Since we were nearby we decided to investigate the Section HQ in Beregost. We eliminated them all except for the Ashirukuru who we know can be deadly. Therefore, whenever we sensed their presence, Dynaheir made us invisible. Lillian Darkwater using invisibility almost managed to kill Dynaheir. "Almost" was not sufficient to stop us. However the spell "Chaos" was almost enough to do so. Only Dynaheir was unaffected by it. Vynd was killed as a result of wandering into the enemy due to the spell. We had to rest so that Jaheira could use "Harper's Call." We collected so many arrows +1 and +2 that we actually began to start using them!!!
Larswood wasn't difficult at this stage. Osmandi and then Corsone were both prevented to cast anything (Web + constant attacks of 6 party members and 2 spirit animals).
Groups of Blacktalon Elite in Peldvale provided a good training before the Bandit Camp. With SCS and APR from the LoB these enemies are brutal, firing arrows after arrows. Usually not less than 4 close to simultaneous Webs and 4 summons were needed for each group of them (with 4 or 5 mercenaries in each).
The party had to rest often (only as close to the area border as possible), and bandit ambushes forced the party to travel often. This is why I decided to take Invisibility, 10 Radius as the first 3rd level spell for my sorcerer, - at least now the party could rest and travel safely (I expect it will be very useful later in the last Cloakwood area, in SoD and in SoA, of course).
Both Larswood and Peldvale were cleared, but I thought the party still needed some experience for additional spells before the Bandit Camp, so the Spiders Wood was next.
There, I learned that Giant Spiders with SCS (in vanilla it's different) did only nonlethal damage on hit, so when Cochrane was held by these spiders, he couldn't die (other spiders were blinded, of course). A Wraith Spider was killed by a series of backstabs.
I left Red Wizards for the future, and this let me remember about 2 mustard jellies I kept alive last time in the Valley of the Tombs. 4 summons kept distracting the jellies while Uzume was completing one backstab after another. Glod attacked the jellies with a two-handed sword - its reach let him stay safe behind the summons (one of the reasons why two-handed weapons may be a good choice on the LoB). The group got 4 000 XP, and now everyone in the party reached 40 000 XP.
Now, the Bandit Camp. In my previous playthroughs on the LoB (with SCS) I usually just took the letters from the chest and left the camp as fighting the whole army of bandits coming at you at once with their high HPs seemed to be not the best idea for a low-level party. But this time I thought there could be a good chance of succeeding. This is what the party had:
21 Blindness (12 on Jagen, 5 on Glod, 4 on Dazbog) 10 Web (5, 3 and 2) 12 charges of the Wand of Fire 10 charges of the Necklace of Missiles 17 charges of the Wand of Fear 6 charges of the Wand of Monster Summoning 10 charges of the Wand of Paralysis 2 Spirit Animals 2 Animate Dead 2 Protection from Fire (3rd level on Glod) 3 Summon Woodland Beings 2 Hold Person 2 Silence 80 Arrows of Biting 40 Bolts of Biting 20 Darts of Wounding
I know usually people attack the Bandit camp from the South-East corner, but I always prefer to to start attacking from this place:
SCS makes enemies start searching for alternative routes to the party if the area is webbed, but this place nearly always leaves only one direction from where they can come attacking.
So, I summoned one Spirit Animal (I prefer the bear, as it has the biggest amount of HPs, and on the LoB any last HP counts) and casted Protection from Fire on it. Other summons were ordered not to move anywhere. As soon as the bear started to melee first bandits, 2 Webs were casted in that direction, followed by numerous charges of both the Wand of Fire and the Necklace of Missiles. Of course, the LoB makes these fireballs less effective, but when it's the 5th or the 6th fireball, even the LoB Blacktalon Elite won't survive. The bear was immune to Web and resistant to Fire, so the start was positive.
Remember how I said that place *nearly* always leaves only one direction for the enemies. Well, sometimes they still can reach you from the East, - this time it almost costed Cochrane his life, but he survived with 3 HPs left, and I sent 3 other summons to the enemy (it was, of course, the Blacktalon Elite).
Soon I saw spells flying in the direction of my Fire Bear, which meant Venkt the mage reached the battlefield, so I tried Silence. It didn't work against Venkt (I still didn't see him). Meanwhile, the East group started to get an upper hand on my summons.
Anyway, the party spotted Venkt, so he required all the attention possible: another Web, the Wand of Fear, Silence. He couldn't resist against 3 or 4 Webs in the area.
He saved against Silence, though, but immediately got poisoned (not surprising, considering 3 sources of potential poison: arrows, bolts and darts. The Fire Bear was still alive (with little HP, but the main thing it was alive). I also saw "Nymph: Poison", - which meant the last of my eastern summons was going to die fast.
Venkt failed against Command, and Dazbog used the Wand of Monster Summoning to distract eastern enemies. Very soon Venkt was dead, and thus the main threat of the whole Bandit Camp encounter was over.
For extra safety, the nearest enemies were blinded (as there were no new Webs left), while new summons from the Wand helped to overcome the rest.
It was hard to believe, but the battle was soon won. There're only 3 charges of the Necklace of Missiles left, and only 5 charges are left in the Wand of Fire.
Here’re the current standings (102 days and 23 hours): Jagen, sorcerer, lvl 6, 32 HPs, 34 kills, Greater Basilisk (4% in the group) Glod, fighter/illusionist, lvl 5/5, 38 HPs, 200 kills, Revenant (27% in the group), 0 deaths Uzume, fighter/thief, lvl 5/6, 45 HPs, 186 kills, Greater Basilisk (25% in the group), 0 deaths Cochrane, archer, lvl 6, 51 HPs, 226 kills, Vampiric Wolf (31% in the group), 0 deaths Sigyn, totemic druid, lvl 7, 51 HPs, 43 kills, Polar Bear (5% in the group), 0 deaths Dazbog, cleric/mage, lvl 5/5, 22 HPs, 39 kills, Lesser Basilisk (5% in the group), 4 deaths (2 by a kobold commando; 1 - Shoal; 1 - Mulahey)
FYI - I accidentally put this post in the wrong thread - now it's where it's supposed to be.
Trio Update (Corey_Russell, Grond0, Gate70) Corthief XIV the elven thief(protagonist, controlled by Corey_Russell) Berk the dwarven berserker (controlled by Grond0) Stinkimo dwarven defender (controlled by Gate70)
The party did some misc. quests before working on the main quest:
1) The helm of balduran was obtained. We battled the mountain maulers and did pretty well. Corthief XIV managed to lay a snare, despite bad skill, and then he disrupted the casters with his bow. 2) Degrodel and his minions were battled. We pulled piece-meal, with Corthief XIV doing backstabs to speed up the kills. This went well. 3) We of course talked to Vai and then got the cloak of balduran a little later. 4) We were finally able to turn in the body of the boy we have been lugging around for a while. The shield went to stinkimo, since Berk usually uses the Spider's Bane. 5) The ogre mage and his crawlers were eliminated. Corthief XIV used a dispelling arrow to rid of the ogre mage of his mirrors. The ogre mage responded with confusion, making Corthief XIV wander around. Fortunately, Corthief XIV managed to not walk into enemies. 6) We then took down the dopplegangers at the Seven Suns without difficulty. 7) We decided to take down the Iron Throne. The dwarves used their special abilities and did well with that. Corthief XIV tried a backstab but Gardush pursued. Corthief XIV then spent the entire battle hiding in the shadows, backstab, run and repeat on Gardush. He was still at it when the dwarves had victory upstairs. 8) We then went to Candlekeep. Corthief used a dispelling arrow on the greater doppeganger - but right afterwards the doppleganger used haste and Corthief XIV couldn't get away and had to use a invis potion. 9) Prat did not do well when the party attacked from all angles. He was also stunned, which was quite helpful to the battle. The basilisks were taken down with a protection from petrification green scroll. 10) Slythe didn't do well, being dispelled and all. Krystin decided not to appear. 11) We used potions to help make sure we won the duchal palace fight - this worked. However, Corthief XIV nearly died, and only survived thanks to a invis potion. 12) The maze went pretty well, with Corthief XIV using backstabs when practical, including on the skeleton warriors with the help of a green scroll vs. undead. 13) We decided the undercity party was not worth the trouble - on the other hand, since the green scroll was still active, the dwarves waited patiently until Corthief XIV was done killing the 4 skeleton warriors - which went slow with his 1 APR. 14) Sarevok battle went OK, with the dwarves taking a beating, but not dying. An attack from the shadows finished off Sarevok. 15) Gate70 helped Corey_Russell load up an prepare for our next session next week.
I really wanted to play bg, but I have a forced holiday. I have been having it already for a bit over a week. No games from me for a bit until I get better.
But for sure I will find time to keep up to date with all your awesomeness people!
We arrive in BG2 with massive fatigue across the board for some reason. It really complicates melee-heavy Chateau Irenicus.
We have to resort to spell damage and the stun from Thunderslap to land hits. We rest before the mephit room, which things a lot less messy.
Haiass greets us outside, but since I'm tired of him winning fights for us like he did in previous runs, I tell him to wait for us elsewhere so he won't follow us around.
It's time to see if we can still recover the items we stashed in Dragonspear Castle. It's important because my item restrictions ban practically every nonmagical item in SoA and ToB, and nonmagical items in EET are not too reliable.
It takes six days and eight hours to reach the castle, but when we finally arrive, both of our item stashes are there.
We're back in business! It's a good thing, too. Without them BG2 would basically be a poverty run considering how many times I've played through it. We've suddenly become filthy rich, but there are only two items that we might buy besides mage scrolls: the Axe of Hrothgar, which is only useful because Fighter/Clerics like Trash Mammal can use axes in my install (so Yeslick can use them), and a necklace that grants immunity to level drain.
