So with the berserkers stuffed back in the closet I thought I would have one more go with the WI to see if protection against chunking can help them overcome my inadequacies (unlikely I suspect ).
As I often do, I'll play this game under the rule that they can only ever purchase anything at the minimum possible cost. That meant they were only equipped with slings in Candlekeep, but everything went perfectly there anyway. Carbos, who can be a significant danger with his stealth and poisoned backstabs, was commanded and blinded - and killed.
The same recipe worked for Shank, though he was also slowed by Whistle's trap. The spirit bear did a good job of occupying the rats as they were shot down. And Melody successfully learnt Firebead's identify scroll.
The intention is for this to be a completionist run, but I forgot to kill the golems at High Hedge before talking to Thalantyr - I'll have to do that later in the run after all the shopping there is finished. Other than that a few other early tasks around Beregost went smoothly. In Nashkel though they did have to spend quite a bit of time running round when a blinded Neira summoned a skeleton warrior. That had a follow-me script, so leading it away and stealthing didn't prevent it returning. After about 6 circuits of Nashkel, however, the WIP managed to finish off Neira and were able to rest.
They charmed and killed the first 3 sirines in the Beregost Temple before a slight mis-click sent the last of them hostile.
Only level 1 protection saved Melody from a holy smite,
but after Kelddath was doomed and blinded he failed to complete another spell.
A bit more work in Beregost and Nashkel meant that after returning a bowl to Tenya and blinding a nearby ankheg for easy disposal everyone was entitled to take at least 1 level.
They didn't do so, however, until they'd cleared a few more areas on the way back to Nashkel and generally got a couple of levels each (in order to continue to benefit from level 1 protection in the meantime).
The ankheg area was cleared to give an extra level or so each. Still no-one died at that stage, although Artemis was hit once there and could easily have been killed if he'd failed his save against acid damage.
Moving south, the Lake area was sorted out - not too much XP there, but a couple of nice weapons courtesy of Drizzt. After seeing Brage back home from the neighbouring area, however, the first death of the run occurred. A RL distraction led to me unknowingly walking into a tasloi ambush. By the time I noticed that Misty was already dead and it was lucky no-one else joined her as they disengaged.
I should probably go after some more serious XP to get a few more levels to help guard against that sort of mistake ...
@StummvonBordwehr If both dukes die, then you automatically get hit with a lethal flame strike that cannot be resisted. You can also get hit if you accuse Sarevok, but don't have the evidence on him, or you don't show your invitations when you enter the coronation area initially.
@semiticgod and @Corey_Russell Thanks that must be it. I didnt see a damage line.. Thought I had gotten between the assasins and the dukes. Was busy killing the assasins at 4 apr with great damage output - and killed only 1....
But considering my options ( had a wand of monster summoning and a nymph cloak with 40 charges) I should have done better.
I will try my luck with a new character later. I hope its Dwarf FC100, but it will probably be his dumber and less atractive kin Dwarf FC80’ish
So, my team for SoD will be : Minsc, Dynaheir, Glint, Corwin... and Baeloth. Yeah, that last one sticks out like a sore thumb, but a sorcerer with high natural MR is too good to pass up. With three fireballs per rounds, let say that this make for a good team, specially in SoD, where enemies are numerous.
While exploring, the team tried to avoid getting too close to the bridge in the Coast Way Crossing, but the cutscene activated anyway. So, I had to go in this fight unbuffed, which I don't like. However, with 3 fireballs in the initial round, things turned to my advantage real quick. All the attackers were dead real fast. I took a bit of damage, but nothing too bad.
The dwarven mine was to be dealt with now. Again, the hordes of undeads were destroyed by fire, even though some bad placement got Corwin killed by the Bronze Sentry. Besides that, the lich was killed with the help of the Secret Revealed, and his phylactery was destroyed in the fire not long after.
Then, when the party arrived at the Troll Claw Woods, I got a bit carelss against a bunch of orcs. Their shaman decided to cast Call Lightning... straight at an unbuffed Miluiel. When it struck, it got her to 19 hp. I actually had to drink a potion of Extra Healing, which is not something I like to do with a defensive charname like her. The blueprint should be clear : scout with stealthed Corwin before engaging. This type of things will get me killed if I'm not careful.
We had to go find the wardstone that can get us inside Bridgefort in the Temple of Bhaal. After having killed a few spiders and bugbears, I decided to try my luck at throwing an unenchanted dagger at Morentherene. Maybe I could get an easy kill right there...
Or so I thought...
I buffed Miluiel thac0 as much as I could, only to discover that the dragon was already active. Never had the chance to throw my dagger. You can imagine how well that went... After a few breath attacks from Morentherene and her young green dragon, two of my teammates were dead and the rest were in really, really bad shape.
Things were looking grim, so we got out of the dragon's lair. However, I realized that, since the dragon is active, I absolutely have to kill it, otherwise I can't have access to the Temple. And we did managed to take the dragon to Injured before retreating. I might as well try to finish it now instead of letting it recover. So, I decided to scrape by all the potions of healing I could find, healed up, buffed up again, and went back in. Miluiel and Baeloth were in charge of doing the damage through wands, while Corwin and Minsc... were trying to do the best they could. After another round of retreating, healing and pouncing, we managed to destroy the mighty foe.
We got back to camp, revived everyone and cleared the rest of the cave.
Phew ! It doesn't get any closer than this ! Or can it...
So, inside the temple, we took care of Ziatar and her croonies without much of a problem. Since we were mostly attacking from range, Teleport Field didn't really mattered, well except for Minsc who was thrown all over the place...
I continued my search of the Temple, and opened the door to the Neothelid a bit too soon, not remembering that he was right after the cells in the Temple... Fighting him unbuffed, I will. Minsc drank a potion of strength (don't remember which) and got in his face right away. After Neothelid managed to kill Dynaheir, the monster disappeared for a moment. And I was waiting for him. And waiting. Where was he ? I scrolled through the message textbox and it seems Baeloth killed it with a wand of frost, which I totally missed in the heat of battle. Well, I'll take it.
Then, Glint killed Akanna all alone. Since I have loosed the restriction of cleric on blunt weapon, he is rocking the Short Sword of Backstabbing +3, which gives +1 to backstab. Neat. After one backstab and a Flame Strike in quick succession, Akanna was no more.
The Darskhelin fight. Did not went as good as I thought it would. I buffed up real good, planning to send a protected from fire Minsc up front with Free Action and Mind Shield from a potion of Clarity and blast everything with fireballs. Simple, effective. Except that I forgot to drink the potion of Clarity. Minsc was stunned right on the get go. Then, the enemy poured from their room and it became a big ol' mess of a fight. Spells flying left and right, int drained rapidly. Dyna and Corwin died to Darskhelin, but we were doing good work on his friends. One thing though : once Minsc got stunned, the enemy ignored him. Well, he received one lick from the Illithid, but he was left alone after that. Long enough for him to regain his senses, but not entirely, because he was roaming the room confused. What did he do ? He won the fight by himself. Still confused, he slashed away Mohad Flintborn :
And Darskhelin right after :
Thanks, confused Minsc !
So, we went back to camp, healed up and got back in the Temple to fight the Shadow Aspect. I thought that IR's potion of Sight (replacing the pathetic potions of Infravision to give the ability to detect invisible creature) and Detect Illusion would do the trick against it, but it did not. The Shadow Aspect started to work on us, killing Minsc and Corwin, before setting his eyes on Miluiel herself. We managed to kill one of his Mislead clone, but he casted another.
I thought that, since I don't have access to True Sight, Glint being too low level, I'd just casually go out of the Temple and maybe come back later. But then, I remarked that Miluiel couldn't move. She was getting strength drained. I did not know that the Shadow Aspect had that power. And the Shadow Aspect was still attacking Miluiel. With Stoneskin on, he was not doing any damage, but was still draining. Miluiel was down to 6 strength.
There, I freaked out : getting killed was a very real threat. I went in her pack, unequipped as much as I could to let her move again, drank a potion of Haste and got the hell out of this place ! Luckily, we made it out of the Temple with Miluiel alive. Close, close call.
I got way too many close call in the last few days : Call Lightning, Morentherene and Shadow Aspect, all got quite a few serious licks on Miluiel. My lack of familiarity with SoD is glaring. Still, to paraphrase a well known Middle Eastern Deity roaming this forum, surviving all that mess fills us with determination. Kinda.
I got cocky after reading that SCS mages don't cast Imprisonment on charname.
... but apparently, they liberally do so on everyone else!
Minsc and Jaheira got Imprisoned. Then both, Jan & imoen, were killed. (No one else can use Freedom scrolls.) I did not try resurrecting them midfight with Horrid Wiltings flying about.
Viconia and Khael managed to tank the lich to the bitter end within an inch of their lives. Viconia is at 80% MR and Khael is at 55% MR with negative saves. They kept drinking potions and waited out Prot from Magic Weapons each time it is recast while dodging the Mord Swords. (In my install, Carsomyr does not dispel automatically.)
Khael finished off Deirex with Carsomyr after his last PfMW wore out.
Here is the end of the battle with Viconia winking at Khael atop their dead comrades, saying "Hey, what's the hurry with resurrections. First, come on over here, J'aluq!"
Now when the party had wands, they were braver travelling across the Sword Coast. They started with clearing already visited areas, though, with the Beregost Temple wolves being the first targets.
I keep reading about how skalds are useful for ToB, and looking at my party, I can find only one substitution that could work for a skald - the main character, the sorcerer. But truth be told, I find the sorcerer to be the real MVP during the LoB playthough. It's not about damage here, it's about disabling any enemies the party encounter. 10+ blindness spellls at the 4th level (thanks to the ring of Wizardy), 3 Web spells - these are actually the most important ways to deal with enemies, to me.
The group of wolves near the Beregost Temple were first Webbed and then killed by +2 arrows purchased from Taerom.
Playing Good has its downsides on the Meta-Gaming level: no items from the Sendai group - I've checked in the NI: all of them have Chaotic Neutral alignment, so no fight here:
Blindness and Web can help in many situations: with a group of skeletons, a cave bear, Vax and Zal.
The party wanted to get another wand - of Paralysis, and thus they came to the Seawatcher Tower area. There, they witnessed (nearly) endless hobgoblin spawns, - no, really, why did these critters kept spawning each time:
Fighting mundane dread wolves brought new levels for the F/I and the F/T, with Glod getting only 2 HPs as a figher (!).
Dealing with the sirens took a few rests - while the lvl 5 spirit lions were immune to Charm, they weren't immune to Feeblemind, so it required a lot of back-and-forth in terms of Blindness and Web.
While dealing with the Flesh golems, the party learned that using +2 arrows against them was a much quicker way to dispatch the critters than failed backstabs by the F/T.
Killing more mundane wolves brought new levels for several party members, including the main character, who now had Mirror Image in addition to Web (for a potential Amazon ambush). Believe it, or not, but the F/I again got no more than 2 HPs (this time as an illusionist).
Finally, the totemic druid in the party could summon 2 spirit animals, and that, according to @Enuhal , is a guarantee the group now was able to defeat almost any wilderness opponent they encounter. Arkushule, for example, couldn't deal with Poison by the spirit snake and Horror by the spirit bear.
Here’re the current standings: Jagen, sorcerer, lvl 5, 21 HPs, 18 kills (5% in the group) Glod, fighter/illusionist, lvl 4/4, 27 HPs, 84 kills (24% in the group), 0 deaths Uzume, fighter/thief, lvl 4/5, 38 HPs, 82 kills (23% in the group), 0 deaths Cochrane, archer, lvl 5, 42 HPs, 123 kills (35% in the group), 0 deaths Sigyn, totemic druid, lvl 6, 45 HPs, 18 kills (5% in the group), 0 deaths Dazbog, cleric/mage, lvl 4/3, 18 HPs, 19 kills (5% in the group), 2 deaths (both by a kobold commando)
No LoB for me at the moment. I might get back to it later, but right now, I want to poke around with my current party and see what kind of stunts I can pull with the few items I can still use.
If I was playing LoB mode, I would have a Totemic Druid on hand. And I would be using wands.
I've found some time to play a little bit, so let's go for that SoA endgame!
