So, a few thoughts on SoD, in the no-reload perspective. Since it's my first "normal" playthrough of the game (by that I mean : not solo on LoB), I feel that I have a better grasp of the game. So, here goes...
General feeling about SoD
SoD's great. I first and foremost like the fights in SoD. The fact that there's pretty much always a bunch of bodies to fight is nice. You really get the feeling that you're in the middle of a war campaign. Plus, you have to fight kitted enemies who actually use their skills, which is really nice. This is something SoD actually did better than SoA.
SoD's difficulty
I played at Insane difficulty with bonus damage turned off. The difficulty is there, but it's not too harsh. I feel it could have been a bit rougher though : too much fights are over before they started, because of fireballs. See my Coalition Camp attack to understand what I mean. For example, there are places in BG1 where fireballs DON'T rule the day (Firewine Bridge, Ulcaster, parts of Durlag's Tower, ...), because you have to fight in crammed spaces. SoD is largely about bigger spaces, thus renders AoE damage spells the king of the game. I admit that I knew that before hand and decided to have an arcane heavy party, so I guess this influences my conclusion. The game is probably harder for a melee-heavy team.
The enemy mages prebuffing is also a really good thing. They're not pushovers. They're pretty much on the same difficulty level of SCS BG1 mages : Secret Word or Spell Thrust in conjunction with Detect Illusion and Breach will render them helpless. And that's a good thing, because you don't have the high-end tools to go all wizard's chess with them yet. Nicely done here.
For no-reload, I think that SoD is about as difficult as BG1. There are not too many "scary" enemies - like dragons, liches, illithids and beholders - that you have to proceed with caution against. There are a few, but those are only optional.
SoD's story
SoD's story works. There are many things I feel were tacked on, like the presence of Irenicus, but certain things were better implemented in SoD than in the rest of the saga. The different choices you make in the game alter the course of the game : what you do during sidequests will influence which allies you can get (dwarves or undeads), how much soldiers you'll have to face during the Siege (poison in their food or not) and how your trial will go at the end. This is better implemented than in any of the other BG games, where sidequests and decisions have little to no real influence on the main quests.
Even if I think that the general story is efficient enough to make you want to keep going, I must say that I'm probably not the best person to have opinions on the details of the game's story, because it's largely secondary to me. Like someone said in another forum : games are games, not novels. If SoD's story would be a flawless flow of events with perfect narration, but the fights would be boring and stale, I wouldn't like SoD and wouldn't want to play it. The general idea of SoD works for me and that's enough, because the rest of gameplay is engaging. There's a war at hand, so there's a lot of bodies to take down. Good, let's do this. The different threads here on the forum that complain about how specifics points of the story are not working for them do not interest me. I respect their position, but I also largely don't care about that. SoD's general scheme works for me, because it resonates with the gameplay.
Would I recommend SoD to a gamer who's only turned on by complex and deep narratives ? Probably not, but I woudn't dissuade to play it him either. Would I recommend SoD to a gamer who mainly likes great gameplay ? Oh yeah.
SoD and Mods
As far as I can tell, SCS doesn't have much impact on the gameplay, except that it's suppose to implement the "Better call for help" bits. If so, that's good, but at the same time, SoD, doesn't really need SCS for difficulty. It stands alone nicely.
IR and SoD's interaction mainly works, but there are items that manage to get out of the rule changes implemented by IR. The Rhino Beetle plate doesn't have dex penalty and no physical resistance outside of missile. All plate armors have general damage resistances under IR. Also, the Commander's chainmail doesn't allow you to cast magic while wearing it. Instead of making it impossible to cast while wearing armor, IR implement either a penalty to casting time or a penalty to casting failure. Neither are present. Those inconsistencies are only seen on some special items, because the regular stuff is all correctly changed. Still, some work has to be done to have a seamless IR implementation in SoD.
Conclusion
To finish, all I can say is that SoD will now be part of all the playthrough I make of the BG saga. It's strength far outweighs it's weakness.
SoD has it's own identity, and it's clear : it's a war campaign. Ranged attacks rule BG1. AoE damage spells rule SoD. Wizard's chess rule SoA. Melee rule ToB. To me, SoD fits right in.
@Enuhal: For the record, no dragon can ever be stunned, as all dragons wear the DRAGRING item, which grants immunity to virtually all disablers except for Feeblemind. They're even immune to slow. But only Thaxll'ssillyia and Abazigal immune to level drain.
I believe they're vulnerable to blindness if you don't have SCS installed, and in the unmodded pre-EE game, non-ToB dragons were vulnerable to instant death effects.
All dragons but Abazigal are vulnerable to petrification.
After nipping down to Nashkel and getting a LMD for Chimera as a Bhaal power (the monks will eventually get lay on hands, so healing is less important for them than many characters) they travelled up to Ulgoth's Beard. On the way they gave Tenya back her bowl, but attempted to pinch it back immediately. Their attacks successfully stunned her, but only after several of them had missed and she just survived.
I was quite prepared to run away from the nearby ankheg, but as they're slow to make their first shot there was no harm in having a whack at it in passing - and this time everyone hit.
Dushai was charmed at the first attempt and I didn't bother taking the time to avoid a reputation loss with him, but just drew him away from the villagers and clubbed him down.
Wraith successfully sneaked into the ankheg nest to loot their treasure and start reputation on an upward trend again. There was more use of stealth on those with distance attacks - Tarnesh for instance found himself the victim of a sneak attack (and unlike Tenya stunning was fatal).
Reputation rose steadily, including Melicamp being successfully restored. In the process of that Greywolf's death got everyone to level 4.
Charleston Nib though got annoyed with the monks - I think they must have attacked one of the diggers before it had turned hostile. You would have thought that charming him would allow the quest to be completed, but it just gave some useless information.
They did quite a bit of other work while going round seeking reputation. Probably my favorite encounter was with Borda. I saw someone posting today saying how monks had no special abilities in BG1. Here they are using stealth to sneak up on someone and stun them - despite the target's 100% magic resistance .
They've done very little high value XP work, so are still only level 4. Missing out on Charleston Nib means reputation is only at 19, with no further possibility to increase that until they've done the Nashkel Mine - so they'll be heading there next.
Then... then who's the other baby in my inventory?
Because I turned in Peladan, and I've still got another one!
Scratch that... it seems that the baby in the Bag of Holding is indeed Peladan.
I've had two of them before today, indeed more than once, one where you are supposed to get the baby and another by oneshotting with a backstab the person that was carrying it, (forgotten the name) so that he couldn't teleport away as was intended by the modder. (That's if I am thinking of the right baby) Old age is creeping in all too quickly.
Woo! I'm for the first time in a no-reload in ToB. I've a lot to cover in my update, including the Planar Sphere and Planar Prison, the Illithids, Kangaxx, Drizzt stealing my experience, and finally Irenicus twice. I don't have time for it now; I'll try to get it in later tonight.
I tend to be higher level when tackling the SCS kobold hordes in the Nashkel Mine, but the monks ability to stealth allowed them to deal with the kobold commandos pretty safely and no-one was badly hurt as they made their way down to Mulahey. With 5 of them stealth attacking him with stunning blows he needed some luck to survive - but didn't get it.
Outside I carefully sneaked up on the amazons - forgetting I was in my SCS installation and they weren't there . The monks carried on to Nashkel to report in to the mayor and maximise their reputation. Approaching Nimbul one of them failed their stealth check in time to allow Nimbul to talk - but not in time to do anything else (other than die).
In Beregost I remembered to talk to Officer Vai - I often forget to do that until after going to the Bandit Camp (by which time it's too late). A sneak attack on Tranzig failed to stun him, but he was badly enough hurt for his morale to break - leaving him no chance to escape.
While doing some shopping the monks were ambushed by the amazons. I was tempted to fight there, but as the backstabbers played "now you see me, now you don't" I decided to protect my no deaths record to date and just ran for it.
Among the purchases made was magical ammunition for the sling and dart users and that allowed the wolf pack at the Beregost Temple to be shot down - getting everyone up to level 5.
They could have gone to the Bandit Camp next, but I decided they'd played fair long enough and should cash in some XP rich locations first to get another level. The basilisks were soloed by Wraith (who wears Meilum's bracers), with Korax surviving a couple of magic missiles in order to deal with Mutamin.
Kirian's companions were then charmed and lured away, leaving her helpless against a sneak attack.
On the way to Durlag's Tower Molkar and friends tried their luck. A first use of the wand of heavens quickly sent the cleric on his way and using darts of stunning on Halacan was probably a bit of a waste after that - the others just got normal missiles.
At the Tower, Wraith used the wand again to speed things up with the first couple of battle horrors (the others got stealth attacks).
The ghasts inside were all shot down without trouble, while Wraith soloed a few more basilisks using potion protection. That combination was enough for everyone to get to level 6.
Riggilo saved against a first set of stunning attacks and I expected him to use a potion of invisibility (which would have prompted me to run) - but he didn't appear to have one and paid the price.
Last time, we had just finished off Firkraag and gotten back into the good graces of the Paladins. As I said before, Planar Sphere is next. Clay golems still fail to force any rests.
Halflings are fought under Mass Invisibility and Chaos, and their mage went for Pro. Magic Weapons, and is thus susceptible to bolts, arrows, and darts of wounding. I even have Death Ward up, for the first time in forever!
And I don't rest like an idiot and face Lavok after all my buffs have worn out.
I don't have screenshots of all this fight: I remember that I fled out of a door to avoid a ADHW and then I just kinda waited around, healing while absorbing all spells, waiting until his frustrating PfMW to run out. Imoen didn't have more Breaches than he had PfMWs in contingencies, so every use means waiting 4 rounds of nothing. Eventually he runs out of spells, though, and dies.
Having learned my lesson, I buffed fully for Tolgerais. And then Alina takes the first shot:
Item Revisions turn the Kuotoa bolts to a Hold effect instead of a Stun effect, but that's irrelevant here. The second mage receives a similar fate.
The two elemental rooms are finished with relative ease, golems can't win with brute force, and we acquire two demon hearts just because we can, and we're soon safely off the Sphere. Instead of the Planar Prison, Baroque and company decide to save Imoen's soul. We run into a slight irritation in the Graveyard, as Sebastian is Charmed, so for the fights he'll have helm of charm protection, but thus no crit immunity. The first level of the lair is essentially just Alina running around invisibly with Turn Undead active, and the second level is relatively easy. Some mod adds Artemis Entreri, though he's killed by a nice backstab
A few seconds later, Drizzt deprives us of 90k experience.
Which is alright, I suppose, since Rogue Rebalancing gives us 35k apiece for essentially having a high Lore. One day I'll fight that Chosen of Cyric fight, but not this day.
Lichs are next. The Gatelich is my least favorite one, since you're just crammed in this awful corner. Baroque had SI:Necromancy up at some point, but that went down at some point to breaches and dispels. Regardless, it ran out of PfMW as well before we ran out of hitpoints, and we come out ahead.
Apparently I'm sidetracked incredibly easily. While heading for the Shade lich, we take out the Illithid Enclave first. I won the battle a first time with no casualties, then apparently didn't save. The second time, Mazzy died fighting the Alhoon but in the interests of keeping the experience the same as my first time and what I consider the true time, I CTRL-R'd her back in time for her to receive her part of the experience.
Shade lich, same tune and verse as the others: wait for PfMW to run out or use enough Breaches, and kill it.
And finally, the Elemental Lich. There was a tense moment as I had to get Baroque through a Sphere of Chaos zone to get out of Valygar's radius. Valygar managed to fail every single save there for his death, to a Spell Trigger Chain Lightning x3.
Out of serious firepower, though, and the last of Kangaxx's guardians fall.
For Kangaxx, the plan was pretty simple: I purchased a Protection From Magic scroll for Sebastian, swapped the Periapt of Life protection to Baroque and the Greenstone amulet to Sebastian, for immunity to Death effects and Fear respectively. Baroque also has boots which claim to grant Imprisonment, and a scroll case with Freedom inside if things go awry.
I encountered the bug where Kangaxx refuses to switch form: after googling, and confirming that this is indeed a bug, since no one's running Protection from Undead, I reload and kill him again. He's beaten fairly quickly both times, and as a demilich he seemed hellbent on trying to Imprison Sebastian, immune through the PfM scroll. Sebastian gets a shiny new ring.
Only a few loose ends to tie up, now. We return Yoshimo's heart, and then the Planar Prison, the last of the stronghold quests. We arrive invisibly, taking out the first bounty hunters before they have any chance to strike. We then all invisibly head to the Githyanki portal, taking them out before facing the Yuan-ti mage trio. They're not nearly as scary as in Spellhold, I found. Greater Command and Chaos disable them, and everything else is elementary. The Master of Thralls dies by our hand, and finally and anticlimactically, a Skeleton warrior kills the Warden off-screen.