All this leaves us with the question of what to do. Side quests will net us basically no useful items and we already have a fair amount of XP. Rather than waste time hunting down items we don't want, I stop by a mod-introduced district of Athkatla. The place is rather boring, almost completely empty.
But I do see one ominous sign.
I decide not to tempt fate and leave.
But when I see absolutely nothing else of interest in the entire area, I decide to try my luck.
I regret it the moment I get there.
Then I decide to attack, thinking we're sufficiently buffed to handle threat. Two Flesh to Stone rays disabuse me of this notion and I hurry downstairs to cast some Protection from Petrification spells before tackling the beholders. They don't last long; beholders have terrible defenses.
But to my deep displeasure, the reward is atrocious...
...and the idiot gnome downstairs tells us that we just murdered his brother.
Totally your fault, dude.
I don't think I'll be doing many vanilla quests in this run. The items are useless, the XP isn't worth the time, and many Chapter 2 fights just aren't that interesting with a party that's already almost strong enough for Spellhold.
Though that's mostly Killer's doing. Even with mod items, Bounty Hunters are absolute monsters.
There's a mod NPC named Jadarath here in the sewers who asks you to deliver a whole bunch of potions, but he also apparently takes a point of CON from whoever's speaking to him when he gives you your reward.
It's an awesome belt, but Witch Dagger really needed that point of CON. Fighters need 17 WIS and CHA to dual-class to druid, so Witch Dagger only has 7 CON, which means her new 6 CON imposes a penalty--a penalty that's pretty hard to bear when you already have so little HP.
Funny enough, Witch Dagger can't even use the belt due to being a Wizard Slayer.
I go out in search of mod-introduced areas. I find more orc mages, who have ceased to be interesting with Witch Dagger's massive anti-mage abilities, as well as the first troglodytes to appear in an IE game.
I have no idea what this area is or what quest I'm completing, but it's mostly just hordes of orcs and trolls. One fellow apparently took a bite out of one of them, but we cure his stomachache with a potentially fatal fire spell that Mae didn't even have memorized.
The area itself is basically just a copy of Firkraag's dungeon, and for some reason, virtually every mod item in the dungeon is flagged to be unmoveable.
I'll fix it with Near Infinity or EEKeeper.
Finally I spot the boss! I do some scouting and discover he has allies. Looks nasty.
The enemy removes our invisibility, but we hide out of their field of vision.
But then, to my amazement and frustration, the enemy mage teleports to the party despite the fact that only Killer is within their field of vision... and triggers a Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency right on top of us.
SCS has a lot of Chain Contingencies like this, but they never use Dimension Door to land on you with them.
I don't like how this is going.
Laras somehow loses or wastes a Time Stop spell, but the next round is no better for us.
Finally, Witch Dagger gets some hits in on the mage, Laras. His fate is nearly sealed.
He gets a single Chromatic Orb off the ground, and his fellows prove ineffectual. Despite that devastating first round, the enemy needs more than one cheap trick to win the fight. We crush them one by one.
We save some guy from a cage, rescue his girlfriend from some orcs... none of it is particularly interesting or dangerous, nor is the loot noteworthy.
The next area is little different. The quests aren't terribly complicated.
Notice the bizarre scenery. I don't know what the bug is, but it's common to a lot of mod areas.
Unable to find any interesting mod stuff to do, I head to the Umar Hills in search of vanilla content. We can't use Sunstone Bullets for an instant kill on the altar, but at level 12, the Shade Lord can be rendered perfectly vulnerable with a single Pierce Magic and Breach spell, and Witch Dagger's Fire Seeds hold him down until then.
I'm a little bored and decide to test out the Sorcerer's Staff on Thaxll'ssillyia. Yep, the only dragon immune to petrification is Abazigal.
I could do the basilisk XP loop on Thaxll'ssillyia by creating blue Stone to Flesh scrolls, but meh. We don't really need the XP.
I've played quite a bit with a sorcerer in LoB and a certain amount with a stats challenged wild mage. I thought I'd combine those ideas with Wimper. To give him something extra to worry about he won't be allowed to pay for any items, spells or identifies and I'm also forbidding the use of Algernon's Cloak or fighting by a familiar as they would otherwise be rather too obvious options.
XP in this run won't be easy to come by, particularly at first, so Wimp did the fetch and carry quests in Candlekeep before leaving. In the first area it took 2 magic missiles to kill Xzar - Wimp relying on L1 protection to survive a LMD in return.
Moving on to Beregost he calmed down Marl and helped Firebead. Then it was up to the FAI to get the Ring of Wizardry. Further north he cornered Sonner, blinded him and beat him up with fists (which took a while with only 1 damage per successful hit) before a magic missile got the kill. His bowl was then returned to Tenya to get a first level.
Mr Colquetle got his amulet back and Noober had a nice chat (all the travelling being done by day to avoid lethal ambushes) on the way to the Carnival. A magic missile made Vitiare run and, once he was blinded, he could also be shown the fist while I read a couple of chapters of my book. A rather quicker XP haul was provided by Brage and accompanying him back to Nashkel got Wimper to level 3. With future XP looking so hard to obtain he took protection from petrification as his next spell there.
At the basilisk area Korax did almost all the work of killing 4 basilisks to get Wimper to level 4 and provide the ability to go invisible. Korax got one more basilisk to near death in the south, but then turned hostile.
Wimper disappeared and rested, but after a bit of experimenting decided he wasn't up to killing any basilisks on his own.
Next he travelled to find Samuel and took him back to the FAI (using the quickloot button to be able to move him even though he couldn't carry him). Coming out of inn after selling the potions gained there was a near death experience when I forgot that Tarnesh would be waiting. His mirrors went up by script so I was only just able to go invisible before being slept. Tarnesh completing that spell was not unreasonable, but it certainly was unreasonable when he followed up with a melee attack - fortunately though he realised he couldn't see what he was attacking just before a second attack would have been due and he didn't have a detect invisibility spell available.
After looting the ankheg nest using invisibility
Wimper used the same laborious movement routine to reunite Farmer Brun with his son's body before going back to the FAI. He didn't have the firepower yet to kill a hobgoblin in one go, but resting near it prevented it from healing and allowed him to finish it off and give Joia back her ring.
Note that in LoB enemies normally get 100 HP back when you rest nearby (and Wimp couldn't do that much with his current spells). However, the 100 HP addition is scripted and only occurs when the creature is doing nothing else. If you can rest nearby and get back into sight almost immediately after resting so that it's attacking you there's a chance that the additional HPs won't get added back. Some creatures have SCS follow-me scripts that cause them to attack an enemy once seen anywhere on the map whether they can see it or not - if you're resting out of sight of a blinded enemy with that script that means they will move into sight of you and attack pretty much instantly after you've rested. However, it's also necessary that the enemy doesn't run around when blinded for that to work - and many of them do. This is therefore not a simple tactic to make use of.
In the Cloudpeaks Wimper reunited Albert with Rufie and convinced Drienne to hand over the last of her allowance to revive her cat. Running out of fetch quests to do he tried without success wearing down a number of enemies with partial damage and resting, before eventually managing that against the gnolls at High Hedge - that allowed him to return Perdue's sword.
He did the same to the wolf near Melicamp before trying his luck against a skeleton in High Hedge. That almost killed him while trying to wear it down a bit with his fists (the almost minimum damage taking Wimper down to 1 HP for the third time in the run), but he was eventually able to take its head after emptying Imoen's magic missile wand at it.
After all that risk and hard work I thought it would be a real pain if Melicamp failed to survive - and I was right: it was a real pain . Edit: looking again at that screenshot where the skeleton hit him Wimper has benefited from level 1 protection - even though he's no longer level 1. Possibly the protection applies irrespective of level if HPs are low enough?
Using magic missiles and the daggers taken from the skeleton at High Hedge Wimper was able to draw away the xvarts attacking Arabelle individually and kill those (blinding each of them and resting while they were partially injured). He then spent quite a long time trying to kill Meilum, but despite being close a couple of times he couldn't prevent his HPs regenerating regularly and eventually gave up - and at that point I decided it was time to take a break. Sorcerer L4, 5 HPs, 21 kills
At the Valley of the Tombs Wimper pulled the ghasts out of their tomb and blinded them before using the damage, rest, damage technique to kill them. While not exactly straight-forward that was still a good XP haul for much less effort than his recent targets. He picked up the wand of monster summoning, though as he can't buy any more wands, will be trying not to use that unless really essential (and at the moment he can't identify it anyway).
That put Wimper close to level 5 and one of Mirianne's ogrillons tipped him over. He took identify and ghoul touch there before heading back to the basilisk area. A few attempts finally saw the back of Korax and several rests later he managed to get the big prize of a greater basilisk. He'd tried ghoul touch on that basilisk and hit it once, but without paralyzing it, but he went one better when attacking a lesser basilisk.
Even dual-wielding though he does so little damage that even after being paralyzed three times it was still only badly wounded. The extra damage there though did mean the basilisk was killed after just a single rest.
With all the basilisks except Mutamin's special pets dead, Wimper left the area and went to Durlag's Tower. He had no way initially to safely get past the trap for more basilisks, but did use the standard tactics of blinding, damaging, resting, killing on all the ghasts - nearly the last of those getting him up to level 6.
He took minor spell deflection there, which allowed him to access the basilisks on the roof. Their calls for help meant there was lots of running round there, but Wimper had killed one and had a second one on its last legs when a tiny error proved costly. He went too close to one of the small piles of stones on the floor and that resulted in pathfinding moving him just close enough to one of the basilisks to get an attack in.
Tough luck @Grond0 - but that run seemed like setting up yourself for failure: solo, LoB, basic stats, no healing potions/antidotes, and some kind of store restriction? Good thing the journey is more important and enjoyable than the end result for you. Not all no-reloaders could do such a run (I know I couldn't). Kudos to ya though for at least giving it the old college try.
