As we had already killed Draconis, entering Abazigal's hideout and taking down the greater werewyvern with the help of an invulnerable mordy sword was easy work. While getting the breath potion, I learned that The Wave +4 also works against ice salamanders! This is great - these would otherwise be quite annoying to deal with:
A couple of summons helped to deal with kua-toans and the prince of water:
For the eye groups, I had only Aikar, protected by the Cloak of Mirroring, and a planetar fight. Aikar only had to make sure to kill the "Sentinels" with a quick GWW, as they summon monsters - everything else simply can't do anything against the power of the cloak:
I rescued Bondari and made my way to Abazigal.
After buffing up (including protection from electricity for everyone), I had Aikar run around and kill all salamanders while Abazigal tried and failed to kill a mordy sword:
It took quite a while to take down his human form, but eventually, he transformed, kicking everyone far away in the process - except for our planetar, who was now tanking the dragon:
Abazigal's most dangerous move would be remove magic + breath weapon. As it happens, he was the first enemy I encountered not to simply use remove magic on the nearest party member, but on my back line - this removed the buffs of Aikar, Mazzy, and also Arbogast himself. However, I was prepared for such an occasion: I had potions of absorption, which I had specifically bought after Jan's chunking via lightning damage, in my potion bag - all three vulnerable party members used one of those, and not a second too soon: Right after that, a breath weapon hit most of the party (though Arbogast would have been out of range).
After the remove magic, I finally managed to get into a good position to deal some damage - summons surrounding the dragon, a surprisingly sturdy planetar still taking all the hits, and my fighters using their HLAs:
In fact, Abazigal was kind of a pushover after his failed dispel + breath weapon ploy - he didn't do anything of significance before being brought down by more GWWs:
We forged the colossus golem book and FoA +5 before entering Amkethran and sneaking to Saemon. The monks guarding the monestary were killed with summons, smite to disable the fighters, and true sight, breaches and some patience for the mages. An AHW was the only dangerous occurence during the fight, but I was quite prepared, switching the Cloak of Mirroring to Nahema, the only one in the threatened range:
I engaged Balthazar without resting again, with my party quickly running back at the start of the battle to take down the eastern monks, while the bhaalspawn was being kited. Eventually, I had Nahema tank him:
With three monks gone and the fourth one not involved in the battle, it was time to focus my attention on Balthazar:
With a couple of HLAs, the monk was brought to near death:
However, he used his second wind to heal back up once again:
Balthazar actually pulled off a couple of successful moves, and I was unable to keep any summons going during this battle. I was forced to put more characters into melee range to deal damage as fast as possible - mostly, Balthazar tried and failed to get past Nahema's protections, but if he managed to hit someone else, it hurt:
He even got through Arbogast's ironskins (I don't know how, propably by using one of his special abilities - I have no idea what all of them really do) - but shortly after that, I had established enough control of the battlefield by now getting some summons going and getting into good positions for HLA use, and our foe was slain:
Finally, I started completing some pocket plane challenges: Smite was very helpful against "Dark Arbogast", and Semaj was killed while his companions were disabled:
The third challenge isn't worth mentioning, and the chosen of cyric faced a fully stoneskinned party (thanks to Gargoyle Boots and some resting) - plus two true sights and some invulnerable magical swords:
I won't be facing the Ravager just yet, because I want to prevent myself form misclicking and going to the throne by accident while trying to clear Watcher's Keep. This is still a completionist run, after all - and I've only cleared level 1 and level 2 in SoA.
@Grond0 That's admirable persistence you got there! I wonder if Wimper thinks he's experiencing groundhog day (for those you unfamiliar with that movie, that's the movie where the main character experiences the same day over and over)...
@Grond0 That's admirable persistence you got there! I wonder if Wimper thinks he's experiencing groundhog day (for those you unfamiliar with that movie, that's the movie where the main character experiences the same day over and over)...
All good things come to an end - even groundhogs.
Wimper {11} - solo LoB sorcerer
Well the 10th run didn't last long. Early on I saw a hobgoblin and pressed the space bar - but the game didn't pause. Although I didn't react quickly to that I decided it was enough not my fault to justify having another 'final' attempt.
Things went smoothly early on with the +2 dagger picked up before going up to Ulgoth's Beard to cut down Dushai. A few fetch type tasks were enough to get to level 3 and learn protection from petrification. I was careless though in travelling to the Beregost Temple on the way to the basilisk area. It was early enough in the day for travel to the area immediately north of Nashkel to be safe from bandits, but not to the next area along the road ...
My latest solution for Tarnesh: bringing Tiax along. I have the Tweaks component that takes NPCs out of Baldur's Gate, so it was simply a matter of heading south to High Hedge, skirting across the northern edge of the map to avoid skellies, and going to Beregost, where I picked Tiax up at Feldepost's Inn (it took a lot of willpower to avoid being goaded by Marl, let me tell you, but once I get a couple levels up he's going to pay dearly). Next, off to the Friendly Arm where Tiax's ghast, in tandem with a command spell, made easy work of Tarnesh. Is it strange to summon a ghast in a public place like the Friendly Arm? Maybe. But Bently Mirrorshade said the ghast could stay, so long as he buys something...