Our success in the Sewers made me think that the Illithid city might not be so bad after all for this party. So we head back to the Underdark, use our scroll of Freedom, fight elementals, and invade a city. While going through, Baroque hits an important mark.
First HLA of the game! Our first one goes to Improved Skald's Song, increasing all bonuses to 5, immunity to stun, fear, and confusion, grants 10% physical damage resistance, and -10 AC to the singer, though hopefully that's not going to come into effect.
The Master Brain falls soon after, even after nailing us all with a massive Dispel. The Skald song's immunity to Stun simply counters too many of his abilities.
There's still the Beholder Hive, but I'm terrified of the Elder Orb, so I'm skipping it. Onto Suldanessellar! We slowly make our way across the city, and get ready to fight Nizi. In the end, I think we killed our final dragon in two rounds: Improved Haste on Mazzy and Sebastian, and a Breach from Imoen, gives us a very dead dragon.
Rillifane's avatar cleanses the temple for us, and we head for the Tree of Life.
Irenicus, part 1. We take him on without resting: if worst comes to worst, it's a gigantic map and I have summons, including a Deva from Imoen, her first HLA. He uses Absolute Immunity, which I have no counters for, but he has no way to stop Imoen from using a Wand of Cold to interrupt his spells. Irencus eventually breaks out a Protect From Magic Weapons after a double length Timestop from Wish. And he's no Lich, meaning I can actually break through with normal bolts and arrows of Mazzy and Alina. Eventually:
We do all the Good paths in Hell, and take on the final fight of SoA. We all head southwest immediately, dragging the Daemons along with us. The Balors are public enemy number 1, as their Vorpal is not something I want to risk, so we focus down those while Sebastian tanks: the Periapt of Life Protection is back on him, and so his immunity to Vorpal strikes is undispellable. Those fall first, and the first Glabrezu dies as well. We take the Slayer down to our position, and Imoen lands her two Breaches. It hasn't been the most impressive run, but this is the first time I've taken down Irenicus in a no-reload, so ToB is next on the horizon. I've played a bit further, but I'll end this here.
My party consists of Khalid (Ranger/Cleric) Jaheira (True Druid) Drake (Holy Justice of Tyr) Vynd (Assassin) Khalid read a tome that gave him a Holy Strategist of the Red Knight kit. This gives him a haste innate spell.
In transit, I stepped up to the mark when we were attacked by a winter wolf. This was because my cloak gives 100% protection from cold. Because of that, the result was a foregone conclusion.
On arrival at the gnoll stronghold, we were attacked by assassins. They did not prevail, the fact that Vynd noticed them whilst stealthed was a great boon. One of them however was a thief himself and did Drake much harm before dying himself.
We picked up Dynaheir (Enchantress) and gained considerable experience. When we got round to going down the Nashkel Mines we discovered that what we had to face were nothing to be scared of, mainly kobolds and not demons as had been reported. Mulahey rapidly surrendered, but did so a fraction too late as he died a second later.
In Nashkel itself, two other assassins attacked us and died. Just north of Nashkel we rescued a halfling for turnips from some Lady Ogres.
Shortly afterwards we were assaulted by a host of kobolds. A fireball from Dynaheir soon sorted them out.
Three Flaming Fist mercenaries then attacked but we resisted them.
After meeting Tazok near the bandit camp, he learned not to underestimate us:
Then the bandits learned to their cost just how powerful we are.
In Beregost Tranzig was also slain before we returned to loot the bandits' camp.
Today's session started with sorting out our inventories and acquiring the Cloak of Balduran. With everything set we went to the Iron Throne where arrows of detonation and a bit of stair-jumping soon had the enemies in trouble and we finished them off having taken very limited damage.
Unfortunately the game crashed on the way out of the building, so we had to redo the fight. This time we were less careful in our approach and Grott found himself confused and hit by several mage spells before the last of the Throne party fell - he still survived though thanks to those fighter HPs.
In Candlekeep we played one of our little mini-games to see who was best at avoiding unnecessary conversations with talkative strangers. Gate70 won this time when Koveras got in Dexter's way and allowed Bendalis to get a word in.
In the crypts I was also a bit careless and Dexter got poisoned by a phase spider. That ticks so quickly that trying and failing with slow poison could well have been fatal, so I took pity on Gate70 and ensured safety by using a green scroll .
On the way out Grott used more exploding arrows on Prat's party, who didn't last long against the barrage.
Back in the City Slythe was pulled away from Krystin and quickly meleed to death.
Krystin was left as we moved on to the Palace. A monk and wizard slayer are not a great combination for the palace - in particular the inability to use haste or summons is limiting and I hadn't manipulated reputation in order to get Bhaal horror this time. It was no great surprise then to see the dukes taking significant damage, but Belt was still hanging on at near death as the last doppleganger fell.
We didn't quite get the positioning right at the end though and Sarevok turned hostile with Belt still in view - meaning a few anxious moments as we converged on him to persuade him to take lumps out of us rather than Belt.
We fought through the maze with one amusing incident where Dexter was initially unable to target a doom guard as Grott was standing on top of it. He did eventually move, though only by apparently deciding to headbut his way through a wall.
In the Undercity we came across Tamoko. Normally we don't bother with her, but this time we'd gone to find her at the Flaming Fist HQ in order to give Grott the chance to get her armor - as he can't use rings of protection the magic armor is a good choice for him. Both Grott and Dexter hit with criticals as Tamoko folded under early pressure.
The Undercity party then got another ration of exploding arrows before we moved on to the temple.
Sarevok was dispelled with Grott's first shot
and Semaj was also hit with dispelling arrows and didn't last long when he teleported out.
Grott was protected by a green PfM scroll there and made good use of that when triggering a web trap and inviting Sarevok to play in it. He got stuck once and took heavy damage and was then stuck again. The second time he was taken to near death and a few sling shots later he'd had enough.
In the SoD prologue dungeon Dexter sneaked through to convince Porios to surrender. A few fireballs and arrows of detonation dealt with most of the enemies on the way to Korlasz, but she proved surprisingly difficult. Despite a good to-hit chance Grott managed to miss her 6 times in a row with dispelling arrows - including a sequence of 3 successive critical misses. Someone posted about that sort of thing recently, so here's evidence that 8,000:1 odds do turn up .
Eventually though the odds told and Grott's 7th arrow dispelled Korlasz' fire protection - a single exploding arrow then convinced her to surrender.
Dexter was initially willing to let her go, but after all his efforts Grott was feeling vindictive and ordered a fresh assault - and a sling critical ensured Korlasz would not get away.
After stocking up on daggers once more at High Hedge, the monks got a lift to the Bandit Camp with Teven. Tazok required some convincing to give them the run of the place, but a few rounds of missiles did the trick and it wasn't long before Taurgosz was charmed and had a fatal encounter with some zombies.
They didn't do any further preparation, but sneaked into Tazok's tent and struck down Venkt before he realised he was under attack.
They were able to exit without being chased - and hence no alarm was raised. That allowed them to do a series of stealth attacks back into the tent,
during which only Hakt reacted fast enough to follow them back outside.
They opened hostilities outside by attacking the Blacktalons - successfully killing 4 of those before retreating.
A combination of shooting while retreating and stealth to allow interception of following archers allowed the rest of the camp to be cleared without much trouble.
In the first Cloakwood area I was intending to help Aldeth Sashenstar, but failed to do so. All of the monks but one have reasonable charisma, but Phantom doesn't (he's got high wisdom and intelligence in order to be able to identify the odd piece of equipment). He happened to be the only monk whose stealth had broken when they got to Aldeth and speaking with him turned Aldeth permanently grumpy (half a dozen attempts to charm him all bounced off magic resistance, so that didn't seem to be an option).
In the second area Chimera used the ring of free action to set off the traps, while sneaking into the nest to kill Centeol
then running chasing spiders back strung them out enough to be able to kill them pretty easily. There wasn't much more done in the Cloakwood on the way to the mine, where Drasus' companions were charmed and drawn away before he failed to react quick enough to rage before being stunned.
I didn't clear all the guards while working down through the mine, so was keen to try and kill Davaeorn without resting if possible. The chance of that was greatly increased by successfully charming the guard near him.
That then pulled back the battle horrors, which were quickly killed by wands.
After sharing out trap damage I'm normally able to sight Davaeorn without him reacting, but this time he became aware of Chimera instructing the guard where to attack.
That was a problem as the monks stood no chance in combat with even a few guards and Davaeorn summons loads of them. However, the monks managed to run away as the first lot turned up
and successfully sneaked back up through the mine and out to the map's edge to rest.
After eventually sneaking back down they tried to let the guards congregating near the entrance go off to Davaeorn while they were still in stealth. The congested area made that difficult, but after several trips up and down they managed it and were able to spot the cluster of guards surrounding Davaeorn. Unfortunately, in spotting them I went further than I needed to (with the aim of getting a better screenshot ),
meaning that Spook was still in sight range when Davaeorn finished casting detect invisibility. Two Blacktalons got a shot in and one of those hit with a critical. Surprisingly, Davaeorn himself was also able to attack with a MMM and that also hit. Together with the trap damage that lot did 2 HPs more than Spook had available (none of the other monks apart from Chimera would have been killed by that) .
After a lot of effort to get down the mine a first death there due to a series of mistakes was disappointing and the other monks picked up the body and left to try again another day.
After a night's rest (for me) and considerably more (for the monks) they successfully sneaked down to find Davaeorn again. I was undecided on arrival how to handle the guards, but eventually plumped for a quick fix.
With them all burnt up Davaeorn was encouraged to chase the monks to the entrance and a few uses of the stairs to avoid his attacks saw the end of him.
The monks flooded the mine, but dodged the slave for now. They then didn't rest until after slaughtering a couple of innocents in order to ensure that Chimera got horror as a Bhaal power.
While the clearance of the mine was safe enough I have a general tendency to take less care after suffering a casualty and that became clear at the Lighthouse. The monks were trying to rest until dark when they were ambushed by a couple of sirines. That shouldn't be a particularly difficult fight, but it does need careful management and Spook once more suffered when that wasn't provided.
The fight with the first 3 sirines can be more chancy if you don't take precautions and the odds looked good on at least one more casualty when 3 of the monks were charmed and 2 more feeble-minded. Wraith did a good job there though in first distracting and then killing the final sirine, along with a nearby hobgoblin, while Chimera was fortunately not good at hitting the target until charm expired (he was too close to Spectre to be distracted away).
Sil's group only managed a single charm,
while the golems couldn't defend against stealth attacks.
While the monks were trying to rest to cure damage from those fights, several more sirines tried ambushes - taking the monks up towards their next level.
To get the final XP required they headed north up the coast. Playing run and shoot with the ogre clan and a few random spawns did the trick and they levelled up with a sigh of gratitude for finally being able to use lay on hands.
One more group of sirines then provided an easy enough fight.
Cleaning up another couple of loose ends saw the Valley of the Tombs invaded. As usual Narcillicus' jellies were pulled away separately before a sneak assault on him. He did well to save against a first round of attacks, but his opening spell was disrupted by a LMD and he didn't get another chance.
A fairly general attack on the Doomsayer, just switching between characters to share out damage, then managed to kill it before any need to switch to stealth attacks or wands.
In the City Ordulinian didn't initially seem interested in offering a reward for seeing off Arkion and Nemphre (he did much later at the end of the session though - I'm not sure what changed). They went to get the ogre gauntlets early in order to allow them to open most locked doors and quickly ticked off encounters. They also gave a bit of money to the temple before doing various quests, including reputation boosting ones. Everything went pretty smoothly - here's a few odd screenshots from that period.
I'd got reputation back to 18, before remembering that Drizzt's scimitars might be handy and going to collect those. I didn't bother with any buffing there, but just ran him round and waited for the criticals to add up.
While on the road I also tracked down Bassilus. His buffs protected him from stun, but he only managed one failed attempt at casting before damage caught up with him.
Silke did manage to complete a spell, but it was a defensive one which was no help against stunning.
With not that many reputation quests left, donating to the Temple was slightly more expensive this time, but soon reputation was back up to 20 allowing decent shop prices to be obtained. With only 126k gold the monks were greedy for a bit more though, so sought out Sunin to get another pricy trinket.
After cashing in a few other unidentified items that pushed gold over 150k. The monks celebrated by splurging out on various potions, though by far the greatest expense was on charging wands and amulets.
To make use of their new weapons they quickly cleared the Red Wizard of Thay area. One advantage of the wands of heavens is that they go over the top of globe protections - as the mages there found to their cost.
While back out in the wilderness the monks briefly stopped off at Gullykin to pick up another +1 sling. They also couldn't resist getting some revenge on Jenkal for the disappearing tricks he's been pulling on me recently.