Tough luck @Grond0 - but that run seemed like setting up yourself for failure: solo, LoB, basic stats, no healing potions/antidotes, and some kind of store restriction?
Doing any no-reload run is setting yourself up for failure.
Tough luck @Grond0 - but that run seemed like setting up yourself for failure: solo, LoB, basic stats, no healing potions/antidotes, and some kind of store restriction?
Doing any no-reload run is setting yourself up for failure.
Yes, but doing no-reload where the only other restriction is Core Rules is much more attainable than what Grond0 was attempting. My point was no-reload from Candlekeep to Throne of Bhaal (which is what Grond0 and I always do) is plenty difficult - for me, it would be quite unnecessary to make it more so, since my trilogy successes are at best about 5% of all my runs. But I understand for Grond0, the journey is more important than the destination. So if these crazy restrictions make the journey more enjoyable for him, more power to him I guess.
This no-reload is nuts. I've tried again twice since my last post and got killed by Tarnesh and then on the transition to the Friendly Arm map by that unfair ring of bandit archers I was complaining about in another thread. Mind you, I'm not even using SCS or LOB, and I'm allowing myself munchkin stats. It's nuts, I tells ya! I'd complain even more but I have to go roll another character for my next try.
It's a common tactic to avoid the Friendly Arm Inn for awhile for no-reloaders: Tarnesh is one of the more deadly foes at low levels outside of a few classes (Three Commands from a Cleric, and Tarnesh is guaranteed dead without a spell, IIRC)
Still rolling through ToB, I'll get an update out soon.
@lunar has helped me discover that the mod quest in my last post came from the Darkest Day. The area is called Trollford. As for the gnome whose brother disguised himself as two Death Tyrants, that's from Fishing for Trouble.
This no-reload is nuts. I've tried again twice since my last post and got killed by Tarnesh and then on the transition to the Friendly Arm map by that unfair ring of bandit archers I was complaining about in another thread. Mind you, I'm not even using SCS or LOB, and I'm allowing myself munchkin stats. It's nuts, I tells ya! I'd complain even more but I have to go roll another character for my next try.
That ambush is why most experienced no-reloaders will go High Hedge > Beregost and then either get more experience/better armor before trying to get to FAI. While Gorion may have meant well with his instruction to get help from his friends at the FAI, thanks to that ambush and Tarnesh, it's a very risky path for a no-reloader. I generally only go that route immediately if I am RPing, or using an all fighter/paladin/ranger party.
This no-reload is nuts. I've tried again twice since my last post and got killed by Tarnesh and then on the transition to the Friendly Arm map by that unfair ring of bandit archers I was complaining about in another thread. Mind you, I'm not even using SCS or LOB, and I'm allowing myself munchkin stats. It's nuts, I tells ya! I'd complain even more but I have to go roll another character for my next try.
That ambush is why most experienced no-reloaders will go High Hedge > Beregost and then either get more experience/better armor before trying to get to FAI. While Gorion may have meant well with his instruction to get help from his friends at the FAI, thanks to that ambush and Tarnesh, it's a very risky path for a no-reloader. I generally only go that route immediately if I am RPing, or using an all fighter/paladin/ranger party.
Yeah, that makes sense. My problem is I'm still trying to RP to a certain extent. And with my particular character (aggressive blackguard) I can only employ risk-averse behaviour to a certain extent without breaking immersion. I guess I need to decide if I can totally dedicate myself to making it to the end at all costs.
In an unrelated note, I'm not sure what is more painful: dying or flubbing scrolls. I'm leaning towards flubbing scrolls.
In an unrelated note, I'm not sure what is more painful: dying or flubbing scrolls. I'm leaning towards flubbing scrolls.
That is indeed painful. I will often delay scribing scrolls (especially with bad INT characters like Garrik), and just hang on to them for a while. Then, when I get a bunch, go to FAI temple and get some potions of genius/mind focusing potions and then successfully scribe most of them.
Fighting the endless hordes of Sendai's Enclave tends to get kind of boring, and things aren't improved by all the extra hp - this is the first time since BG1 I've really found them to be tedious again.
Anyway, our party fought their way through large, but ultimately completely harmless waves of monsters and entered the drow barracks. Forcing all the drow to attack a mordy sword made this an easy battle:
Mass invisibilty was used to get to the end of the slave tunnels, allowing the group to take out the boss and prevent any more hostile forces from spawning:
In the spider tunnels, Lashar'ra managed to heal up to full hp two times, but failed to do any significant damage:
Odamaron had a fatal encounter with an iMoD +2, thanks to one of Anomen's devas:
I had to be careful with Ogremoch, as he'd propably be able to kill a party member with a single successful hit. I made sure he and his earth elementals were trying to take down magical swords instead:
Diaytha provided the first somewhat interesting battle in here: I opened with a planetar throwing firestorms into the room, luring out multiple enemies:
However, neither the drow priestess nor the hive mother would come outside, so I had to enter - however, Diaytha dispelled the buffs of Arbogast, Nahema and Mazzy, so the other three (mostly Aikar) tried to take her down as quickly as possible while everyone else retreated. Meanwhile, Anomen's buffs were taken away via anti magic ray thanks to the hive mother:
Luckily, our foe turned its attention to the planetar next, and it, assisted by Nahema (who was prepared to switch to the Shield of Balduran and still had her buffs going), took down the final foe.
For the duel, Arbogast mostly relied on energy blades and kiting, but I summoned some spirit snakes, thinking that I could maybe force my opponent into a hit-animation lock via poison damage (if such a thing is even possible) - but he never failed his saves (he propably can't). Still, he sometimes got blocked thanks to poor pathfinding:
After killing a bunch of mindflayers, it was finally time to face Sendai herself. I changed my spellbook quite a bit for this battle, preparing tons of summons and extra buffs (so I'd be able to rebuff the entire party in case of remove magic). My plan was to have a planetar/deva and elemental prince going all the time, assisted by multiple regular summons, with most of the party just focusing on the spawning drow, keeping Sendai distracted and always reinforcing summons/buffs before taking down a version of the Bhaalspawn. The first couple of Sendai clones were quickly dealt with, with the drow spawns actually being a bigger threat, as they forced me to keep true sight active at all times and use many of my limited number of breach spells. When the first thief Sendai showed up (a potential threat, as are all backstabs on LoB), a single spirit lion was enough to tank her before she was killed:
I had a bit of fun with archer Sendai, as she finally gave me the opportunity to use The Reflex, which I had in my bag of holding the entire time but never remembered to take out:
Finally, thief Sendai 2 was killed - at this point, I only had to renew multiple summons, remove fear and improved haste, so I still had a good spellbook going, only being low on breach spells:
The real Sendai spawned, and after being weakened by true sight and breach, was quickly put into a bad situation with smite:
However, when brought close to death, she instantly healed herself up to full hp again:
I realized I needed more damage output to really take her down, so I switched some of my characters to melee weapons, most importantly Aikar, who used The Answerer +4, making it much easier for the other party members to hit. Sendai used a quick heal spell once again, but the next time, melee weapons plus GWWs were deployed to great effect:
This no-reload is nuts. I've tried again twice since my last post and got killed by Tarnesh and then on the transition to the Friendly Arm map by that unfair ring of bandit archers I was complaining about in another thread. Mind you, I'm not even using SCS or LOB, and I'm allowing myself munchkin stats. It's nuts, I tells ya! I'd complain even more but I have to go roll another character for my next try.
Two points of advice: 1) Travel overland during the daylight hours if you can help it. Any map transitions starting after Hour 15 do not count as daylight hours. 2) If you're heading to Inner FAI first, consider picking up some cannon fodder along the way. Tarnesh isn't worth a lot of XP so splitting it across four characters isn't a loss. 3) As an aside to 2, Imoen starts with a 10-charge Wand of Magic Missiles, and Larloch's Minor Drain (Xzar's ranged spell) has a casting time of one. Any sort of damage will interrupt Tarnesh's casting, and he doesn't use a sequencer if all your characters are level 1.
This no-reload is nuts. I've tried again twice since my last post and got killed by Tarnesh and then on the transition to the Friendly Arm map by that unfair ring of bandit archers I was complaining about in another thread. Mind you, I'm not even using SCS or LOB, and I'm allowing myself munchkin stats. It's nuts, I tells ya! I'd complain even more but I have to go roll another character for my next try.
Two points of advice: 1) Travel overland during the daylight hours if you can help it. Any map transitions starting after Hour 15 do not count as daylight hours. 2) If you're heading to Inner FAI first, consider picking up some cannon fodder along the way. Tarnesh isn't worth a lot of XP so splitting it across four characters isn't a loss. 3) As an aside to 2, Imoen starts with a 10-charge Wand of Magic Missiles, and Larloch's Minor Drain (Xzar's ranged spell) has a casting time of one. Any sort of damage will interrupt Tarnesh's casting, and he doesn't use a sequencer if all your characters are level 1.
I have had succes memorizing the spells they cast. Tarnesh casts horror and then MM. Resist fear and the shield amulet renders him harmless - when his spells are depleated he goes into melee.
Each caster will have their spell cast order - and each spell can either be negated, countered or Interrupted. When you know how to deal with the spells, the mages are the easiest advesary (but only when you have ALL the spells covered).
Speaking of Tarnesh I had an amusing start to my current run. Since I haven't died in awhile I made the install fairly hard and roleplayed a rather earnest LN Psypher called Stirkus. He followed Gorion's advice, and avoided the rather shady characters who he met on the way to the Friendly Arm. He also freely gave his name to Tarnesh... what an honest lad.