Surprisingly, once you get the right equipment and levels, killing adamantite golems doesn't even take that long on LoB:
Whenever possible, we made full use of Crom Faeyr's golem killing powers, though. Only one encounter is worth mentioning when it comes to the outside areas of the city: The rakshasa in front of the House of the Moon decided to completely ignore my summons and went after my unbuffed party! Since they use a lot of dangerous elemental damage spells, I was actually able to use all the resistance equipment I had stashed away in my bag of holding for cases just like this - a couple of fire protection items certainly helped Nahema out when she was hit by a second sunfire:
Arbogast is wearing the Cloak of Mirroring, so he was always going to be safe. We eventually ended up using an ihasted Aikar to take down all of those spellcasters.
Another strange encounter: The balor in front of the palace actually started attacking all of those elf npcs standing around there, and they didn't even try to fight back:
Raamilat didn't manage to deal with a couple of skeleton warriors and fire elementals:
We saved Demin, only having to leave her house once because one of our foes got to cast an uninterruptable spell:
Now, the party had to kill their third dragon. While I've never actually seen him use his breath weapon in the vanilla game, I buffed everyone with protection from acid anyway. Three skeletons, a mordy sword and a deva plus full buffs were prepared. And by now I'm pretty sure I've figured out how vanilla dragons use their one and only remove magic spell: In the first couple of rounds, and always on the target closest to them, even if only summons are in melee range - so no one of our party lost any of their buffs:
A breach spell and a couple of rounds later, and the dragon was history. Even his insect plague only managed to hit summons:
We decided to summon the Avatar of Rillifane to make things easier:
While clearing the city, Imoen had gotten access to her first HLA, so I was eager to have her Planetar fight a little duel against Jon Irenicus. Guess who won:
In hell, Wraith Sarevok was tanked by a single skeleton warrior. Since I only chose good-aligned options, the only other fight was against the three elder orbs. They managed to imprison my planetar, and I wasn't allowed to bring in a deva instead, because the planetar wasn't really dead. This put me in an awkward situation, as I wasn't prepared to for a head to head fight against three elder orbs. I ran back outside, and one of them followed. I took it down with GWWs before it could do anything harmful:
I went back in to have Imoen take the Tear of Bhaal, but the other two elder orbs noticed her and followed her outside. This could've been a huge problem, but I managed to avoid any further trouble by having two of my fighter-types use smite and kick the elder orbs far away from my party for now, giving me the chance to get in some summons and use only Mazzy with sling + Balduran's Shield:
Now, time for the final SoA battle. I prepared with full buffs - though I ended up forgetting to use mass invisibility. Also, three fire giant strength potions for my fighters (except Anomen, he doesn't need one). But hey, wait a second, why does Irenicus start with half hp? Is this some kind of LoB? bug? Doesn't seem fair!
Well, anyway, Irenicus was busy using death spell to get rid of my summons, but the deva still kept him and some demons busy. Meanwhile, I had already dealt with two of the demonic foes:
The other two demons didn't survive for long - meanwhile, Jon teleported away. I already had true sight going at this point:
So I only needed to breach Irenicus two times to get rid of his defensive spells:
All in all, quite an easy victory for our party down here.
So I obviously did far better in SoA compared to BG1 or, god forbid, SoD - main reasons being the large arsenal of summons and defensive buffs available at this point, my very high familiarity with vanilla SoA compared to the other parts to the tetralogy and, of course, no improved AI like in SoD. We still permanently lost Jan, though I blame my poor potion management and his low hitpoints for that. ToB will have some high physical damage encounters, which might make things much harder and more interesting, as summons propably just won't survive long enough against certain bosses. And there's always Watcher's Keep - I think some of the battles in level 3 could be quite challenging on LoB.
Here are some final stats for SoA: Arbogast, level 21 Great Druid, 120 kills Aikar, level 24 Kensai, 388 kills Nahema, level 16/15 Fighter/Illusionist, 139 kills (her relatively low killcount is due to the fact that she doesn't have an infinte ammo ranged weapon at her disposal and often only engages in combat if a melee presence is required) Mazzy, level 23 Fighter, 211 kills Anomen, level 25/7 Cleric/Fighter, 129 kills Imoen, level 18/7 Mage/Thief, 24 kills
@Ygramul it was noticeable how slowly the page opened for me today. If you're going to post many screenshots it would be good if you used the far smaller JPG format rather than PNG .
@JuliusBorisov it will be interesting to see if anything comes from your HP ticket. At this stage having to get used to low HPs again would be a wrench of course . Incidentally, I think you referred in an earlier post to the expectation that multi-class characters would do well on HP rolls - it's actually the other way round. A single class character always fully benefits from the roll obtained, but multi-class rolls permanently lose any fractions of HPs from the roll at level ups (though with a minimum of 1 HP gained). Thus for example a M/C getting a cleric level could roll the following: 1 = 0.5 = 1 HP gained (rounded up to 1) 2 = 1 = 1 3 = 1.5 = 1 (rounded down unless below 1) 4 = 2 = 2 5= 2.5 = 2 6 = 3 = 3 7 = 3.5 = 3 8 = 4 = 4 So in the game the average HPs actually gained after rounding should be 17/8. The theoretical average from the original die rolls would be 18/8. That doesn't sound like a lot of difference, but it is pretty noticeable if you roll a lot of characters.
Venturing on we confronted the tanar'ri having benched Kelsey in favour of Ajantis. (The dead magic zone effects lingered for a round or two.) Things went wrong from the start as I unecessarily allowed Yvette and Sirene to be stunned while the summons came out. Then Sarevok & Valygar each took down a Glabezru only for Sarevok to become the decapitatee at the hands of Tanahazzar. Somewhat reckless of me, and wasteful too. Wary now Cromarty took the balor down at range with his throwing spear and the rest of the battle was fairly academic.
And so our intern Ajantis became a full member, and we mourned Sarevok for... well, about that long. Surprising to think of how long ago Cromarty broke with Ajantis in BG1 after that incident with the fellow who wasn't a doppleganger... No sooner did we go through the next portal however than Kelsey dropped dead at -10 hp, possibly due to the calls of the demon wraith's servants. Yvette recalled Kelsey's spirit and detrapped the area while the muscle formed a shieldwall. Initially the demonwraith threw out some symbols but it then rather terrifyingly moved into close quarters to incant its next spell. Fearing Imprisonment I was ready to flee but fortunately its casting was interrupted and it didn't get another spell off for the rest of the battle while at close quarters. Ironically enough we were able to retrieve Foebane from this room- due to my mod loadout Sarevok would have had grandmastery with that and we would have been set for the Throne...
Then we detrapped the room, and I paused to listen to my wife. She wasn't happy that I seem to be concentrating so much while playing a video game recently! Just a few more challenges darling... and then the throne.... I am tempted to plunge on into Watcher's Keep as I know that the fourth level isn't very dangerous but will probably do the grove & Pocketplane challenges now, just in case something goes badly wrong and I have a need to level up some party members in the training ground of the fourth level.
we got a license to cast, thats the law here apparently... I couldn't rest again after collecting Viconia so we stealth traveled, dealing with the slavers is easy when you get the drop on them instead of the other way round but I didn't have the rep to let Dorn run amuck either so stealth is maintained until we leave the city gates.
I almost got my head kicked in by a chicken then we made peace between the townies and the ogres before collecting my wild mage and grabbing some easy loot in watchers. dragging shadows into the light proves the easy option... ok the undead constructs are a challenge but one at a time they are manageable for Dorn.
the boss fight
= kill the alter first and the gold ammo makes fast work of it, Viconia keeps the boss away with her 'repulse' and my detect skill + a 'true sight' from J put a stop to most his silliness... the few rounds of +3 ammo from watchers help whittle him down but Dorn gets the kill.
p.s, Dorn tried it on but I draw the line at green!
party; Sarah, (lob) Jaheira, Dorn, Neera, Viconia and Yoshimo
The sirines at the Lighthouse were no problem with skeletons to add to a spirit summons. However, there was another lapse in concentration when Melody was sent into the pirate cave to disarm the traps - and after moving on to the second of those didn't notice the first golem creeping up on her.
After returning from the temple to deal with the golems I couldn't be bothered to face the hordes of hobgoblins @juliusBorisov referred to in the area and left them for later.
Next they went to Durlag's, where they ganged up as usual on blinded battle horrors.
The doom guard was again harder and with it down to single figure HPs numerous backstab attempts had missed before Melody rather oddly got the kill (she was actually only trying to get its attention in order that Artemis could go off and hide).
The ghasts didn't cause any problems, but the ghost killed a pair of skeleton warriors without taking any damage itself and lots of backstabs were required up and down the stairs to deal with it.
Another bit of luck saw Melicamp successfully revived - pushing reputation up to 20 and finally allowing the WIP to buy more than ammunition. Bassilus was told to die and, surprisingly, did so - though as Kelddath is already dead that didn't help raise the normal funds for shopping.
At Ulgoth's Beard Melody used potions of perception and did again manage to steal Dushai's ring - but this time only after an initial failure so most of the villagers are now hostile.
There were still plenty of things they'd like to buy after using all the money earned to date so the WIP headed down to the Cloud Peaks to see what they could find. Greywolf provided an early bonus, but funds then took another knock when I didn't pause the game quite quickly enough after resting - and a kobold horde took advantage.
After that several of the areas were cleared without further loss. However, it took a while to reduce the Gnoll Stronghold and that probably contributed to a slight movement error on arriving in the gibberling area to the north - an ogre berserker taking the opportunity there to one-shot Perky.
After going to the Temple I tried to rest, but there must have been a script running somewhere as the game wouldn't let me. I switched areas a couple of times, but that didn't help - but it did contribute to a lack of concentration as a group of hobgoblin elites were allowed too many shots at Misty.
After raising her the game still wouldn't save normally, so I reloaded the autosave after an area transition to reset things. Time for some breakfast now I think.
So instead of the list of notable events, let's just skip to what you're REALLY here for.
23:54 Khark, Slayer of Grant Pix
I did a lot of things wrong with this fight.
Garrick's spells were wrong - Dire Charm instead of something actually useful. That I didn't have him as a backup Spell Thrust caster was bad enough (Neera got fried in round 1, before she could get it off!), but nobody actually had a way of dispelling his other buffs. Removing just MGoI is not enough when he's still hasted, mirror imaged, and hits like a truck.
I don't prebuff. I need to get into the habit of doing so, I had a perfectly serviceable Haste in Neera's memory.
I sent Imoen forward to set traps ahead of time, but she got too close to Carsa on the second one, triggering the fight before I was actually ready.
I had both Dorn and Khalid working on poisoning Khark but backed off once Dorn landed some poison damage - turned out it was the fixed damage, not lingering damage.
Finally, I left Grant Pix in melee too long, allowing Khark to stack enough damage for an Acid Arrow to finish me off.
I will be finishing Grant Pix up in my own time, but it will no longer be recorded. I'm going to continue to try and minimize reloads. I need to do this because I am remarkably unfamiliar with Siege of Dragonspear under normal circumstances.
I forgot to mention one of my rules for my current run: if I accidentally use an item that I've already used too many times before and is forbidden for this run, I have to re-do any and all fights in which I used the item.
After the mishap at the duchal palace, I decided to roll a dwarven fighter/cleric.
The god of rolls granted me another favour:
The setting is once again unmodded version 2.4 played on iPhone. Difficulty hard - but no extra damage and max HP at level up.
Dwarf FC is lawfull good - but not lawfull stupid. I will try to RP the game. So no ring from Dushai and no cloak from Algernon. Money will be an issue when your charisma is 5 and you dont loot that much. 2 pips in sling and mace.
Did the usual in CK
Said I needed money.. did the same in Beregost.
Killed some Zhentarim agents along the way
Picked up the potions
Picked up a ring +1 and the Mace +1 for free (some loot is to good to pass), and a sling +1 for 135 at the Blacksmith. We are now ready for some action
Well actually just some kiting, quick looting and some noobering. Now we are ready to:
Kill Edwin - well Dwarf FC92 is LG..
Killed shoal - well because I needed the XP..
