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
I thought you might be doing that signature players run? Could be interesting with some 'quirks' based on forumites. Obviously Grond0 wouldn't use potions for example . You could also disallow resurrection and cycle new pcs in from a 'dirty dozen' pool .
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).
Remember Dushai is a HER, not a him. the wiki agrees with me. Remember, it's a poor defenseless female you are always picking on, not some guy. Now that I realize she's an unarmed female, I kill her a lot less, mostly my evil parties, my good characters leave her alone.
I find it difficult enough to remember the sex of my own characters, let alone neutrals . Fortunately, however, I'm a believer in sexual equality - everyone should have the same opportunity to lose their head ...
After breezing through the Nashkel Mine Mulahey failed to complete a spell though I stayed by the entrance to be able to run away if necessary.
For Nimbul I took the precaution of using the Horn of Kazgaroth. That only lasts 3 rounds (immunity to level 1 and 2 spells, +5 AC vs missiles and +2 to saving throws at the expense of 10 HP damage) and that allowed Nimbul to get one lot of magic missiles through my defenses before he exploded into chunks.
In Beregost I talked to Officer Vai (to ensure that opportunity to gain reputation wouldn't disappear) before another Horn charge was used on Tranzig.
At the Bandit Camp, Taurgosz got hammered, but his armor was still in good enough condition to be worth transferring.
Inside Tazok's tent, Venkt failed to complete a spell. The others did get pretty lucky in the rest of the fight (getting 4 critical hits), but that wasn't enough to save them.
I went to the FAI to pick up the pantaloons - Tarnesh failing to put up much of a defense there.
With free action operating there was no threat from the Cloakwood web traps on the way to the mine. Fireballs killed the mages guarding the entrance and the others were quickly finished off.
Inside the mine I tried using horror to clear away the ambush on the 2nd level down, but was interrupted and had to fight through the hard way.
In compensation for that though the guard on the next level was successfully charmed and he helped against the battle horrors before being killed by a lightning bolt from Davaeorn. The advantage of that was it made quite sure that this time the potion of magic blocking would still be active when Davaeorn tried his hold person!
After flooding the mine and resting to get a second Bhaal horror I moved on to the City. A small donation and doing all the reputation quests there boosted rep back up to 20, while equipment and fighting improvements obtained included the dexterity tome, ring of protection +2, Helm & Cloak of Balduran, nymph cloak, Helm of Glory and another couple of Necklaces of Missiles. Here are a few sundry screenshots from those encounters, showing most of the mages were tackled from range for safety.
After the Helm of Glory allowed me to buy everything desired at minimum prices, a final trip into the wilderness saw the Red Wizards fireballed before Denak was the latest to feel a poisonous sting.
That just leaves the Iron Throne before heading back to Candlekeep.
Right now I'm leaning towards the restless solo poverty run with a Seducer. @argent77 recently showed me how to add unlimited followers to a party--not actual party members you can raise from the dead, or whose inventory or spellbooks you can manage, or who could gain levels, but critters who follow you around like familiars from map to map. So you might recruit a small army of followers, only to see half of them die to a single spell because they're so low-level and have no potions.
At the Iron Throne I successfully charmed Zhalimar on first going up to the 5th floor.
Several of the enemies tried to play on the stairs, but found they weren't very good at that game. Most of the casters though targeted Zhalimar while I targeted them. Zhalimar eventually recovered his senses, but by then he only had one companion left and it was far too late for his cause. I took no damage during the fights there.
In Candlekeep I went straight to the catacombs and as usual just relied on HPs against the traps while getting the tomes. For Prat's gang a fireball turned them hostile before horror sent everyone but Sakul running. He didn't get a chance to cast a spell and Bor also died before the horror ended. Tam then lost out in an acid arrow exchange, but it took a while to track Prat down and cost a potion of absorption to stay safe against his lightning bolts.
I then switched to dual-wielding for the first time to kill the basilisks quicker after using another potion to protect against their gaze.
Back in the City, Slythe was on a loser in a melee contest.
I waited for Krystin's mirrors to fall and then showed myself. Her only completed spell was an initial remove magic (and I had no buffs anyway ).