The final wilderness target was Ulcaster. Having done that not long ago in LoB I expected the monks to kill the Wolf quickly - which they did. However, I thought it would use a dispel magic before a Howl of Terror - which it didn't. Only 2 of the monks were scared though and the others were able to block off the route to the worst trap until they recovered.
Icharyd was also a potential threat, but the monks all used potions of insulation and were able to spread damage around enough to finish him off with a bit in hand.
Next up will be a battle at the Iron Throne and then, hopefully, a trip to Candlekeep.
Time to finish off BG1. With the XP cap disabled, Mayday has learned Spell Immunity, and with the scroll scribing mod, she is able to create scrolls for Mae to scribe herself, allowing our Berserker/Mage and our Sorcerer to shrug off the likes of Remove Magic. Mae absorbs Cythandria's opening Remove Magic spell while Killer, our Bounty Hunter, maintains a safe distance. This allows us to tackle the golems (are they golems, or do they just use the golem animation?) without losing our buffs.
Note that I have guaranteed spell scribing success in my install, which is important since I can't use Potions of Genius or Mind Focusing due to my item restrictions.
Cythandria herself is not too much trouble. Witch Dagger, our Wizard Slayer/Druid, can shut down any visible mage using her darts. Once we've got three hits in, Cythandria is doomed.
Wizard Slayers are some of the most overpowered classes in the game with SCS installed, when pre-buffs make their spells so hard to disrupt and mages are prepared for Inquisitors. They're even more important in EE, when dealing damage through Stoneskin is still no guarantee of disruption.
Witch Dagger is also instrumental in taking down Kristin. Slythe has never been difficult for my parties on his own, and he's even easier when he forgets to equip a weapon when he attacks us.
Unfortunately, I foolishly have Killer focusing on dealing damage on Slythe instead of using Detect Illusions on Kristin so Witch Dagger can apply further spell failure. And while our Spell Thrust somehow fails, Kristin lands a Breach on our main character just as Enrage and SI: Abjuration wear off, costing Mae all of her buffs as well as her immunities.
We break through Kristin's defenses as she confuses Trash Mammal and Witch Dagger, but she escapes using a Potion of Invisibility, and against the odds, Killer fails to reveal her with Detect Illusions, because I haven't gotten her Detect Illusions skill up to 100 yet. We use Blindness to keep Witch Dagger from attacking any passersby.
It makes no difference. With spell failure crippling Kristin, we take her down and end the battle as soon as she appears.
The fight against the Ducal Palace doppelgangers is brief and uncomplicated. Killer sets a bunch of traps to the east, close enough to hit the doppelgangers when the fight begins, but far enough that Killer doesn't reveal herself to the dukes and trigger the fight before she's set all of her traps. Mae turns Liia Jannath invisible and the doppelgangers transform, suffering heavy damage on the first round.
We bought a bunch of Greater Malison and Chaos spells earlier, which allows us to disable the already-wounded doppelgangers. Sarevok goes after Belt, but a couple of Invisibility spells keep Belt at bay long enough for Sarevok to flee.
I skip the Undercity party; they have nothing to offer us.
We scribe a few last scrolls, reorganize our inventory and spellbooks, and confront Sarevok. We send out a Nishruu from a scroll from the Gullykin ogre fights and use the Necklace of Missiles to bomb the enemy. I've only used the Necklace of Missiles a single time in all my previous runs, so this otherwise commonly used item is acceptable under our item restrictions.
I notice that Semaj and Angelo appear to have no Fire Shields, so I have Witch Dagger launch an Insect Plague spell. I don't see any spell deflection/turning/trap effects on Semaj, but a PW: Kill scroll fails to affect him.
Apparently he has 62 HP at maximum, so PW: Kill is just barely too weak to kill him.
We lose control of Trash Mammal to a confusion or Chaos spell, but she targets Diarmid, a good choice regardless, and it seems that Insect Plague is working on Semaj if not Angelo (who apparently does come Fire Shield: Blue).
It's a good thing, because I only belatedly remember to cover Mae with SI: Abjuration. Semaj could have taken down all of her buffs if we had not shut down his spellcasting.
Witch Dagger summons a Fire Elemental and targets Angelo with darts, but has trouble landing hits due to Angelo's surprisingly strong AC. Sarevok and Tazok slay our Nishruu and turn their attention to Trash Mammal, who doesn't have the AC to stay safe for long. Mae uses Arrows of Ice on Diarmid, because Acid Arrows aren't allowed in this run.
Witch Dagger helps put down Diarmid, though ignoring Angelo allows him to keep firing Lightning Bolts at her.
Sarevok targets a Fire Elemental, but his +1 sword can't touch it. It buys us time to slay Tazok. Meanwhile, the mages remain active but spell failure prevents them from imposing much pressure on us.
Killer reveals Semaj, only for Semaj to vanish again. Witch Dagger switches her attention back to Angelo to keep him from casting spells and we apply some light pressure to the Skeleton Warriors.
Semaj keeps vanishing, but wanders into Killer's traps, which impose some lingering poison damage. Mae's Berserker immunities wear off, leaving her vulnerable for the next five rounds, so Trash Mammal, now free of confusion, uses Exaltation to give Mae some limited immunities.
With Diarmid and Tazok dead, Sarevok busy with our Fire Elemental, and both enemy mages unable to cast spells, it's just a matter of time before Sarevok's last allies collapse. Angelo dies to Darts of Acid from Witch Dagger; Semaj dies to lingering poison from Killer's traps.
We break apart the skeletons and soon Sarevok is alone, wasting his time attacking a Fire Elemental that has taken the place of my normal Wand of Monster Summoning charges. The fight is already won, so I start picking up the loot and find a ridiculous robe on Semaj or Angelo.
Only evil mages can use it, so it's useless to us at the moment, but it would be great for Edwin if we recruit him later.
With Sarevok busy, there's no need to engage him in melee. We put him down with missile weapons.
This is what the party looks like at the beginning of SoD.
Our party composition did a lot to compensate for our item restrictions. Berserker/Mages are nearly impossible to kill, Bounty Hunters are spectacular glass cannons, our sorcerer kept us safe from ambushes, and our Wizard Slayer/Druid broke the difficulty of nearly every mage fight in the game.
Siege of Dragonspear should not be too challenging, but I will need to plan carefully for the final fight. I don't know if I'll be able to get many decent items in BG2 (basically all vanilla items will be banned), so I want to smuggle as many BG1 items into BG2 as I can, which means I'll have to drop them in a container before tackling Belhifet. But I can't drop too many, or I might find myself facing Belhifet with too few resources to win.
Siege of Dragonspear will be very short. I've already used basically all of the new SoD items (the good ones, anyway) and we're already over 300,000 XP for each party member, which means there is little reason for us to pursue many side quests. This will be a straight shot through the main quest.
No screenshots for Korlasz; a midlevel wizard is no challenge when we have Witch Dagger in the party. No screenshots for the second dungeon, either; we didn't bother entering. We recruit Viconia for the simple reason that we have a flail or morningstar that grants 3 APR and only Viconia can use it.
Morentherene killed Viconia and severely wounded half our party with her breath weapon, but she doesn't have the HP to stand up very long against a party with high damage output like ours.
Ziatar is a similar story, doing a surprising amount of poison damage but not having the defenses to follow up.
Mae doesn't usually take damage during fights, but she has a massive HP pool, which is very handy for situations like this.
We buff the party with Chaotic Commands and rush Darskhelin before he can kill anyone with INT drain. When he's gone, the rest of the enemies are little challenge; Jhan Redmoons, the only real threat, is vulnerable to Witch Dagger's spell failure.
No need to wrestle with the Shadow Aspect; we can't use the Fractal Blade anyway.
Time to tackle Bridgefort. Fun fact: you can set traps in the middle of the camp while the Crusaders are non-hostile. It makes a huge impact in the early rounds.
Viconia casts Holy Power so she can use her 3 APR flail to better effect and marches into the fray, since I figure she should be able to survive the handful of rounds it will take to break the first wave.
Unfortunately, the enemy lands some excellent attack rolls, and Viconia's HP pool is quite shallow. I have to bring her back in.
I send out Witch Dagger instead to deal with the enemy mage, and when Witch Dagger gets surrounded, I send in Mae, who stuns the Barghest, a very dangerous melee grunt, with Thunderslap.
With the enemy mage disabled and the rest of the Crusaders wounded, we push them back in short order. The Barghest survives, but since Thunderslap stuns for 6 seconds without a saving throw, bypassing magic resistance but not MGOI, we have little trouble holding him down until we're ready to mob him.
The battle on the bridge is simple; Witch Dagger can neutralize the mage using Darts of Acid.
I use the Spectacles of Spectacle to reveal Nazramu so I can cheaply recharge a wand or two and get some money to buy the last of the many cleric scrolls for sale in SoD. Otherwise, I skip the optional quests and reach the Underground River. I don't really need to do much here besides lay the Barrel of Bwoosh and fight Hephernaan, but I don't like the idea of leaving the place crawling with enemies considering I'll have to run all the way back out later. I even save Halatathlaer, because Witch Dagger can apply spell failure to the whole cabal of mages using Fire Seeds.
We still get blasted by a couple of spells, but Wizard Slayer spell failure leaves the enemy too weak to kill or disable anyone.
Viconia has not been doing as well as I'd hoped, so before we confront Hephernaan, I switch her out for Corwin once a few calculations show that Corwin will deal more damage to Belhifet considering her superior THAC0. Witch Dagger and Trash Mammal team up with some Fire Elementals to hold down Hephernaan and his fellow mages.
To the east, the rest of the party is holding off some less dangerous melee enemies. Since Hephernaan and his mage buddies might throw out Slow or Chaos, I prefer to minimize the number of party members in Hephernaan's room.
One last Fire Seed through a Sanctuary spell sends Hephernaan packing.
Back in the Coalition Camp, we have to hold off an invasion. Although we don't have the wands or Arrows of Detonation we normally would use for these fights, we do still have the Necklace of Missiles, Fire Seeds, Slow spells, and Bounty Hunter traps that let us break each encounter.
The final battle proves embarrassingly easy. Killer paralyzes three enemies with a Special Snare, Witch Dagger shuts down the mages with Fire Seeds, and the rest of the enemies crumple under heavy pressure.
Notice the Coalition Spies doing massive damage to the enemy using backstabs. I've never noticed that before, and I'm not sure why.
Next is Dragonspear Castle, but the only thing I'm really worried about is Belhifet. I think I'll need a lot of our current equipment to beat SoA, but every item I smuggle into BG2 is an item I can't bring to the final battle of SoD.
Sieging Dragonspear Castle itself is very difficult without wands, but the Necklace of Missiles appears about as good as a Wand of Fire. In fact, it's better, because it bypasses MGOI.
We have tons of charges, so there's really no reason to hold back.
We win the first few waves by relying on the necklace and the coalition fighters. When more serious spellcasters show up, Witch Dagger wades into the fray to throw some Fire Seeds. But proves largely unnecessary, because Killer's Special Snares and the Necklace of Missiles break this fight, too.
I see no reason to fight Ashatiel alone. Why change the rules of the battle when you're already winning? We have one last major fight before the castle is ours, and the next group of enemies is rather tough, and also spread out, making area-effect options slightly weaker.
I use a Horrid Wilting scroll I found on the Gullykin ogres. It's a game-changer, to say the least.
We suffer a lot in the coming rounds as the surviving enemies get some lucky rolls, and Corwin has to flee because of blindness, but Killer--whom an enemy also foolishly blinded--evens things out using her traps.
When more enemies appear, we fall back and lure them across the last of our traps, leaving Ashatiel weak enough to finish off with missile weapons.
Before I enter Avernus, I carefully pick out which items we'll need for the final battle and put everything else in a chest that hopefully will keep everything safe until we return to it in BG2. This is what our party looks like right before the final battle when shorn of its normal items:
Notice the ridiculously high stack of darts and Fireseeds in Witch Dagger's inventory. I don't like inventory management or re-casting Fire Seeds, so I use the console to remove the need for it.
I buff gradually during the elevator ride, but misjudge the time gap, and Mae enters the battle with neither Enrage no SI: Abjuration active. She has to re-cast the latter and sit tight until she can re-activate the former.
As always, we focus on Hephernaan first, because I assume that he starts casting mage spells if you don't kill him fast. Witch Dagger will be tanking Belhifet due to her strong saves vs. death (very important consider Belhifet's poison and disease damage on hit), so she casts Entropy Shield from the IWDification mod to send her AC down to -13.
Corwin is able to use +3 arrows since I've only ever used those arrows on one or two occasions (aside from Item Revisions, but IR runs don't count for the purposes of our item restrictions), but we have multiple Enchanted Weapon scrolls, which means Belhifet is rather easy to harm.