Sold evermemory and did some shopping:
Killed Tarnesh at FAI (protection from fear, the shield necklace and a low AC renders him harmless), and picked up Buckleys buckler. Welcome regeneration...I have missed you:
Saved Melicamp by kiting the wolf and meeleing the skeleton.. I have now saved Melicamp 50% of the times..
Next stop was a pitstop at UB. Picked up a cloak and a wand of heavens... nice. Then onto the basilisks.
Hadnt planed how I would deal with Kirians group. I had one skeleton at my disposal, but no cloak. Trying to scout the area exposed me to the group, and an unplanned battle was at hand.. I was unbuffed and without summons....
My first move was to take out Kirian and the other caster. I used the wand of heavens on Kirian and killed her right away. Hadnt really tried the wand before, so the result was quite pleasing.
I drew back and brought the cleric to near death with the wand, but had the sword guy at my neck. I quick looted the girdle and killed the cleric and the archer in quick succesion. The last guy just died to my mace... Nice turnaround I must say - wands are great in BG1 - even for clerics...
Left mutamin and korax for later.. Picked up the three tomes of cha, con and wis thanks to the greenstone amulet, my sling and brute force. I am at level 6/7 (3 lever 4 clerics spells) and about to enter the mines. Things are looking good - so far
The mine should be my hometurf - and mulahey has some boots and a ring I like....
The new session continued on seamlessly from the previous one with Perky snuffing it. She had a missile weapon equipped, so I'm not sure how she managed to get so separated from everyone else - I only noticed that when she was hit and it was then too late to retreat.
Annoyed about that I lost concentration entirely and let Whistle suffer a first death.
A couple more areas were completed before I attempted to tick the Nashkel Carnival off. The size of the kobold spawns there makes that dangerous and my rules require a visible patrol of the whole area, not just exploring by stealth. Initially there were no kobolds as the WIP passed across the top of the map, but not greatly to my surprise some spawned behind them - and 2 shots from kobold commandos were too much for Misty.
The Valley of the Tombs was the last of the southern areas and that was almost clear when I decided I should rest once more. An ambush by ogrillons triggered, but was beaten off. Trying to rest again produced a horde of wild dogs and I couldn't be bothered fighting those, so just ran far enough away to be able to try and rest once more - and another lot of wild dogs appeared. The sensible thing would have been to leave the area then and the definitely unsensible thing would have been to try and manoeuvre in close quarters using the move all command - which is what I tried to do and Whistle paid the penalty.
Looking to tick off a few more areas the WIP moved on to Firewine. They again tried sending sequential summons against Kahrk, guided in by an invisible scout. That worked pretty well, with nymphs available this time to soak up various charm spells. Kahrk still held on to a flame arrow, but Perky managed to get him to waste that by moving out of sight during the casting (saving the cost of a potion of fire resistance) and Kahrk could then be shot down at leisure.
Drawing heavily on my reserves of patience the WIP then crawled invisibly through the Firewine Ruins, shutting as many kobold commandos as possible behind them on the way to Lendarn. Three skeleton warriors and 2 spirit lions then had just enough to deal with the mage and his assistants.
Jenkal was waiting outside the back door, but only managed one hit before making a run for it.
On the west of the map the remaining areas were cleared. The Doomsayer was immune to lightning, but after being blinded summons lasted long enough for the WIP to be able to cut him down.
They had to retreat a couple of times from the hobgoblin hordes at the Lighthouse area, but eventually wore them down with summons and charms. They finished that area with Arkushule who's ended a few runs of mine, but lost out to poisonous snakes this time.
That phase of area clearance ended at Shoal's area, where Artemis didn't move back quite quick enough after pacifying Shoal and had to take a potion of magic blocking to defend against a chromatic orb.
After summons took care of Droth,
Shoal was shot down, Mad Arcand helped out with the ogre clan
and the sirines were overwhelmed.
Even the Surgeon was charmed and failed to survive an encounter with a hungry wolf.
The only things south of Beregost not totally cleared yet are Ulcaster, which I'll have a go at once I've got a bit more lightning protection available, the Nashkel Mines, Durlag's Tower and the Phoenix guards in Nashkel - it's a long time since I've done the latter and I can't remember how dangerous they are (there's one way to find out though ).
Khael the Aegis, Cavalier, just got his first HLA: Deva!
... and boy can it faceroll like a boss!
I just cleaned up the Mindflayer lair without even resting. (Can't remember if my SCS install even permits rest there anyway, but just wanted to go for the challenge.)
Used the Deva in a "stuck in the hallway between Umberhulk and Illithids and get to help Imoen in time" situation. The Deva cleaned the clock with some Illithids, held the line against the Hulks, then stayed around just long enough to heal the injured.
Had forgotten how powerful the HLA-lands were.
-
For the Big Brain fight, all but Khael and Imoen got Mazed and sat out the fight after doing some initial damage to the Brain. Imoen had to duck & cover, distracting some Brain Golems (which apparently respawn) and Khael had to be micromanaged with a Speed Potion to avoid getting brain-sucked to death. With a THAC0 well into negatives and crits of almost 50 every few rounds, he could take down the Ulitharids.
(Used Brine potions even though my saves were in the negatives. No idea what save penalty Psionic skills get.)
--
*** RETROSPECT ***
Really glad that I haven't abandoned my Cavalier to restartitis. He probably would have died a couple of times were it not for:
1. Cavalier save bonus (+2) 2. Claw of Kazgaroth (as per advice from @Alesia_BH ) (+3)
Khael had to roll a few Spell saves in potentially game ending situations. (I am far too undisciplined a player compared to the experts in this thread who can finish a run without rolling for chance at all.)
That +5 difference to saves (particularly, Spell) means a cumulative loss chance of maybe 20% (for Cavalier + Kazgaroth) as opposed to something like 80% (combined probability of fails due to worse saves).
We shall see if his luck will hold all the way to Irenicus and beyond.
(I have left the SCS option to enhance Irenicus OFF as I remember losing an old game to an unkillable Irenicus that would regenerate faster than my Sorcerer could damage.)
@Enuhal: If my memory is correct, Irenicus as the Slayer normally appears in Hell with only a portion of his HP. If it's a bug, it's not EE or LoB; I've seen it in vanilla.
It's usually not relevant, though, since vanilla Irenicus in Hell has massive regeneration and he normally recovers all of it within a few moments.
we stumbled across the hut of the murderer we were sort of hunting and killed him from stealth so he couldn't try to trick us with any sad "but i'm not a killer" stories... I ran around a forest collecting cats + beer for the wild mages then we returned to the city so a cleric named Anomen could challenge Dorn... yes in his dreams lol. couldn't rest without having a "look" around the area and the big dome thing opened up for us but stole the dead body of that murderer we was carting back to justice... perhaps we can tell slavers took him for a sex toy?
we asked and the local slavers aren't popular so we did a bit of muscle for hire which now has two groups wanting us to work for them and they have called a type of truce until we decide which one we want to work for... in the mean time I let the bounty hunter dual to fighter and swapped him out for a dull-witted thief whom needs to battle shadows. Dorn points out that he is not immune to hold but I have an idea how to get around that issue
We need more levels before we proceed with the main questline. The Iron Throne fight is bad enough when we have wands; it's going to be a nightmare with the limited resources at our disposal. We need Witch Dagger and Mae to recover their Wizard Slayer and Berserker levels.
So I join up with some mod NPC who wants me to go out to some area to do some heroic deed of some sort. Turns out the local orcs are five levels over me. The mages here are level 12, at least.
Which I find offensive. Because the mod NPC who brought me here is level 3.
Anyway, we use Boiling Rain Storm to try to get past MGOI.
We don't seem able to stun him, at least not for long, and we can't take down his invisibility. We keep trying to stun him, worried about what kind of spells he might pull off, but we only manage to disrupt the priests--cold comfort when there's a high-level mage about.
Then the mage takes action, and I realize this situation is far, far worse than I imagined.
Not a single member of our entire party is above level 8. A Death Spell is instantly fatal for anyone who gets caught within range.
Mae is out of range; I always keep Charname at a respectful distance. But half the party goes down instantly.
This is idiocy. I am not saving the daughter or sister or friend of this level 3 mod NPC from a group of level 12 orcs. I flee the area, resurrect everyone, and kick the NPC out of the party. If she wants to rush into a Death Spell, she can do it herself.
Tenya mentions her magic bowl and I learn that somebody at Firewine can tell her how to use it. I poke around the place, killing some mod-introduced trolls, and find somebody named Carsa, whom I assume is supposed to tell us how. But I accidentally choose a wrong dialogue option. If Carsa indeed held the key to that bowl's power, I apparently screwed this up.
Hoping that Carsa wasn't the right person, I poke around Gullykin to see if the right one is there. Instead, I find a bunch of ogres rampaging around town. They hit really hard, but we have the damage output to take them down before can smash anyone.
They're not the only ones. More bands of ogres are wandering about, and they pile up really fast.
Boiling Rain Storm can stun all of the Ogre Rampagers, if not the Berserkers, but we can't take advantage of the automatic hits when there are so many of them. We need Safana's help, so we blind her and have her set traps.
She doesn't kill all of them, but the traps do wipe out the large majority, and leave the rest at Near Death.
The ogres get 540 XP apiece and have a habit of dropping high-level mage scrolls, all level 6 or higher. We even see a Spell Trap scroll, but only one of them truly catches my eye.
I don't believe it! We can actually un-petrify Killer while we're still in BG1! We don't have to wait until SoA starts up.
But there are still more ogres. Just gobs and gobs of them.
We butcher the lot of them, though it takes multiple rests to deal with them because we really need Slow spells and Safana's traps to take them down quickly, before they deal enough damage to start draining our potion supply.
Then we finally run into the main group, headed by a yet another ogre mage. And our excellent AC provides no defense whatsoever against Magic Missile.
The other batches of ogres weren't so tough, but for this one, we needed heavier buffs. Not wanting to lose any lives in the process, I deploy our special boots, Love Lies Bleeding, to cast Nature's Beauty and blind the whole group.
Taking down the last of the ogres, plus the leader Kharaz, is an arduous process, and we have to chase them all over the place before we can put them down with missile weapons. Kharaz is especially bothersome, because he has strong THAC0 even when blind and his AC is so low--again, even while he's blind--that we deploy some mage scrolls to tack on some damage without having to make an attack roll.
Finally, Tenya stuns him with Salt Crystals and we get the automatic hits we need to bring him down.
We get a really special suit of leather armor for our trouble.
Honestly, I have no idea what the mod creators were thinking. So many modders seem to approach BG1 with a BG2 mindset, assuming that the player is using a heavily min-maxed party, is already level 8 or 9, and comes equipped with a bunch of +2 or better weapons and high-end spells, and assuming that the player needs a really huge reward to make the fight worth it. No BG1 party emerging from the Firewine Ruins (what level would by typical for that quest? 4, 5, 6, maybe?) should realistically have been able to handle the ogre bands without losing characters or draining a bunch of potions and resting after every single fight. And no party should have been able to survive Kharaz and his ogre buddies until they had paid a visit to Baldur's Gate, unless they just burned a bunch of wand charges to win the fight for them.
And while I will gladly use the scrolls I got from this encounter, there is simply no reason that a BG1 party should have 5 Sphere of Chaos scrolls and 2 scrolls of Horrid Wilting. That's just silly.
I'll probably save them for the attack on Dragonspear Castle, unless Sarevok and company prove more resilient than I expected.
Anyway, we sell off the excess loot. The curious thing about this run is that, because we can't use any of the normal items, we end up with a lot of gold instead...
...but we simply don't have anything to spend it on.
Safana now has 36% of the party's kills for this chapter, almost entirely because of her using those traps on the ogres. The party got a massive XP boost. But because Killer has far superior stats and saving throws to Safana, we use one of our only two blue Stone to Flesh scrolls on her statue over in Mutamin's Garden, replacing Safana as our Bounty Hunter. This is what we're working with now:
Trash Mammal, our Fighter/Cleric, has the most kills with Safana gone. Trash Mammal doesn't have the highest APR in our party, or the highest damage per hit (that would go to pre-dual-classing Witch Dagger and Mae, respectively), but she does have far superior THAC0, which has gotten her more kills than the rest of the party.