The resulting battle was rather hairy. After the two fled Tarnesh called up some slimes, but they didn't interfere much. Imoen winged Tarnesh but then the two were caught by a Horror spell. (Only a base coward would hang back while his friend fought for him...). The guards were useless, and as Tarnesh threw out a sleep spell it looked like the game was up. Fortunately however Imoen was able to recover and distract Tarnesh, but her wand was useless against his shield, and her courage failed after she was hurt in her turn, and she fell to an acid arrow. Now Tarnesh came to claim his prey but he tried to use his quarterstaff to finish the job which awoke Stirkus... who after a few futile rounds of crossbow tag opted to seek for further assistance from the local authorities...and finally Jaheira and Khalid saved his hide. Phew! Haven't had a battle that tense & lucky in awhile!
Not content with this he then played red riding hood with a mage upstairs - "ooh, what big teeth your statue has" and provoked a further fight. This time it was his turn to save J&K by sniping down the enraged mage, though he hasn't freed Verr'Sza quite yet. It would after all be irresponsible to do so without ensuring his companions can deal with a potentially dangerous demon.
He has since picked up Ajantis and watched Imoen get mauled again by a Dreadwolf that the party incautiously meleed, and is probably not long for this world. If he does go on he'll pick up some lawful types and continue blundering into dangerous situations . Hopefully he'll survive long enough that I can play around with some psionics anyway.
So, here's Miluiel in SoA. I'm a fairly new no-reloader, so it's only the second time I make it there. I hope it's not the last...
As I said earlier in my posts, Miluiel is a kitless bard who's using the IWD bard songs (through IWDification) instead of the regular bard song. Power-wise, I think that keeping the original bard song would have been stronger toward the end game, but the IWD songs give us more flexibility through the earlier parts.
There was a problem in SoD though... There's this item called the Bard Hat that let your song linger for two rounds, which is absolutely fantastic. However, I couldn't really use it, because the IWD songs were stacking with themselves, thus giving much too great bonuses to feel ok about it. So, I decided to give up on the Hat in SoD. But, after some research, I noticed that the Hat is imported in SoA. And I really want to use it... So, I dug up the song files with NearInfinity to correct the behavior I wanted. I simply added Opcode 321 to each song, which prevent stacking spell effects. I also added Opcode 136 to each song : it forces your character to be visible, which means that I won't be able to sing invisibly in SoA. I didn't take advantage of invisible singing in BG1/SoD, so I didn't need to add this Opcode, but since Improved Invisibility is gonna be a pretty standard buff to Miluiel in SoA, I thought it would be fair to add it. Lastly, I erased the Enthralling song from Miluiel's repertoire because the song was kinda broken. That song put an enemy to sleep for 5 rounds if it fails an unmodified save vs spell every round (!!!!). It also affected every neutral AND enemy creatures on a map except my teammates without a range. Since I considered that song broken mechanically AND balance wise, I simply threw it to garbage.
Here are my regular songs in SoA :
"The Ballad of the Three Heroes." All allies within 30 ft. gain +1 to hit, +1 to damage, and +1 to all their Saving Throws.
"The Tale of Curran Strongheart." All allies within 30 ft. gain immunity to spell effects for as long as the song lasts, and any fear effects currently on them are removed.
"Tymora's Melody." All allies within 30 ft. gain +1 to luck, +3 to Saving Throws, +10 to lore, and a +10% bonus to all of their thieving skills.
"The Song of Kaudies." All allies within 30 ft. have a 50% chance to shrug off the effects of spells such as Silence, Shout, Great Shout, Command, Greater Command, or any other sound-based attack.
"The Siren's Yearning." All enemies within 30 ft. must save vs. Spell or become enthralled, unable to take action until 1 round passes or they take damage. (The description is false : an enemy goes to sleep for 5 rounds on a failed save vs spell through IWDification. It doesn't have any range either.)
"War Chant of the Sith." All allies within 30 ft. gain a +2 bonus to Armor Class, +10% resistance to slashing, piercing, crushing, and missile damage, and the ability to regenerate 2 Hit Point per round.
So, with my songs all sorted out and balanced, I plunged into Chateau Irenicus. Nothing of note here, went through it with ease, because the regen from my song "War Chant of the Sith" alleviated the difficulty of managing resources in the Chateau. So, we go out of the Chateau and saw Irenicus go away with Imoen in Spellhold.
First order of business : gather my old BG1 team. Jaheira was already with me through the first dungeon. Kivan found me in front of the Adventurer's Mart. Alora was met into the Adventurer's Mart. Xan was met in the Government District. So, I only needed one last character, Branwen. But I didn't installed a mod for her in BG2, so I decided to go with Gavin, a single class Priest of Lathander. A bard, an enchanter, a fighter/druid, a (kitless) thief, an archer and a pureclass cleric. That team is really flexible, where everyone can fill more than one role. We might lack a bit of damage, but Kivan's there for this. I also ajusted their stats to reflect the tome I gave them in BG1.
So, we went into the Circus Tent, where we easily killed Kalah. No picture needed here.
We went to the Copper Coronet next. We defeated the Beastmaster, which earned us the Tuigan Bow for Alora. Then, we fought our way through the sewers to attack the slavers. After a few prebuff, we went into the Slaver's building to stop them. The fights went well enough, nobod got seriously injured.
The first thing I invested in was a Magic license, because I don't want to fight Cowled Wizards by mistake simply because I forgot that I can't prebuff with Stoneskin and Invisibility as soon as I get out of an inn. No chance taken here.
The Baron Ployer's arc was next. He was slained fast enough, but his mage friends took a bit longer, simply because I hadn't enough anti-mage spells ready.
I didn't reshuffled my spellbook anyway, because I decided to test that team by going into De'Arnise Castle right away, where I'll only adapt my spellbooks when I'll meet Yuan-Ti mages. At lower levels, TorGal can be quite a nuisance. I'm eager to test my team, though. I hope everything will be all right...
So, we drop by the Castle to speak with Nalia. We went back into the city to buy an IR flaming scimitar (+1 that adds 1d6 of fire damage every hit) for Jaheira, which will be quite useful not only against the trolls, but also against mages and Stoneskin. On our way back to De'Arnise Castle, we were caught in an ambush, which we managed to flee from after activating some buffs. But, when we arrived at the Castle, we were greeted by a big bunch of trolls, with our standard buffs down. We had nothing to do but to scramble by. Through the use of quite a few potions and plenty of repositioning, we managed to slay the pack.
So, that's it for now, we're entering the Castle, where I think that serious challenges will arise when I'll get in the basement.
All in all, it's a wonderful feeling to be back in Amn...
1) Travel overland during the daylight hours if you can help it. Any map transitions starting after Hour 15 do not count as daylight hours.
I agree that's one way to avoid the bandits. The other is to travel using an alternative route that doesn't go up the main road. Note that to do that you need to travel one area at a time as the game will default to standard routes if you do more than that.
Of course, either method relies on your characters understanding the ways of the wild and you may consider they should be ignorant .
In an unrelated note, I'm not sure what is more painful: dying or flubbing scrolls. I'm leaning towards flubbing scrolls.
I actually quite like a bit of randomness on scroll learning as it can provide an opportunity to try out different tactics. I remember one run not that long ago where I think my character must have had poor intelligence as the only damage spell he'd managed to learn was lightning bolt. The way that bounced made it extremely hazardous to cast in the original game, so I got out of the habit of using it. However, in EE it's much less so and I had a lot of fun mowing things down with that. Of course eventually I did try casting it when an opponent was a touch too close and killed myself ...
The second time round Wimper hung on to the identify scroll from Candlekeep, but didn't get around to using that - being killed by natural lightning while trying to get Tenya's bowl.
Trying again, a significant change was attacking Dushai in Ulgoth's Beard in order to get the ring of free action - that would allow attacking in melee using web, which would be far more efficient than ghoul touch. Unfortunately getting through Dushai's HPs with just fists takes a long time and he was only at badly wounded when the storm clouds came over once more. Lightning did actually kill Dushai first, but it was only a moment later when Wimper joined him.
With the gods seemingly against him, Wimper worked his way up to attack Sonner once more for his bowl. However, on the way he had to pass over the encounter point nearby that can spawn bandits. None were there when he crossed, but they obviously appeared after that and moved towards Wimper - he was shot down before he was aware of the attack.
A 5th attempt ended soon after when I think I must not have checked the time before travelling and a bandit ambush scored the easiest kill they'll ever get.
For number 6 I changed Wimper's proficiencies to daggers - as without being able to buy anything darts doesn't help him much. This time Wimper headed straight for the Valley of the Tombs (being careful about travel times) and picked up the +2 dagger. That gave him a significantly better melee performance than before and considerably speeded up some encounters, including Dushai. However, when he'd got to level 3 he picked the wrong route to try and get to Brage and got caught by a skeleton archer ambush.
After a good night's sleep (for me) I restarted Wimp once more. He duly picked up the +2 dagger and killed Dushai before taking advantage of the slow weapon speed of hobgoblins to get Joia's ring. This time, after getting to level 3 he went straight after the basilisks. He initially tried hit and run tactics on a blinded one, but their weapon speed was too quick for that to be reliable, so he rested and went to find Korax. However, I'd forgotten that the basilisks have the follow-me script and the blinded one had made its way across the map where a gaze attack proved instantly fatal.
For number 8 Wimper tried to kill Bentan while at 1st level - and failed.
Next time I deliberately killed Dushai before picking up a first Bhaal power in order to get LMD for a change. Needing a few more XP for level 3 I started attacking the gnolls at High Hedge, only to realise I hadn't rested on arrival (and fatigue imposes killing penalties when stats are already so low). Rather than go back to the map edge though I tried to rest next to the blinded gnolls - and a skeleton appeared with a throwing dagger ...
