted Bjornin's shield, so we did that real quick without much difficulty. We also took down Melium and Molkar's group. We also defeated the sirines in Shoal's area. Often times, Stinkimo gets held or confused, but so far the others have been able to keep him safe.
Corthief XIV decided now was a good time to work on the main quest. Nashkel Mines were pretty straightforward, with Berk once again keeping a caster busy while Corthief XIV peppered Mulahey with arrows. We also took down the Amazons. Stinkimo got held, but was far enough away to stay safe. We also took down Tranzig, he wasn' able to do much.
While we were at it, we took down the battle horrors/doom guards at the Durlag's Tower and obtained the wisdom tome here. Corthief XIV used acid arrows to speed up the kills plus be able to attack the battle horrors/doom guards at range.
We also took down Vax and Zal for their bracers, took down Krumm and his brother, and took down the ogres trying to extort us for crossing their bridge.
The dwarves welcomed the gauntlets of dexterity. While here we also picked up the charisma tome without much happening in the process.
By this point, we have two tomes we need identified, so went to High Hedge - but ran out of time so saved our session here.
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
Part XXVII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907259/#Comment_907259
Part XXVIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907527/#Comment_907527
Part XXIX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907875/#Comment_907875
Part XXX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907944/#Comment_907944
Part XXXI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908048/#Comment_908048
Since I've been resting much more than usual in this run and I don't feel quite comfortable with doing that, I challenged myself to at least clear the City of Caverns, a relatively easy area, without any rests. While this resulted in my party taking some damage, I eventually succeeded and killed every single Sahuagin:
Our first mind flayer group int-drained one of my hasted skeleton warriors, but fell quickly after that:
The remaining skeletons were destroyed when fighting the first drow group, thanks to a death spell, which left me without fodder, so my party retreated:
Another group of summons (this time fire elementals + aerial servants) was called upon, but they eventually got death spelled as well. Only the third group of summons (spirit animals and item-based summons) took down all of the drow. The second drow group, lacking in spellcasters, was beaten right away though:
My last run ended at the magical prison, with Raevilin Strathi. This time, we didn't give any quarter - he was attacked as soon as he spawned and died before initiating dialogue:
Alchra Diagott, the lich, surivived our first volley of attacks and managed to get his protections up. I got out of sight for the inevitable time stop, and our summons were death spelled once again. However, Alchra was near death already, so a single spirit lion was enough to get through his stoneskins and defeat him:
Next, we completed Vithal's quest. After being done with it, I had Imoen (who had been drinking 3 potions of master thievery) steal all of his stuff - we want those scrolls:
Finally, we had to get rid of a balor for the deep gnomes. Skeleton warriors, 6x death ward, 6x cc and various other buffs (including our first use of improved haste, as we found/bought scrolls now) made this a safe and easy battle:
Next time, we shall try to explore the three outlying areas of the underdark - the Kuo-Toa Caves, the Illithid City and the Beholder Tunnels. This is where SoA usually starts to get really dangerous for me.
Enuhal
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6SoD First post
Notable mods
- SCS
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalance
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
I have to admit that it's only my second time around SoD, where the first one was with a solo fighter on LoB. 'Twas a bit crazy, but still managed to finish the game (with plenty of reloads though). So, that's my first real attempt to no-reload SoD. For that reason, I'll probably use a very defensive approach with Miluiel. We'll see what will happen...
The starting dungeon in SoD is not a cakewalk. If the first floor was cleaned up easily through a bit of fighting and talking, the second floor was harder. Since I decided to set the difficulty at Insane, I had to face plenty of undeads on the very first wave. And they were hitting really hard. Too hard actually : I forgot to check the "don't add difficulty base damage" option. So, as a consequence, we lost both Xan and Branwen on the first undead wave. Ouchy.
After having set the real difficulty I was aiming for, undeads were less dangerous, but still problematic. Every fight on the second floor was more difficult than they should have been. I think I was a tiny bit condescending toward SoD, thinking it would be easier since SCS has little effect on it. I just can't think that way. It's welcoming lack of concentration which I believe is the main reason people fail their no-reload. I have to keep my shit together, man...