Belhifet vanishes, Killer moves in to use Detect Illusions and reveal him, and we use a scroll to heal Caelar.
Belhifet teleports and turns invisible, but the invisibility is easily removed and the teleport effect acts in our favor because Belhifet has no ranged attacks and we do better in wars of attrition due to our potions and scrolls.
Corwin can probably win this fight largely on her own as long as you cast Enchanted Weapon on her and make sure she stays a safe distance from the enemies, but I use our scrolls to make sure we bring down Belhifet before he claims any lives.
In the end, my fears prove unfounded. As deadly as Belhifet is in melee, he is simply not equipped to handle an Archer with Enchanted Weapon active.
Victory! It wasn't that exciting, but the good news is that we can move on to BG2, where the fights will prove more challenging and I will have a whole slew of new mod quests to try out.
I notice that we emerge in the same area where we already stashed our previous items, which means depriving ourselves of those items when fighting Belhifet was unnecessary. I put all of our stuff in a single chest and hope that it will still be full when I come back in Shadows of Amn.
the best defense, things went smooth, kill a mage and rescue a whore to get into spellhold then trade wisdom to open a door and the wild mage for Imoen.
I remember most of my dirty tricks to lure guard into the trap... kill trolls without taking damage and fight my way to the daylight but as it turns out, the best defense is in fact defense and not offence... the battle was well in hand and I should have cloaked
The first part of Cloakwood was without major incident, but once again the dragon showed wiliness once more targetting weak party members who weren't even in range of sight. It did him no good however. He still died.
After killing Selene and her friends we can now pretend to be neutral as we have three amulets that nake it appear so. Vynd of course was the first recipient.
We were ambushed by asassins whilst in transit. Web helped us to survive but a stealthy thief attacked Dynaheir who died as a result.
We then rescued Maretha and returned to tell the druids who were back where we met Aldeth.
I then deemed it a good plan to exchange Khalid for Minsc. Whilst in Nashkel, I was able to release the tension that both I and Bardolan were feeling.
We then took on Valeria and her friends. Easy enough but sad that they were nerfed. I was wanting that staff +3 and it was only +1. It means that I will have to fork out gold for a decent staff and I was actually wanting two of them!!
Minsc will now take over from me as our tank, though I will help.
I would have chosen proficiency points differently if I had known about this!! I have bought the +3 staff for Jaheira. Dynaheir will just have to stay out of melee combat.
Arriving at the Iron Throne I was concerned about the SCS backstabbers there, so started proceedings with a full round of fireballs. That killed all 4 of the casters, but only one of the invisible enemies. So the monks nipped back down, re-stealthed and did a follow-up salvo with the 3 necklaces. That left only Gardush alive and he got a more traditional monk greeting.
Arriving at Candlekeep they didn't use any protections against the ogre magi, but just immediately scattered to reduce the impact of any area spells. Phantom was held early on, but a couple of rounds of wand blasts soon turned the tide and no-one was badly hurt.
The Iron Throne leaders also felt the heat before the monks moved down to the catacombs.
There was no problem getting through to Prat, but an attempt to economise there by only throwing 3 fireballs initially nearly resulted in a casualty. Bor managed to stun Spectre before dying, while Tam took a nasty chunk out of Wraith with an acid arrow before he was wanded. Prat also survived longer than expected thanks to the intrusion of several spiders and disappeared using a minor sequencer. Fortunately, when he reappeared he only threw a chromatic orb, but he was attacking Spectre and within an instant of killing him when a flame strike pierced his mirrors.
After finishing off the remaining spiders and basilisks, the monks returned to the City to sort out their inventory. Chimera took the strength tome (as he could then reach higher values for opening things using DUHM), while Phantom used the wisdom one to reach the dizzy heights of 39 for lore - 40 when they get their final level).
The monks saved Duke Eltan
and burnt Cythandria down
(and also robbed the Hall of Wonders that I'd forgotten to do before). They were close to being able to level up, so hunted a few spiders and carrion crawlers in the sewers to do that before going in search of Slythe.
He resisted initial stunning blows and got a couple of attacks of his own in before succumbing.
They played hide and seek with Krystin for a while before Wraith showed herself to persuade Krystin to do the same and then managed to shut her up with a first use of a stunning dart.
At the palace they took the precaution of charming the doppleganger mage along with a number of Flaming Fists. The cleric was burnt down immediately and, though the assassin got a couple of backstabs in, the others were finished off with Belt almost untouched. Eventually the mage recovered and buffed up - but not with anything that could fend off darts of stunning.
After fighting through the maze they killed the undercity party and the nearby skeleton warriors by pulling targets away and mobbing them in stealth attacks.
In the temple Sarevok was as usual dumped in a corner with the help of an invisibility potion. Angelo was drawn out of hiding by being offered a target and managed to confuse Spectre, but the others burnt him down.
A few fireballs dealt with Sarevok's other companions before Sarevok faced the bitter fact that he couldn't catch a monk in speedy boots. The monks weren't very good at hitting him - but they didn't need to be .
After being transported to SoD the monks quickly persuaded Porios to surrender without a fight. There was an immediate problem down below though when they attempted to all stealth together to attack the Shadowed Soul. Phantom's stealth broke at the wrong time and a hail of missiles prevented him from running back to safety (I thought that seemed unlucky and checking back in the text Phantom was hit 6 times from 8 shots with the skeleton archers requiring a 16).
After paying up to the Flaming Fist healer there were no more problems in the dungeon. Phantom's stealth did actually break again just as the attack on Korlasz was about to start - but there was not enough time for the mage to react before he was stunned.
They also sorted out the skeletal mage before leaving - but didn't reunite the staff as DUHM was insufficient to open the container (and they didn't resort to a strength potion).
In the City they foiled a break-in at Sorcerous Sundries, but missed out on a reward there as apparently if you don't say what you've done at the first opportunity you don't get another one.
The monks also relieved various NPCs of their goods in order to finance more purchases that probably won't be used and did a number of minor quests I don't normally bother with.
After marching to the Coast Way Crossing there was a bit more sorting out inventory with new bags purchased (still got far too many potions to fit in 3 cases though ). Then they took a trip to the Coast Way Forest where a vampire was quickly saved from hunters to get them a first ioun stone.
Back at the Coast Way Crossing I presented Takos with his heirlooms. I don't think I've done that before, but the returning acid dart gained was certainly a good reward for this party. I saved the game there, but on restarting some time later forgot where I was and walked close enough to the bridge to activate the scripted combat. Despite being unprepared the wand of heavens proved their worth once more - the last of the opposition dying just before Caelar called a parley - though a critical hit for 44 damage on one of the monks there was a reminder of their vulnerability in melee.
With XP still being pretty low the monks explored the whole external area, including stunning Teleria.
They then moved on to the dwarf mine. Inside, they shot up most of the enemies on the first level, then drew most of those on the second level back to the entrance where the monks could jump back and forth - using their powerful offense, but minimising their defensive frailties. The most worrying moment was a mummy turning up and causing 3 of the monks to run in terror - the others responding there by using their wands for the first time in the dungeon.
There are quite a few enemies with special attacks, so things never really felt safe, but the monks did eventually manage to make it through to Coldhearth with no losses. They used the Secret Revealed to nerf him and then burnt him up,
but then wasted a couple of rounds trying to force the secret door open before realising Coldhearth had the key. That proved a problem when the lich turned up again just as they destroyed his phylactery. The mephits seemed like quite enough to deal with, but another use of the Secret Revealed was able to block the lich's casting for long enough to take him down.
Even with all the XP from the undead the monks are still a long way off another level, so will continue to take on all comers next time.
Arriving at Troll Claw Woods, just for a change, I resolved the Irregulars quest peacefully. The area was cleared - mainly using just weapons, but fireballs aborted a mass troll charge in the cave.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms they hit an ambush area with more trolls. The ones in the upper cave were just beaten up, but the gathering in the lower cave had a couple of fireballs thrown in to discourage the opposition at the start - the Firefly sling providing a nice reward there.
On arrival, ranged weapons cleared the exterior area of a wyvern infestation.
Heading into another cave the monks smelled dragon and everyone threw a dagger at it. Spook hit, but as typically happens with me the dragon had already awoken and 3 of the party were suddenly running scared.
Fortunately, as dragons go, Morentherene doesn't have good HPs or resistances and 4 blasts of wands later she was flat on the floor.
Initially I tried to just shoot the wyverns while Wraith ran them round, but when one of the scared monks bumped into a wyvern and got stuck the others came into melee - which resulted in Spook being poisoned. He had a clear aura so it would have seemed that he had plenty of time to use a green scroll. However, they seem to be subject to some sort of initiative check (like using a weapon) and sometimes take longer to use than expected. As a result 4 ticks of poison took Spook from 26 down to 2 HPs while he waited anxiously for the green scroll to kick in to allow him to move away from an attacking wyvern (to be safe I should have given the scroll to someone else to use, but it felt more appropriate for Spook to do it himself).
The distraction from that close call also left Phantom in melee range a fraction longer than he should have been and he picked up a nasty critical (fortunately saving against the poison) before things got back under control.
The scared monks recovered just in time to finish off the last wyvern.
Stealth attacks allowed them to get past the bugbears reasonably easily. Snorgash, rather amusingly, wasted time playing hide and seek with the monks and was scared by Chimera's Bhaal horror after his berserk rage wore off.
Stealth resting ensured HPs were at maximum as they moved on into the old temple. Stealth and stunning attacks were used on most of the guards, though the largest collection got a warmer greeting.
Chimera's stealth failed as the monks were lining up Ziatar, but she didn't have enough warning to avoid the stunning blows (and for once she couldn't escape into sanctuary).
The Neothelid took a while to show itself, but once it did so was taken to near death by wand blasts and immediately beaten up.
Moving on, Wraith was confused by a trap as she entered the Shadow Aspect's hiding place, but she had been in stealth and was already running back out when the trap hit and got safely out of sight. I thought that would probably make the fight easy enough, but that proved not to be the case. Wraith was scared at the start of the contest while the others alternated between wand blasts and physical attacks. They had no luck at all with the latter, however, while the former proved slow going against 90% fire resistance. In the end Chimera was down to single figure HPs (and seriously considering commandeering someone else's boots of speed) when Spectre finally scored the first missile (or melee) hit of the contest.
Chimera used a strength potion in order to be able to get at the Fractal Blade. Then the monks opened hostilities against Darskhelin with a few fireballs. However, they failed to kill anything and immediately retreated. Darskhelin followed and they tried to kill him quickly with a group stealth attack, but Spirit was stunned by a psionic blast - causing Darskhelin to immediately switch his attack to her and complete sucking her brains out a second or two before he fell.
After using a raise dead scroll, Spirit put on the regeneration ioun stone to get her HPs back before going in search of Darskhelin's companions - they were individually isolated and soon finished off with stealth attacks.
That left just Akanna in the temple. Her aerial servants hit hard, so they were given the wand treatment before she was tempted out of hiding.
There was another cave in the area to explore and some spiders there soon got the last of the monks the XP needed for level 9.
That was at a dangerous point for Spectre as she had been stunned by a gargantuan spider, prompting everything else to attack her. However, a slow poison from Chimera kept her alive while the current attackers were dealt with and a further stream of attackers summoned by calls for help failed to reach her.
When the monks finally took their levels final HPs were reasonable. Chimera has the lowest total at 60 (ignoring the 10 additional from his bracers), which is just under the theoretical average die roll of 62. They celebrated their levels by using their new +1 fists to crush a wraith spider and various companions. There was then just time for a rhinoceros beetle to get stuck in a passage before the monks left.
They saved a dragon from a couple of marauding hill giants on the journey, but eventually got back to camp for a well-deserved spot of R&R.
Arriving at Boareskyr Bridge the monks as usual cleaned up the exterior area - the only notable point there was using wands of sleep for the first time in the run to avoid the hassle of dealing with large groups of hobgoblins and goblins.
Inside Bridgefort the monks smacked down a Dark Wraith in order to be able to forge some +3 sling bullets. Wraith was level drained after exposing an undead cult in the temple and the local cleric couldn't cure that, so they went back to camp to find Mizhena and set up for a joint assault on the crusaders.
Journeying back to the bridge they came across a hole in the ground sheltering some myconids. The first group of those went down easily enough to stunning blows and I was thinking the same would happen to the next. However, the monks now had 3 stunning blows at level 9 and I hadn't previously realised that after using 2 of those the special abilities order would switch such that F12/F1 would select lay on hands instead. That made the fight more exciting than otherwise, but despite 1 feeblemind and 4 confusions they triumphed.