At the Palace I entered properly, but was surprised by the dialogue options inside asking why I didn't have an invitation. Checking the previous text it appeared I must have knocked the keypad while shifting the keyboard and informed the guard that I didn't need an invitation.
I suspected that was bad news as I've suffered an instant death there before, but tried to bluff my way through by saying the guard couldn't ask why I didn't have an invitation - and I wasn't instantly killed this time. Talking again to the guard outside didn't help and the inside guard refused to look at the invitations I kept thrusting under his nose, so I just prepared for the fight. Potions of power, speed, mind focusing and giant strength were used and topped up by DUHM. The palace fight is the only one in BG1 I fear, but fortunately this time it was the dopplegangers affected by fear when horror sent 3 of them running. Liia still died rapidly, but Belt was never in trouble and acid arrows killed the running dopplegangers well before they could recover. I was still a bit afraid the guard checking tickets would intervene at the last minute, but Belt duly sent me after Sarevok.
After fighting through the maze I decided to leave the Undercity party alone this time and go straight to the temple (straight as in by a roundabout route ). A first use of a PfM scroll ensured Semaj wouldn't be able to do anything nasty when he teleported out. However, his further use of dimension door took him close enough to the dais for the others to join in when he died.
Angelo used a dispel magic, but when he tried using arrows of detonation on me he was rather amusingly killed by an annoyed Tazok who had been caught in the blast.
For a further laugh I set off repeated skull traps to wear down Tazok and Sarevok before buffing with DUHM and closing for the finish (though I was too slow to get a screenshot of Sarevok before the cut-scene kicked in).
Arriving in SoD I see I've gone a bit too completionist again and amassed 433k XP . Taking the level earned gave 12 more HPs.
All but one of Porios' guards ran in terror as I advanced on them, making it easy to open the door and persuade Porios to surrender. On the next level there was liberal use of necklace fireballs to dispose of the undead with minimal help from the Flaming Fist. For Korlasz I just buffed with DUHM and a single hit with a dispelling arrow followed up by an arrow of detonation saw her give up.
In Baldur's Gate the equipment from various NPCs funded some purchases before marching out. My equipment chest was emptied into a bag of holding to ensure nothing was forgotten before a vampire was helped to complete a critical mission (securing a source of regeneration in the process).
Back at the Coast Way Crossing Teleria was poisoned to make available some stone golem summons (though I would need to use potions to boost intelligence to allow that). The messenger from Tsolak turned up at that point - also getting me to the SoD level cap.
That seemed like a good time to assault the bridge guards and a potion of firebreath there helped kill the most dangerous ones before a parley (the rest died after the parley).
There were only a few hobgoblins to be cleared from the road at Troll Claw Woods before moving on. An ambush area with orcs and trolls was sorted out
before arriving at the Forest of Wyrms. Bhaal horror helped make fights with wyverns and phase spiders simple
before I nipped through a dragon cave without waking anything. Some bugbears and traps then did a bit of damage that was repaired by regeneration before I moved into the temple proper.
After ensuring no guards would be coming to Ziatar's aid I attacked her, using both defensive stance and the Horn to get saves into negative territory. As usual she disappeared into sanctuary, but I decided this time I was having none of that and dropped some daggers on the floor to act as a target for the Ring of Energy.
To be safe against the Neothelid I used a potion of invulnerability (that also protected against a suspected charm trap in the corridor).
The potion had worn off by the time I got to the Shadow Aspect, but its THAC0 is not really up to plate armor and a couple of criticals soon dispatched it.
For Darskhelin I used another potion of invulnerability and added a potion of speed to make arrows of detonation more effective before finishing off in melee.
I tried making a straight attack on Akanna, but her aerial servants got a couple of lucky early blows in to make that seem a questionable technique. Fortunately Bhaal horror once more came up trumps to make finishing the contest simple.
On the way out I couldn't resist testing my dagger throwing ability. As with my last run the dragon seems to be much more sleepy on the way out than the way in and it was actually my third attack with a dagger that proved deadly.
I reckon by now I know the SoD content up to this point pretty well, so would have expected to get at least this far. Sterner challenges may lie ahead, however .