While we're there, we sneak up on Mutamin and stun him with Thunderslap. It's basically an instant death effect for mages without MGOI.
We also obliterate Kirian with traps.
Next up is Ulcaster, which, thanks to one of my mods, has a second level with some incredibly overpowered loot. We can't use any of it, but it has a lot of high-XP critters, and I really want to get Mae to level 8 so she can recover her Berserker levels and get those precious immunities.
I was entering the mine. The kobolds and a spider was removed with my sling - simple pest control. Mulahey was next...
I summoned a skeleton warrior, and placed it at the enterence to Mulaheys room. I wanted a private audience with him. We talked briefly, and I fried him with the WoH (I have grown rather fond of it lately...). I killed Muahey (couldnt let him live), and helped out my skeleton warrior with the rest.
Next up valley of tombs and some looting.. The amazons where treated with two blasts from the necklace of missiles. Only a badly injured Zeela was left - victory was mine. I went in for the loot...
But hey isnt Zeela casting something? Yes it seems so. She aught to be panicking or something... but she is actially busy casting hold person, which I am not likely to save against. What to do? Drinking or throwing a potion of some sort? Using a wand - had 3? Using my sling? The less obvious answer is the mace
I just managed to kill her before I was held. Dumb luck, and a stupid call in the heat of the moment.
I looted the tombs using a prot from undead.
Nimbul was fried
So was Tranzig
Next up was the bandits. First up Ardenor Crush - he was stunned and chrushed
Khossan was fried and slinged to death
Nice ac against missile btw
The main tent was greeted with my necklace of missiles.. and a surprise party of three skeleton warriors outside. I did very little besides that
Sold the loot, did some shopping and ran for the mine. Avoided all battle and I am now facing Drassus and his goons.
Boys own - LoB berserkers (3rd and final update) Previous updates:
I'd just finished writing the note about Spider's Bane and went back to the game - to see the animation of a crumbling statue in progress. Once more I'd not been careful about pausing the game and some respawned spiders had been given just enough time to take Prime's number ...
I guess that somebody ought to wish you good intelligence for your next game.
@semiticgod Carsa isn't a mod-related NPC, she's involved in the Kahrk encounter (you have to insist on taking the jar in order to fight Kahrk, otherwise he won't appear).
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XXXVIII - One down, four to go
We started ToB by fighting Illasera and her Black Reavers. First order of business: Taking out the mage. This involved two breach spells and true sight:
As someone not protected by any stoneskins, Anomen took quite a bit of damage from a Black Reaver archer (could've been prevented by equipping The Reflex, but I didn't think about that at the time), but that didn't stop him from getting the final hit on Illasera:
For the first pocket plane challenge, a couple of skeleton warriors plus improved haste on Aikar and Mazzy were enough to end things rather quickly:
In Saradush, our party bought more boots of speed and completed various minor quests. Kiser ended up falling to a vorpal hit thanks to Imoen's trusted planetar:
The battle at the barracks was basically ended by a nature's beauty spell, though I did manage to stun Anomen with my own symbol:stun, and Nahema had to cast invisibility on him to make sure he didn't die:
By this point, I still sometimes try out save or else-spells, though only combined with greater malison. They don't do a lot, but against big groups of weak enemies, they can still be somewhat useful - at least if they involve some kind of extra save penalty (like symbol:stun or chaos)
Anyway, in the sewers, it was mostly just summons in front, party at the back with ranged weapons. A couple of shadows decided to ignore my summon frontline, so I used invisibility 10' radius, forcing them to deal with a deva (but they didn't even try - they just ended up standing around, doing nothing. Very strange).
I didn't want to take any risks, so the two mages were only tackled by summons as well - they eventually ran out of spells:
Next, we cleared out the prison, but vampires aren't especially dangerous for our party at this point - especially when backed up by skeleton warriors:
For Gromnir's basement, I used the natural chokepoint to deal with the fighters and thieves. Nahema protected the party by standing in front and having true sight going in case of any backstabs. Meanwhile, ranged weapons and a planetar took down our opponents, with the planetar delivering a couple of vorpal hits:
When fighting the group before Gromnir, I went in with mass invisibility, hoping to catch out the mage while he would cast true sight - however, thanks to his LoB extra hp, he was able to get up his protections in time. I decided to retreat, and all opponents except for the mage followed me downstairs - which was great for me, as I still had summons waiting there:
Now, the battle against Gromnir: First, I changed some equipment around, finally turning Imoen into my primary arcane spellcaster by giving her the Robe of Vecna + AoP combo. Next, I buffed with my full array of spells, including true sight - there are two mages and a thief to deal with, after all. My primary strategy involved having Imoen instantly summon a planetar to distract the two mages and Gromnir, while my fighters would use smite to keep the three additional physical damage dealers at bay and control the battlefield. To make sure my planetar would stay alive, Anomen would cast implosion on Gromnir. Arbogast would back up the planetar by summoning an elemental prince.
Everything works according to plan: Gromnir is stunned, the mages are focused on the planetar, two of the fighters are stunned thanks to smite, the archer is about to follow:
Our opponents use time stop, but all spells are wasted on the planetar. Meanwhile, we are almost done with the physical damage dealers. Sunnis has appeared, ready to take on Gromnir if needed.
Soon enough, the final mage is breached and the battle is won:
As a final little note, I was able to use spirit animals as primary summons once again against Yaga Shura's soldiers, since most of them don't even carry magical weapons. They are still useful in other ways, though - their short summoning time and the fact that summoning them doesn't use the aura in BG2:EE makes it possible to get a full army of summons going in a heartbeat.
After eventually tracking down our last update with the help of a Google search we were ready to play. We'd just defeated Teleria last time, so started by reviving her statues before nipping into the local mine to find a bard's treasure.
Skull prepared for the fight at the bridge by producing some summons, but failed to push them in front and they were locked out during the cut-scene where Skull and Ern were pulled towards the bridge. That wasn't a great problem though as an insect plague shut down the enemy casters while iron skins protected Skull until a parley was called - and once that ended the previously produced summons were waiting to gobble down the enemy before they could escape.
Moving on to the Troll Claw woods we investigated a troll cave in case there was something useful (there wasn't as it turned out). The close confines there meant summons couldn't be prepared in advance, so Ern effectively took on the role of rabbit to be chased round while Skull threw in the odd summons and flame strike to whittle down the opposition. Avoiding being hit in a laggy game, in close quarters, takes skill and practice - fortunately though Gate70 is well endowed with both and the battle was safely won .
Next up was an old temple. We bypassed the smell of dragon on the way in and fire elementals proved a winning tactic against bugbears, invisible stalkers and various guards. Some spirit summons were added for Ziatar and she was shortly under severe pressure, but still somehow managed to disappear into sanctuary - just as a beautifully timed set of magic missiles from Ern came in to finish her off.
There were no buffs used for the Neothelid, but after Skull saved against one domination attempt it surfaced and didn't last long thereafter.
By the time we got to the Shadow Aspect existing summons had disappeared, but a set of nymphs was produced as a replacement. They tried throwing confusion into the area, but the Shadow Aspect didn't even bother saving against that (it may not have been hostile at the time, or just immune). It was fully immune to magic damage, but was briefly blinded by a glitterdust allowing an insect plague to nibble away at it and MMMs to finish it off.
Resting allowed more summons for Darskhelin, but he immediately reduced those a bit by one-shot intelligence draining a fire elemental.
However, the other elemental and spirit lions lasted rather longer and allowed Skull and Ern to concentrate attacks on Darskhelin and ensure a comfortable victory.
After dealing with Akanna and picking up some throwing daggers we looked to put them to good use on the way out and did so ...
On the way to the next area we came across a large group of goblins. Most of those disappeared in a fireball, but the shaman had the cheek to hit Skull with a call lightning - drawing a fiery response.
In the hole in the ground they were guarding some myconids managed to confuse both Skull and Ern at one point - fortunately though they didn't target each other.
The battle for Bridgefort will be fought next time, but we just made it a bit easier by ensuring that Vichand won't be taking part.
@semiticgod I was actually thinking of playing in an EET BWS mega install, but your review of the different mods (and items that go along with it) makes me much more hesitant. I just don't like mods that take over the game and completely break the balance. A few years back, I tried an install with Dark Horizon / DSotSC mods and hated it.
It's nice to read about this type of installs. Thank you to go through this gauntlet for us. And, to be clear, what I'm saying is absolutely not a knock on your run : the harder parts seem to make up for the unbalance aspect of the mods. It's merely about personal preference.
The funny thing is, the Nature's Beauty boots are the only item I have that's truly overpowered (one of the reasons I want to cut back on them). But because I cannot use stuff like the Wand of Monster Summoning, Arrows of Dispelling or Detonation, Darts of Stunning or Wounding, or Potions of Clarity or Invisibility or Magic Shielding and so forth, my items in this run are actually weaker than a normal run, at least in a no-reload context.
As long as I don't abuse those boots, anyway. Because those boots really could win almost any battle up until endgame SoD.
But most of the items I can still use do nothing but let me deal more damage in combat, which is great, but in a no-reload context, a +3 axe doesn't have nearly as much utility as a wand or a couple key potions. I can kill an enemy fighter earlier than normal, but I can't drink a Potion of Clarity to block a Chaos or Demon Fear spell--and the latter is far more likely to make the difference between life and death.
It's going to get even worse in BG2, I think, when I will have no Robe of Vecna or Soul Reaver or Ring of Free Action or Cloak of Mirroring... the list goes on and on.
Which is not to say that this run has been difficult. It's actually been remarkably easy. But that's primarily because of our party makeup:
1. Mae is a Berserker/Mage, which means she's almost impossible to kill except for the 5 rounds after Enrage wears off, in which you cannot re-activate the ability (and the lack of vanilla potions make this period much more dangerous). 2. Killer is a Bounty Hunter and can wipe out or severely wound almost any mob in BG1 or SoD. 3. Witch Dagger is a Wizard Slayer/Druid and can shut down any SCS mage.
Trash Mammal, our Fighter/Cleric, and Mayday, our sorcerer, are also useful, but they won't come into their own until BG2.
I specifically designed this party to be nearly indestructible, and it very much is. In fact, if Mae had no Enrage immunities, she'd be practically doomed in this run.
The WIP proceeded to tick off the remaining external areas to the north of Beregost. The Black Talon archers were mainly handled with summons, while a couple of druids at Larswood didn't manage to call down any lightning before being shot down.
I got a nice surprise there when Baeloth was found to have a Robe of the Archmagi that Melody could wear - so no need to wait for Davaeorn to hand his over.
At the Red Wizard area I cautiously removed traps using invisibility and ambushed the spiders with summons. The Red Wizards were handicapped by silence and suffered a quick casualty when an initial assault triggered some traps. The WIP then retreated invisibly and left the snakes and skeletons to do the remaining work for them.
At Nashkel Artemis disturbed a grave. He had defensive buffs on, but immediately retreated to see what summons could do against them - the answer being not much.
However, the Phoenix Guards were not responding to attacks by the town guards, so I left them to get on with that for a while. Daer'Ragh used detect invisibility at one point, resulting in the nearby scout retreating to the edge of the map and Tawny coming up to monitor progress - arriving just in time to be caught in a fireball as a Phoenix Guard exploded!
Daer'Ragh was also being attacked and when his huge HP stack was finally whittled down the WIP stepped in to get the kill - and for killing a 21st level mage with 461 HPs the WIP got a whole 100 XP and 58 gold pieces .
They used missile fire to hunt down the remaining Phoenix Guards (the first time those are killed they reappear and the second time they explode, so keeping a distance is usually wise).
Working through Ulcaster Perky got to level 7, meaning her skeleton warriors could now damage the Wolf. She also remembered to pack a second remove fear for that fight this time, but in fact the Wolf died quickly enough that wasn't actually required anyway.
Outside, summons helped get rid of Icharyd's first incarnation quickly and they'd moved away from his original spot to give time to protect themselves against call lightning before Icharyd got back to them. Some skeletons tried to join in the fight, but after they were all blinded a single wand charge was used to summon some monsters while Icharyd was shot up.