Arriving with the Flaming Fist the monks led the attack from the rear. They switched from ranged weapons to wands to burn down the Barghest and the Crusader mages and actually managed to come to Khalid's aid in time to save a number of the Bridgefort defenders. They saved the bridge from destruction and beat up a well spirit using +2/+3 weapons before moving on to the Coalition Camp.
At the Camp they used the Spectacles of Spectacle to summon Nazramu who had some nice equipment for them. I don't really know the quests in the camp, but as this wasn't a completionist run I didn't bother looking for things to do there. Instead the monks headed straight for Dead Mans Pass. They cleared a few groups of enemies there before trouble struck with a capital T. While being chased by a group of ogres and displacer beasts I couldn't be bothered to control every character individually, but just used move all. The problem with that in the EE is that it makes it much more likely that your sprite will get hung up on an obstruction, so you really need to keep a close eye on things. I didn't do that either though and when Chimera didn't appear with the rest of the group on schedule I paused the game and looked back to find that he was stuck and being attacked by a couple of ogres - and down to 18 HPs. I expected that to be a minor blip given that he was carrying huge numbers of invisibility potions and he clicked to take one of those. Taking a potion is not instant so it's quite possible to be hit after clicking to take a potion, but there was a perceptible delay after coming out of inventory and unpausing the game before Chimera died. I don't think there was anything there which could see through invisible, so my suspicion is that the click to drink the potion didn't register properly ...
So, having gone through much of SoD in the wee small hours this morning with a party of monks, you might have thought that playing it again with a monk protagonist would be a piece of cake - or you might have realised it was me playing it .
The early stages went well enough with Tsolak being helped on his way in return for a regeneration ioun stone.
A troll cave provided a sling upgrade for Dexter
before the duo advanced on the Coast Way bridge. More detonation arrows there left only 2 opponents alive when the parley was called and none shortly after it finished.
Grott's love affair with detonation arrows continued in the next area. A trash mob of hobgoblins shouldn't have been much threat, but they were nuked anyway - the exploding wave-front just failing to hit the duo as well.
An ambush area with some myconids did provide a real potential threat. In SoD enemies will target any visible characters rather than concentrating on the nearest, so not using buffing is far more risky. While dealing with the first group both Dexter and Grott were confused, but fortunately ran away from each other.
Grott was keener to chop his way through Dexter after dealing with the second group, but this time Dexter had not been confused and was able to keep his distance without trouble.
Moving into the Forest of Wyrms both Grott and Dexter were poisoned in separate incidents, but use of Bhaal slow poison and an area transition provided cures. Grott then asked Dexter if he had throwing daggers ready for the dragon and Dexter replied he would do as soon as Grott supplied them. Realising there was a slight inventory hitch the duo agreed to sneak past the dragon into the Temple .
Snogrash and his bugbear chums were cut down on the way in and all the cultist guard forces died before Ziatar could call them to her defense. As so often she was able to cast sanctuary while at near death and did some healing up before resuming combat - but not enough.
The Neothelid took a little while to surface, but failed to make any of its spells count and died soon after it appeared.
The Shadow Aspect found Grott in full plate a much harder target to hit than unarmored monks and a chunky critical took him down.
For Darskhelin Grott tried using detonation arrows, but could only manage to kill the mage before the illithid got into melee range. Dexter might have been able to help, but he had once more not buffed and this time that resulted in him being stunned.
At that point it still looked quite possible that Grott would be able to win the fight, but the archer attacking him with acid arrows was hitting with every shot and Grott's HPs were disappearing fast. He made a desperate lunge forward to try and drag the remaining enemies into the room - hoping they would not turn on Dexter if he was out of sight. However, a lag hit by the kensai cut him down before he could move them far enough.
How bitter is the bitter pill of defeat? My second no-reload attempt just came to an end in the Ankheg caverns.
I got overconfident and paid the price for it. I took a half-orc assassin through there in an earlier (non-no-reload) run and cleaned up without taking a single hit point of damage, but the die rolls went all wrong for my half-orc fighter/thief. My backstabs weren't working, and the ankhegs made every single save versus poison (dagger of venom). Viconia was tanking and taking damage despite the little bastards likely needing crits to hit since she had the girdle of piercing, boots of avoidance and sword and shield weapon style. I used up my cure light and medium wounds spells but decided to soldier on, thinking my luck would change. My PC got bitten once and lost about 25% of her hit points. I figured I could take another hit before dipping into my potions of healing and getting Xan to start using sleep spells, but the next hit killed me. Jeepers did that hit do a lot of damage. I had a 19 constitution and was using max hit points. Why didn't I cast sleep? I guess it's because I haven't had any difficulty in that cave for a long time. I seemed to have it down to a science. It was the first area in the run in which I wasn't worried and didn't have that on-the-edge-of-my-seat feeling.
Anyway, I made it to levels fighter 3/thief 4. Way better than my first no-reload in which I didn't even make it to the Friendly Arm. Not sure if I'll start another run right away. Time to reflect. It stings to lose that time investment. If I do, I'll maybe try to document it in depth like you guys are doing, if I can find the time. You guys are doing great recaps.
Sorry to see both of your runs end @OrlonKronsteen and @Grond0 . After months of lurking on this thread, I am almost, almost ready to start a first no-reload run of my own, but do not have time these days due to work and family commitments. Probably I will also go with a F/T also for the first time.
Comments
General feeling about SoD
SoD's great. I first and foremost like the fights in SoD. The fact that there's pretty much always a bunch of bodies to fight is nice. You really get the feeling that you're in the middle of a war campaign. Plus, you have to fight kitted enemies who actually use their skills, which is really nice. This is something SoD actually did better than SoA.
SoD's difficulty
I played at Insane difficulty with bonus damage turned off. The difficulty is there, but it's not too harsh. I feel it could have been a bit rougher though : too much fights are over before they started, because of fireballs. See my Coalition Camp attack to understand what I mean. For example, there are places in BG1 where fireballs DON'T rule the day (Firewine Bridge, Ulcaster, parts of Durlag's Tower, ...), because you have to fight in crammed spaces. SoD is largely about bigger spaces, thus renders AoE damage spells the king of the game. I admit that I knew that before hand and decided to have an arcane heavy party, so I guess this influences my conclusion. The game is probably harder for a melee-heavy team.
The enemy mages prebuffing is also a really good thing. They're not pushovers. They're pretty much on the same difficulty level of SCS BG1 mages : Secret Word or Spell Thrust in conjunction with Detect Illusion and Breach will render them helpless. And that's a good thing, because you don't have the high-end tools to go all wizard's chess with them yet. Nicely done here.
For no-reload, I think that SoD is about as difficult as BG1. There are not too many "scary" enemies - like dragons, liches, illithids and beholders - that you have to proceed with caution against. There are a few, but those are only optional.
SoD's story
SoD's story works. There are many things I feel were tacked on, like the presence of Irenicus, but certain things were better implemented in SoD than in the rest of the saga. The different choices you make in the game alter the course of the game : what you do during sidequests will influence which allies you can get (dwarves or undeads), how much soldiers you'll have to face during the Siege (poison in their food or not) and how your trial will go at the end. This is better implemented than in any of the other BG games, where sidequests and decisions have little to no real influence on the main quests.
Even if I think that the general story is efficient enough to make you want to keep going, I must say that I'm probably not the best person to have opinions on the details of the game's story, because it's largely secondary to me. Like someone said in another forum : games are games, not novels. If SoD's story would be a flawless flow of events with perfect narration, but the fights would be boring and stale, I wouldn't like SoD and wouldn't want to play it. The general idea of SoD works for me and that's enough, because the rest of gameplay is engaging. There's a war at hand, so there's a lot of bodies to take down. Good, let's do this. The different threads here on the forum that complain about how specifics points of the story are not working for them do not interest me. I respect their position, but I also largely don't care about that. SoD's general scheme works for me, because it resonates with the gameplay.
Would I recommend SoD to a gamer who's only turned on by complex and deep narratives ? Probably not, but I woudn't dissuade to play it him either. Would I recommend SoD to a gamer who mainly likes great gameplay ? Oh yeah.
SoD and Mods
As far as I can tell, SCS doesn't have much impact on the gameplay, except that it's suppose to implement the "Better call for help" bits. If so, that's good, but at the same time, SoD, doesn't really need SCS for difficulty. It stands alone nicely.
IR and SoD's interaction mainly works, but there are items that manage to get out of the rule changes implemented by IR. The Rhino Beetle plate doesn't have dex penalty and no physical resistance outside of missile. All plate armors have general damage resistances under IR. Also, the Commander's chainmail doesn't allow you to cast magic while wearing it. Instead of making it impossible to cast while wearing armor, IR implement either a penalty to casting time or a penalty to casting failure. Neither are present. Those inconsistencies are only seen on some special items, because the regular stuff is all correctly changed. Still, some work has to be done to have a seamless IR implementation in SoD.
Conclusion
To finish, all I can say is that SoD will now be part of all the playthrough I make of the BG saga. It's strength far outweighs it's weakness.
SoD has it's own identity, and it's clear : it's a war campaign. Ranged attacks rule BG1. AoE damage spells rule SoD. Wizard's chess rule SoA. Melee rule ToB. To me, SoD fits right in.
I believe they're vulnerable to blindness if you don't have SCS installed, and in the unmodded pre-EE game, non-ToB dragons were vulnerable to instant death effects.
All dragons but Abazigal are vulnerable to petrification.
Previous updates:
After nipping down to Nashkel and getting a LMD for Chimera as a Bhaal power (the monks will eventually get lay on hands, so healing is less important for them than many characters) they travelled up to Ulgoth's Beard. On the way they gave Tenya back her bowl, but attempted to pinch it back immediately. Their attacks successfully stunned her, but only after several of them had missed and she just survived.
Dushai was charmed at the first attempt and I didn't bother taking the time to avoid a reputation loss with him, but just drew him away from the villagers and clubbed him down.
Wraith successfully sneaked into the ankheg nest to loot their treasure and start reputation on an upward trend again. There was more use of stealth on those with distance attacks - Tarnesh for instance found himself the victim of a sneak attack (and unlike Tenya stunning was fatal).
Reputation rose steadily, including Melicamp being successfully restored. In the process of that Greywolf's death got everyone to level 4.
They did quite a bit of other work while going round seeking reputation. Probably my favorite encounter was with Borda. I saw someone posting today saying how monks had no special abilities in BG1. Here they are using stealth to sneak up on someone and stun them - despite the target's 100% magic resistance
They've done very little high value XP work, so are still only level 4. Missing out on Charleston Nib means reputation is only at 19, with no further possibility to increase that until they've done the Nashkel Mine - so they'll be heading there next.
Wraith - L4, 32 HPs, 74 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L4, 36 HPs, 41 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L4, 35 HPs, 51 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L4, 29 HPs, 66 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L4, 36 HPs, 55 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L4, 30 HPs, 65 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
I tend to be higher level when tackling the SCS kobold hordes in the Nashkel Mine, but the monks ability to stealth allowed them to deal with the kobold commandos pretty safely and no-one was badly hurt as they made their way down to Mulahey. With 5 of them stealth attacking him with stunning blows he needed some luck to survive - but didn't get it.
Outside I carefully sneaked up on the amazons - forgetting I was in my SCS installation and they weren't there
In Beregost I remembered to talk to Officer Vai - I often forget to do that until after going to the Bandit Camp (by which time it's too late). A sneak attack on Tranzig failed to stun him, but he was badly enough hurt for his morale to break - leaving him no chance to escape.
While doing some shopping the monks were ambushed by the amazons. I was tempted to fight there, but as the backstabbers played "now you see me, now you don't" I decided to protect my no deaths record to date and just ran for it.
Among the purchases made was magical ammunition for the sling and dart users and that allowed the wolf pack at the Beregost Temple to be shot down - getting everyone up to level 5.
They could have gone to the Bandit Camp next, but I decided they'd played fair long enough and should cash in some XP rich locations first to get another level. The basilisks were soloed by Wraith (who wears Meilum's bracers), with Korax surviving a couple of magic missiles in order to deal with Mutamin.
On the way to Durlag's Tower Molkar and friends tried their luck. A first use of the wand of heavens quickly sent the cleric on his way and using darts of stunning on Halacan was probably a bit of a waste after that - the others just got normal missiles.
The Bandit Camp will be next.
Wraith - L6, 46 HPs, 153 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L6, 51 HPs, 77 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L6, 49 HPs, 97 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L6, 42 HPs, 123 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L6, 52 HPs, 103 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L6, 41 HPs, 112 kills
Previous updates:
Update 1
Update 2
Update 3,
BG1 end
Update 4, SoA start
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7
Last time, we had just finished off Firkraag and gotten back into the good graces of the Paladins. As I said before, Planar Sphere is next. Clay golems still fail to force any rests.