At Boareskyr Bridge I cleared the exterior of the map (in fact I had to do that twice due to a program crash - that seems relatively common in that area). Inside Bridgefort I had a dragonscale shield made up. That gives a bonus against save vs death and I decided that it was about time to put the Claw of Kazgaroth on - the save bonuses being much more attractive than the loss of 9 HPs and natural regeneration now that the vulnerability against death saves has been patched. With shield equipped that pushes my AC to -12, meaning standard enemies will struggle to get a hit in.
Vichand is just far enough away from others to be able to be attacked without alerting the camp
and I used his scroll to patch the magic defenses in Bridgefort. After a dark wraith was killed
some of its substance was made up into a +3 hammer. That doesn't apply strength bonuses, so won't be used for normal combats, but should come in handy against Belhifet if I get that far. I also bought Rhyte's last arrow, which is a minor upgrade on the standard +2 throwing axe, as well as lots more potions.
After telling Khalid to join in when he heard an attack I brought the Flaming Fist up to attack the crusaders. A few potions helped boost my damage and my attacks added to a firebreath accounted for the main crusader leaders.
The mage at the bridge managed to get a lightning bolt off before being crushed.
After looting all the dead bodies, I exorcised a well spirit before moving on to the Coalition Camp. I looked for the Spectacles of Spectacle, but appear to have mislaid those at some point, so there was no genie offering goods. Instead I picked up some Bwoosh and poison and headed for Dead Man's Pass. On the way I bumped into a Shadowy Figure and his gang. Running round and fireballs reduced the odds a bit before I stood and fought. The Shadowy Figure soon decided he'd had enough and disappeared, but I fireballed myself just quickly enough to catch him in the fringes of the blast.
There was a reminder to be more careful at Dead Man's Pass when I saw a gargantuan spider coming and decided not to put on the ring of free action as a spell save of -1 would make me safe. Unfortunately though, its web tangle requires a save vs breath and 2 did not make me safe . However, a save of 0 vs poison and high HPs kept me alive long enough to escape the web and take revenge on the spiders.
There was still plenty of fighting on the way through the area, but I was more careful and made it through safely. Incidentally, if anyone (like me) has been confused about why Dragonspear Castle is sometimes shown as accessible from this map and sometimes not, I think it's because although the castle lies to the north-west according to the World Map, it's only opened up if you leave Dead Man's Pass on the eastern edge.
At the Castle I rescued Skie
before trying a number of conversation options on the guard at the gate. Eventually one proved successful and he let me in and gave me Caelar's seal. I haven't been in here at this stage before, but decided not to explore this time either and just head for the Underground River. Some myconids there provided another lot of potential summons. A bit further on a group of guards with a cyclops were preventing entrance to the underground tunnels. I thought that having the seal would probably allow me to pass through the guards peaceably and indeed the cyclops said we were friends and to pass - and then half a second later everyone attacked .
I immediately ran away and then sniped backwards and forwards to avoid being attacked by multiple enemies at once. The crusader archers got a number of nasty criticals in, but eventually the gate was cleared of enemies - I left Rigah and Julann alone.
Inside the tunnels I persuaded a pair of sahuagin to hand over a wand of elemental summoning, but couldn't use it anyway. However, Ferrusk was willing to hand over an ankheg summoning amulet that I could use.
More potions were on sale by Bellowgulp - resulting in me over-filling my third potion case. A bit further on I attacked Strunk with the vague idea you got a reward for killing him, but not the elementals.
There was indeed a reward - a protection from poison ioun stone, which is unlikely to be useful to me though could be for some parties.
After resting to heal up I placed the barrel of Bwoosh and then talked my way into the Warrens. A bit of poison for the water and food later and I used a potion of invisibility to disappear and leave the tunnels.
Next up will be the enemy assault on the Coalition Camp. The last time I was here I somehow overlooked an enemy slipping past the defences resulting in a scripted death - so I'll have to try and be more careful this time.
Dwarven defender L10, 121 HPs (incl. 5 from helm, -9 from Claw), 855 kills
My run came to an end trying to do the Grey Clan Episode. Æthelioba was the only one left alive after defeating the Clan at the FAI. Raising them again was no problem as gold was in plentiful supply. Thorin however was chunked. Probably at the hands of Æthelioba. Both of them were affected by chaos as I no longer had a cleric. Bad mistake! Drake should have been replaced as I had to evict him due to a bug. Vynd and Dynaheir went downstairs to avoid being killed by Æthelioba. They were killed by the bandits instead!! Æthelioba was able to survive however. They picked up Minsc as a replacement for Thorin and Gavin as a replacement for Drake. Gavin had quite good experience when he joined unlike some other NPCs.