This is why I said to myself that it's time to stop slacking off on the prebuff. Before the Korlasz fight, I got back to my old routine. Which is probably why the fight was really easy. It's perhaps also because of SR : under it, Mirror Images doesn't protect against AoE spells, which, if my memory of vanilla is not too bad, is still the case in the EE. Three fireballs from wands/spell/arrows were sufficient to deal enough damage to Korlasz to make her surrender. This took about two second. A bit anti-climatic again.
So, that's it for the team that carried me through BG1. I'm a bit sad to see them go, because I think that's the team with which I had the most fun going through the first game ever. I'll show what they looked like fully buffed before any significant fight (except for the first picture of Miluiel, which was taken before all the buffs were up).
Miluiel (gained tome of dex, cha and wis) :
Branwen :
Jaheira (gained tome of con) :
Xan (gained tome of int) :
Kivan (gained tome of strength) :
Alora :
All in all, it was a strong team with plenty of magic power to boot. Fun, it was.
So, I proceeded to Baldur's Gate, where I started to gather new teammates. Safana was hired, but perhaps will be replaced by Glint. Not sure though, 'cause I like myself some pure class thief very much. I also hired Dynaheir and Minsc. And you know what ? The crazy ranger did came with a nice lil' Greenstone Amulet. OH. YEAH. Finally... Now, Miluiel is protected by Mind Shield and Free Action permanently. Strong stuff. I'm cautiously confident about SoD. Let's do this !
@Enuhal: Looks like Greater Mummies have a save vs. death of 2. The IMoD has a save penalty of -4, bumping that up to 6, but LoB bonuses will bump it back down to 1, giving them guaranteed saves. Greater Malison, Doom, and Chant would be necessary to disrupt them in LoB mode.
Interestingly enough, vampires have rather terrible saves vs. death. Ancient Vampires have a save vs. death of 3, which amounts to a 5% chance of disruption per hit in LoB mode, but most vampires, including a lot of the named ones, have saves vs. death around 10!
Well, in the end...
A quick update, sadly something went wrong with my screenshots though. Initially we visited an area associated with Sirene, and then did Kulyok's Reunion sidequest, meeting another sibling and some of his demon helpers without incident.
On to Abazzy's lair. Here I was slightly distracted by a conversation with my daughter and didn't finish buffing. As a result poor Xan got melted by Draconis just as I noticed his belt of fortitude hadn't been activated and started moving him back. Sigh... just as he was starting to lighten up.
We interviewed one or two candidates for the resulting vacancy, but Sarevok pipped Ajantis on sheer bastardy, meat shieldery, and killing power. He's rather underleveled however. The rest of the lair was unproblematic, except that Abazigal's transformation was bugged. For some reason CLUAing us all to a different location (this was to our disadvantage as it happens as he was originally surrounded by summons) cleared up the problem. The ensuing battle was fairly simple except that I forgot Abazigal is immune to timestop and so Kelsey got to watch Sarevok being thrown around like a toy. Eh, that's what he's here for anyway...
The second pocketplane challenge was a little more dangerous. First Cromarty got badly hurt by his alterego- I later realised that his resistances were slightly bugged and set too low- and then he ventured into a pool of lava...and stayed there during Kelsey's timestop.... but despite his yelps of pain his fire resistance was high enough to remain self. Sarevok had the pleasure of vorpalising evil Cromarty, hm maybe even too much pleasure...
Then it was time to drop in on Sendai, and after clearing out the trash in the world above they've been parked in her lair for now. The lack of dialogue is grating on me slightly, Xan was never less than chatty... Of the rest Valygar is perpetually glaring at Kelsey, Yvette is finding new lines in her skin and on the verge of vanishing away, Sirene is finding new ways to suffer for Ilmater (ironic that a Gallant should so often be watching her suffer...), and Sarevok just hates everyone. A happy band are we!
Oh, and thanks to Gate70. With his help my computer seems to be handling some of the spell effects better w/ an updated driver, though it's never quite smooth.