Halflings are fought under Mass Invisibility and Chaos, and their mage went for Pro. Magic Weapons, and is thus susceptible to bolts, arrows, and darts of wounding. I even have Death Ward up, for the first time in forever!
And I don't rest like an idiot and face Lavok after all my buffs have worn out.
I don't have screenshots of all this fight: I remember that I fled out of a door to avoid a ADHW and then I just kinda waited around, healing while absorbing all spells, waiting until his frustrating PfMW to run out. Imoen didn't have more Breaches than he had PfMWs in contingencies, so every use means waiting 4 rounds of nothing. Eventually he runs out of spells, though, and dies.
Having learned my lesson, I buffed fully for Tolgerais. And then Alina takes the first shot:
Item Revisions turn the Kuotoa bolts to a Hold effect instead of a Stun effect, but that's irrelevant here. The second mage receives a similar fate.
The two elemental rooms are finished with relative ease, golems can't win with brute force, and we acquire two demon hearts just because we can, and we're soon safely off the Sphere. Instead of the Planar Prison, Baroque and company decide to save Imoen's soul. We run into a slight irritation in the Graveyard, as Sebastian is Charmed, so for the fights he'll have helm of charm protection, but thus no crit immunity. The first level of the lair is essentially just Alina running around invisibly with Turn Undead active, and the second level is relatively easy. Some mod adds Artemis Entreri, though he's killed by a nice backstab
A few seconds later, Drizzt deprives us of 90k experience.
Which is alright, I suppose, since Rogue Rebalancing gives us 35k apiece for essentially having a high Lore. One day I'll fight that Chosen of Cyric fight, but not this day.
Lichs are next. The Gatelich is my least favorite one, since you're just crammed in this awful corner. Baroque had SI:Necromancy up at some point, but that went down at some point to breaches and dispels. Regardless, it ran out of PfMW as well before we ran out of hitpoints, and we come out ahead.
Apparently I'm sidetracked incredibly easily. While heading for the Shade lich, we take out the Illithid Enclave first. I won the battle a first time with no casualties, then apparently didn't save. The second time, Mazzy died fighting the Alhoon but in the interests of keeping the experience the same as my first time and what I consider the true time, I CTRL-R'd her back in time for her to receive her part of the experience.
Shade lich, same tune and verse as the others: wait for PfMW to run out or use enough Breaches, and kill it.
And finally, the Elemental Lich. There was a tense moment as I had to get Baroque through a Sphere of Chaos zone to get out of Valygar's radius. Valygar managed to fail every single save there for his death, to a Spell Trigger Chain Lightning x3.
Out of serious firepower, though, and the last of Kangaxx's guardians fall.
For Kangaxx, the plan was pretty simple: I purchased a Protection From Magic scroll for Sebastian, swapped the Periapt of Life protection to Baroque and the Greenstone amulet to Sebastian, for immunity to Death effects and Fear respectively. Baroque also has boots which claim to grant Imprisonment, and a scroll case with Freedom inside if things go awry.
I encountered the bug where Kangaxx refuses to switch form: after googling, and confirming that this is indeed a bug, since no one's running Protection from Undead, I reload and kill him again. He's beaten fairly quickly both times, and as a demilich he seemed hellbent on trying to Imprison Sebastian, immune through the PfM scroll. Sebastian gets a shiny new ring.
Only a few loose ends to tie up, now. We return Yoshimo's heart, and then the Planar Prison, the last of the stronghold quests. We arrive invisibly, taking out the first bounty hunters before they have any chance to strike. We then all invisibly head to the Githyanki portal, taking them out before facing the Yuan-ti mage trio. They're not nearly as scary as in Spellhold, I found. Greater Command and Chaos disable them, and everything else is elementary. The Master of Thralls dies by our hand, and finally and anticlimactically, a Skeleton warrior kills the Warden off-screen.
Our success in the Sewers made me think that the Illithid city might not be so bad after all for this party. So we head back to the Underdark, use our scroll of Freedom, fight elementals, and invade a city. While going through, Baroque hits an important mark.
First HLA of the game! Our first one goes to Improved Skald's Song, increasing all bonuses to 5, immunity to stun, fear, and confusion, grants 10% physical damage resistance, and -10 AC to the singer, though hopefully that's not going to come into effect.
The Master Brain falls soon after, even after nailing us all with a massive Dispel. The Skald song's immunity to Stun simply counters too many of his abilities.
There's still the Beholder Hive, but I'm terrified of the Elder Orb, so I'm skipping it. Onto Suldanessellar! We slowly make our way across the city, and get ready to fight Nizi. In the end, I think we killed our final dragon in two rounds: Improved Haste on Mazzy and Sebastian, and a Breach from Imoen, gives us a very dead dragon.
Rillifane's avatar cleanses the temple for us, and we head for the Tree of Life.
Irenicus, part 1. We take him on without resting: if worst comes to worst, it's a gigantic map and I have summons, including a Deva from Imoen, her first HLA. He uses Absolute Immunity, which I have no counters for, but he has no way to stop Imoen from using a Wand of Cold to interrupt his spells. Irencus eventually breaks out a Protect From Magic Weapons after a double length Timestop from Wish. And he's no Lich, meaning I can actually break through with normal bolts and arrows of Mazzy and Alina. Eventually:
We do all the Good paths in Hell, and take on the final fight of SoA. We all head southwest immediately, dragging the Daemons along with us. The Balors are public enemy number 1, as their Vorpal is not something I want to risk, so we focus down those while Sebastian tanks: the Periapt of Life Protection is back on him, and so his immunity to Vorpal strikes is undispellable. Those fall first, and the first Glabrezu dies as well. We take the Slayer down to our position, and Imoen lands her two Breaches. It hasn't been the most impressive run, but this is the first time I've taken down Irenicus in a no-reload, so ToB is next on the horizon. I've played a bit further, but I'll end this here.
Diary of Æthelioba Continued
My party consists of Khalid (Ranger/Cleric) Jaheira (True Druid) Drake (Holy Justice of Tyr) Vynd (Assassin)Khalid read a tome that gave him a Holy Strategist of the Red Knight kit. This gives him a haste innate spell.
After meeting Tazok near the bandit camp, he learned not to underestimate us:
Dexter (Human Monk, Grond0); Grott (Dwarf Wizard Slayer, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/910915/#Comment_910915
Today's session started with sorting out our inventories and acquiring the Cloak of Balduran. With everything set we went to the Iron Throne where arrows of detonation and a bit of stair-jumping soon had the enemies in trouble and we finished them off having taken very limited damage.
In Candlekeep we played one of our little mini-games to see who was best at avoiding unnecessary conversations with talkative strangers. Gate70 won this time when Koveras got in Dexter's way and allowed Bendalis to get a word in.
Back in the City Slythe was pulled away from Krystin and quickly meleed to death.
We fought through the maze with one amusing incident where Dexter was initially unable to target a doom guard as Grott was standing on top of it. He did eventually move, though only by apparently deciding to headbut his way through a wall.
Sarevok was dispelled with Grott's first shot
In the SoD prologue dungeon Dexter sneaked through to convince Porios to surrender. A few fireballs and arrows of detonation dealt with most of the enemies on the way to Korlasz, but she proved surprisingly difficult. Despite a good to-hit chance Grott managed to miss her 6 times in a row with dispelling arrows - including a sequence of 3 successive critical misses. Someone posted about that sort of thing recently, so here's evidence that 8,000:1 odds do turn up
Dexter, Monk 8, 73 HPs, 205 kills
Grott, Wizard Slayer 8, 102 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 283 kills, 0 deaths
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
After stocking up on daggers once more at High Hedge, the monks got a lift to the Bandit Camp with Teven. Tazok required some convincing to give them the run of the place, but a few rounds of missiles did the trick and it wasn't long before Taurgosz was charmed and had a fatal encounter with some zombies.
They didn't do any further preparation, but sneaked into Tazok's tent and struck down Venkt before he realised he was under attack.
They opened hostilities outside by attacking the Blacktalons - successfully killing 4 of those before retreating.
In the first Cloakwood area I was intending to help Aldeth Sashenstar, but failed to do so. All of the monks but one have reasonable charisma, but Phantom doesn't (he's got high wisdom and intelligence in order to be able to identify the odd piece of equipment). He happened to be the only monk whose stealth had broken when they got to Aldeth and speaking with him turned Aldeth permanently grumpy (half a dozen attempts to charm him all bounced off magic resistance, so that didn't seem to be an option).
In the second area Chimera used the ring of free action to set off the traps, while sneaking into the nest to kill Centeol
I didn't clear all the guards while working down through the mine, so was keen to try and kill Davaeorn without resting if possible. The chance of that was greatly increased by successfully charming the guard near him.
After eventually sneaking back down they tried to let the guards congregating near the entrance go off to Davaeorn while they were still in stealth. The congested area made that difficult, but after several trips up and down they managed it and were able to spot the cluster of guards surrounding Davaeorn. Unfortunately, in spotting them I went further than I needed to (with the aim of getting a better screenshot
After a lot of effort to get down the mine a first death there due to a series of mistakes was disappointing and the other monks picked up the body and left to try again another day.
Wraith - L6, 46 HPs, 218 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L6, 51 HPs, 121 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L6, 49 HPs, 135 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L6, 42 HPs, 166 kills, 1 death
Spirit - L6, 52 HPs, 135 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L6, 41 HPs, 149 kills
Phantasmic 6 {65} - monks party (update 4)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911917/#Comment_911917
After a night's rest (for me) and considerably more (for the monks) they successfully sneaked down to find Davaeorn again. I was undecided on arrival how to handle the guards, but eventually plumped for a quick fix.
The monks flooded the mine, but dodged the slave for now. They then didn't rest until after slaughtering a couple of innocents in order to ensure that Chimera got horror as a Bhaal power.
While the clearance of the mine was safe enough I have a general tendency to take less care after suffering a casualty and that became clear at the Lighthouse. The monks were trying to rest until dark when they were ambushed by a couple of sirines. That shouldn't be a particularly difficult fight, but it does need careful management and Spook once more suffered when that wasn't provided.
The fight with the first 3 sirines can be more chancy if you don't take precautions and the odds looked good on at least one more casualty when 3 of the monks were charmed and 2 more feeble-minded.
Wraith did a good job there though in first distracting and then killing the final sirine, along with a nearby hobgoblin, while Chimera was fortunately not good at hitting the target until charm expired (he was too close to Spectre to be distracted away).
Sil's group only managed a single charm,
To get the final XP required they headed north up the coast. Playing run and shoot with the ogre clan and a few random spawns did the trick and they levelled up with a sigh of gratitude for finally being able to use lay on hands.
Cleaning up another couple of loose ends saw the Valley of the Tombs invaded. As usual Narcillicus' jellies were pulled away separately before a sneak assault on him. He did well to save against a first round of attacks, but his opening spell was disrupted by a LMD and he didn't get another chance.
The monks have just arrived in Baldur's Gate.
Wraith - L7, 53 HPs, 240 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L7, 58 HPs, 141 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L7, 53 HPs, 148 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L7, 50 HPs, 183 kills, 2 deaths
Spirit - L7, 60 HPs, 168 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L7, 51 HPs, 165 kills
Diary of Æthelioba
After shopping in Ulgoth's Beard for some scrolls, we passed through the ankheg area only to discover that they had ben multiplying!Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911917/#Comment_911917
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911956/#Comment_911956
In the City Ordulinian didn't initially seem interested in offering a reward for seeing off Arkion and Nemphre (he did much later at the end of the session though - I'm not sure what changed). They went to get the ogre gauntlets early in order to allow them to open most locked doors and quickly ticked off encounters. They also gave a bit of money to the temple before doing various quests, including reputation boosting ones. Everything went pretty smoothly - here's a few odd screenshots from that period.
I'd got reputation back to 18, before remembering that Drizzt's scimitars might be handy and going to collect those. I didn't bother with any buffing there, but just ran him round and waited for the criticals to add up.
With not that many reputation quests left, donating to the Temple was slightly more expensive this time, but soon reputation was back up to 20 allowing decent shop prices to be obtained. With only 126k gold the monks were greedy for a bit more though, so sought out Sunin to get another pricy trinket.
To make use of their new weapons they quickly cleared the Red Wizard of Thay area. One advantage of the wands of heavens is that they go over the top of globe protections - as the mages there found to their cost.
While back out in the wilderness the monks briefly stopped off at Gullykin to pick up another +1 sling. They also couldn't resist getting some revenge on Jenkal for the disappearing tricks he's been pulling on me recently.
The final wilderness target was Ulcaster. Having done that not long ago in LoB I expected the monks to kill the Wolf quickly - which they did. However, I thought it would use a dispel magic before a Howl of Terror - which it didn't. Only 2 of the monks were scared though and the others were able to block off the route to the worst trap until they recovered.