Well even if you don't have the mod to get Tiax, there are quite a few meatshields on the way/near FAI to use instead (Xzar/Montaron/Ajantis/Viconia). If Viconia does resist fear that greatly reduces the risk non-SCS.
We recruit Foundling, the shadow magic guy from some mod, but I can't tell if he has any incoming quests or any decent powers. Since he seems little better than a crummy mage with limited scrolls and subpar spells, we ditch him.
We stop by another mod area (Snake Woods maybe?) and fight a bunch of Yuan-ti. The mages are actually very easy for our party because of Witch Dagger, who can alternate between nonmagical darts and Fire Seeds, handling PFMW and Mantle both. And the Fire Elementals are immune to the fighters' swords.
Back in Dragon's Eye, or wherever, we get surprised by a huge, discolored demon. Thunderslap stun-locks it.
I don't know who designed this spell, but it's erroneously coded as an on-touch spell like Poison instead of a magical weapon spell like Shocking Grasp, which means the lack of a saving throw makes it pretty darn broken.
Speaking of coding errors, we find a really awesome spell scroll that's erroneously coded to not give you the spell when you scribe it successfully.
Deeper in some ice caverns borrowed from IWD, we find a long series of repetitive fights with enemies who are fairly interesting the first time around, including some big white caterpillars that breathe liquid nitrogen. The second time around, we come prepared against cold damage.
After fighting many Frost Giants and Frost Wyrms over and over again, we run into a topaz dragon, who is blue despite all the topazes in the entire game being yellow, and despite topaz dragons being yellow in D&D.
An earlier hint told us that the topaz dragon would be vulnerable when you kill the ice golems, so we prioritize the golem while Killer runs the dragons in circles.
Eventually we break it down, and discover in the process that Tapanasacar can cast True Seeing, which means Mae is much less equipped to tank the dragon should the need arise.
Topsy apparently attacks with her bare fists, dealing nonlethal damage, but her incredibly frequent wing buffet spells mean that she can still kill us very easily.
Topsy's PFMW wears off, but Mae doesn't get the petrification kill that we got so early on Thaxll'ssillyia.
Over and over again, we make extremely low attack rolls. Luck is very much against us in this fight. We need to do more.
I give Mayday a scroll of Minor Spell Turning, hoping to trigger a scorcher loop on the dragon. I figure Topsy's magic resistance will block most of it, but both caster and target in a scorcher loop will suffer much of the damage from the scorcher loop itself unless they're resistant to fire.
But once again, our luck proves absolutely abysmal. A basic scorcher loop with a single Agannazar's Scorcher spell and Minor Spell Turning does 100 damage on average. How much does this one do?
Not much.
Our Fire Elemental is suddenly hostile, Trash Mammal is unconscious due to nonlethal damage, and Mayday is boxed in. Things are looking ugly.
Trash Mammal drinks a potion after waking up to make sure she survives long enough to cast Heal via her belt. We use scrolls on Topsy, but luck continues to go against our efforts; Topsy resists practically everything.
I discover too late that Mae has lost her SI: Abjuration, and suffers 76 damage in a single round because Topsy apparently can cast a spell, activate a Spell Trigger, use a wing buffet, and use her breath weapon in the same round.
This is unacceptable. No dragon can use four spells in a single round, and judging by the lack of any aura cleansing messages, it's clear that Topsy's scripting just lets her cast multiple spells per round for no real reason.
The next few rounds confirm it. And Topsy's script even lets her cast spells simultaneously without using spell triggers.
No. I am not tolerating this. This whole quest has already been a boring slog of repetitive fights; I'm not going to let this end because of a modder's incompetent scripting. Mae dons the Boots of Boredom. She is now invisible to all critters and immune to spell levels 0-9.
Trash Mammal is confused, so I can't flee the fight until she recovers, which means the fight must go on. Mae chills by the exit while I watch Topsy continue to demonstrate her lousy scripting: on top of violating aura laws, Topsy is able to re-use the same Spell Trigger she expended just a few shorts rounds earlier.
I have Mae use a Tenser's Transformation scroll and have Mayday cast Improved Haste on Mae, hoping to kill Topsy using the Bow of the Snow Storm while wearing the Boots of Boredom. But it looks like killing Topsy with arrows is going to be a tedious and time-consuming prospect.
I finally just decide to wait for our disabled party members to die so I can collect our items, retreat, rest, and return with a better plan.
What's our better plan? I stack a bunch of Emotion: Hope spells to get Mae's THAC0 below zero, then crank up her APR using Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. It's not long before Mae petrifies the dragon with the Sorcerer's Staff.
Guess how much XP we got?