Other than the TotSC additions that was everything possible prior to doing the Nashkel Mines in terms of standard encounters - though the WIP did also stretch that definition by deciding they no longer had any need for Thalantyr or his golems.
I'll probably be stating the obvious to the experts of late BG2, but...
.... the difficulty just dropped to nearly nonexistent after I ventured into HLA territory.
My Cavalier can now cast Hardiness + Armor of Faith for 55% resistance to all physical damage (+20% extra if I choose to wield Defender of Easthaven).
Armor of Faith + my already substantial energy resistances mean, I can basically tank any mage (even if dispelled, I have potions galore).
Will see if the Liches I avoided before can make a dent. (Saves low enough that short of a Greater Malison combo, I doubt they can disable him, which is why I have Potions of Invulnerability.)
Perhaps, early game is actually easier than late game, which I rarely ever made it into before.
@Ygramul: Enjoy it while it lasts. Once you get into ToB, the tide will turn against you. SoA was not designed for solo characters with HLAs, but neither was ToB.
@Ygramul: Enjoy it while it lasts. Once you get into ToB, the tide will turn against you. SoA was not designed for solo characters with HLAs, but neither was ToB.
Good point. I have made it so rarely to ToB that I have little memory about how it holds up. (Playing with full party actually. In a completionist run, I just got out of the Underdark just obtained my second HLA.)
So far, I am playing with paranoid defensiveness as I have next to no meta-game knowledge beyond this point.
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Just got the Lich in the Gate district. After a few rounds of Imoen RRRing it, Minsc landed one single hit with Mace of Disruption (must have been exactly when the PfMW expired, because I wasn't hitting him before).
I'll probably be stating the obvious to the experts of late BG2, but...
.... the difficulty just dropped to nearly nonexistent after I ventured into HLA territory.
My Cavalier can now cast Hardiness + Armor of Faith for 55% resistance to all physical damage (+20% extra if I choose to wield Defender of Easthaven).
Armor of Faith + my already substantial energy resistances mean, I can basically tank any mage (even if dispelled, I have potions galore).
Will see if the Liches I avoided before can make a dent. (Saves low enough that short of a Greater Malison combo, I doubt they can disable him, which is why I have Potions of Invulnerability.)
Perhaps, early game is actually easier than late game, which I rarely ever made it into before.
The main reason for runs to fail is making mistakes, rather than the inherent difficulty of encounters. Let's hope that doesn't apply to you .
I wouldn't take liches too casually. You would need a spell save of -5 or below to ensure the avoidance of status effects you're not immune to - are your basic saves really that low?
Comments
Previous run
So with the berserkers stuffed back in the closet I thought I would have one more go with the WI to see if protection against chunking can help them overcome my inadequacies (unlikely I suspect
As I often do, I'll play this game under the rule that they can only ever purchase anything at the minimum possible cost. That meant they were only equipped with slings in Candlekeep, but everything went perfectly there anyway. Carbos, who can be a significant danger with his stealth and poisoned backstabs, was commanded and blinded - and killed.
The intention is for this to be a completionist run, but I forgot to kill the golems at High Hedge before talking to Thalantyr - I'll have to do that later in the run after all the shopping there is finished. Other than that a few other early tasks around Beregost went smoothly. In Nashkel though they did have to spend quite a bit of time running round when a blinded Neira summoned a skeleton warrior. That had a follow-me script, so leading it away and stealthing didn't prevent it returning. After about 6 circuits of Nashkel, however, the WIP managed to finish off Neira and were able to rest.
They charmed and killed the first 3 sirines in the Beregost Temple before a slight mis-click sent the last of them hostile.
The ankheg area was cleared to give an extra level or so each. Still no-one died at that stage, although Artemis was hit once there and could easily have been killed if he'd failed his save against acid damage.
Moving south, the Lake area was sorted out - not too much XP there, but a couple of nice weapons courtesy of Drizzt. After seeing Brage back home from the neighbouring area, however, the first death of the run occurred. A RL distraction led to me unknowingly walking into a tasloi ambush. By the time I noticed that Misty was already dead and it was lucky no-one else joined her as they disengaged.
Perky - Priest of Tyr L4, 26 HPs, 18 kills, 0 deaths
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L3/2, 25 HPs, 49 kills, 1 death
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L2/2/3, 20 HPs, 30 kills, 0 deaths
Artemis - Archer L4, 43 HPs, 60 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L4, 34 HPs, 10 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L4, 23 HPs, 16 kills, 0 deaths
Thanks that must be it. I didnt see a damage line.. Thought I had gotten between the assasins and the dukes. Was busy killing the assasins at 4 apr with great damage output - and killed only 1....
But considering my options ( had a wand of monster summoning and a nymph cloak with 40 charges) I should have done better.
I will try my luck with a new character later. I hope its Dwarf FC100, but it will probably be his dumber and less atractive kin Dwarf FC80’ish
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6SoD posts : 1, 2
Notable mods
- SCS
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalance
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
So, my team for SoD will be : Minsc, Dynaheir, Glint, Corwin... and Baeloth. Yeah, that last one sticks out like a sore thumb, but a sorcerer with high natural MR is too good to pass up. With three fireballs per rounds, let say that this make for a good team, specially in SoD, where enemies are numerous.
While exploring, the team tried to avoid getting too close to the bridge in the Coast Way Crossing, but the cutscene activated anyway. So, I had to go in this fight unbuffed, which I don't like. However, with 3 fireballs in the initial round, things turned to my advantage real quick. All the attackers were dead real fast. I took a bit of damage, but nothing too bad.
The dwarven mine was to be dealt with now. Again, the hordes of undeads were destroyed by fire, even though some bad placement got Corwin killed by the Bronze Sentry. Besides that, the lich was killed with the help of the Secret Revealed, and his phylactery was destroyed in the fire not long after.
Then, when the party arrived at the Troll Claw Woods, I got a bit carelss against a bunch of orcs. Their shaman decided to cast Call Lightning... straight at an unbuffed Miluiel. When it struck, it got her to 19 hp. I actually had to drink a potion of Extra Healing, which is not something I like to do with a defensive charname like her. The blueprint should be clear : scout with stealthed Corwin before engaging. This type of things will get me killed if I'm not careful.
We had to go find the wardstone that can get us inside Bridgefort in the Temple of Bhaal. After having killed a few spiders and bugbears, I decided to try my luck at throwing an unenchanted dagger at Morentherene. Maybe I could get an easy kill right there...
Or so I thought...
I buffed Miluiel thac0 as much as I could, only to discover that the dragon was already active. Never had the chance to throw my dagger. You can imagine how well that went... After a few breath attacks from Morentherene and her young green dragon, two of my teammates were dead and the rest were in really, really bad shape.
Things were looking grim, so we got out of the dragon's lair. However, I realized that, since the dragon is active, I absolutely have to kill it, otherwise I can't have access to the Temple. And we did managed to take the dragon to Injured before retreating. I might as well try to finish it now instead of letting it recover. So, I decided to scrape by all the potions of healing I could find, healed up, buffed up again, and went back in. Miluiel and Baeloth were in charge of doing the damage through wands, while Corwin and Minsc... were trying to do the best they could. After another round of retreating, healing and pouncing, we managed to destroy the mighty foe.
We got back to camp, revived everyone and cleared the rest of the cave.
Phew ! It doesn't get any closer than this ! Or can it...
So, inside the temple, we took care of Ziatar and her croonies without much of a problem. Since we were mostly attacking from range, Teleport Field didn't really mattered, well except for Minsc who was thrown all over the place...
I continued my search of the Temple, and opened the door to the Neothelid a bit too soon, not remembering that he was right after the cells in the Temple... Fighting him unbuffed, I will. Minsc drank a potion of strength (don't remember which) and got in his face right away. After Neothelid managed to kill Dynaheir, the monster disappeared for a moment. And I was waiting for him. And waiting. Where was he ? I scrolled through the message textbox and it seems Baeloth killed it with a wand of frost, which I totally missed in the heat of battle. Well, I'll take it.
Then, Glint killed Akanna all alone. Since I have loosed the restriction of cleric on blunt weapon, he is rocking the Short Sword of Backstabbing +3, which gives +1 to backstab. Neat. After one backstab and a Flame Strike in quick succession, Akanna was no more.
The Darskhelin fight. Did not went as good as I thought it would. I buffed up real good, planning to send a protected from fire Minsc up front with Free Action and Mind Shield from a potion of Clarity and blast everything with fireballs. Simple, effective. Except that I forgot to drink the potion of Clarity. Minsc was stunned right on the get go. Then, the enemy poured from their room and it became a big ol' mess of a fight. Spells flying left and right, int drained rapidly. Dyna and Corwin died to Darskhelin, but we were doing good work on his friends. One thing though : once Minsc got stunned, the enemy ignored him. Well, he received one lick from the Illithid, but he was left alone after that. Long enough for him to regain his senses, but not entirely, because he was roaming the room confused. What did he do ? He won the fight by himself. Still confused, he slashed away Mohad Flintborn :
And Darskhelin right after :
Thanks, confused Minsc !
So, we went back to camp, healed up and got back in the Temple to fight the Shadow Aspect. I thought that IR's potion of Sight (replacing the pathetic potions of Infravision to give the ability to detect invisible creature) and Detect Illusion would do the trick against it, but it did not. The Shadow Aspect started to work on us, killing Minsc and Corwin, before setting his eyes on Miluiel herself. We managed to kill one of his Mislead clone, but he casted another.
I thought that, since I don't have access to True Sight, Glint being too low level, I'd just casually go out of the Temple and maybe come back later. But then, I remarked that Miluiel couldn't move. She was getting strength drained. I did not know that the Shadow Aspect had that power. And the Shadow Aspect was still attacking Miluiel. With Stoneskin on, he was not doing any damage, but was still draining. Miluiel was down to 6 strength.
There, I freaked out : getting killed was a very real threat. I went in her pack, unequipped as much as I could to let her move again, drank a potion of Haste and got the hell out of this place ! Luckily, we made it out of the Temple with Miluiel alive. Close, close call.
I got way too many close call in the last few days : Call Lightning, Morentherene and Shadow Aspect, all got quite a few serious licks on Miluiel. My lack of familiarity with SoD is glaring. Still, to paraphrase a well known Middle Eastern Deity roaming this forum, surviving all that mess fills us with determination. Kinda.
** Close call with Deirex the Lich. **
I got cocky after reading that SCS mages don't cast Imprisonment on charname.
... but apparently, they liberally do so on everyone else!
Minsc and Jaheira got Imprisoned. Then both, Jan & imoen, were killed. (No one else can use Freedom scrolls.) I did not try resurrecting them midfight with Horrid Wiltings flying about.
Viconia and Khael managed to tank the lich to the bitter end within an inch of their lives. Viconia is at 80% MR and Khael is at 55% MR with negative saves. They kept drinking potions and waited out Prot from Magic Weapons each time it is recast while dodging the Mord Swords. (In my install, Carsomyr does not dispel automatically.)
Khael finished off Deirex with Carsomyr after his last PfMW wore out.
Here is the end of the battle with Viconia winking at Khael atop their dead comrades, saying "Hey, what's the hurry with resurrections. First, come on over here, J'aluq!"
@Arctodus There's nothing wrong in encountering unexpected situations in SoD, as it's still relatively new for everyone.
@StummvonBordwehr Each failure will only make us stronger!
@semiticgod Are you playing on LoB?
@Ygramul - Dealing with those drows is not easy!
Party LoB + SCS run - Sometimes they do roll 1 during their HP rolls!
Prologue
First Steps
First Level Ups
First Real Challenges
First Casualties
First Wands
Now when the party had wands, they were braver travelling across the Sword Coast. They started with clearing already visited areas, though, with the Beregost Temple wolves being the first targets.
I keep reading about how skalds are useful for ToB, and looking at my party, I can find only one substitution that could work for a skald - the main character, the sorcerer. But truth be told, I find the sorcerer to be the real MVP during the LoB playthough. It's not about damage here, it's about disabling any enemies the party encounter. 10+ blindness spellls at the 4th level (thanks to the ring of Wizardy), 3 Web spells - these are actually the most important ways to deal with enemies, to me.