OK. I'll have one more go. Despite appearances from the above I've actually learnt quite a bit about how this challenge can be approached, so will see if I can be patient and put those lessons into practice .
It's a common tactic to avoid the Friendly Arm Inn for awhile for no-reloaders: Tarnesh is one of the more deadly foes at low levels outside of a few classes (Three Commands from a Cleric, and Tarnesh is guaranteed dead without a spell, IIRC)
Still rolling through ToB, I'll get an update out soon.
It is possible to get into the FAI without fighting Tarnesh. You can lure him away around the temple until he loses sight of you so that he never starts talking to you. Some of course can get past him using invisibility.
It's a common tactic to avoid the Friendly Arm Inn for awhile for no-reloaders: Tarnesh is one of the more deadly foes at low levels outside of a few classes (Three Commands from a Cleric, and Tarnesh is guaranteed dead without a spell, IIRC)
Still rolling through ToB, I'll get an update out soon.
It is possible to get into the FAI without fighting Tarnesh. You can lure him away around the temple until he loses sight of you so that he never starts talking to you. Some of course can get past him using invisibility.
With SCS he start talking right away he see you, so luring him away is not an option.
My cleric had enjoyed a great start. Metagaming had put med ahead levels wise. I was off to get the charisma tome, and some more XP. I once again dodged the Sendai fight. Her last words really struck a nerve
Good luck peseants - youre gonna need it. Sad but true.
The trip to the Gnoll fortress was uneventfull.
I sold all the loot. Including the brawling hands - I was planning a solo run, after all....
After that, it was some ankheg farming and more of the usual:
I then trekked back to Beregost to deal with Silke. Well actually she took care of herself. As @Grond0 has pointed out, you have to avoid standing too close to your target, when you release a lightning bolt. Especially when youre close to a cleric with protection from lightning memorized
In your face silke. In your face....
My actions brought me to level 7, and things where going smoothly. But I have profound respect for the ducal palace, and I feared that I werent up for the fight. How you guys do it solo with ScS is a mystery to me...
I was running out of options/places to loot and easy xp, so I headed for the mine. At the enterence of the mine, my fear provoked me to pick up a companion. A cleric perhaps? Yes, thats a good idea: of to the carnival and beregost for some gear. Now we are ready for the mines.. ? Branwen and I entered - but it felt wrong. So we trekked back to beregost, and I left her there.
Back in the mine I cleared the first ambush and returned a dagger..
And then? Well I had a change of hearts and decided to RP - so enter Ajantis
The new update enables you to pick up NPCs at level 2, and level them up from there (thank you Beamdog - your tweaks is my treat). I have the max hp at level up enabled , and chose weapon proficiences that actually make sense.
Mulahey was fried and killed. His ring was a gift from lathander for the rigtheous kill.
Out in the open I decided to tackle the amazones. I had forgotten that in my search for durlags tower, I had already made them hostile. Luckily my skeletons proved instrumental.. well that and a glyph of warding from the amazons that nearly finished them off...
The next move was a pure gem. At the enterence to one of the tombs, I decided to test my turn undead skills. A great idea - if you dont have skeletons to help you. After I had scared them off, they actually came back
I cleared the area - and killed Tranzig
But the lack of a game plan - and lousy execution when I had one - brought my progress to a halt. If I play like this, I might as well not play. So Cleric F95 will have to wait a bit. But only until motivation and a game plan is manifest... I will be back
I tend to just play him straight up, and 9 out of 10 times I'll win that fight, but with no-reload the stakes are high. There are all kinds of cheesy tactics, including just pot-shotting him the moment he enters your line of sight (all the more effective with a blackguard or assassin's poison weapon). But I think my favourite is backstabbing him. Even Imoen can do it at level one, provided you have a short sword for her. You just need the patience to keep trying stealth until it works. Of course there's a chance she'll miss and in no-reload the stakes are... You know, the more I think about it, no-reload feels like a weekend in Vegas, minus the crippling financial repercussions and the higher probability of getting dumped by your spouse.
Comments
Diary of Æthelioba Continued
Since we were nearby we decided to investigate the Section HQ in Beregost. We eliminated them all except for the Ashirukuru who we know can be deadly. Therefore, whenever we sensed their presence, Dynaheir made us invisible. Lillian Darkwater using invisibility almost managed to kill Dynaheir. "Almost" was not sufficient to stop us. However the spell "Chaos" was almost enough to do so. Only Dynaheir was unaffected by it. Vynd was killed as a result of wandering into the enemy due to the spell. We had to rest so that Jaheira could use "Harper's Call."We collected so many arrows +1 and +2 that we actually began to start using them!!!
1. Prologue
2. First Steps
3. First Level Ups
4. First Real Challenges
5. First Casualties
6. First Wands
7. Sometimes they do roll 1 during their HP rolls!
8. Surviving the ambush
9. Molkar and Lamalha groups are defeated
Larswood wasn't difficult at this stage. Osmandi and then Corsone were both prevented to cast anything (Web + constant attacks of 6 party members and 2 spirit animals).
Groups of Blacktalon Elite in Peldvale provided a good training before the Bandit Camp. With SCS and APR from the LoB these enemies are brutal, firing arrows after arrows. Usually not less than 4 close to simultaneous Webs and 4 summons were needed for each group of them (with 4 or 5 mercenaries in each).
The party had to rest often (only as close to the area border as possible), and bandit ambushes forced the party to travel often. This is why I decided to take Invisibility, 10 Radius as the first 3rd level spell for my sorcerer, - at least now the party could rest and travel safely (I expect it will be very useful later in the last Cloakwood area, in SoD and in SoA, of course).
Both Larswood and Peldvale were cleared, but I thought the party still needed some experience for additional spells before the Bandit Camp, so the Spiders Wood was next.
There, I learned that Giant Spiders with SCS (in vanilla it's different) did only nonlethal damage on hit, so when Cochrane was held by these spiders, he couldn't die (other spiders were blinded, of course). A Wraith Spider was killed by a series of backstabs.
I left Red Wizards for the future, and this let me remember about 2 mustard jellies I kept alive last time in the Valley of the Tombs. 4 summons kept distracting the jellies while Uzume was completing one backstab after another. Glod attacked the jellies with a two-handed sword - its reach let him stay safe behind the summons (one of the reasons why two-handed weapons may be a good choice on the LoB). The group got 4 000 XP, and now everyone in the party reached 40 000 XP.
Now, the Bandit Camp. In my previous playthroughs on the LoB (with SCS) I usually just took the letters from the chest and left the camp as fighting the whole army of bandits coming at you at once with their high HPs seemed to be not the best idea for a low-level party. But this time I thought there could be a good chance of succeeding. This is what the party had:
21 Blindness (12 on Jagen, 5 on Glod, 4 on Dazbog)
10 Web (5, 3 and 2)
12 charges of the Wand of Fire
10 charges of the Necklace of Missiles
17 charges of the Wand of Fear
6 charges of the Wand of Monster Summoning
10 charges of the Wand of Paralysis
2 Spirit Animals
2 Animate Dead
2 Protection from Fire (3rd level on Glod)
3 Summon Woodland Beings
2 Hold Person
2 Silence
80 Arrows of Biting
40 Bolts of Biting
20 Darts of Wounding
I know usually people attack the Bandit camp from the South-East corner, but I always prefer to to start attacking from this place:
SCS makes enemies start searching for alternative routes to the party if the area is webbed, but this place nearly always leaves only one direction from where they can come attacking.
So, I summoned one Spirit Animal (I prefer the bear, as it has the biggest amount of HPs, and on the LoB any last HP counts) and casted Protection from Fire on it. Other summons were ordered not to move anywhere. As soon as the bear started to melee first bandits, 2 Webs were casted in that direction, followed by numerous charges of both the Wand of Fire and the Necklace of Missiles. Of course, the LoB makes these fireballs less effective, but when it's the 5th or the 6th fireball, even the LoB Blacktalon Elite won't survive. The bear was immune to Web and resistant to Fire, so the start was positive.
Remember how I said that place *nearly* always leaves only one direction for the enemies. Well, sometimes they still can reach you from the East, - this time it almost costed Cochrane his life, but he survived with 3 HPs left, and I sent 3 other summons to the enemy (it was, of course, the Blacktalon Elite).
Soon I saw spells flying in the direction of my Fire Bear, which meant Venkt the mage reached the battlefield, so I tried Silence. It didn't work against Venkt (I still didn't see him). Meanwhile, the East group started to get an upper hand on my summons.
Anyway, the party spotted Venkt, so he required all the attention possible: another Web, the Wand of Fear, Silence. He couldn't resist against 3 or 4 Webs in the area.
He saved against Silence, though, but immediately got poisoned (not surprising, considering 3 sources of potential poison: arrows, bolts and darts. The Fire Bear was still alive (with little HP, but the main thing it was alive). I also saw "Nymph: Poison", - which meant the last of my eastern summons was going to die fast.
Venkt failed against Command, and Dazbog used the Wand of Monster Summoning to distract eastern enemies. Very soon Venkt was dead, and thus the main threat of the whole Bandit Camp encounter was over.
For extra safety, the nearest enemies were blinded (as there were no new Webs left), while new summons from the Wand helped to overcome the rest.
It was hard to believe, but the battle was soon won. There're only 3 charges of the Necklace of Missiles left, and only 5 charges are left in the Wand of Fire.