Previous updates:
A nasty combination of bad play and computer cheating saw the end of this run.
There was another death at the start of the session in the ankheg nest. Summons were making light work of the ankhegs and there was no apparent danger when Misty suddenly fell dead. She had her missile weapon equipped with plenty of ammunition, but somehow she'd apparently managed to get right next to the ankheg - possibly buffeted by the summons as they charged to the attack in the twisting passage. At least the trip to the temple also allowed them to carry more ankheg shells for sale. After finishing off the ankhegs they were travelling back to Beregost again, but no longer bothering to stick to daytime. Some bandits attempted to take advantage of that, but Misty and Melody both hastily put on suits of plate armour as the bandits appeared and everyone survived.
At the Valley of the Tombs the fight with the Revenant took rather longer than any other in this run to date. Spell damage didn't do too much and the Revenant would switch targets from summons as soon as a character attacked. In the end though persistence told off when it was blinded, making it vulnerable to attack by 2-handed weapons. Narcillicus' mustard jellies were pulled away before the mage was silenced. That didn't stop him from using a potentially deadly minor sequencer, but fortunately that was only loaded with ray of enfeeblement.
Melody had got another thief level since being at Durlag's originally, so the WIP returned there to finish looting the tower. They also surrounded Riggilo, preventing him from attacking Melody until Whistle could reveal him and the spirit bears eventually scared him to death. On that level summons were also sent to deal on their own with the ghost and did so quite nicely. My suspicion was that Kirinhale (with a large number of HPs and ability to go ethereal) would be very difficult to kill and she was left again.
While nearby they took the opportunity to loot the halfling houses at Gullykin and get another +1 sling. Then they moved on to the Lake area where some gnolls kindly handed over Drizzt's equipment.
Gathering their courage they had a go at the Red Wizard area. The web traps were prospected invisibly before producing summons and working through the spiders - blind again performing well against the largest group of those. However, things did not go well against the Red Wizards:
1) I misjudged exactly where Denak was and didn't lead with a stealth character - resulting in activating the wizards prematurely.
2) I retreated to the map edge, but rather than run immediately pulled out a couple of summons. One of the mages appeared as that was happening and cast hold person at Whistle. That seemed harmless, so Whistle just ran away a bit as Artemis handed him the ring of free action.
3) The mages were throwing MMMs around, which are vicious in LoB and it was no surprise that Melody was an early casualty of those. What had been a surprise though was Artemis being affected by the hold person at Whistle. That was despite Whistle being far further than 5' away when the projectile hit - I've marked his position on the screenshot. I haven't noted hold person as subject to that sort of effect before, so am really not sure what was going on there.
5) Things were actually looking quite promising with both mages out of shot and being chased by snakes & skeletons, while the mages' own summons were under control and Artemis was about to be released from her hold effect. At that point though both mages used dimension door to reappear. One of them cast a horror, causing Artemis to run just as she regained control, while the other finished off Perky with a chromatic orb.
@Grond0 Hard luck on your run finishing when it had barely started.
WIP{4} (SCS / LoB) - update 1
Previous run:
I felt I couldn't let the game get away with the dodgy ending for the previous run, so started the WIP off once more. However, in response to the game's cheesiness I indulged in a bit more of my own - deciding to reset proficiencies of Artemis and Whistle to scimitars without rerolling them.
In the early stages I prioritised safety rather than speed and by the time a character was first hit
When they finally did get a skull Melicamp failed his system check anyway, so the WIP went down to Greywolf to get their final rep point.
Perky - Priest of Tyr L4, 32 HPs, 13 kills, 0 deaths
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L3/3, 27 HPs, 34 kills, 0 deaths
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L3/2/3, 24 HPs, 21 kills, 0 deaths
Artemis - Archer L4, 52 HPs, 48 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L6, 30 HPs, 8 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L5, 36 HPs, 9 kills, 1 death
@Mantis37 Good to hear your laptop experience is better now for the EEs.
@Arctodus Congratulations on beating BG1!