The group of wolves near the Beregost Temple were first Webbed and then killed by +2 arrows purchased from Taerom.
Playing Good has its downsides on the Meta-Gaming level: no items from the Sendai group - I've checked in the NI: all of them have Chaotic Neutral alignment, so no fight here:
Blindness and Web can help in many situations: with a group of skeletons, a cave bear, Vax and Zal.
The party wanted to get another wand - of Paralysis, and thus they came to the Seawatcher Tower area. There, they witnessed (nearly) endless hobgoblin spawns, - no, really, why did these critters kept spawning each time:
Fighting mundane dread wolves brought new levels for the F/I and the F/T, with Glod getting only 2 HPs as a figher (!).
Dealing with the sirens took a few rests - while the lvl 5 spirit lions were immune to Charm, they weren't immune to Feeblemind, so it required a lot of back-and-forth in terms of Blindness and Web.
While dealing with the Flesh golems, the party learned that using +2 arrows against them was a much quicker way to dispatch the critters than failed backstabs by the F/T.
Killing more mundane wolves brought new levels for several party members, including the main character, who now had Mirror Image in addition to Web (for a potential Amazon ambush). Believe it, or not, but the F/I again got no more than 2 HPs (this time as an illusionist).
BTW, based on the evidence provided by the community and my own experience, I've filed a ticket about Random HPs - https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/32900.
Finally, the totemic druid in the party could summon 2 spirit animals, and that, according to @Enuhal , is a guarantee the group now was able to defeat almost any wilderness opponent they encounter. Arkushule, for example, couldn't deal with Poison by the spirit snake and Horror by the spirit bear.
Here’re the current standings:
Jagen, sorcerer, lvl 5, 21 HPs, 18 kills (5% in the group)
Glod, fighter/illusionist, lvl 4/4, 27 HPs, 84 kills (24% in the group), 0 deaths
Uzume, fighter/thief, lvl 4/5, 38 HPs, 82 kills (23% in the group), 0 deaths
Cochrane, archer, lvl 5, 42 HPs, 123 kills (35% in the group), 0 deaths
Sigyn, totemic druid, lvl 6, 45 HPs, 18 kills (5% in the group), 0 deaths
Dazbog, cleric/mage, lvl 4/3, 18 HPs, 19 kills (5% in the group), 2 deaths (both by a kobold commando)
If I was playing LoB mode, I would have a Totemic Druid on hand. And I would be using wands.
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
Part XXXIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908261/#Comment_908261
Part XXXIV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908347/#Comment_908347
Part XXXV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908579/#Comment_908579
Part XXXVI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/908661/#Comment_908661
I've found some time to play a little bit, so let's go for that SoA endgame!
Surprisingly, once you get the right equipment and levels, killing adamantite golems doesn't even take that long on LoB:
Whenever possible, we made full use of Crom Faeyr's golem killing powers, though. Only one encounter is worth mentioning when it comes to the outside areas of the city: The rakshasa in front of the House of the Moon decided to completely ignore my summons and went after my unbuffed party! Since they use a lot of dangerous elemental damage spells, I was actually able to use all the resistance equipment I had stashed away in my bag of holding for cases just like this - a couple of fire protection items certainly helped Nahema out when she was hit by a second sunfire:
Arbogast is wearing the Cloak of Mirroring, so he was always going to be safe. We eventually ended up using an ihasted Aikar to take down all of those spellcasters.
Another strange encounter: The balor in front of the palace actually started attacking all of those elf npcs standing around there, and they didn't even try to fight back:
Raamilat didn't manage to deal with a couple of skeleton warriors and fire elementals:
We saved Demin, only having to leave her house once because one of our foes got to cast an uninterruptable spell:
Now, the party had to kill their third dragon. While I've never actually seen him use his breath weapon in the vanilla game, I buffed everyone with protection from acid anyway. Three skeletons, a mordy sword and a deva plus full buffs were prepared. And by now I'm pretty sure I've figured out how vanilla dragons use their one and only remove magic spell: In the first couple of rounds, and always on the target closest to them, even if only summons are in melee range - so no one of our party lost any of their buffs:
A breach spell and a couple of rounds later, and the dragon was history. Even his insect plague only managed to hit summons:
We decided to summon the Avatar of Rillifane to make things easier:
While clearing the city, Imoen had gotten access to her first HLA, so I was eager to have her Planetar fight a little duel against Jon Irenicus. Guess who won:
In hell, Wraith Sarevok was tanked by a single skeleton warrior. Since I only chose good-aligned options, the only other fight was against the three elder orbs. They managed to imprison my planetar, and I wasn't allowed to bring in a deva instead, because the planetar wasn't really dead. This put me in an awkward situation, as I wasn't prepared to for a head to head fight against three elder orbs. I ran back outside, and one of them followed. I took it down with GWWs before it could do anything harmful:
I went back in to have Imoen take the Tear of Bhaal, but the other two elder orbs noticed her and followed her outside. This could've been a huge problem, but I managed to avoid any further trouble by having two of my fighter-types use smite and kick the elder orbs far away from my party for now, giving me the chance to get in some summons and use only Mazzy with sling + Balduran's Shield:
Now, time for the final SoA battle. I prepared with full buffs - though I ended up forgetting to use mass invisibility. Also, three fire giant strength potions for my fighters (except Anomen, he doesn't need one). But hey, wait a second, why does Irenicus start with half hp? Is this some kind of LoB? bug? Doesn't seem fair!
Well, anyway, Irenicus was busy using death spell to get rid of my summons, but the deva still kept him and some demons busy. Meanwhile, I had already dealt with two of the demonic foes:
The other two demons didn't survive for long - meanwhile, Jon teleported away. I already had true sight going at this point:
So I only needed to breach Irenicus two times to get rid of his defensive spells:
All in all, quite an easy victory for our party down here.
So I obviously did far better in SoA compared to BG1 or, god forbid, SoD - main reasons being the large arsenal of summons and defensive buffs available at this point, my very high familiarity with vanilla SoA compared to the other parts to the tetralogy and, of course, no improved AI like in SoD. We still permanently lost Jan, though I blame my poor potion management and his low hitpoints for that. ToB will have some high physical damage encounters, which might make things much harder and more interesting, as summons propably just won't survive long enough against certain bosses. And there's always Watcher's Keep - I think some of the battles in level 3 could be quite challenging on LoB.
Here are some final stats for SoA:
Arbogast, level 21 Great Druid, 120 kills
Aikar, level 24 Kensai, 388 kills
Nahema, level 16/15 Fighter/Illusionist, 139 kills (her relatively low killcount is due to the fact that she doesn't have an infinte ammo ranged weapon at her disposal and often only engages in combat if a melee presence is required)
Mazzy, level 23 Fighter, 211 kills
Anomen, level 25/7 Cleric/Fighter, 129 kills
Imoen, level 18/7 Mage/Thief, 24 kills
Enuhal
@JuliusBorisov it will be interesting to see if anything comes from your HP ticket. At this stage having to get used to low HPs again would be a wrench of course
1 = 0.5 = 1 HP gained (rounded up to 1)
2 = 1 = 1
3 = 1.5 = 1 (rounded down unless below 1)
4 = 2 = 2
5= 2.5 = 2
6 = 3 = 3
7 = 3.5 = 3
8 = 4 = 4
So in the game the average HPs actually gained after rounding should be 17/8. The theoretical average from the original die rolls would be 18/8. That doesn't sound like a lot of difference, but it is pretty noticeable if you roll a lot of characters.
@Enuhal impressive stuff
And so our intern Ajantis became a full member, and we mourned Sarevok for... well, about that long. Surprising to think of how long ago Cromarty broke with Ajantis in BG1 after that incident with the fellow who wasn't a doppleganger... No sooner did we go through the next portal however than Kelsey dropped dead at -10 hp, possibly due to the calls of the demon wraith's servants. Yvette recalled Kelsey's spirit and detrapped the area while the muscle formed a shieldwall. Initially the demonwraith threw out some symbols but it then rather terrifyingly moved into close quarters to incant its next spell. Fearing Imprisonment I was ready to flee but fortunately its casting was interrupted and it didn't get another spell off for the rest of the battle while at close quarters. Ironically enough we were able to retrieve Foebane from this room- due to my mod loadout Sarevok would have had grandmastery with that and we would have been set for the Throne...
Then we detrapped the room, and I paused to listen to my wife. She wasn't happy that I seem to be concentrating so much while playing a video game recently! Just a few more challenges darling... and then the throne.... I am tempted to plunge on into Watcher's Keep as I know that the fourth level isn't very dangerous but will probably do the grove & Pocketplane challenges now, just in case something goes badly wrong and I have a need to level up some party members in the training ground of the fourth level.
SP-7,
shadow boxing,we got a license to cast, thats the law here apparently... I couldn't rest again after collecting Viconia so we stealth traveled, dealing with the slavers is easy when you get the drop on them instead of the other way round but I didn't have the rep to let Dorn run amuck either so stealth is maintained until we leave the city gates.
I almost got my head kicked in by a chicken then we made peace between the townies and the ogres before collecting my wild mage and grabbing some easy loot in watchers. dragging shadows into the light proves the easy option... ok the undead constructs are a challenge but one at a time they are manageable for Dorn.
the boss fight
= kill the alter first and the gold ammo makes fast work of it, Viconia keeps the boss away with her 'repulse' and my detect skill + a 'true sight' from J put a stop to most his silliness... the few rounds of +3 ammo from watchers help whittle him down but Dorn gets the kill.p.s, Dorn tried it on but I draw the line at green!
party;
Sarah, (lob)
Jaheira, Dorn, Neera, Viconia and Yoshimo
Previous updates
The sirines at the Lighthouse were no problem with skeletons to add to a spirit summons. However, there was another lapse in concentration when Melody was sent into the pirate cave to disarm the traps - and after moving on to the second of those didn't notice the first golem creeping up on her.
Next they went to Durlag's, where they ganged up as usual on blinded battle horrors.
Another bit of luck saw Melicamp successfully revived - pushing reputation up to 20 and finally allowing the WIP to buy more than ammunition. Bassilus was told to die and, surprisingly, did so - though as Kelddath is already dead that didn't help raise the normal funds for shopping.
At Ulgoth's Beard Melody used potions of perception and did again manage to steal Dushai's ring - but this time only after an initial failure so most of the villagers are now hostile.
There were still plenty of things they'd like to buy after using all the money earned to date so the WIP headed down to the Cloud Peaks to see what they could find. Greywolf provided an early bonus, but funds then took another knock when I didn't pause the game quite quickly enough after resting - and a kobold horde took advantage.
After going to the Temple I tried to rest, but there must have been a script running somewhere as the game wouldn't let me. I switched areas a couple of times, but that didn't help - but it did contribute to a lack of concentration as a group of hobgoblin elites were allowed too many shots at Misty.
Perky - Priest of Tyr L6, 41 HPs, 35 kills, 1 death
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L5/4, 42 HPs, 113 kills, 2 deaths
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L4/4/5, 37 HPs, 78 kills, 2 deaths
Artemis - Archer L5, 53 HPs, 132 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L5, 49 HPs, 23 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L5, 37 HPs, 32 kills, 0 deaths
So instead of the list of notable events, let's just skip to what you're REALLY here for.
23:54 Khark, Slayer of Grant Pix
I did a lot of things wrong with this fight.
- Garrick's spells were wrong - Dire Charm instead of something actually useful. That I didn't have him as a backup Spell Thrust caster was bad enough (Neera got fried in round 1, before she could get it off!), but nobody actually had a way of dispelling his other buffs. Removing just MGoI is not enough when he's still hasted, mirror imaged, and hits like a truck.
- I don't prebuff. I need to get into the habit of doing so, I had a perfectly serviceable Haste in Neera's memory.
- I sent Imoen forward to set traps ahead of time, but she got too close to Carsa on the second one, triggering the fight before I was actually ready.
- I had both Dorn and Khalid working on poisoning Khark but backed off once Dorn landed some poison damage - turned out it was the fixed damage, not lingering damage.