Next up will be a battle at the Iron Throne and then, hopefully, a trip to Candlekeep.
Wraith - L7, 53 HPs, 268 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L7, 58 HPs, 164 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L7, 53 HPs, 175 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L7, 50 HPs, 206 kills, 2 deaths
Spirit - L7, 60 HPs, 190 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L7, 51 HPs, 195 kills
Night in the Woods: Mae in Baldur's Gate
Part 7https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909103/#Comment_909103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909200/#Comment_909200
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909567/#Comment_909567
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909861/#Comment_909861
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911181/#Comment_911181
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911202/#Comment_911202
Time to finish off BG1. With the XP cap disabled, Mayday has learned Spell Immunity, and with the scroll scribing mod, she is able to create scrolls for Mae to scribe herself, allowing our Berserker/Mage and our Sorcerer to shrug off the likes of Remove Magic. Mae absorbs Cythandria's opening Remove Magic spell while Killer, our Bounty Hunter, maintains a safe distance. This allows us to tackle the golems (are they golems, or do they just use the golem animation?) without losing our buffs.
Note that I have guaranteed spell scribing success in my install, which is important since I can't use Potions of Genius or Mind Focusing due to my item restrictions.
Cythandria herself is not too much trouble. Witch Dagger, our Wizard Slayer/Druid, can shut down any visible mage using her darts. Once we've got three hits in, Cythandria is doomed.
Wizard Slayers are some of the most overpowered classes in the game with SCS installed, when pre-buffs make their spells so hard to disrupt and mages are prepared for Inquisitors. They're even more important in EE, when dealing damage through Stoneskin is still no guarantee of disruption.
Witch Dagger is also instrumental in taking down Kristin. Slythe has never been difficult for my parties on his own, and he's even easier when he forgets to equip a weapon when he attacks us.
Unfortunately, I foolishly have Killer focusing on dealing damage on Slythe instead of using Detect Illusions on Kristin so Witch Dagger can apply further spell failure. And while our Spell Thrust somehow fails, Kristin lands a Breach on our main character just as Enrage and SI: Abjuration wear off, costing Mae all of her buffs as well as her immunities.
We break through Kristin's defenses as she confuses Trash Mammal and Witch Dagger, but she escapes using a Potion of Invisibility, and against the odds, Killer fails to reveal her with Detect Illusions, because I haven't gotten her Detect Illusions skill up to 100 yet. We use Blindness to keep Witch Dagger from attacking any passersby.
It makes no difference. With spell failure crippling Kristin, we take her down and end the battle as soon as she appears.
The fight against the Ducal Palace doppelgangers is brief and uncomplicated. Killer sets a bunch of traps to the east, close enough to hit the doppelgangers when the fight begins, but far enough that Killer doesn't reveal herself to the dukes and trigger the fight before she's set all of her traps. Mae turns Liia Jannath invisible and the doppelgangers transform, suffering heavy damage on the first round.
We bought a bunch of Greater Malison and Chaos spells earlier, which allows us to disable the already-wounded doppelgangers. Sarevok goes after Belt, but a couple of Invisibility spells keep Belt at bay long enough for Sarevok to flee.
I skip the Undercity party; they have nothing to offer us.
We scribe a few last scrolls, reorganize our inventory and spellbooks, and confront Sarevok. We send out a Nishruu from a scroll from the Gullykin ogre fights and use the Necklace of Missiles to bomb the enemy. I've only used the Necklace of Missiles a single time in all my previous runs, so this otherwise commonly used item is acceptable under our item restrictions.
I notice that Semaj and Angelo appear to have no Fire Shields, so I have Witch Dagger launch an Insect Plague spell. I don't see any spell deflection/turning/trap effects on Semaj, but a PW: Kill scroll fails to affect him.
Apparently he has 62 HP at maximum, so PW: Kill is just barely too weak to kill him.
We lose control of Trash Mammal to a confusion or Chaos spell, but she targets Diarmid, a good choice regardless, and it seems that Insect Plague is working on Semaj if not Angelo (who apparently does come Fire Shield: Blue).
It's a good thing, because I only belatedly remember to cover Mae with SI: Abjuration. Semaj could have taken down all of her buffs if we had not shut down his spellcasting.
Witch Dagger summons a Fire Elemental and targets Angelo with darts, but has trouble landing hits due to Angelo's surprisingly strong AC. Sarevok and Tazok slay our Nishruu and turn their attention to Trash Mammal, who doesn't have the AC to stay safe for long. Mae uses Arrows of Ice on Diarmid, because Acid Arrows aren't allowed in this run.
Witch Dagger helps put down Diarmid, though ignoring Angelo allows him to keep firing Lightning Bolts at her.
Sarevok targets a Fire Elemental, but his +1 sword can't touch it. It buys us time to slay Tazok. Meanwhile, the mages remain active but spell failure prevents them from imposing much pressure on us.
Killer reveals Semaj, only for Semaj to vanish again. Witch Dagger switches her attention back to Angelo to keep him from casting spells and we apply some light pressure to the Skeleton Warriors.
Semaj keeps vanishing, but wanders into Killer's traps, which impose some lingering poison damage. Mae's Berserker immunities wear off, leaving her vulnerable for the next five rounds, so Trash Mammal, now free of confusion, uses Exaltation to give Mae some limited immunities.
With Diarmid and Tazok dead, Sarevok busy with our Fire Elemental, and both enemy mages unable to cast spells, it's just a matter of time before Sarevok's last allies collapse. Angelo dies to Darts of Acid from Witch Dagger; Semaj dies to lingering poison from Killer's traps.
We break apart the skeletons and soon Sarevok is alone, wasting his time attacking a Fire Elemental that has taken the place of my normal Wand of Monster Summoning charges. The fight is already won, so I start picking up the loot and find a ridiculous robe on Semaj or Angelo.
Only evil mages can use it, so it's useless to us at the moment, but it would be great for Edwin if we recruit him later.
With Sarevok busy, there's no need to engage him in melee. We put him down with missile weapons.
This is what the party looks like at the beginning of SoD.
Our party composition did a lot to compensate for our item restrictions. Berserker/Mages are nearly impossible to kill, Bounty Hunters are spectacular glass cannons, our sorcerer kept us safe from ambushes, and our Wizard Slayer/Druid broke the difficulty of nearly every mage fight in the game.
Siege of Dragonspear should not be too challenging, but I will need to plan carefully for the final fight. I don't know if I'll be able to get many decent items in BG2 (basically all vanilla items will be banned), so I want to smuggle as many BG1 items into BG2 as I can, which means I'll have to drop them in a container before tackling Belhifet. But I can't drop too many, or I might find myself facing Belhifet with too few resources to win.
Night in the Woods: Mae in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 8https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909103/#Comment_909103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909200/#Comment_909200
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909567/#Comment_909567
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909861/#Comment_909861
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911181/#Comment_911181
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911202/#Comment_911202
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912037/#Comment_912037
Siege of Dragonspear will be very short. I've already used basically all of the new SoD items (the good ones, anyway) and we're already over 300,000 XP for each party member, which means there is little reason for us to pursue many side quests. This will be a straight shot through the main quest.
No screenshots for Korlasz; a midlevel wizard is no challenge when we have Witch Dagger in the party. No screenshots for the second dungeon, either; we didn't bother entering. We recruit Viconia for the simple reason that we have a flail or morningstar that grants 3 APR and only Viconia can use it.
Morentherene killed Viconia and severely wounded half our party with her breath weapon, but she doesn't have the HP to stand up very long against a party with high damage output like ours.
Ziatar is a similar story, doing a surprising amount of poison damage but not having the defenses to follow up.
Mae doesn't usually take damage during fights, but she has a massive HP pool, which is very handy for situations like this.
We buff the party with Chaotic Commands and rush Darskhelin before he can kill anyone with INT drain. When he's gone, the rest of the enemies are little challenge; Jhan Redmoons, the only real threat, is vulnerable to Witch Dagger's spell failure.
No need to wrestle with the Shadow Aspect; we can't use the Fractal Blade anyway.
Time to tackle Bridgefort. Fun fact: you can set traps in the middle of the camp while the Crusaders are non-hostile. It makes a huge impact in the early rounds.
Viconia casts Holy Power so she can use her 3 APR flail to better effect and marches into the fray, since I figure she should be able to survive the handful of rounds it will take to break the first wave.
Unfortunately, the enemy lands some excellent attack rolls, and Viconia's HP pool is quite shallow. I have to bring her back in.
I send out Witch Dagger instead to deal with the enemy mage, and when Witch Dagger gets surrounded, I send in Mae, who stuns the Barghest, a very dangerous melee grunt, with Thunderslap.
With the enemy mage disabled and the rest of the Crusaders wounded, we push them back in short order. The Barghest survives, but since Thunderslap stuns for 6 seconds without a saving throw, bypassing magic resistance but not MGOI, we have little trouble holding him down until we're ready to mob him.
The battle on the bridge is simple; Witch Dagger can neutralize the mage using Darts of Acid.
I use the Spectacles of Spectacle to reveal Nazramu so I can cheaply recharge a wand or two and get some money to buy the last of the many cleric scrolls for sale in SoD. Otherwise, I skip the optional quests and reach the Underground River. I don't really need to do much here besides lay the Barrel of Bwoosh and fight Hephernaan, but I don't like the idea of leaving the place crawling with enemies considering I'll have to run all the way back out later. I even save Halatathlaer, because Witch Dagger can apply spell failure to the whole cabal of mages using Fire Seeds.
We still get blasted by a couple of spells, but Wizard Slayer spell failure leaves the enemy too weak to kill or disable anyone.
Viconia has not been doing as well as I'd hoped, so before we confront Hephernaan, I switch her out for Corwin once a few calculations show that Corwin will deal more damage to Belhifet considering her superior THAC0. Witch Dagger and Trash Mammal team up with some Fire Elementals to hold down Hephernaan and his fellow mages.
To the east, the rest of the party is holding off some less dangerous melee enemies. Since Hephernaan and his mage buddies might throw out Slow or Chaos, I prefer to minimize the number of party members in Hephernaan's room.
One last Fire Seed through a Sanctuary spell sends Hephernaan packing.
Back in the Coalition Camp, we have to hold off an invasion. Although we don't have the wands or Arrows of Detonation we normally would use for these fights, we do still have the Necklace of Missiles, Fire Seeds, Slow spells, and Bounty Hunter traps that let us break each encounter.
The final battle proves embarrassingly easy. Killer paralyzes three enemies with a Special Snare, Witch Dagger shuts down the mages with Fire Seeds, and the rest of the enemies crumple under heavy pressure.
Notice the Coalition Spies doing massive damage to the enemy using backstabs. I've never noticed that before, and I'm not sure why.
Next is Dragonspear Castle, but the only thing I'm really worried about is Belhifet. I think I'll need a lot of our current equipment to beat SoA, but every item I smuggle into BG2 is an item I can't bring to the final battle of SoD.
Night in the Woods: Mae in Siege of Dragonspear
Part 9https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909103/#Comment_909103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909200/#Comment_909200
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909567/#Comment_909567
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909861/#Comment_909861
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911181/#Comment_911181
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911202/#Comment_911202
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912037/#Comment_912037
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912042/#Comment_912042
Sieging Dragonspear Castle itself is very difficult without wands, but the Necklace of Missiles appears about as good as a Wand of Fire. In fact, it's better, because it bypasses MGOI.
We have tons of charges, so there's really no reason to hold back.
We win the first few waves by relying on the necklace and the coalition fighters. When more serious spellcasters show up, Witch Dagger wades into the fray to throw some Fire Seeds. But proves largely unnecessary, because Killer's Special Snares and the Necklace of Missiles break this fight, too.
I see no reason to fight Ashatiel alone. Why change the rules of the battle when you're already winning? We have one last major fight before the castle is ours, and the next group of enemies is rather tough, and also spread out, making area-effect options slightly weaker.
I use a Horrid Wilting scroll I found on the Gullykin ogres. It's a game-changer, to say the least.
We suffer a lot in the coming rounds as the surviving enemies get some lucky rolls, and Corwin has to flee because of blindness, but Killer--whom an enemy also foolishly blinded--evens things out using her traps.
When more enemies appear, we fall back and lure them across the last of our traps, leaving Ashatiel weak enough to finish off with missile weapons.
Before I enter Avernus, I carefully pick out which items we'll need for the final battle and put everything else in a chest that hopefully will keep everything safe until we return to it in BG2. This is what our party looks like right before the final battle when shorn of its normal items:
Notice the ridiculously high stack of darts and Fireseeds in Witch Dagger's inventory. I don't like inventory management or re-casting Fire Seeds, so I use the console to remove the need for it.