5860.
This dragon, with massive stats and the ability to incessantly cast multiple spells per round at level 34, gives less XP than Davaeorn, a Stone Golem, the Chinchilla from ToB, or even Baron Ployer with his 95 HP and 8 AC.
Maybe it's a coding error. Maybe it's a typo. Whatever the cause, it's yet another example of low-quality modding. Judging by the lack of author initials on the relevant files, this seems to be from a very, very old mod, so perhaps it's forgivable. Early mods in general were not very sophisticated; that holds for any game with a modding scene.
Eager to do some higher-quality questing, I head to the druid grove and stomp the trolls. Since we have Witch Dagger on the team and Tresset's chunking fix has been applied to all characters, I decide to try my hand at slaying Faldorn myself.
The first try doesn't go very well. Witch Dagger hits Faldorn with Insect Plague, but doesn't have the stats to deal with the Mountain Bears that Faldorn summoned first.
There's no limit on the number of times you can challenge Faldorn, unless you're fighting her with your main character. The second time around, we discover that, unlike my previous runs, we can actually enter the battle fully buffed. Ironskins hold off the bears, giving Witch Dagger just enough time to kill Faldorn with the Beast Claw spell.
I don't know where to go to find interesting mod companions, so I just go grab Edwin. Rayic Gethras is easy, but Mae'Var is once again bugged and it's impossible to attack him without Arkanis Gath instantly killing the party, even after Renal Bloodscalp tells you to assassinate Mae'Var. I use a workaround to deal with the bug.
Just for fun, I use the Polymorph Self trick to grant Edwin and Mae permanent access to the Mustard Jelly form, just in case they need to reach 100% MR to avoid a fatal spell. If you shapeshift at just the right time, you can keep the shapeshift you chose even after Polymorph Self is over.
I devised a complicated plan for shapeshifting at just the right time, but rather than spend 5 minutes micromanaging the whole thing, I just wait until the spell duration notifications tell me Polymorph Self is about to expire, then use the quick save trick to repeatedly shapeshift, ensuring that Mae and Edwin are in the middle of using their last shapeshifting spell when the timer runs out.
I don't know what else to do besides continue with the main quest. There's just not that much point in pursuing a whole bunch of side quests when there are no items worth getting and we have enough XP to scrape by in Spellhold.
But since I've already done the Bodhi and Aran Linvail questlines many times, I decide to try a third option from the Assassinations mod. We're going to get to Spellhold without siding with either Bodhi or the Shadow Thieves.
Well even if you don't have the mod to get Tiax, there are quite a few meatshields on the way/near FAI to use instead (Xzar/Montaron/Ajantis/Viconia). If Viconia does resist fear that greatly reduces the risk non-SCS.
Viconia has general magic resistance in vanilla, not an explicit Fear Immunity
Well even if you don't have the mod to get Tiax, there are quite a few meatshields on the way/near FAI to use instead (Xzar/Montaron/Ajantis/Viconia). If Viconia does resist fear that greatly reduces the risk non-SCS.
Viconia has general magic resistance in vanilla, not an explicit Fear Immunity
No, I am referring to the Resist Fear spell, as in the Cleric Spell. You know, Viconia=Cleric.
Corey_Russell said: Pokota said: Corey_Russell said:Well even if you don't have the mod to get Tiax, there are quite a few meatshields on the way/near FAI to use instead (Xzar/Montaron/Ajantis/Viconia). If Viconia does resist fear that greatly reduces the risk non-SCS. Viconia has general magic resistance in vanilla, not an explicit Fear Immunity
No, I am referring to the Resist Fear spell, as in the Cleric Spell. You know, Viconia=Cleric.
And that spell affects the entire party! I would in general keep your prime Character out of his sight as he has some pretty lethal spells such as lightning bolt.
After the previous death, we immediately rolled up another pair of randoms and saved. Tynea the cleric and Brave the Skald started their adventure today.
The well-trodden route began with Candlekeep chores, rapidly moving on to the death of Gorion followed by the death of Shoal the Nereid. Over to Beregost (Neera "bequeathed" her gem bag to Brave, Marl shared a drink and Firebead gave us a scroll container), then down to Nashkel picking up an amulet, boos and some delayed post on the way.
Ankheg armour and Noober were all we encountered in town so we headed south and east to retrieve a deserter. After dropping off the boots and mail we continued north to pick up some rings. Hobgoblins were used to test out Hold Person, then after a brief foray into an ankheg nest (two down, lots to go) a better target was located far to the east.
Brave was persuaded to learn Protection from Petrification, so we treated basilisks to a few Command combats before using Blindness and Silence to soften up some skeleton fodder.
Flush with success and loot, we pressed on to deal with sirines and flesh golems. Brave putting a non-proficient bow to good use.
I would like to see what you could do with the FMT.