In Beregost the Clan were just too much for the party. I think that I'll play it through a few times to see if I can discover a strategy that works. Perhaps loads of summoned monsters could do the trick. Backstabbing one of the mages with Vynd might also do the trick. He might get killed doing it, but by killing one of thee mages, the battle could be a lot easier.
@Wise_Grimwald: I won the Grey Clan fights, both at the FAI and in Beregost, by summoning Greater Wyverns from the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning from the Dark Horizons mod in my BWS install (that amulet can win basically any fight). I don't really see how the fight could be reasonably won without relying on mod resources of some sort--in fact, I'm shocked you were able to beat the FAI fights without reloading! How did you manage it exactly?
@Wise_Grimwald: I won the Grey Clan fights, both at the FAI and in Beregost, by summoning Greater Wyverns from the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning from the Dark Horizons mod in my BWS install (that amulet can win basically any fight). I don't really see how the fight could be reasonably won without relying on mod resources of some sort--in fact, I'm shocked you were able to beat the FAI fights without reloading! How did you manage it exactly?
I did have some mod items. Every team member had +3 weapons and they all had good armour. Jaheira had ankheg armour and the tanks had armour with an AC of 0.
Æthelioba cast true sight before going upstairs.
Dynaheir cast web first followed by cloudkill. Jaheira cast insect plague. She died fairly early on.
When Æthelioba and Thorin were affected by Chaos, Dynaheir and Vynd escaped downstairs and were followed by two of the Clan. That may have been crucial, two fewer to fight Æthelioba and Minsc!!
I don't know quite what was happening upstairs as I was desperately trying to keep Vynd and Dynaheir alive!!
A crucial factor may have been that Æthelioba did not move into the cloudkill whilst under the influence of Chaos. Thorin did.
Upon the deaths of Vynd and Dynaheir I looked to see what was happening upstairs. The mage was fighting melee from a position inside the cloudkill whilst Æthelioba was outside it. That was also crucial.
I moved Thorin outside the cloudkill, but he was already on the point of death and healing potions didn't help.
As soon as the mage was dead Æthelioba took numerous healing potions to bring her up to full health.
Vynd and Dynaheir had both helped weaken the Clan members downstairs so that when Æthelioba fought them, the battle was already won to a large extent. Dynaheir hadn't been very effective as she couldn't get many spells off. Vynd however had done them some serious harm with his +3 short sword. As an assassin he was able to poison it!
All party members were at the experience cap.
So Æthelioba survived largely due to a large dose of luck. If she had wandered into the Cloudkill, she would have died. I had a second go at them in Beregost and won. Slightly better tactics were sufficient. Minsc died and Vynd was on the point of death at the end.
Our main strategy for fighting trolls was to rely on summons. It did the job just nice. The Yuan-ti mage on the second floor was taken out with the same strategy.
The golems were attacked next. Since I didn't have much +3 weapons - except Xan's Moonblade, but even with 3 level of fighter, he's quite poor with it - I decided to rely on Jaheira and the wonderful spell ... Shillelagh. Yeah, you read that right. It not only does good damage (2d4+3 crushing damage), but IR's Shillelagh count as +3 enchantment as soon as your druid hits level 9. Jaheira is a druid of level 11. With plenty of buffs, she makes for a great golem killer. Aided by two Earth Elementals and one Aerial Servant, she managed to kill 4 golems before dying. She only fell because she was cursed and couldn't heal herself. Gavin took out out a fifth one before going out to revive Jaheira. Once we did, we got back into the golem room to kill the Iron one.
So, TorGal himself... I lured him away from his goons with Invisibility and dealt a lot of damage to him very quickly, but I encountered the nasty bug where he refused to go down at Near Death for a looong time. He basically spent the whole fight at Near Death, but without dying. I tried to move people around to give him space to fall, that didn't change anything. It took so long that his goons finally rejoined him, and we were cornered by trolls, an Elder Umber Hulk and two Yuan-ti mages. Once, we were surrounded, he FINALLY fell to the ground, so Kivan shot him with a Fire Arrow to slay him.