Party LoB + SCS run – First Level Ups
Prologue
First Steps
The group set off for Nashkel. On the North Nashkel Road they found only hobgoblins and bandits (no vampiric wolf, unlike @Enuhal ), which were easy to deal with using a sprit summon and Blindness.
The first natural thing to do in Nashkel was (and no, it was not picking up an ankheg armor) visiting a tavern, of course. There the group met the third assassin. Neira saved against first round of Blindness attempts, and seeing her finishing casting a spell the adventurers left the tavern just in case (Unholy Blight could easily end the run), then reentered and this time blinded the priest.
From Nashkel, the group decided to travel to the west in order to reach the Gnoll Stronghold. Helping the Dryad of the Cloud Peaks resulted in the first level up, - the totemic druid got 7 (from 9 possible) HPs.
This is why when the group approached Ludrug he challenged Sigyn. In normal (non-LoB) games I usually find it difficult not to kill Ludrug accidently during the duel. But the long duration of the fight on the LoB difficulty made me realize how it works (at least, in the EE)– your character just stops attacking Ludrug, and Ludrug stops attacking your strongest party member when his HPs hit the threshold. The screenshots below show the difference betwee the battling pose of Sigyn and her standing still not actively attacking (I didn’t order her to do that – she stopped herself). Also, the party blocked Ludrug’s way so that Sigyn could attack without the need to run in circles.
Gnarl and Hairtooth were blinded like all other critters, and fighting another pack of xvarts brought a new level for the archer (who got 10 HPs from 10 available).
The group saved Dynaheir without any troubles – the amount of gnolls on their way was not big (if compared to the time @Enuhal visited the same area) – maybe the fact the main character was still of the 1st level had to do with the amount of spawns. After the gnolls were killed the sorcerer got his level up (3 HPs from 5). Bringing freedom to Dynaheir gave the new level to the fighter/thief (3 HPs).
The Tome of CHA was given to the sorcerer, so he now had 12 CHA, and with the Friends spell (which I chose for him in addition to Blindness during the Character creation) he now could buy items and interact with key NPCs at 18 CHA. The Bracers of Dexterity were given to the C/M, as everyone else had 17 DEX, and 1 point of this attribute didn’t improve their ranged THAC0, while the difference in AC didn’t mean anything at this stage of the game on LoB.
SP-4,
Do unto others,... before they can do unto you
we traveled to the river map where the mushroom sack was waiting for us and I defeated two chickens and cleared the traps before attacking the stronghold. inside the cave we set a trap (actually five) for a pussycat then I almost lost Viconia to some albino critters and talked to
juhanijackshapur about finding some lost kids but my traps saved me any hassle getting my new threads... 'even in my colour' ... and the ghost dragon helped tidy up.on the way out I was surprised to see the guardian (I normally take the glasses off after killing the lich) and boy was he pissed at me but fortunately we all still had +3 weapons and the loot is a very nice crossbow... ok thats Mine!.
party;
Viconia, + 3 wisdom + 1 Dexterity
Jaheira, Minsc and Neera
Previous update
That didn't end well ...
Carrying on from the previous session the WIP cleared the ankheg area - by leading with a spirit summons and dooming & blinding the ankhegs they could normally kill about 3 with the single summons they had available initially. Perky got up to level 5 before the nest was finished though, allowing her to produce skeletons to help out.
At Durlag's Tower the battle horrors all died pretty easily, but the doom guard was more of a problem. It managed to kill the summons while still only at badly wounded. Perky, with the best AC of -5 tried to engage, but despite being doomed and blinded the doom guard managed to take out her 35 HPs with a single swing and Perky had to leave it to the others to take revenge with the help of a few stealth attacks.