The poverty run is really RP heavy. That might appeal to some, bit I read this page to learn something about gameplay - not the moral dilemmas of charname. But thats just me
@StummvonBordwehr: If it makes a difference, I wouldn't be doing any RP stuff in the poverty run. Much of it would involve finding ways to deal with horrible AC, no potions, and very restricted access to resurrection.
I've also considered a restless run. But unlike other restless runs, I would not allow the party to rest even from quest-related rests like the rest after meeting Garren Windspear; they'd all be immune to the rest opcode.
@StummvonBordwehr: If it makes a difference, I wouldn't be doing any RP stuff in the poverty run. Much of it would involve finding ways to deal with horrible AC, no potions, and very restricted access to resurrection.
I've also considered a restless run. But unlike other restless runs, I would not allow the party to rest even from quest-related rests like the rest after meeting Garren Windspear; they'd all be immune to the rest opcode.
@StummvonBordwehr: If it makes a difference, I wouldn't be doing any RP stuff in the poverty run. Much of it would involve finding ways to deal with horrible AC, no potions, and very restricted access to resurrection.
I've also considered a restless run. But unlike other restless runs, I would not allow the party to rest even from quest-related rests like the rest after meeting Garren Windspear; they'd all be immune to the rest opcode.
@semiticgod A restless run sounds cool. I hate resting - in a no reload scenario. I avoid resting at all cost in BG2, just because I hate the cut scenes... I would love to see how you would manage the no rest restriction. You always seem to handle in play setbacks extremely well - so you doing a no rest run would be inspiring.
But I will leave the call to the no-reload veterans
I've also considered a restless run. But unlike other restless runs, I would not allow the party to rest even from quest-related rests like the rest after meeting Garren Windspear; they'd all be immune to the rest opcode.
What cruelty! Will you at least be modding in caffeine potions?
In an unrelated note: do any of you get restartitis on no-reload runs? I never thought it would happen to me but it's happening. I'm at the entrance to the Cloakwood Mines and I've lost connection to my character due to my focus on metagaming. I've also reached a level of power (levels, money and gear) where I'm not likely to die outside of Werewolf Island, Durlag's Tower or the final fight. And I admit I'm not really eager to go to Durlag's now that I've made it this far (cue the ballad of the brave Sir Robin).
I've also considered a restless run. But unlike other restless runs, I would not allow the party to rest even from quest-related rests like the rest after meeting Garren Windspear; they'd all be immune to the rest opcode.
What cruelty! Will you at least be modding in caffeine potions?
In an unrelated note: do any of you get restartitis on no-reload runs? I never thought it would happen to me but it's happening. I'm at the entrance to the Cloakwood Mines and I've lost connection to my character due to my focus on metagaming. I've also reached a level of power (levels, money and gear) where I'm not likely to die outside of Werewolf Island, Durlag's Tower or the final fight. And I admit I'm not really eager to go to Durlag's now that I've made it this far (cue the ballad of the brave Sir Robin).
I do sometimes get restartitis - and you hit the nail on the head, the key to see it to the end is being connected to your character (or party). For example, I love the paladin class, so when I do all paladin parties, they are a lot of fun, and I connect with them and want to see them to the end.
I dropped of Minsc and picked up Thorin. (Just wanting as many good guys to reach the experience limit as possible. Minsc reached it in the Section. ) We turned down Nikita's help.
In transit we met and defeated Molkar.
We then took on the Cloakwood Mines:
Jaheira used insects well and avoided serious hurt.
True sight helped against an ogre-mage.
Fireballs and web proved most effective at the lowest level, but guards coming up behind us was a major problem which we managed to solve.
That final battle was much harder than usual due to the unexpected happening. We then fought Wendall and his men. They shouldn't really have attacked a superior force like us.
In transit we fought wyverns.
Having depopulated the mine we headed for Baldur's Gate where we were ambushed by Jhaeros Auglathla who didn't set his trap at all well and as a result fought us without back-up. That resulted in his death:
A thief tried to sneak up on us undetected after Dynaheir cast web and Cloudkill but I was alert to the possibility and he was detected by my Truesight. As a result he did no damage before he was killed.
Halbazzer was able to make a helpful artifact from a spider's egg.
Stoneheart then gave us a quest. It was easy enough but it took some searching before we were able to complete it. We went in search of R&R but ended up fighting Larze.
We then blundered into a ogre- mage and killed both him and his pet carrion crawlers.
We were able to help Arkion and Nemphre, though they probably wouldn't have recognised it as such.
We then helped a nymph and a mage.
We were able to help Sir Winton without even going out of our way.
I killed a basilisk single handed.
Having been sent in search of Yago, we were intercepted by Desreta who we killed first before killing her cohort.
Yago died next.
We then ensured that we got the antidote to the poison in our bodies.
Ramazith died next. He was most unpleasant.
Joular was next.
We then tried to help Mendes but ended up in a minor war against werewolves.
@Arctodus: There's a decent chance I'll end up losing interest in the one I don't do first, since there's also a good chance I'll end up re-starting the first run if it fails midway through, instead of switching to the second.