Here’re the current standings (102 days and 23 hours):
Jagen, sorcerer, lvl 6, 32 HPs, 34 kills, Greater Basilisk (4% in the group)
Glod, fighter/illusionist, lvl 5/5, 38 HPs, 200 kills, Revenant (27% in the group), 0 deaths
Uzume, fighter/thief, lvl 5/6, 45 HPs, 186 kills, Greater Basilisk (25% in the group), 0 deaths
Cochrane, archer, lvl 6, 51 HPs, 226 kills, Vampiric Wolf (31% in the group), 0 deaths
Sigyn, totemic druid, lvl 7, 51 HPs, 43 kills, Polar Bear (5% in the group), 0 deaths
Dazbog, cleric/mage, lvl 5/5, 22 HPs, 39 kills, Lesser Basilisk (5% in the group), 4 deaths (2 by a kobold commando; 1 - Shoal; 1 - Mulahey)
Trio Update (Corey_Russell, Grond0, Gate70)
Corthief XIV the elven thief(protagonist, controlled by Corey_Russell)
Berk the dwarven berserker (controlled by Grond0)
Stinkimo dwarven defender (controlled by Gate70)
The party did some misc. quests before working on the main quest:
1) The helm of balduran was obtained. We battled the mountain maulers and did pretty well. Corthief XIV managed to lay a snare, despite bad skill, and then he disrupted the casters with his bow.
2) Degrodel and his minions were battled. We pulled piece-meal, with Corthief XIV doing backstabs to speed up the kills. This went well.
3) We of course talked to Vai and then got the cloak of balduran a little later.
4) We were finally able to turn in the body of the boy we have been lugging around for a while. The shield went to stinkimo, since Berk usually uses the Spider's Bane.
5) The ogre mage and his crawlers were eliminated. Corthief XIV used a dispelling arrow to rid of the ogre mage of his mirrors. The ogre mage responded with confusion, making Corthief XIV wander around. Fortunately, Corthief XIV managed to not walk into enemies.
6) We then took down the dopplegangers at the Seven Suns without difficulty.
7) We decided to take down the Iron Throne. The dwarves used their special abilities and did well with that. Corthief XIV tried a backstab but Gardush pursued. Corthief XIV then spent the entire battle hiding in the shadows, backstab, run and repeat on Gardush. He was still at it when the dwarves had victory upstairs.
8) We then went to Candlekeep. Corthief used a dispelling arrow on the greater doppeganger - but right afterwards the doppleganger used haste and Corthief XIV couldn't get away and had to use a invis potion.
9) Prat did not do well when the party attacked from all angles. He was also stunned, which was quite helpful to the battle. The basilisks were taken down with a protection from petrification green scroll.
10) Slythe didn't do well, being dispelled and all. Krystin decided not to appear.
11) We used potions to help make sure we won the duchal palace fight - this worked. However, Corthief XIV nearly died, and only survived thanks to a invis potion.
12) The maze went pretty well, with Corthief XIV using backstabs when practical, including on the skeleton warriors with the help of a green scroll vs. undead.
13) We decided the undercity party was not worth the trouble - on the other hand, since the green scroll was still active, the dwarves waited patiently until Corthief XIV was done killing the 4 skeleton warriors - which went slow with his 1 APR.
14) Sarevok battle went OK, with the dwarves taking a beating, but not dying. An attack from the shadows finished off Sarevok.
15) Gate70 helped Corey_Russell load up an prepare for our next session next week.
But for sure I will find time to keep up to date with all your awesomeness people!
Night in the Woods: Mae in Shadows of Amn
Part 10https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909103/#Comment_909103
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We arrive in BG2 with massive fatigue across the board for some reason. It really complicates melee-heavy Chateau Irenicus.
We have to resort to spell damage and the stun from Thunderslap to land hits. We rest before the mephit room, which things a lot less messy.
Haiass greets us outside, but since I'm tired of him winning fights for us like he did in previous runs, I tell him to wait for us elsewhere so he won't follow us around.
It's time to see if we can still recover the items we stashed in Dragonspear Castle. It's important because my item restrictions ban practically every nonmagical item in SoA and ToB, and nonmagical items in EET are not too reliable.
It takes six days and eight hours to reach the castle, but when we finally arrive, both of our item stashes are there.
We're back in business! It's a good thing, too. Without them BG2 would basically be a poverty run considering how many times I've played through it. We've suddenly become filthy rich, but there are only two items that we might buy besides mage scrolls: the Axe of Hrothgar, which is only useful because Fighter/Clerics like Trash Mammal can use axes in my install (so Yeslick can use them), and a necklace that grants immunity to level drain.
All this leaves us with the question of what to do. Side quests will net us basically no useful items and we already have a fair amount of XP. Rather than waste time hunting down items we don't want, I stop by a mod-introduced district of Athkatla. The place is rather boring, almost completely empty.
But I do see one ominous sign.
I decide not to tempt fate and leave.
But when I see absolutely nothing else of interest in the entire area, I decide to try my luck.
I regret it the moment I get there.
Then I decide to attack, thinking we're sufficiently buffed to handle threat. Two Flesh to Stone rays disabuse me of this notion and I hurry downstairs to cast some Protection from Petrification spells before tackling the beholders. They don't last long; beholders have terrible defenses.
But to my deep displeasure, the reward is atrocious...
...and the idiot gnome downstairs tells us that we just murdered his brother.
Totally your fault, dude.
I don't think I'll be doing many vanilla quests in this run. The items are useless, the XP isn't worth the time, and many Chapter 2 fights just aren't that interesting with a party that's already almost strong enough for Spellhold.
Though that's mostly Killer's doing. Even with mod items, Bounty Hunters are absolute monsters.
There's a mod NPC named Jadarath here in the sewers who asks you to deliver a whole bunch of potions, but he also apparently takes a point of CON from whoever's speaking to him when he gives you your reward.
It's an awesome belt, but Witch Dagger really needed that point of CON. Fighters need 17 WIS and CHA to dual-class to druid, so Witch Dagger only has 7 CON, which means her new 6 CON imposes a penalty--a penalty that's pretty hard to bear when you already have so little HP.
Funny enough, Witch Dagger can't even use the belt due to being a Wizard Slayer.
I go out in search of mod-introduced areas. I find more orc mages, who have ceased to be interesting with Witch Dagger's massive anti-mage abilities, as well as the first troglodytes to appear in an IE game.
I have no idea what this area is or what quest I'm completing, but it's mostly just hordes of orcs and trolls. One fellow apparently took a bite out of one of them, but we cure his stomachache with a potentially fatal fire spell that Mae didn't even have memorized.
The area itself is basically just a copy of Firkraag's dungeon, and for some reason, virtually every mod item in the dungeon is flagged to be unmoveable.
I'll fix it with Near Infinity or EEKeeper.
Finally I spot the boss! I do some scouting and discover he has allies. Looks nasty.
The enemy removes our invisibility, but we hide out of their field of vision.
But then, to my amazement and frustration, the enemy mage teleports to the party despite the fact that only Killer is within their field of vision... and triggers a Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency right on top of us.
SCS has a lot of Chain Contingencies like this, but they never use Dimension Door to land on you with them.
I don't like how this is going.
Laras somehow loses or wastes a Time Stop spell, but the next round is no better for us.
Finally, Witch Dagger gets some hits in on the mage, Laras. His fate is nearly sealed.
He gets a single Chromatic Orb off the ground, and his fellows prove ineffectual. Despite that devastating first round, the enemy needs more than one cheap trick to win the fight. We crush them one by one.
We save some guy from a cage, rescue his girlfriend from some orcs... none of it is particularly interesting or dangerous, nor is the loot noteworthy.
The next area is little different. The quests aren't terribly complicated.
Notice the bizarre scenery. I don't know what the bug is, but it's common to a lot of mod areas.
Unable to find any interesting mod stuff to do, I head to the Umar Hills in search of vanilla content. We can't use Sunstone Bullets for an instant kill on the altar, but at level 12, the Shade Lord can be rendered perfectly vulnerable with a single Pierce Magic and Breach spell, and Witch Dagger's Fire Seeds hold him down until then.
I'm a little bored and decide to test out the Sorcerer's Staff on Thaxll'ssillyia. Yep, the only dragon immune to petrification is Abazigal.
I could do the basilisk XP loop on Thaxll'ssillyia by creating blue Stone to Flesh scrolls, but meh. We don't really need the XP.
It looks like the Darkest Day (TDD) mega mod - but I am not sure. There is a walkthrough here
http://www.geocities.ws/oriordan3001/tdd.html
It might give you a clue of whats going on - and quests you might miss.
Ps. If it is the TDD mod, there is a ring called Aegis of torment, that Witch Daggers is going to love...
I've played quite a bit with a sorcerer in LoB and a certain amount with a stats challenged wild mage. I thought I'd combine those ideas with Wimper. To give him something extra to worry about he won't be allowed to pay for any items, spells or identifies and I'm also forbidding the use of Algernon's Cloak or fighting by a familiar as they would otherwise be rather too obvious options.
XP in this run won't be easy to come by, particularly at first, so Wimp did the fetch and carry quests in Candlekeep before leaving. In the first area it took 2 magic missiles to kill Xzar - Wimp relying on L1 protection to survive a LMD in return.
Moving on to Beregost he calmed down Marl and helped Firebead. Then it was up to the FAI to get the Ring of Wizardry. Further north he cornered Sonner, blinded him and beat him up with fists (which took a while with only 1 damage per successful hit) before a magic missile got the kill. His bowl was then returned to Tenya to get a first level.
Mr Colquetle got his amulet back and Noober had a nice chat (all the travelling being done by day to avoid lethal ambushes) on the way to the Carnival. A magic missile made Vitiare run and, once he was blinded, he could also be shown the fist while I read a couple of chapters of my book. A rather quicker XP haul was provided by Brage and accompanying him back to Nashkel got Wimper to level 3. With future XP looking so hard to obtain he took protection from petrification as his next spell there.
At the basilisk area Korax did almost all the work of killing 4 basilisks to get Wimper to level 4 and provide the ability to go invisible. Korax got one more basilisk to near death in the south, but then turned hostile.