Inside, they killed all the ghasts before I tried once more to leave it to summons to deal with the ghost. The rest of the party remained on the lower floor while Artemis used hide in shadows to direct the summons to attack the ghost. That worked well last time, but not this time. One skeleton warrior had been killed and the remaining one and a spirit snake were attacking when this happened:
I have noted before that enemies do sometimes seek out the remaining party using area transitions if they can't see a party member in the current area, so I suppose I should have been prepared for that - but I wasn't
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
Part XXVII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907259/#Comment_907259
Part XXVIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907527/#Comment_907527
Part XXIX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907875/#Comment_907875
Part XXX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907944/#Comment_907944
Part XXXI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908048/#Comment_908048
Part XXXII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908166/#Comment_908166
With our buffs from the balor fight still going, we moved into the western tunnels - kuo-toan's are easy to deal with as long as our summons make their saves against domination, and, with one exception, they always did. Imoen weakened the prince and the party killed him:
We needed to rest before taking on the demon knights, but Nahema took out the beholders on the way out. Now, we had the neccessary buffs prepared to minimze any risk during this battle: Protection from fire, remove fear, chaotic commands and death ward for everyone. The only thing to worry about would be getting those buffs dispelled - and there was indeed a dispel magic, though it only hit a couple of characters. Strangely enough, only haste and stoneskin got dispelled, with all the defensive cleric buffs still active, so we easily took out the demon knights one by one:
The illithid city just couldn't deal with our six chaotic command spells - we did have to rest two times, because I always wanted to fight with a full group of skeletons and haste, to maximize our damage output. Taking down the elder brain was easy, though an additional rest was required so we could summon our aerial servants and fire elementals to take out the brain golems:
For the southern tunnels, I had not only death wards and chaotic commands, but also protection from petrification spells ready, and I started with improved invisibility active to make the elder orb go for true sight instead of anything dangerous. I killed the beholder right away to reduce the chance of any anti-magic rays. After that, a quick breach on the elder orb allowed my party to win this battle:
As you can see, the elder orb was about to fire a potentially devastating spell trigger - dispel magic could've been absolutely brutal for our party. Luckily, while the trigger showed up in the combat log, it never actually happened.
No anti-magic rays so far, so I quickly took out the nearby drow. Mazzy got our best strength belt and the Sling of Everard + Shield of Balduran to clear out the remaining beholders:
She tricked an elder orb to use his imprisonment on her simulacrum. The elder orb was still trying to get close to her, making me think that he might've had a second imprisonment spell at the ready, so I decided to kite him instead. It took quite a while, but eventually this threat was gone, and only normal beholders remained:
Ust'Natha awaits!
Enuhal
Journal of Æthelthryth
We left total mahem behind at the bandits' camp using web and fireballs to great effect.We then went to the FAI where we were attacked first by Najara and then by Vallius. We killed both of them quite easily.
We then headed south where we were attacked by Davenport and his allies.
In transit we were then attacked by Zeela and friends. All of them were killed.
We ended up just north of the FAI where once more we were attacked by numerous ankheg.
="" />
We then started hunting sirine before helping Drittz against some gnolls. He later helped us to find Dynaheir's journal.
We then used invisibility to sneak into the Section Stronghold. This went well until Xan was backstabbed by some hidden thieves. He was killed and we had to use invisibility once more to get him to a healer.
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
Part XXVII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907259/#Comment_907259
Part XXVIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907527/#Comment_907527
Part XXIX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907875/#Comment_907875
Part XXX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907944/#Comment_907944
Part XXXI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908048/#Comment_908048
Part XXXII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908166/#Comment_908166
Part XXXIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908261/#Comment_908261
The most important thing we did in Ust'Natha was buying a new throwing dagger for Aikar - this will serve him well (by now, he is a grandmaster with daggers and does huge amounts of damage compared to everyone else in the party). Now, first quest: We have to deal with the underdark party. I knew the mage had at least one death spell, but it turned out to be two - but we still had summons left, and our party moved out with a couple of skeletons. The mage had only low level damage spells left by then:
When rescuing Phaere, things didn't turn out so well - Mazzy got surrounded and stuck between our enemies and our summons - she almost died, but I had her drink an invisibility potion in time:
This was the first major mistake I made since losing Jan at the planar prison. I'm trying to be even more careful about my movement from now on. Anyway, I had to obtain Quile's brain next, but with full buffs (which includes the triple combo for Anomen and improved haste for my fighters), spirit animals and breach, her mages didn't get to use any offensive spells:
Next, I decided to fight a couple of duels - Nahema did some shooting and running during the first one, eventually using her flesh golem to finish off the enemy:
Imoen dueled Chalinthra - for that purpose, I had her equip the Robe of Vecna + AoP (usually used by Nahema) and quickly summon a bunch of skeleton warriors:
Those also served her well in the three following mage duels. After Nahema killed another beholder, we dealt with the remaining Ust'Natha quests peacefully. Somewhere at this point, our first couple of characters got their very first HLAs! Eventually, we were called upon to deal with some slime cultists - these slimes are always more dangerous than they look, so we went in with summons and haste. Still, I used a couple of healing potions to keep everyone on high hp, as our summons were eventually defeated and not every enemy could be made to attack Nahema.