@Wise_Grimwald Man, fighting those werewolves in confined quarters seems highly risky. Congrats on getting by them. I have a feeling my run will end there, if I go.
@Wise_Grimwald Man, fighting those werewolves in confined quarters seems highly risky. Congrats on getting by them. I have a feeling my run will end there, if I go.
I was at the experience cap with all my party, and I got a surprise bonus on the island, a +3 katana for a character who has ** in katanas.
I had a few attempts with a dwarven defender 6 or 7 months ago and decided to pick that character up again. I had an annoying end to attempt 6 early this morning though when a character with 126 HPs (easily the most I've ever had in BG1 ) got held by Davaeorn.
This run I feel determined to make better progress, so thought I would do a brief write up of it. Thus far I've kept things extremely safe while doing the following: - made sure to keep distance from Shoal while throwing those slow axes at her.
The 2 levels gained there netted 31 HPs (not quite up to the maximum 34 gained with the previous attempt, but pretty good). - killed Algernon for his cloak. - travelling north, got another level by giving Tenya a bowl (a disappointing 8 HPs there though).
- charmed Dushai and drew him away for a private discussion on the best way to use throwing axes to chop a gnome's head off (we agreed that the best way is to use it as a melee weapon - avoiding any possibility of it breaking). - a few reputation quests on the way to Nashkel ensured that I would get CLW as a first Bhaal power. One of the quests was for Bjornin to provide a shield upgrade and the ankheg armor in Nashkel further improved AC. - at Firewine Bridge I used Algernon's Cloak for the first time to get Bentan's scroll without suffering a reputation loss. I also used defensive stance for the first time against Meilum. The potential problem with that is the difficulty of running away if you get unlucky in a fight, so I stayed near the map edge in case that was needed (it wasn't, though Meilum did quite well to get a few licks in).
- taking Samuel back to the FAI triggered another level and 13 more HPs.
- Melicamp was successfully revived on the way to the Lighthouse, where the potion of clarity from Candlekeep ensured the sirines could be meleed safely. That was just enough to get me to level 6 and another 12 HPs.
- I briefly left the golems while going to collect some +1 arrows from Sendai's archer friends. Then back to the cave to pick up the constitution tome and activate natural regeneration. - the ankheg nest was cleared (I rested once in the middle of doing that to ensure HPs were always high enough to be safe). - the major encounters in the Cloud Peaks were done to net a crushing girdle and charisma tome. - helping Charleston Nib pushed reputation up to 20, but I didn't immediately take on the Doomsayer as I had no magical melee weapon. I was though close to level 7, so did a bit more exploring in that area to tip me over - gaining a nice 17 extra HPs.
- with the extra HPs and APR, as well as the crushing girdle, I decided that taking on Bassilus would be safe even if he successfully hit me with rigid thinking - but I saved anyway.
- with a new hammer in hand the Doomsayer didn't last long and after doing some shopping I cleared the Valley of the Tombs. The items purchased had included potions of magic blocking in case that was needed against Narcilicus, but his first 2 spells were interrupted before poison ensured he wouldn't get another chance. Three fireballs then ended the amazons' challenge.
- on the way to the basilisks I realised I'd apparently forgotten to pick up Bassilus' holy symbol. Depopulating the monsters soothed away that annoyance before Korax paralysed Mutamin. He lost out to Kirian's crew though and I had to pull them away individually to finish them off.
- with the slashing girdle equipped the battle horrors at Durlag's Tower were severely outclassed and I soon picked up my final BG1 level with 12 more HPs.
I didn't bother with the ghasts inside, but used the Greenstone Amulet to pick up the tome and a couple of mirror eye potions to quickly smack down the basilisks on the roof. - with all items I've got any use for at the moment purchased, I killed a couple of innocents in order to get evil Bhaal powers next. With that done it's time to crack on with the main quest.
Comments
Previous posts:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904835/#Comment_904835
SoD start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/904866/#Comment_904866
SoD end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906579/#Comment_906579
BG2 start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/906698/#Comment_906698
BG2 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909375/#Comment_909375
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
Part LI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912871/#Comment_912871
As we had already killed Draconis, entering Abazigal's hideout and taking down the greater werewyvern with the help of an invulnerable mordy sword was easy work. While getting the breath potion, I learned that The Wave +4 also works against ice salamanders! This is great - these would otherwise be quite annoying to deal with:
A couple of summons helped to deal with kua-toans and the prince of water:
For the eye groups, I had only Aikar, protected by the Cloak of Mirroring, and a planetar fight. Aikar only had to make sure to kill the "Sentinels" with a quick GWW, as they summon monsters - everything else simply can't do anything against the power of the cloak:
I rescued Bondari and made my way to Abazigal.