I buff gradually during the elevator ride, but misjudge the time gap, and Mae enters the battle with neither Enrage no SI: Abjuration active. She has to re-cast the latter and sit tight until she can re-activate the former.
As always, we focus on Hephernaan first, because I assume that he starts casting mage spells if you don't kill him fast. Witch Dagger will be tanking Belhifet due to her strong saves vs. death (very important consider Belhifet's poison and disease damage on hit), so she casts Entropy Shield from the IWDification mod to send her AC down to -13.
Corwin is able to use +3 arrows since I've only ever used those arrows on one or two occasions (aside from Item Revisions, but IR runs don't count for the purposes of our item restrictions), but we have multiple Enchanted Weapon scrolls, which means Belhifet is rather easy to harm.
Belhifet vanishes, Killer moves in to use Detect Illusions and reveal him, and we use a scroll to heal Caelar.
Belhifet teleports and turns invisible, but the invisibility is easily removed and the teleport effect acts in our favor because Belhifet has no ranged attacks and we do better in wars of attrition due to our potions and scrolls.
Corwin can probably win this fight largely on her own as long as you cast Enchanted Weapon on her and make sure she stays a safe distance from the enemies, but I use our scrolls to make sure we bring down Belhifet before he claims any lives.
In the end, my fears prove unfounded. As deadly as Belhifet is in melee, he is simply not equipped to handle an Archer with Enchanted Weapon active.
Victory! It wasn't that exciting, but the good news is that we can move on to BG2, where the fights will prove more challenging and I will have a whole slew of new mod quests to try out.
I notice that we emerge in the same area where we already stashed our previous items, which means depriving ourselves of those items when fighting Belhifet was unnecessary. I put all of our stuff in a single chest and hope that it will still be full when I come back in Shadows of Amn.
SP-11,
the best defense,things went smooth, kill a mage and rescue a whore to get into spellhold then trade wisdom to open a door and the wild mage for Imoen.
I remember most of my dirty tricks to lure guard into the trap... kill trolls without taking damage and fight my way to the daylight but as it turns out, the best defense is in fact defense and not offence... the battle was well in hand and I should have cloaked
@ussnorway Sorry about your demise.
The first part of Cloakwood was without major incident, but once again the dragon showed wiliness once more targetting weak party members who weren't even in range of sight. It did him no good however. He still died.Diary of Æthelioba
We then rescued Maretha and returned to tell the druids who were back where we met Aldeth.
I would have chosen proficiency points differently if I had known about this!! I have bought the +3 staff for Jaheira. Dynaheir will just have to stay out of melee combat.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911917/#Comment_911917
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911956/#Comment_911956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912000/#Comment_912000
Arriving at the Iron Throne I was concerned about the SCS backstabbers there, so started proceedings with a full round of fireballs. That killed all 4 of the casters, but only one of the invisible enemies. So the monks nipped back down, re-stealthed and did a follow-up salvo with the 3 necklaces. That left only Gardush alive and he got a more traditional monk greeting.
Arriving at Candlekeep they didn't use any protections against the ogre magi, but just immediately scattered to reduce the impact of any area spells. Phantom was held early on, but a couple of rounds of wand blasts soon turned the tide and no-one was badly hurt.
The Iron Throne leaders also felt the heat before the monks moved down to the catacombs.
After finishing off the remaining spiders and basilisks, the monks returned to the City to sort out their inventory. Chimera took the strength tome (as he could then reach higher values for opening things using DUHM), while Phantom used the wisdom one to reach the dizzy heights of 39 for lore - 40 when they get their final level).
The monks saved Duke Eltan
At the palace they took the precaution of charming the doppleganger mage along with a number of Flaming Fists. The cleric was burnt down immediately and, though the assassin got a couple of backstabs in, the others were finished off with Belt almost untouched. Eventually the mage recovered and buffed up - but not with anything that could fend off darts of stunning.
After fighting through the maze they killed the undercity party and the nearby skeleton warriors by pulling targets away and mobbing them in stealth attacks.
In the temple Sarevok was as usual dumped in a corner with the help of an invisibility potion. Angelo was drawn out of hiding by being offered a target and managed to confuse Spectre, but the others burnt him down.
Wraith - L8, 58 HPs, 307 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L8, 67 HPs, 186 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L8, 62 HPs, 188 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L8, 55 HPs, 218 kills, 2 deaths
Spirit - L8, 70 HPs, 196 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L8, 55 HPs, 224 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911917/#Comment_911917
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911956/#Comment_911956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912000/#Comment_912000
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912140/#Comment_912140
After being transported to SoD the monks quickly persuaded Porios to surrender without a fight. There was an immediate problem down below though when they attempted to all stealth together to attack the Shadowed Soul. Phantom's stealth broke at the wrong time and a hail of missiles prevented him from running back to safety (I thought that seemed unlucky and checking back in the text Phantom was hit 6 times from 8 shots with the skeleton archers requiring a 16).
After paying up to the Flaming Fist healer there were no more problems in the dungeon. Phantom's stealth did actually break again just as the attack on Korlasz was about to start - but there was not enough time for the mage to react before he was stunned.
In the City they foiled a break-in at Sorcerous Sundries, but missed out on a reward there as apparently if you don't say what you've done at the first opportunity you don't get another one.
After marching to the Coast Way Crossing there was a bit more sorting out inventory with new bags purchased (still got far too many potions to fit in 3 cases though
Back at the Coast Way Crossing I presented Takos with his heirlooms. I don't think I've done that before, but the returning acid dart gained was certainly a good reward for this party. I saved the game there, but on restarting some time later forgot where I was and walked close enough to the bridge to activate the scripted combat. Despite being unprepared the wand of heavens proved their worth once more - the last of the opposition dying just before Caelar called a parley - though a critical hit for 44 damage on one of the monks there was a reminder of their vulnerability in melee.
With XP still being pretty low the monks explored the whole external area, including stunning Teleria.
Even with all the XP from the undead the monks are still a long way off another level, so will continue to take on all comers next time.
Wraith - L8, 58 HPs, 356 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L8, 67 HPs, 235 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L8, 62 HPs, 211 kills, 1 death
Spook - L8, 55 HPs, 266 kills, 2 deaths
Spirit - L8, 70 HPs, 231 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L8, 65 HPs (incl. 10 from bracers), 281 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911917/#Comment_911917
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911956/#Comment_911956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912000/#Comment_912000
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912140/#Comment_912140
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912264/#Comment_912264
Arriving at Troll Claw Woods, just for a change, I resolved the Irregulars quest peacefully. The area was cleared - mainly using just weapons, but fireballs aborted a mass troll charge in the cave.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms they hit an ambush area with more trolls. The ones in the upper cave were just beaten up, but the gathering in the lower cave had a couple of fireballs thrown in to discourage the opposition at the start - the Firefly sling providing a nice reward there.
Heading into another cave the monks smelled dragon and everyone threw a dagger at it. Spook hit, but as typically happens with me the dragon had already awoken and 3 of the party were suddenly running scared.
Stealth attacks allowed them to get past the bugbears reasonably easily. Snorgash, rather amusingly, wasted time playing hide and seek with the monks and was scared by Chimera's Bhaal horror after his berserk rage wore off.
The Neothelid took a while to show itself, but once it did so was taken to near death by wand blasts and immediately beaten up.
Chimera used a strength potion in order to be able to get at the Fractal Blade. Then the monks opened hostilities against Darskhelin with a few fireballs. However, they failed to kill anything and immediately retreated. Darskhelin followed and they tried to kill him quickly with a group stealth attack, but Spirit was stunned by a psionic blast - causing Darskhelin to immediately switch his attack to her and complete sucking her brains out a second or two before he fell.
After using a raise dead scroll, Spirit put on the regeneration ioun stone to get her HPs back before going in search of Darskhelin's companions - they were individually isolated and soon finished off with stealth attacks.
There was another cave in the area to explore and some spiders there soon got the last of the monks the XP needed for level 9.
When the monks finally took their levels final HPs were reasonable. Chimera has the lowest total at 60 (ignoring the 10 additional from his bracers), which is just under the theoretical average die roll of 62. They celebrated their levels by using their new +1 fists to crush a wraith spider and various companions. There was then just time for a rhinoceros beetle to get stuck in a passage before the monks left.
Wraith - L9, 67 HPs, 417 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L9, 75 HPs, 311 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L9, 68 HPs, 238 kills, 1 death
Spook - L9, 63 HPs, 285 kills, 2 deaths
Spirit - L9, 79 HPs, 258 kills, 1 death
Chimera - L9, 70 HPs (incl. 10 from bracers), 316 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911664/#Comment_911664
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911917/#Comment_911917
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911956/#Comment_911956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912000/#Comment_912000
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912140/#Comment_912140
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912264/#Comment_912264
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912285/#Comment_912285
Arriving at Boareskyr Bridge the monks as usual cleaned up the exterior area - the only notable point there was using wands of sleep for the first time in the run to avoid the hassle of dealing with large groups of hobgoblins and goblins.
Inside Bridgefort the monks smacked down a Dark Wraith in order to be able to forge some +3 sling bullets. Wraith was level drained after exposing an undead cult in the temple and the local cleric couldn't cure that, so they went back to camp to find Mizhena and set up for a joint assault on the crusaders.
Journeying back to the bridge they came across a hole in the ground sheltering some myconids. The first group of those went down easily enough to stunning blows and I was thinking the same would happen to the next. However, the monks now had 3 stunning blows at level 9 and I hadn't previously realised that after using 2 of those the special abilities order would switch such that F12/F1 would select lay on hands instead. That made the fight more exciting than otherwise, but despite 1 feeblemind and 4 confusions they triumphed.
Arriving with the Flaming Fist the monks led the attack from the rear. They switched from ranged weapons to wands to burn down the Barghest and the Crusader mages and actually managed to come to Khalid's aid in time to save a number of the Bridgefort defenders. They saved the bridge from destruction and beat up a well spirit using +2/+3 weapons before moving on to the Coalition Camp.
At the Camp they used the Spectacles of Spectacle to summon Nazramu who had some nice equipment for them. I don't really know the quests in the camp, but as this wasn't a completionist run I didn't bother looking for things to do there. Instead the monks headed straight for Dead Mans Pass. They cleared a few groups of enemies there before trouble struck with a capital T. While being chased by a group of ogres and displacer beasts I couldn't be bothered to control every character individually, but just used move all. The problem with that in the EE is that it makes it much more likely that your sprite will get hung up on an obstruction, so you really need to keep a close eye on things. I didn't do that either though and when Chimera didn't appear with the rest of the group on schedule I paused the game and looked back to find that he was stuck and being attacked by a couple of ogres - and down to 18 HPs. I expected that to be a minor blip given that he was carrying huge numbers of invisibility potions and he clicked to take one of those. Taking a potion is not instant so it's quite possible to be hit after clicking to take a potion, but there was a perceptible delay after coming out of inventory and unpausing the game before Chimera died. I don't think there was anything there which could see through invisible, so my suspicion is that the click to drink the potion didn't register properly ...
Dexter (Human Monk, Grond0); Grott (Dwarf Wizard Slayer, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/910915/#Comment_910915
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911842/#Comment_911842
So, having gone through much of SoD in the wee small hours this morning with a party of monks, you might have thought that playing it again with a monk protagonist would be a piece of cake - or you might have realised it was me playing it
The early stages went well enough with Tsolak being helped on his way in return for a regeneration ioun stone.
Grott's love affair with detonation arrows continued in the next area. A trash mob of hobgoblins shouldn't have been much threat, but they were nuked anyway - the exploding wave-front just failing to hit the duo as well.
An ambush area with some myconids did provide a real potential threat. In SoD enemies will target any visible characters rather than concentrating on the nearest, so not using buffing is far more risky. While dealing with the first group both Dexter and Grott were confused, but fortunately ran away from each other.
Moving into the Forest of Wyrms both Grott and Dexter were poisoned in separate incidents, but use of Bhaal slow poison and an area transition provided cures. Grott then asked Dexter if he had throwing daggers ready for the dragon and Dexter replied he would do as soon as Grott supplied them. Realising there was a slight inventory hitch the duo agreed to sneak past the dragon into the Temple
Snogrash and his bugbear chums were cut down on the way in and all the cultist guard forces died before Ziatar could call them to her defense. As so often she was able to cast sanctuary while at near death and did some healing up before resuming combat - but not enough.
The Neothelid took a little while to surface, but failed to make any of its spells count and died soon after it appeared.
The Shadow Aspect found Grott in full plate a much harder target to hit than unarmored monks and a chunky critical took him down.
For Darskhelin Grott tried using detonation arrows, but could only manage to kill the mage before the illithid got into melee range. Dexter might have been able to help, but he had once more not buffed and this time that resulted in him being stunned.