After Deirex wasted his timestop because my party simply ran away before it was finished, two skeleton warriors were enough to take him out - he simply had no way to deal with their MR:
Our first test for high physical damage encounters was against house Jae'llat. To that purpose, Nahema got into full tanking mode (with -18 ac, stoneskins, mirror images, negative saving throws etc.) while the others started to summon as many bodies as possible:
That turned out to be quite unneccessary - Nahema never got close to losing any of her protections or taking damage, and I still had PFMW ready in case it would be needed.
We did the usual triple-cross, but instead of one person sneaking in to swap the eggs, we used our whole party (in order to kill the guards as quickly as possible) - we still regularily use invisibility 10' radius anyway (though mass invisibility is now available and will replace it for combat purposes):
After fleeing the drow city, I made sure to avoid any backstabs while Adalon took care of the drow guards - true sight and a distracting spirit animal helped:
And we made it back to the surface! Next time, we have lots of battles to fight - dragons, liches, high level mages - all the stuff we decided not to do yet in chapter 2/3. I just hope Firkraag doesn't manage to dispel my buffs again...
Enuhal
Journal of Æthelthryth last entry
We got down to the bottom level of the Section HQ. It was tthere that I maade a number of errors of judgement.Web was not used soon enough with the result that a cleric using flamestrike killed both Dynaheir and Xan. That meant no webs or fireballs.
Gavin and Tenya were killed first and finally I was given a fatal wound leaving Vynd the onle evil member of the party to finish off Paul Wolfe. Whether he succeeded or not, I have no idea.
The Talonite Duo
The duo consists of a Talonite Champion and a Talonite Fighter/Cleric the latter having a Stormbringer of Talos kit and the former an Initiate of Rust and Worm kit.Strangely, whilst the pure Cleric version of the Stormbringer of Talos doesn't work, the fighter/cleric version does. That is a major reason for having a fighter / cleric. Both are Chaotic Neutral Dwarves. I have never tried either kit before, so I don't expect to advance far, but we'll have to wait and see. I am looking forward to a very different type of game as my characters tend to be good. These won't be.
Neera's quest is finished as simply as any quest full of SCS mages is going to be. I didn't realize Lanneth actually went behind a door into an inner sanctum, so I wasted a good 10 minutes trying to dispel her invisibility when she wasn't anywhere close. In the end, Insect Plague wrecks them.
We bid Neera farewell with Baroque about to level. Since our destination is Trademeet anyways, Neeber contributes a bit of experience.
Baroque can now cast level 6 spells, and importantly for a team heavy on physical damage, Improved Haste. But we take on Rasaad's questline first before acquiring the scroll. There's 4 unique items in his quest, and I intend to sell three of them. Gold ahoy. The only thing to note is that Baroque doesn't have to kill the Invisible Stalkers himself in that one test: he used three summons to do the job for him, so his kill count is still a singular Shadow. The Monk fight has only a few spellcasters, and none high level enough to really worry about, and sheer physical damage is enough to overwhelm the d8+2 health of Monks, bonus AC vs Missiles notwithstanding. Jaheira still has her Ironskins up.