After buffing up (including protection from electricity for everyone), I had Aikar run around and kill all salamanders while Abazigal tried and failed to kill a mordy sword:
It took quite a while to take down his human form, but eventually, he transformed, kicking everyone far away in the process - except for our planetar, who was now tanking the dragon:
Abazigal's most dangerous move would be remove magic + breath weapon. As it happens, he was the first enemy I encountered not to simply use remove magic on the nearest party member, but on my back line - this removed the buffs of Aikar, Mazzy, and also Arbogast himself. However, I was prepared for such an occasion: I had potions of absorption, which I had specifically bought after Jan's chunking via lightning damage, in my potion bag - all three vulnerable party members used one of those, and not a second too soon: Right after that, a breath weapon hit most of the party (though Arbogast would have been out of range).
After the remove magic, I finally managed to get into a good position to deal some damage - summons surrounding the dragon, a surprisingly sturdy planetar still taking all the hits, and my fighters using their HLAs:
In fact, Abazigal was kind of a pushover after his failed dispel + breath weapon ploy - he didn't do anything of significance before being brought down by more GWWs:
We forged the colossus golem book and FoA +5 before entering Amkethran and sneaking to Saemon. The monks guarding the monestary were killed with summons, smite to disable the fighters, and true sight, breaches and some patience for the mages. An AHW was the only dangerous occurence during the fight, but I was quite prepared, switching the Cloak of Mirroring to Nahema, the only one in the threatened range:
I engaged Balthazar without resting again, with my party quickly running back at the start of the battle to take down the eastern monks, while the bhaalspawn was being kited. Eventually, I had Nahema tank him:
With three monks gone and the fourth one not involved in the battle, it was time to focus my attention on Balthazar:
With a couple of HLAs, the monk was brought to near death:
However, he used his second wind to heal back up once again:
Balthazar actually pulled off a couple of successful moves, and I was unable to keep any summons going during this battle. I was forced to put more characters into melee range to deal damage as fast as possible - mostly, Balthazar tried and failed to get past Nahema's protections, but if he managed to hit someone else, it hurt:
He even got through Arbogast's ironskins (I don't know how, propably by using one of his special abilities - I have no idea what all of them really do) - but shortly after that, I had established enough control of the battlefield by now getting some summons going and getting into good positions for HLA use, and our foe was slain:
Finally, I started completing some pocket plane challenges: Smite was very helpful against "Dark Arbogast", and Semaj was killed while his companions were disabled:
The third challenge isn't worth mentioning, and the chosen of cyric faced a fully stoneskinned party (thanks to Gargoyle Boots and some resting) - plus two true sights and some invulnerable magical swords:
I won't be facing the Ravager just yet, because I want to prevent myself form misclicking and going to the throne by accident while trying to clear Watcher's Keep. This is still a completionist run, after all - and I've only cleared level 1 and level 2 in SoA.
Enuhal
Wimper {11} - solo LoB sorcerer
Well the 10th run didn't last long. Early on I saw a hobgoblin and pressed the space bar - but the game didn't pause. Although I didn't react quickly to that I decided it was enough not my fault to justify having another 'final' attempt.
Things went smoothly early on with the +2 dagger picked up before going up to Ulgoth's Beard to cut down Dushai. A few fetch type tasks were enough to get to level 3 and learn protection from petrification. I was careless though in travelling to the Beregost Temple on the way to the basilisk area. It was early enough in the day for travel to the area immediately north of Nashkel to be safe from bandits, but not to the next area along the road ...
Night in the Woods: Mae in Shadows of Amn
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We recruit Foundling, the shadow magic guy from some mod, but I can't tell if he has any incoming quests or any decent powers. Since he seems little better than a crummy mage with limited scrolls and subpar spells, we ditch him.
We stop by another mod area (Snake Woods maybe?) and fight a bunch of Yuan-ti. The mages are actually very easy for our party because of Witch Dagger, who can alternate between nonmagical darts and Fire Seeds, handling PFMW and Mantle both. And the Fire Elementals are immune to the fighters' swords.
Back in Dragon's Eye, or wherever, we get surprised by a huge, discolored demon. Thunderslap stun-locks it.
I don't know who designed this spell, but it's erroneously coded as an on-touch spell like Poison instead of a magical weapon spell like Shocking Grasp, which means the lack of a saving throw makes it pretty darn broken.
Speaking of coding errors, we find a really awesome spell scroll that's erroneously coded to not give you the spell when you scribe it successfully.
Deeper in some ice caverns borrowed from IWD, we find a long series of repetitive fights with enemies who are fairly interesting the first time around, including some big white caterpillars that breathe liquid nitrogen. The second time around, we come prepared against cold damage.
After fighting many Frost Giants and Frost Wyrms over and over again, we run into a topaz dragon, who is blue despite all the topazes in the entire game being yellow, and despite topaz dragons being yellow in D&D.
An earlier hint told us that the topaz dragon would be vulnerable when you kill the ice golems, so we prioritize the golem while Killer runs the dragons in circles.