Next he travelled to find Samuel and took him back to the FAI (using the quickloot button to be able to move him even though he couldn't carry him). Coming out of inn after selling the potions gained there was a near death experience when I forgot that Tarnesh would be waiting. His mirrors went up by script so I was only just able to go invisible before being slept. Tarnesh completing that spell was not unreasonable, but it certainly was unreasonable when he followed up with a melee attack - fortunately though he realised he couldn't see what he was attacking just before a second attack would have been due and he didn't have a detect invisibility spell available.
After looting the ankheg nest using invisibility
Note that in LoB enemies normally get 100 HP back when you rest nearby (and Wimp couldn't do that much with his current spells). However, the 100 HP addition is scripted and only occurs when the creature is doing nothing else. If you can rest nearby and get back into sight almost immediately after resting so that it's attacking you there's a chance that the additional HPs won't get added back. Some creatures have SCS follow-me scripts that cause them to attack an enemy once seen anywhere on the map whether they can see it or not - if you're resting out of sight of a blinded enemy with that script that means they will move into sight of you and attack pretty much instantly after you've rested. However, it's also necessary that the enemy doesn't run around when blinded for that to work - and many of them do. This is therefore not a simple tactic to make use of.
In the Cloudpeaks Wimper reunited Albert with Rufie and convinced Drienne to hand over the last of her allowance to revive her cat. Running out of fetch quests to do he tried without success wearing down a number of enemies with partial damage and resting, before eventually managing that against the gnolls at High Hedge - that allowed him to return Perdue's sword.
He did the same to the wolf near Melicamp before trying his luck against a skeleton in High Hedge. That almost killed him while trying to wear it down a bit with his fists (the almost minimum damage taking Wimper down to 1 HP for the third time in the run), but he was eventually able to take its head after emptying Imoen's magic missile wand at it.
Edit: looking again at that screenshot where the skeleton hit him Wimper has benefited from level 1 protection - even though he's no longer level 1. Possibly the protection applies irrespective of level if HPs are low enough?
Using magic missiles and the daggers taken from the skeleton at High Hedge Wimper was able to draw away the xvarts attacking Arabelle individually and kill those (blinding each of them and resting while they were partially injured). He then spent quite a long time trying to kill Meilum, but despite being close a couple of times he couldn't prevent his HPs regenerating regularly and eventually gave up - and at that point I decided it was time to take a break.
Sorcerer L4, 5 HPs, 21 kills
Previous updates:
At the Valley of the Tombs Wimper pulled the ghasts out of their tomb and blinded them before using the damage, rest, damage technique to kill them. While not exactly straight-forward that was still a good XP haul for much less effort than his recent targets. He picked up the wand of monster summoning, though as he can't buy any more wands, will be trying not to use that unless really essential (and at the moment he can't identify it anyway).
That put Wimper close to level 5 and one of Mirianne's ogrillons tipped him over. He took identify and ghoul touch there before heading back to the basilisk area. A few attempts finally saw the back of Korax and several rests later he managed to get the big prize of a greater basilisk. He'd tried ghoul touch on that basilisk and hit it once, but without paralyzing it, but he went one better when attacking a lesser basilisk.
With all the basilisks except Mutamin's special pets dead, Wimper left the area and went to Durlag's Tower. He had no way initially to safely get past the trap for more basilisks, but did use the standard tactics of blinding, damaging, resting, killing on all the ghasts - nearly the last of those getting him up to level 6.
Still rolling through ToB, I'll get an update out soon.
In an unrelated note, I'm not sure what is more painful: dying or flubbing scrolls. I'm leaning towards flubbing scrolls.
In an unrelated note, I'm not sure what is more painful: dying or flubbing scrolls. I'm leaning towards flubbing scrolls.
That is indeed painful. I will often delay scribing scrolls (especially with bad INT characters like Garrik), and just hang on to them for a while. Then, when I get a bunch, go to FAI temple and get some potions of genius/mind focusing potions and then successfully scribe most of them.
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
SoD end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906579/#Comment_906579
BG2 start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906698/#Comment_906698
BG2 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909375/#Comment_909375
ToB start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909665/#Comment_909665
Part IXL: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/910474/#Comment_910474
Part L: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911556/#Comment_911556
Fighting the endless hordes of Sendai's Enclave tends to get kind of boring, and things aren't improved by all the extra hp - this is the first time since BG1 I've really found them to be tedious again.
Anyway, our party fought their way through large, but ultimately completely harmless waves of monsters and entered the drow barracks. Forcing all the drow to attack a mordy sword made this an easy battle:
Mass invisibilty was used to get to the end of the slave tunnels, allowing the group to take out the boss and prevent any more hostile forces from spawning:
In the spider tunnels, Lashar'ra managed to heal up to full hp two times, but failed to do any significant damage:
Odamaron had a fatal encounter with an iMoD +2, thanks to one of Anomen's devas:
I had to be careful with Ogremoch, as he'd propably be able to kill a party member with a single successful hit. I made sure he and his earth elementals were trying to take down magical swords instead:
Diaytha provided the first somewhat interesting battle in here: I opened with a planetar throwing firestorms into the room, luring out multiple enemies:
However, neither the drow priestess nor the hive mother would come outside, so I had to enter - however, Diaytha dispelled the buffs of Arbogast, Nahema and Mazzy, so the other three (mostly Aikar) tried to take her down as quickly as possible while everyone else retreated. Meanwhile, Anomen's buffs were taken away via anti magic ray thanks to the hive mother:
Luckily, our foe turned its attention to the planetar next, and it, assisted by Nahema (who was prepared to switch to the Shield of Balduran and still had her buffs going), took down the final foe.
For the duel, Arbogast mostly relied on energy blades and kiting, but I summoned some spirit snakes, thinking that I could maybe force my opponent into a hit-animation lock via poison damage (if such a thing is even possible) - but he never failed his saves (he propably can't). Still, he sometimes got blocked thanks to poor pathfinding:
After killing a bunch of mindflayers, it was finally time to face Sendai herself. I changed my spellbook quite a bit for this battle, preparing tons of summons and extra buffs (so I'd be able to rebuff the entire party in case of remove magic). My plan was to have a planetar/deva and elemental prince going all the time, assisted by multiple regular summons, with most of the party just focusing on the spawning drow, keeping Sendai distracted and always reinforcing summons/buffs before taking down a version of the Bhaalspawn. The first couple of Sendai clones were quickly dealt with, with the drow spawns actually being a bigger threat, as they forced me to keep true sight active at all times and use many of my limited number of breach spells. When the first thief Sendai showed up (a potential threat, as are all backstabs on LoB), a single spirit lion was enough to tank her before she was killed:
I had a bit of fun with archer Sendai, as she finally gave me the opportunity to use The Reflex, which I had in my bag of holding the entire time but never remembered to take out:
Finally, thief Sendai 2 was killed - at this point, I only had to renew multiple summons, remove fear and improved haste, so I still had a good spellbook going, only being low on breach spells:
The real Sendai spawned, and after being weakened by true sight and breach, was quickly put into a bad situation with smite:
However, when brought close to death, she instantly healed herself up to full hp again:
I realized I needed more damage output to really take her down, so I switched some of my characters to melee weapons, most importantly Aikar, who used The Answerer +4, making it much easier for the other party members to hit. Sendai used a quick heal spell once again, but the next time, melee weapons plus GWWs were deployed to great effect:
Three down, two to go.
Enuhal
1) Travel overland during the daylight hours if you can help it. Any map transitions starting after Hour 15 do not count as daylight hours.
2) If you're heading to Inner FAI first, consider picking up some cannon fodder along the way. Tarnesh isn't worth a lot of XP so splitting it across four characters isn't a loss.
3) As an aside to 2, Imoen starts with a 10-charge Wand of Magic Missiles, and Larloch's Minor Drain (Xzar's ranged spell) has a casting time of one. Any sort of damage will interrupt Tarnesh's casting, and he doesn't use a sequencer if all your characters are level 1.
Each caster will have their spell cast order - and each spell can either be negated, countered or Interrupted. When you know how to deal with the spells, the mages are the easiest advesary (but only when you have ALL the spells covered).
The resulting battle was rather hairy. After the two fled Tarnesh called up some slimes, but they didn't interfere much. Imoen winged Tarnesh but then the two were caught by a Horror spell. (Only a base coward would hang back while his friend fought for him...). The guards were useless, and as Tarnesh threw out a sleep spell it looked like the game was up. Fortunately however Imoen was able to recover and distract Tarnesh, but her wand was useless against his shield, and her courage failed after she was hurt in her turn, and she fell to an acid arrow. Now Tarnesh came to claim his prey but he tried to use his quarterstaff to finish the job which awoke Stirkus... who after a few futile rounds of crossbow tag opted to seek for further assistance from the local authorities...and finally Jaheira and Khalid saved his hide. Phew! Haven't had a battle that tense & lucky in awhile!
Not content with this he then played red riding hood with a mage upstairs - "ooh, what big teeth your statue has" and provoked a further fight. This time it was his turn to save J&K by sniping down the enraged mage, though he hasn't freed Verr'Sza quite yet. It would after all be irresponsible to do so without ensuring his companions can deal with a potentially dangerous demon.
He has since picked up Ajantis and watched Imoen get mauled again by a Dreadwolf that the party incautiously meleed, and is probably not long for this world. If he does go on he'll pick up some lawful types and continue blundering into dangerous situations
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6SoD posts : 1, 2, 3, 4
SoA First post
Notable mods
- SCS (full prebuffs, full Tactical Challenges)
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalancing
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Refinements
So, here's Miluiel in SoA. I'm a fairly new no-reloader, so it's only the second time I make it there. I hope it's not the last...