Last NPC to deal with: "Hexxat." And by that I mean Clara. No way am I doing Hexxat's quests: I've never touched them before.
Jaheira is finally summoned to the Harper's Hold, and one rest later, we start and end the fight.
And I decide to fight the Guarded Compound. And I didn't rest after Vista's Stoneskins were taken down, nor did I have True Sight running.
Well. We hightail it out of there. Vista's loss means mostly that I have no traps, and no Detect Illusions and I won't unless I recruit Jan. And I'm not trading one Gnome I/T for another just yet. We set sail to Spellhold with Yoshimo, mostly for his heart and one or two traps in Perth the Adept's home.
Speaking of Perth, he's taken care of by Improved Invisibility + Harm from Alina, fleeing his house, and waiting for his Mantle to expire before Mazzy takes a shot with an Acid Arrow at him.
Yoshimo gets us some extra experience by getting us into Deshirak's good graces. Or a trap. One or the other. Baroque gives up a point of Wisdom in the dream sequence, but Bhaal fails to follow him inside after trying around 15 times. A quick "C:CreateCreature("ppbhaal") fixes the issue, and a Skeleton Warrior and Kitthix win the fight. Onto Spellhold proper.
And Spellhold can be summed up in one phrase: I hate Yuan-ti mages. I didn't take a screenshot until the aftermath, but what happened is a Yuan-ti mage cast Flesh to Stone on Jaheira, and then a Fireball took her out. We clean up, but we're officially down to 5 for the entirety of Spellhold and the Underdark. I later see that this is standard: Pro. Petrification or Improved Invisibility is now going to be a regular on all my forces from now on.
Other close calls involve the Beholder that you can summon: an Antimagic ray was targeted at Baroque even with Improved Invisibility still running, so I high-tailed it out of there. Also, Sebastian was stunned and almost killed by an Ullithid in the dungeon.
Again the Clay golems fail to land a hit, leaving us all uncursed and healthy. Baroque is hidden behind a door so that he doesn't kill anyone during the Slayer transformation, while Sebastian charges ahead with the iMoD.
The battle with Sarevok is always nerve-wracking: we're stuck in a small room with a sorcerer throwing 9ths and capable of mass havoc with Chaos Sphere. The clones don't help either. We play a fighting defense to the south before the mages are overwhelmed by Irenicus. We all quaff invisibility potions, having no good illusion spells left.
We waste time and spells with summons and more invisibility potions, slowly killing our clones. Turns out that their AC is high enough that it's downright irritating trying to hit some of them, and Imoen's not really capable of mass damage yet, as she failed a lot of her spell scribes. 5 more potions are used in another transition, and we come across some interesting stuff in Jon's scripting. He's trying to remove his own spell protections.
Finally, he uses a divination spell: dunno why it took him so long. But that's our cue: all 4 of the damage dealers go for Irenicus, and the battle's ours.
True Seeing stops the thieves from doing anything too horrendous, and we're about to approach the Sahuaguin city. Also, Sebastian recovered his Cleric levels from the dual, so he can boost his damage with the trinity of cleric buffs! I'll get out stats once I load up the game.
Had I picked something that was stat-dependent I never would've gotten that roll. The game knows - it mocks me.
Anyway...
So it's obviously a lucky roll and I don't want to get killed and lose the character within 15 minutes. I'd like to try and make it into the second game. I took burning hands (RP reasons) and sleep (yes, it scales bad but I need it...hardcore).
Aside from that, I can use whatever advice you want to give - I'll be damned if I'm getting Ogre'd on the way to the FFI. Whatever advice is helpful - NPCs, what to knock out first, spell selection, etc. It would be much appreciated.
- travel by day (to avoid the risk of archer ambushes) to the coast to find Shoal.
- shoot her down without letting her get close enough to talk (or kiss
- use sleep to take down the ogre clan nearby.
- a few more tasks around Beregost and you'll be up to level 4. If you choose invisibility you then have the option of safe travel / resting from then onwards.