Eventually we break it down, and discover in the process that Tapanasacar can cast True Seeing, which means Mae is much less equipped to tank the dragon should the need arise.
Topsy apparently attacks with her bare fists, dealing nonlethal damage, but her incredibly frequent wing buffet spells mean that she can still kill us very easily.
Topsy's PFMW wears off, but Mae doesn't get the petrification kill that we got so early on Thaxll'ssillyia.
Over and over again, we make extremely low attack rolls. Luck is very much against us in this fight. We need to do more.
I give Mayday a scroll of Minor Spell Turning, hoping to trigger a scorcher loop on the dragon. I figure Topsy's magic resistance will block most of it, but both caster and target in a scorcher loop will suffer much of the damage from the scorcher loop itself unless they're resistant to fire.
But once again, our luck proves absolutely abysmal. A basic scorcher loop with a single Agannazar's Scorcher spell and Minor Spell Turning does 100 damage on average. How much does this one do?
Not much.
Our Fire Elemental is suddenly hostile, Trash Mammal is unconscious due to nonlethal damage, and Mayday is boxed in. Things are looking ugly.
Trash Mammal drinks a potion after waking up to make sure she survives long enough to cast Heal via her belt. We use scrolls on Topsy, but luck continues to go against our efforts; Topsy resists practically everything.
I discover too late that Mae has lost her SI: Abjuration, and suffers 76 damage in a single round because Topsy apparently can cast a spell, activate a Spell Trigger, use a wing buffet, and use her breath weapon in the same round.
This is unacceptable. No dragon can use four spells in a single round, and judging by the lack of any aura cleansing messages, it's clear that Topsy's scripting just lets her cast multiple spells per round for no real reason.
The next few rounds confirm it. And Topsy's script even lets her cast spells simultaneously without using spell triggers.
No. I am not tolerating this. This whole quest has already been a boring slog of repetitive fights; I'm not going to let this end because of a modder's incompetent scripting. Mae dons the Boots of Boredom. She is now invisible to all critters and immune to spell levels 0-9.
Trash Mammal is confused, so I can't flee the fight until she recovers, which means the fight must go on. Mae chills by the exit while I watch Topsy continue to demonstrate her lousy scripting: on top of violating aura laws, Topsy is able to re-use the same Spell Trigger she expended just a few shorts rounds earlier.
I have Mae use a Tenser's Transformation scroll and have Mayday cast Improved Haste on Mae, hoping to kill Topsy using the Bow of the Snow Storm while wearing the Boots of Boredom. But it looks like killing Topsy with arrows is going to be a tedious and time-consuming prospect.
I finally just decide to wait for our disabled party members to die so I can collect our items, retreat, rest, and return with a better plan.
What's our better plan? I stack a bunch of Emotion: Hope spells to get Mae's THAC0 below zero, then crank up her APR using Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. It's not long before Mae petrifies the dragon with the Sorcerer's Staff.
Guess how much XP we got?
5860.
This dragon, with massive stats and the ability to incessantly cast multiple spells per round at level 34, gives less XP than Davaeorn, a Stone Golem, the Chinchilla from ToB, or even Baron Ployer with his 95 HP and 8 AC.
Maybe it's a coding error. Maybe it's a typo. Whatever the cause, it's yet another example of low-quality modding. Judging by the lack of author initials on the relevant files, this seems to be from a very, very old mod, so perhaps it's forgivable. Early mods in general were not very sophisticated; that holds for any game with a modding scene.
Eager to do some higher-quality questing, I head to the druid grove and stomp the trolls. Since we have Witch Dagger on the team and Tresset's chunking fix has been applied to all characters, I decide to try my hand at slaying Faldorn myself.
The first try doesn't go very well. Witch Dagger hits Faldorn with Insect Plague, but doesn't have the stats to deal with the Mountain Bears that Faldorn summoned first.
There's no limit on the number of times you can challenge Faldorn, unless you're fighting her with your main character. The second time around, we discover that, unlike my previous runs, we can actually enter the battle fully buffed. Ironskins hold off the bears, giving Witch Dagger just enough time to kill Faldorn with the Beast Claw spell.
I don't know where to go to find interesting mod companions, so I just go grab Edwin. Rayic Gethras is easy, but Mae'Var is once again bugged and it's impossible to attack him without Arkanis Gath instantly killing the party, even after Renal Bloodscalp tells you to assassinate Mae'Var. I use a workaround to deal with the bug.
Just for fun, I use the Polymorph Self trick to grant Edwin and Mae permanent access to the Mustard Jelly form, just in case they need to reach 100% MR to avoid a fatal spell. If you shapeshift at just the right time, you can keep the shapeshift you chose even after Polymorph Self is over.
I devised a complicated plan for shapeshifting at just the right time, but rather than spend 5 minutes micromanaging the whole thing, I just wait until the spell duration notifications tell me Polymorph Self is about to expire, then use the quick save trick to repeatedly shapeshift, ensuring that Mae and Edwin are in the middle of using their last shapeshifting spell when the timer runs out.