As I said earlier in my posts, Miluiel is a kitless bard who's using the IWD bard songs (through IWDification) instead of the regular bard song. Power-wise, I think that keeping the original bard song would have been stronger toward the end game, but the IWD songs give us more flexibility through the earlier parts.
There was a problem in SoD though... There's this item called the Bard Hat that let your song linger for two rounds, which is absolutely fantastic. However, I couldn't really use it, because the IWD songs were stacking with themselves, thus giving much too great bonuses to feel ok about it. So, I decided to give up on the Hat in SoD. But, after some research, I noticed that the Hat is imported in SoA. And I really want to use it... So, I dug up the song files with NearInfinity to correct the behavior I wanted. I simply added Opcode 321 to each song, which prevent stacking spell effects. I also added Opcode 136 to each song : it forces your character to be visible, which means that I won't be able to sing invisibly in SoA. I didn't take advantage of invisible singing in BG1/SoD, so I didn't need to add this Opcode, but since Improved Invisibility is gonna be a pretty standard buff to Miluiel in SoA, I thought it would be fair to add it. Lastly, I erased the Enthralling song from Miluiel's repertoire because the song was kinda broken. That song put an enemy to sleep for 5 rounds if it fails an unmodified save vs spell every round (!!!!). It also affected every neutral AND enemy creatures on a map except my teammates without a range. Since I considered that song broken mechanically AND balance wise, I simply threw it to garbage.
Here are my regular songs in SoA :
"The Ballad of the Three Heroes." All allies within 30 ft. gain +1 to hit, +1 to damage, and +1 to all their Saving Throws.
"The Tale of Curran Strongheart." All allies within 30 ft. gain immunity to spell effects for as long as the song lasts, and any fear effects currently on them are removed.
"Tymora's Melody." All allies within 30 ft. gain +1 to luck, +3 to Saving Throws, +10 to lore, and a +10% bonus to all of their thieving skills.
"The Song of Kaudies." All allies within 30 ft. have a 50% chance to shrug off the effects of spells such as Silence, Shout, Great Shout, Command, Greater Command, or any other sound-based attack.
"The Siren's Yearning." All enemies within 30 ft. must save vs. Spell or become enthralled, unable to take action until 1 round passes or they take damage.(The description is false : an enemy goes to sleep for 5 rounds on a failed save vs spell through IWDification. It doesn't have any range either.)"War Chant of the Sith." All allies within 30 ft. gain a +2 bonus to Armor Class, +10% resistance to slashing, piercing, crushing, and missile damage, and the ability to regenerate 2 Hit Point per round.
So, with my songs all sorted out and balanced, I plunged into Chateau Irenicus. Nothing of note here, went through it with ease, because the regen from my song "War Chant of the Sith" alleviated the difficulty of managing resources in the Chateau. So, we go out of the Chateau and saw Irenicus go away with Imoen in Spellhold.
First order of business : gather my old BG1 team. Jaheira was already with me through the first dungeon. Kivan found me in front of the Adventurer's Mart. Alora was met into the Adventurer's Mart. Xan was met in the Government District. So, I only needed one last character, Branwen. But I didn't installed a mod for her in BG2, so I decided to go with Gavin, a single class Priest of Lathander. A bard, an enchanter, a fighter/druid, a (kitless) thief, an archer and a pureclass cleric. That team is really flexible, where everyone can fill more than one role. We might lack a bit of damage, but Kivan's there for this. I also ajusted their stats to reflect the tome I gave them in BG1.
So, we went into the Circus Tent, where we easily killed Kalah. No picture needed here.
We went to the Copper Coronet next. We defeated the Beastmaster, which earned us the Tuigan Bow for Alora. Then, we fought our way through the sewers to attack the slavers. After a few prebuff, we went into the Slaver's building to stop them. The fights went well enough, nobod got seriously injured.
The first thing I invested in was a Magic license, because I don't want to fight Cowled Wizards by mistake simply because I forgot that I can't prebuff with Stoneskin and Invisibility as soon as I get out of an inn. No chance taken here.
The Baron Ployer's arc was next. He was slained fast enough, but his mage friends took a bit longer, simply because I hadn't enough anti-mage spells ready.
I didn't reshuffled my spellbook anyway, because I decided to test that team by going into De'Arnise Castle right away, where I'll only adapt my spellbooks when I'll meet Yuan-Ti mages. At lower levels, TorGal can be quite a nuisance. I'm eager to test my team, though. I hope everything will be all right...
So, we drop by the Castle to speak with Nalia. We went back into the city to buy an IR flaming scimitar (+1 that adds 1d6 of fire damage every hit) for Jaheira, which will be quite useful not only against the trolls, but also against mages and Stoneskin. On our way back to De'Arnise Castle, we were caught in an ambush, which we managed to flee from after activating some buffs. But, when we arrived at the Castle, we were greeted by a big bunch of trolls, with our standard buffs down. We had nothing to do but to scramble by. Through the use of quite a few potions and plenty of repositioning, we managed to slay the pack.
So, that's it for now, we're entering the Castle, where I think that serious challenges will arise when I'll get in the basement.
All in all, it's a wonderful feeling to be back in Amn...
Of course, either method relies on your characters understanding the ways of the wild and you may consider they should be ignorant
The second time round Wimper hung on to the identify scroll from Candlekeep, but didn't get around to using that - being killed by natural lightning while trying to get Tenya's bowl.
Trying again, a significant change was attacking Dushai in Ulgoth's Beard in order to get the ring of free action - that would allow attacking in melee using web, which would be far more efficient than ghoul touch. Unfortunately getting through Dushai's HPs with just fists takes a long time and he was only at badly wounded when the storm clouds came over once more. Lightning did actually kill Dushai first, but it was only a moment later when Wimper joined him.
With the gods seemingly against him, Wimper worked his way up to attack Sonner once more for his bowl. However, on the way he had to pass over the encounter point nearby that can spawn bandits. None were there when he crossed, but they obviously appeared after that and moved towards Wimper - he was shot down before he was aware of the attack.
A 5th attempt ended soon after when I think I must not have checked the time before travelling and a bandit ambush scored the easiest kill they'll ever get.
For number 6 I changed Wimper's proficiencies to daggers - as without being able to buy anything darts doesn't help him much. This time Wimper headed straight for the Valley of the Tombs (being careful about travel times) and picked up the +2 dagger. That gave him a significantly better melee performance than before and considerably speeded up some encounters, including Dushai. However, when he'd got to level 3 he picked the wrong route to try and get to Brage and got caught by a skeleton archer ambush.
After a good night's sleep (for me) I restarted Wimp once more. He duly picked up the +2 dagger and killed Dushai before taking advantage of the slow weapon speed of hobgoblins to get Joia's ring. This time, after getting to level 3 he went straight after the basilisks. He initially tried hit and run tactics on a blinded one, but their weapon speed was too quick for that to be reliable, so he rested and went to find Korax. However, I'd forgotten that the basilisks have the follow-me script and the blinded one had made its way across the map where a gaze attack proved instantly fatal.
For number 8 Wimper tried to kill Bentan while at 1st level - and failed.
Next time I deliberately killed Dushai before picking up a first Bhaal power in order to get LMD for a change. Needing a few more XP for level 3 I started attacking the gnolls at High Hedge, only to realise I hadn't rested on arrival (and fatigue imposes killing penalties when stats are already so low). Rather than go back to the map edge though I tried to rest next to the blinded gnolls - and a skeleton appeared with a throwing dagger ...
OK. I'll have one more go. Despite appearances from the above I've actually learnt quite a bit about how this challenge can be approached, so will see if I can be patient and put those lessons into practice
Previously
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911322/#Comment_911322
My cleric had enjoyed a great start. Metagaming had put med ahead levels wise. I was off to get the charisma tome, and some more XP. I once again dodged the Sendai fight. Her last words really struck a nerve
Good luck peseants - youre gonna need it. Sad but true.
The trip to the Gnoll fortress was uneventfull.
I sold all the loot. Including the brawling hands - I was planning a solo run, after all....
After that, it was some ankheg farming and more of the usual:
I then trekked back to Beregost to deal with Silke. Well actually she took care of herself. As @Grond0 has pointed out, you have to avoid standing too close to your target, when you release a lightning bolt. Especially when youre close to a cleric with protection from lightning memorized
In your face silke. In your face....
My actions brought me to level 7, and things where going smoothly. But I have profound respect for the ducal palace, and I feared that I werent up for the fight. How you guys do it solo with ScS is a mystery to me...
I was running out of options/places to loot and easy xp, so I headed for the mine. At the enterence of the mine, my fear provoked me to pick up a companion. A cleric perhaps? Yes, thats a good idea: of to the carnival and beregost for some gear. Now we are ready for the mines.. ? Branwen and I entered - but it felt wrong. So we trekked back to beregost, and I left her there.
Back in the mine I cleared the first ambush and returned a dagger..
And then? Well I had a change of hearts and decided to RP - so enter Ajantis
The new update enables you to pick up NPCs at level 2, and level them up from there (thank you Beamdog - your tweaks is my treat). I have the max hp at level up enabled
Mulahey was fried and killed. His ring was a gift from lathander for the rigtheous kill.
Out in the open I decided to tackle the amazones. I had forgotten that in my search for durlags tower, I had already made them hostile. Luckily my skeletons proved instrumental.. well that and a glyph of warding from the amazons that nearly finished them off...
The next move was a pure gem.
At the enterence to one of the tombs, I decided to test my turn undead skills. A great idea - if you dont have skeletons to help you. After I had scared them off, they actually came back
I cleared the area - and killed Tranzig
But the lack of a game plan - and lousy execution when I had one - brought my progress to a halt. If I play like this, I might as well not play. So Cleric F95 will have to wait a bit. But only until motivation and a game plan is manifest... I will be back