- Finally, I left Grant Pix in melee too long, allowing Khark to stack enough damage for an Acid Arrow to finish me off.
I will be finishing Grant Pix up in my own time, but it will no longer be recorded. I'm going to continue to try and minimize reloads. I need to do this because I am remarkably unfamiliar with Siege of Dragonspear under normal circumstances.After the mishap at the duchal palace, I decided to roll a dwarven fighter/cleric.
The god of rolls granted me another favour:
The setting is once again unmodded version 2.4 played on iPhone. Difficulty hard - but no extra damage and max HP at level up.
Dwarf FC is lawfull good - but not lawfull stupid. I will try to RP the game. So no ring from Dushai and no cloak from Algernon. Money will be an issue when your charisma is 5 and you dont loot that much. 2 pips in sling and mace.
Did the usual in CK
Said I needed money.. did the same in Beregost.
Killed some Zhentarim agents along the way
Picked up a ring +1 and the Mace +1 for free (some loot is to good to pass), and a sling +1 for 135 at the Blacksmith. We are now ready for some action
Well actually just some kiting, quick looting and some noobering.
Now we are ready to:
Kill Edwin - well Dwarf FC92 is LG..
Killed shoal - well because I needed the XP..
Sold evermemory and did some shopping:
Killed Tarnesh at FAI (protection from fear, the shield necklace and a low AC renders him harmless), and picked up Buckleys buckler. Welcome regeneration...I have missed you:
Saved Melicamp by kiting the wolf and meeleing the skeleton.. I have now saved Melicamp 50% of the times..
Next stop was a pitstop at UB. Picked up a cloak and a wand of heavens... nice. Then onto the basilisks.
Hadnt planed how I would deal with Kirians group. I had one skeleton at my disposal, but no cloak. Trying to scout the area exposed me to the group, and an unplanned battle was at hand.. I was unbuffed and without summons....
My first move was to take out Kirian and the other caster. I used the wand of heavens on Kirian and killed her right away. Hadnt really tried the wand before, so the result was quite pleasing.
I drew back and brought the cleric to near death with the wand, but had the sword guy at my neck. I quick looted the girdle and killed the cleric and the archer in quick succesion. The last guy just died to my mace... Nice turnaround I must say - wands are great in BG1 - even for clerics...
Left mutamin and korax for later.. Picked up the three tomes of cha, con and wis thanks to the greenstone amulet, my sling and brute force. I am at level 6/7 (3 lever 4 clerics spells) and about to enter the mines. Things are looking good - so far
The mine should be my hometurf - and mulahey has some boots and a ring I like....
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909419/#Comment_909419
The new session continued on seamlessly from the previous one with Perky snuffing it. She had a missile weapon equipped, so I'm not sure how she managed to get so separated from everyone else - I only noticed that when she was hit and it was then too late to retreat.
A couple more areas were completed before I attempted to tick the Nashkel Carnival off. The size of the kobold spawns there makes that dangerous and my rules require a visible patrol of the whole area, not just exploring by stealth. Initially there were no kobolds as the WIP passed across the top of the map, but not greatly to my surprise some spawned behind them - and 2 shots from kobold commandos were too much for Misty.
The Valley of the Tombs was the last of the southern areas and that was almost clear when I decided I should rest once more. An ambush by ogrillons triggered, but was beaten off. Trying to rest again produced a horde of wild dogs and I couldn't be bothered fighting those, so just ran far enough away to be able to try and rest once more - and another lot of wild dogs appeared. The sensible thing would have been to leave the area then and the definitely unsensible thing would have been to try and manoeuvre in close quarters using the move all command - which is what I tried to do and Whistle paid the penalty.
Looking to tick off a few more areas the WIP moved on to Firewine. They again tried sending sequential summons against Kahrk, guided in by an invisible scout. That worked pretty well, with nymphs available this time to soak up various charm spells. Kahrk still held on to a flame arrow, but Perky managed to get him to waste that by moving out of sight during the casting (saving the cost of a potion of fire resistance) and Kahrk could then be shot down at leisure.
On the west of the map the remaining areas were cleared. The Doomsayer was immune to lightning, but after being blinded summons lasted long enough for the WIP to be able to cut him down.
That phase of area clearance ended at Shoal's area, where Artemis didn't move back quite quick enough after pacifying Shoal and had to take a potion of magic blocking to defend against a chromatic orb.
The only things south of Beregost not totally cleared yet are Ulcaster, which I'll have a go at once I've got a bit more lightning protection available, the Nashkel Mines, Durlag's Tower and the Phoenix guards in Nashkel - it's a long time since I've done the latter and I can't remember how dangerous they are (there's one way to find out though
Perky - Priest of Tyr L6, 41 HPs, 57 kills, 2 deaths
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L5/5, 45 HPs, 181 kills, 3 deaths
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L5/4/5, 40 HPs, 151 kills, 2 deaths
Artemis - Archer L6, 60 HPs, 260 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L7, 56 HPs, 30 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L7, 44 HPs, 73 kills, 2 deaths
... and boy can it faceroll like a boss!
I just cleaned up the Mindflayer lair without even resting. (Can't remember if my SCS install even permits rest there anyway, but just wanted to go for the challenge.)
Used the Deva in a "stuck in the hallway between Umberhulk and Illithids and get to help Imoen in time" situation. The Deva cleaned the clock with some Illithids, held the line against the Hulks, then stayed around just long enough to heal the injured.
Had forgotten how powerful the HLA-lands were.
-
For the Big Brain fight, all but Khael and Imoen got Mazed and sat out the fight after doing some initial damage to the Brain. Imoen had to duck & cover, distracting some Brain Golems (which apparently respawn) and Khael had to be micromanaged with a Speed Potion to avoid getting brain-sucked to death. With a THAC0 well into negatives and crits of almost 50 every few rounds, he could take down the Ulitharids.
(Used Brine potions even though my saves were in the negatives. No idea what save penalty Psionic skills get.)
--
*** RETROSPECT ***
Really glad that I haven't abandoned my Cavalier to restartitis. He probably would have died a couple of times were it not for:
1. Cavalier save bonus (+2)
2. Claw of Kazgaroth (as per advice from @Alesia_BH ) (+3)
Khael had to roll a few Spell saves in potentially game ending situations. (I am far too undisciplined a player compared to the experts in this thread who can finish a run without rolling for chance at all.)
That +5 difference to saves (particularly, Spell) means a cumulative loss chance of maybe 20% (for Cavalier + Kazgaroth) as opposed to something like 80% (combined probability of fails due to worse saves).
We shall see if his luck will hold all the way to Irenicus and beyond.
(I have left the SCS option to enhance Irenicus OFF as I remember losing an old game to an unkillable Irenicus that would regenerate faster than my Sorcerer could damage.)
It's usually not relevant, though, since vanilla Irenicus in Hell has massive regeneration and he normally recovers all of it within a few moments.
SP-8,
herding cats,we stumbled across the hut of the murderer we were sort of hunting and killed him from stealth so he couldn't try to trick us with any sad "but i'm not a killer" stories... I ran around a forest collecting cats + beer for the wild mages then we returned to the city so a cleric named Anomen could challenge Dorn... yes in his dreams lol.
couldn't rest without having a "look" around the area and the big dome thing opened up for us but stole the dead body of that murderer we was carting back to justice... perhaps we can tell slavers took him for a sex toy?
we asked and the local slavers aren't popular so we did a bit of muscle for hire which now has two groups wanting us to work for them and they have called a type of truce until we decide which one we want to work for... in the mean time I let the bounty hunter dual to fighter and swapped him out for a dull-witted thief whom needs to battle shadows. Dorn points out that he is not immune to hold but I have an idea how to get around that issue
party
Sarah,Jaheira, Dorn, Neera, Viconia and Hexxat
Night in the Woods: Mae in Baldur's Gate
Part 3https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909103/#Comment_909103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909200/#Comment_909200
We need more levels before we proceed with the main questline. The Iron Throne fight is bad enough when we have wands; it's going to be a nightmare with the limited resources at our disposal. We need Witch Dagger and Mae to recover their Wizard Slayer and Berserker levels.
So I join up with some mod NPC who wants me to go out to some area to do some heroic deed of some sort. Turns out the local orcs are five levels over me. The mages here are level 12, at least.
Which I find offensive. Because the mod NPC who brought me here is level 3.
Anyway, we use Boiling Rain Storm to try to get past MGOI.
We don't seem able to stun him, at least not for long, and we can't take down his invisibility. We keep trying to stun him, worried about what kind of spells he might pull off, but we only manage to disrupt the priests--cold comfort when there's a high-level mage about.
Then the mage takes action, and I realize this situation is far, far worse than I imagined.
Not a single member of our entire party is above level 8. A Death Spell is instantly fatal for anyone who gets caught within range.
Mae is out of range; I always keep Charname at a respectful distance. But half the party goes down instantly.
This is idiocy. I am not saving the daughter or sister or friend of this level 3 mod NPC from a group of level 12 orcs. I flee the area, resurrect everyone, and kick the NPC out of the party. If she wants to rush into a Death Spell, she can do it herself.
Tenya mentions her magic bowl and I learn that somebody at Firewine can tell her how to use it. I poke around the place, killing some mod-introduced trolls, and find somebody named Carsa, whom I assume is supposed to tell us how. But I accidentally choose a wrong dialogue option. If Carsa indeed held the key to that bowl's power, I apparently screwed this up.
Hoping that Carsa wasn't the right person, I poke around Gullykin to see if the right one is there. Instead, I find a bunch of ogres rampaging around town. They hit really hard, but we have the damage output to take them down before can smash anyone.
They're not the only ones. More bands of ogres are wandering about, and they pile up really fast.
Boiling Rain Storm can stun all of the Ogre Rampagers, if not the Berserkers, but we can't take advantage of the automatic hits when there are so many of them. We need Safana's help, so we blind her and have her set traps.
She doesn't kill all of them, but the traps do wipe out the large majority, and leave the rest at Near Death.
The ogres get 540 XP apiece and have a habit of dropping high-level mage scrolls, all level 6 or higher. We even see a Spell Trap scroll, but only one of them truly catches my eye.
I don't believe it! We can actually un-petrify Killer while we're still in BG1! We don't have to wait until SoA starts up.
But there are still more ogres. Just gobs and gobs of them.
We butcher the lot of them, though it takes multiple rests to deal with them because we really need Slow spells and Safana's traps to take them down quickly, before they deal enough damage to start draining our potion supply.
Then we finally run into the main group, headed by a yet another ogre mage. And our excellent AC provides no defense whatsoever against Magic Missile.
The other batches of ogres weren't so tough, but for this one, we needed heavier buffs. Not wanting to lose any lives in the process, I deploy our special boots, Love Lies Bleeding, to cast Nature's Beauty and blind the whole group.
Taking down the last of the ogres, plus the leader Kharaz, is an arduous process, and we have to chase them all over the place before we can put them down with missile weapons. Kharaz is especially bothersome, because he has strong THAC0 even when blind and his AC is so low--again, even while he's blind--that we deploy some mage scrolls to tack on some damage without having to make an attack roll.
Finally, Tenya stuns him with Salt Crystals and we get the automatic hits we need to bring him down.
We get a really special suit of leather armor for our trouble.
Honestly, I have no idea what the mod creators were thinking. So many modders seem to approach BG1 with a BG2 mindset, assuming that the player is using a heavily min-maxed party, is already level 8 or 9, and comes equipped with a bunch of +2 or better weapons and high-end spells, and assuming that the player needs a really huge reward to make the fight worth it. No BG1 party emerging from the Firewine Ruins (what level would by typical for that quest? 4, 5, 6, maybe?) should realistically have been able to handle the ogre bands without losing characters or draining a bunch of potions and resting after every single fight. And no party should have been able to survive Kharaz and his ogre buddies until they had paid a visit to Baldur's Gate, unless they just burned a bunch of wand charges to win the fight for them.
And while I will gladly use the scrolls I got from this encounter, there is simply no reason that a BG1 party should have 5 Sphere of Chaos scrolls and 2 scrolls of Horrid Wilting. That's just silly.
I'll probably save them for the attack on Dragonspear Castle, unless Sarevok and company prove more resilient than I expected.