WIP{5} (SCS / LoB) - update 1
Previous run
One of them needed to rely on level 1 protection to survive early on, but no-one has actually died yet. They did the ankheg area as their first big target this time and followed up with the Lighthouse area before going to the basilisks. The levels gained by then meant they were able to protect everyone against petrification - thus reducing the chances of seeing death caused by accidentally selecting all.
The Doomsayer and the upper part of Durlag's Tower provided plenty more XP. This time I paid closer attention to what the ghost was doing, but it never tried to leave its floor.
Perky - Priest of Tyr L5, 39 HPs, 15 kills, 0 deaths
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L4/4, 38 HPs, 60 kills, 0 deaths
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L4/3/4, 32 HPs, 40 kills, 0 deaths
Artemis - Archer L5, 62 HPs, 78 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L6, 47 HPs, 12 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L6, 42 HPs, 27 kills, 0 deaths
Lastly, I forgot to mention another reason I chose Sorc is so that I don't lose out trying to learn spells. But I may have a mage in my party and am curious about the -15%. Is it applied before or after INT bonus? The reason I ask is because if I quaff a pot and get INT to 21, that should be like 97%. I'm not sure how that works. So it becomes 82%. I am starting to wonder if it's even worth it to get a mage if I'm going to have to chase down genius pots and worry about losing scrolls.
Oh, one more thing, I'm not going to be able to pickpocket back stuff I sell so money is going to be tight. Is there any way to farm unlimited money in this game?
About the spell-learning chance for specialist mages: All I can tell you is that with 24 int (which is 100% success), you still have 100% success even if learning a spell not from your school, so the -15% doesn't seem to apply there. I usually only learn scrolls at about 3-4 points in the game (once after getting enough money to buy those from High Hedge/Feldpost's/Ulgoth's Beard, once after getting access to Sorcerous Sundries and once after completing Durlag's Tower) and use potions of genius to do so. Keep in mind that there are some very rare scrolls (like Stoneskin - unless you do Neera's quest, there is only one scroll) that you wouldn't want to miss out on, so unless you are fine with turning down difficulty to normal for scroll scribing (which I don't like to do), potions of genius are the way to go anyway (they can be bought at the FAI temple and Sorcerous Sundries - if you only have one mage, you will have enough of them, provided you act like I do and only scribe scrolls at certain points in the game).
Any other tips for starting? Well, once you have invisibility, I would recommend acquiring a couple of wands - there's the wand of fire (ankheg lair, though ankhegs can be killed via sleep anyway and a are a good source of early experience), the wand of monster summoning (in the south-eastern tomb at the mine exit area - some ghasts are in there, but you can either blind them or use protection from undead to kill them and all of the other tomb dwellers on the map) and the wand of paralyzation (flesh golem cave - beware of traps, you might want to have the greenstone amulet before going there) - the wand of frost has already been mentioned.
Basically, most of BG1 (including the final battle) can be completed with wands alone. They are really quite powerful and remain great in SoD.
The setup is plain and simple. No mods and core (max hp on leveling up). It version 2.4 and the game is played on iPhone 6s. I am playing solo - besides picking up NPCs gear
My plan was to roll an unkitted human mage, with at least 90 in stats. It proved rather difficult... until a 95 came up. So here is Mage F95
He is LN because I like the ferrets pickpocket skill. I Chose find familiar and spook at creation, summoned my familar an ventured out..
With Deders oil of speed, a bless spell and two prot from evil I finished all quests in CK - besides stealing the third healing potions (damn you no reload restrictions..)
I picked up the diamond and a ring of prot +1. I had decided to leave shoal alone because I hadnt soloed her before. So I did som errands and tried sorting out the easy stuff by kiting... I had some close calls...
Did a lot of kiting and even more running.. after reaching my second level I decided to save melicamp. Kiting and depleating the wand og magic missiles enabled me to dispose of the wolf and a skeleton. If I had saved Melicamp I would reached my third level.
Double damn no reloading.
Instead I scraped through the lands helping Mirianne and Zhurlong - blindness would have been a better choice than spook btw. Talking to a bandit provided me with the last xp for third level