I don't know what else to do besides continue with the main quest. There's just not that much point in pursuing a whole bunch of side quests when there are no items worth getting and we have enough XP to scrape by in Spellhold.
But since I've already done the Bodhi and Aran Linvail questlines many times, I decide to try a third option from the Assassinations mod. We're going to get to Spellhold without siding with either Bodhi or the Shadow Thieves.
Viconia has general magic resistance in vanilla, not an explicit Fear Immunity
No, I am referring to the Resist Fear spell, as in the Cleric Spell. You know, Viconia=Cleric.
And that spell affects the entire party! I would in general keep your prime Character out of his sight as he has some pretty lethal spells such as lightning bolt.
After the previous death, we immediately rolled up another pair of randoms and saved. Tynea the cleric and Brave the Skald started their adventure today.
The well-trodden route began with Candlekeep chores, rapidly moving on to the death of Gorion followed by the death of Shoal the Nereid. Over to Beregost (Neera "bequeathed" her gem bag to Brave, Marl shared a drink and Firebead gave us a scroll container), then down to Nashkel picking up an amulet, boos and some delayed post on the way.
Ankheg armour and Noober were all we encountered in town so we headed south and east to retrieve a deserter. After dropping off the boots and mail we continued north to pick up some rings. Hobgoblins were used to test out Hold Person, then after a brief foray into an ankheg nest (two down, lots to go) a better target was located far to the east.
1. A solo Legacy of Bhaal mode run with a Fighter/Mage/Thief (no bonus XP, no XP cap)
2. A poverty run with a Cleric of Tyr, Shaman, Totemic Druid, Wizard Slayer/Druid, Cleric/Thief, Fighter/Druid, and/or multiple sorcerers
The poverty run is really RP heavy. That might appeal to some, bit I read this page to learn something about gameplay - not the moral dilemmas of charname. But thats just me
I've also considered a restless run. But unlike other restless runs, I would not allow the party to rest even from quest-related rests like the rest after meeting Garren Windspear; they'd all be immune to the rest opcode.
A restless run sounds cool. I hate resting - in a no reload scenario. I avoid resting at all cost in BG2, just because I hate the cut scenes... I would love to see how you would manage the no rest restriction. You always seem to handle in play setbacks extremely well - so you doing a no rest run would be inspiring.
But I will leave the call to the no-reload veterans
In an unrelated note: do any of you get restartitis on no-reload runs? I never thought it would happen to me but it's happening. I'm at the entrance to the Cloakwood Mines and I've lost connection to my character due to my focus on metagaming. I've also reached a level of power (levels, money and gear) where I'm not likely to die outside of Werewolf Island, Durlag's Tower or the final fight. And I admit I'm not really eager to go to Durlag's now that I've made it this far (cue the ballad of the brave Sir Robin).
Diary of Æthelioba
I dropped of Minsc and picked up Thorin. (Just wanting as many good guys to reach the experience limit as possible. Minsc reached it in the Section.Diary of Æthelioba
Halbazzer was able to make a helpful artifact from a spider's egg.We went in search of R&R but ended up fighting Larze.
I had a few attempts with a dwarven defender 6 or 7 months ago and decided to pick that character up again. I had an annoying end to attempt 6 early this morning though when a character with 126 HPs (easily the most I've ever had in BG1
This run I feel determined to make better progress, so thought I would do a brief write up of it. Thus far I've kept things extremely safe while doing the following:
- made sure to keep distance from Shoal while throwing those slow axes at her.
- killed Algernon for his cloak.
- travelling north, got another level by giving Tenya a bowl (a disappointing 8 HPs there though).
- a few reputation quests on the way to Nashkel ensured that I would get CLW as a first Bhaal power. One of the quests was for Bjornin to provide a shield upgrade and the ankheg armor in Nashkel further improved AC.
- at Firewine Bridge I used Algernon's Cloak for the first time to get Bentan's scroll without suffering a reputation loss. I also used defensive stance for the first time against Meilum. The potential problem with that is the difficulty of running away if you get unlucky in a fight, so I stayed near the map edge in case that was needed (it wasn't, though Meilum did quite well to get a few licks in).
- the ankheg nest was cleared (I rested once in the middle of doing that to ensure HPs were always high enough to be safe).
- the major encounters in the Cloud Peaks were done to net a crushing girdle and charisma tome.
- helping Charleston Nib pushed reputation up to 20, but I didn't immediately take on the Doomsayer as I had no magical melee weapon. I was though close to level 7, so did a bit more exploring in that area to tip me over - gaining a nice 17 extra HPs.
- with all items I've got any use for at the moment purchased, I killed a couple of innocents in order to get evil Bhaal powers next. With that done it's time to crack on with the main quest.
Here's my current character record.
Dwarven defender L8, 110 HPs, 206 kills