Anyway, we sell off the excess loot. The curious thing about this run is that, because we can't use any of the normal items, we end up with a lot of gold instead...
...but we simply don't have anything to spend it on.
Safana now has 36% of the party's kills for this chapter, almost entirely because of her using those traps on the ogres. The party got a massive XP boost. But because Killer has far superior stats and saving throws to Safana, we use one of our only two blue Stone to Flesh scrolls on her statue over in Mutamin's Garden, replacing Safana as our Bounty Hunter. This is what we're working with now:
Trash Mammal, our Fighter/Cleric, has the most kills with Safana gone. Trash Mammal doesn't have the highest APR in our party, or the highest damage per hit (that would go to pre-dual-classing Witch Dagger and Mae, respectively), but she does have far superior THAC0, which has gotten her more kills than the rest of the party.
While we're there, we sneak up on Mutamin and stun him with Thunderslap. It's basically an instant death effect for mages without MGOI.
We also obliterate Kirian with traps.
Next up is Ulcaster, which, thanks to one of my mods, has a second level with some incredibly overpowered loot. We can't use any of it, but it has a lot of high-XP critters, and I really want to get Mae to level 8 so she can recover her Berserker levels and get those precious immunities.
Previously
I was entering the mine. The kobolds and a spider was removed with my sling - simple pest control. Mulahey was next...
I summoned a skeleton warrior, and placed it at the enterence to Mulaheys room. I wanted a private audience with him. We talked briefly, and I fried him with the WoH (I have grown rather fond of it lately...). I killed Muahey (couldnt let him live), and helped out my skeleton warrior with the rest.
Next up valley of tombs and some looting..
The amazons where treated with two blasts from the necklace of missiles. Only a badly injured Zeela was left - victory was mine. I went in for the loot...
But hey isnt Zeela casting something? Yes it seems so. She aught to be panicking or something... but she is actially busy casting hold person, which I am not likely to save against. What to do? Drinking or throwing a potion of some sort? Using a wand - had 3? Using my sling? The less obvious answer is the mace
I just managed to kill her before I was held. Dumb luck, and a stupid call in the heat of the moment.
I looted the tombs using a prot from undead.
Nimbul was fried
So was Tranzig
Next up was the bandits. First up Ardenor Crush - he was stunned and chrushed
Khossan was fried and slinged to death
Nice ac against missile btw
The main tent was greeted with my necklace of missiles.. and a surprise party of three skeleton warriors outside. I did very little besides that
Sold the loot, did some shopping and ran for the mine. Avoided all battle and I am now facing Drassus and his goons.
Arbogast's party and the Legacy of Bhaal, Part XXXVIII - One down, four to go
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
BG2 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909375/#Comment_909375
We started ToB by fighting Illasera and her Black Reavers. First order of business: Taking out the mage. This involved two breach spells and true sight:
As someone not protected by any stoneskins, Anomen took quite a bit of damage from a Black Reaver archer (could've been prevented by equipping The Reflex, but I didn't think about that at the time), but that didn't stop him from getting the final hit on Illasera:
For the first pocket plane challenge, a couple of skeleton warriors plus improved haste on Aikar and Mazzy were enough to end things rather quickly:
In Saradush, our party bought more boots of speed and completed various minor quests. Kiser ended up falling to a vorpal hit thanks to Imoen's trusted planetar:
The battle at the barracks was basically ended by a nature's beauty spell, though I did manage to stun Anomen with my own symbol:stun, and Nahema had to cast invisibility on him to make sure he didn't die:
By this point, I still sometimes try out save or else-spells, though only combined with greater malison. They don't do a lot, but against big groups of weak enemies, they can still be somewhat useful - at least if they involve some kind of extra save penalty (like symbol:stun or chaos)
Anyway, in the sewers, it was mostly just summons in front, party at the back with ranged weapons. A couple of shadows decided to ignore my summon frontline, so I used invisibility 10' radius, forcing them to deal with a deva (but they didn't even try - they just ended up standing around, doing nothing. Very strange).
I didn't want to take any risks, so the two mages were only tackled by summons as well - they eventually ran out of spells:
Next, we cleared out the prison, but vampires aren't especially dangerous for our party at this point - especially when backed up by skeleton warriors:
For Gromnir's basement, I used the natural chokepoint to deal with the fighters and thieves. Nahema protected the party by standing in front and having true sight going in case of any backstabs. Meanwhile, ranged weapons and a planetar took down our opponents, with the planetar delivering a couple of vorpal hits:
When fighting the group before Gromnir, I went in with mass invisibility, hoping to catch out the mage while he would cast true sight - however, thanks to his LoB extra hp, he was able to get up his protections in time. I decided to retreat, and all opponents except for the mage followed me downstairs - which was great for me, as I still had summons waiting there:
Now, the battle against Gromnir: First, I changed some equipment around, finally turning Imoen into my primary arcane spellcaster by giving her the Robe of Vecna + AoP combo. Next, I buffed with my full array of spells, including true sight - there are two mages and a thief to deal with, after all. My primary strategy involved having Imoen instantly summon a planetar to distract the two mages and Gromnir, while my fighters would use smite to keep the three additional physical damage dealers at bay and control the battlefield. To make sure my planetar would stay alive, Anomen would cast implosion on Gromnir. Arbogast would back up the planetar by summoning an elemental prince.
Everything works according to plan: Gromnir is stunned, the mages are focused on the planetar, two of the fighters are stunned thanks to smite, the archer is about to follow:
Our opponents use time stop, but all spells are wasted on the planetar. Meanwhile, we are almost done with the physical damage dealers. Sunnis has appeared, ready to take on Gromnir if needed.
Soon enough, the final mage is breached and the battle is won:
As a final little note, I was able to use spirit animals as primary summons once again against Yaga Shura's soldiers, since most of them don't even carry magical weapons. They are still useful in other ways, though - their short summoning time and the fact that summoning them doesn't use the aura in BG2:EE makes it possible to get a full army of summons going in a heartbeat.
Enuhal
Skull (Half-elf Totemic Druid, Grond0); Ern (Human Bard, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904615/#Comment_904615
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904876/#Comment_904876
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/907689/#Comment_907689
After eventually tracking down our last update with the help of a Google search we were ready to play. We'd just defeated Teleria last time, so started by reviving her statues before nipping into the local mine to find a bard's treasure.
Skull prepared for the fight at the bridge by producing some summons, but failed to push them in front and they were locked out during the cut-scene where Skull and Ern were pulled towards the bridge. That wasn't a great problem though as an insect plague shut down the enemy casters while iron skins protected Skull until a parley was called - and once that ended the previously produced summons were waiting to gobble down the enemy before they could escape.
Moving on to the Troll Claw woods we investigated a troll cave in case there was something useful (there wasn't as it turned out). The close confines there meant summons couldn't be prepared in advance, so Ern effectively took on the role of rabbit to be chased round while Skull threw in the odd summons and flame strike to whittle down the opposition. Avoiding being hit in a laggy game, in close quarters, takes skill and practice - fortunately though Gate70 is well endowed with both and the battle was safely won
Next up was an old temple. We bypassed the smell of dragon on the way in and fire elementals proved a winning tactic against bugbears, invisible stalkers and various guards. Some spirit summons were added for Ziatar and she was shortly under severe pressure, but still somehow managed to disappear into sanctuary - just as a beautifully timed set of magic missiles from Ern came in to finish her off.
By the time we got to the Shadow Aspect existing summons had disappeared, but a set of nymphs was produced as a replacement. They tried throwing confusion into the area, but the Shadow Aspect didn't even bother saving against that (it may not have been hostile at the time, or just immune). It was fully immune to magic damage, but was briefly blinded by a glitterdust allowing an insect plague to nibble away at it and MMMs to finish it off.
Resting allowed more summons for Darskhelin, but he immediately reduced those a bit by one-shot intelligence draining a fire elemental.
On the way to the next area we came across a large group of goblins. Most of those disappeared in a fireball, but the shaman had the cheek to hit Skull with a call lightning - drawing a fiery response.
Skull, Totemic Druid 12, 76 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 174 kills
Ern, Bard 11, 73 HPs, 282 kills
It's nice to read about this type of installs. Thank you to go through this gauntlet for us. And, to be clear, what I'm saying is absolutely not a knock on your run : the harder parts seem to make up for the unbalance aspect of the mods. It's merely about personal preference.
As long as I don't abuse those boots, anyway. Because those boots really could win almost any battle up until endgame SoD.
But most of the items I can still use do nothing but let me deal more damage in combat, which is great, but in a no-reload context, a +3 axe doesn't have nearly as much utility as a wand or a couple key potions. I can kill an enemy fighter earlier than normal, but I can't drink a Potion of Clarity to block a Chaos or Demon Fear spell--and the latter is far more likely to make the difference between life and death.
It's going to get even worse in BG2, I think, when I will have no Robe of Vecna or Soul Reaver or Ring of Free Action or Cloak of Mirroring... the list goes on and on.
Which is not to say that this run has been difficult. It's actually been remarkably easy. But that's primarily because of our party makeup:
1. Mae is a Berserker/Mage, which means she's almost impossible to kill except for the 5 rounds after Enrage wears off, in which you cannot re-activate the ability (and the lack of vanilla potions make this period much more dangerous).
2. Killer is a Bounty Hunter and can wipe out or severely wound almost any mob in BG1 or SoD.
3. Witch Dagger is a Wizard Slayer/Druid and can shut down any SCS mage.
Trash Mammal, our Fighter/Cleric, and Mayday, our sorcerer, are also useful, but they won't come into their own until BG2.
I specifically designed this party to be nearly indestructible, and it very much is. In fact, if Mae had no Enrage immunities, she'd be practically doomed in this run.
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909419/#Comment_909419
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909538/#Comment_909538
The WIP proceeded to tick off the remaining external areas to the north of Beregost. The Black Talon archers were mainly handled with summons, while a couple of druids at Larswood didn't manage to call down any lightning before being shot down.
At Nashkel Artemis disturbed a grave. He had defensive buffs on, but immediately retreated to see what summons could do against them - the answer being not much.
Working through Ulcaster Perky got to level 7, meaning her skeleton warriors could now damage the Wolf. She also remembered to pack a second remove fear for that fight this time, but in fact the Wolf died quickly enough that wasn't actually required anyway.
Other than the TotSC additions that was everything possible prior to doing the Nashkel Mines in terms of standard encounters - though the WIP did also stretch that definition by deciding they no longer had any need for Thalantyr or his golems.
Perky - Priest of Tyr L7, 50 HPs, 63 kills, 2 deaths
Misty - Fighter / illusionist L5/5, 45 HPs, 204 kills, 3 deaths
Melody - Fighter / mage / thief L5/5/6, 45 HPs, 179 kills, 2 deaths
Artemis - Archer L6, 60 HPs, 314 kills
Tawny - Totemic Druid L8, 59 HPs, 36 kills, 0 deaths
Whistle - Bounty Hunter L7, 44 HPs, 82 kills, 2 deaths
.... the difficulty just dropped to nearly nonexistent after I ventured into HLA territory.
My Cavalier can now cast Hardiness + Armor of Faith for 55% resistance to all physical damage (+20% extra if I choose to wield Defender of Easthaven).
Armor of Faith + my already substantial energy resistances mean, I can basically tank any mage (even if dispelled, I have potions galore).
Will see if the Liches I avoided before can make a dent. (Saves low enough that short of a Greater Malison combo, I doubt they can disable him, which is why I have Potions of Invulnerability.)
Perhaps, early game is actually easier than late game, which I rarely ever made it into before.
(Playing with full party actually. In a completionist run, I just got out of the Underdark just obtained my second HLA.)
So far, I am playing with paranoid defensiveness as I have next to no meta-game knowledge beyond this point.
--
Just got the Lich in the Gate district. After a few rounds of Imoen RRRing it, Minsc landed one single hit with Mace of Disruption (must have been exactly when the PfMW expired, because I wasn't hitting him before).
And PUFF! Lich gone.
That is some mace...
I wouldn't take liches too casually. You would need a spell save of -5 or below to ensure the avoidance of status effects you're not immune to - are your basic saves really that low?