This is when a Yuan-ti mage decided to cast Confusion. Half of my team failed their saving throw. Since Gavin was level 11, I didn't have enough spell slots for 6 Chaotic Commands, so we were bound to fail against those type of situation. I knew I was too low level to tackle that fight without danger.
Without the control of my team, I couldn't flee upstairs, because the underground of De'Arnise Castle is one of those area where "you need to gather your party before venturing forth". So, Miluiel drank an Invisibility potion and waited for her team to die in front of her before she could leave. The other Yuan-ti also casted Confusion and managed to take out the rest of my team from my control... I was simply at the enemy's mercy, reduced to hope that the Yuan-ti mages wound't cast True Seeing...
They didn't. My team died. I could flee. Here's the horrible result of that situation.
This has to be the ugliest save I made in my short no reload career. But we lived to fight another day, so I revided everyone and destroyed those fools when I got back in De'Arnise. I knew my team was a bit too low level for TorGal's team (around level 10), but I never expected to find myself in such a dire condition.
To give ourselves a bit of a break, we went into the Umar Hills. From there, we went into the Temple Ruins. Not much to say, except that I was afraid of having to fight a lich, because Miluiel attained level 14 not long ago. I was ok though, no lich appeared here.
We soon found ourselves against the Shade Lord. We buffed up real nice, mainly with Negative Plane Protection and scrolls of Protection from Undead. Those scrolls were GREATLY nerfed in IR. They now only give a small +2 boost to save, AC, hit and damage against undead, but also protect from Level Drain. Three scrolls and three spells from Gavin were enough to protect everyone. Miluiel casted Dispelling Screen to protect our buffs. Xan had another Dispelling Screen memorized just in case.
In the Shade's Lord lair, I summoned an Aerial Servant, had Kivan, Alora and Jaheira work on the Altar (Sunstone Bullets don't destroy it in one hit anymore under IR). Xan debuffed the Shade Lord while the Aerial Servant was doing great work on him. We won the fight without any trouble.
We got back in Umar Hills to collect our rewards. I'm happy that this quest went better than De'Arnise Castle; it gives us more confidence for what's to come next. Mae'Var questline is next on the list.
My blackguard is still alive. I really can't believe it.
I managed to survive the Iron Throne fight (in which I've died many times) by luring them downstairs and having summons at the foot of each stair case to jam them. My characters were protected from magic effects with potions and generally chipped away from the center of the room, my mage adding to the fallen summons with the wand of summoning. Those bad guys sure have good saving throws.
I then did the upper floors at Durlag's Tower which were pretty easy, and then I headed off to Candlekeep. I screwed the pooch down in the caverns beyond the secret library catacombs and nearly lost half my party, not to mention charname. I revealed myself too soon to that party of ne'er do wells and Prat nailed us with a lightning bolt that bounced around, nearly killing charname, Vicky and my necromancer. Luckily my blackguard was able to interrupt his next spell with a poisoned bolt of lightning and my necromancer got a web off. A couple skull traps and fireballs later and I had dodged the bullet.
Next I went back to Durlag's Tower and did the first basement level. It all went pretty well, except I screwed up in the final fight and allowed Kagain to get charmed. Unfortunately, he was heffed up on a strength potion and had that +2 throwing axe (with *** in axes), so I had to throw some summons at him and hide the rest of my party until the spell wore off. My necromancer doesn't have stoneskin yet so that could have been a disaster, but I'm through the level.
Now... the next level is usually where I usually start to have big problems. I find those greater doppelgangers with the cloudkills and gas spells to be a real pain in the ass, not to mention some of them polymorph into wizards with robust spellbooks. I also find it hard to maneuver in the tight corridors down there. I could go down there, but as Han Solo would say, "I have a bad feeling about this."
On the other hand I could just go back to Baldur's Gate. Basically it would mean I'm guaranteed to make it to the final fight. But that feels kind of cheap. I haven't gone to Werewolf Island, either. Not sure what to do next.
I've been trying out the restless solo poverty run with a Seducer gathering non-leveling followers and it's... hard. Really, really hard. I can keep Charname out of trouble with stealth, but without items, Shoal and the basilisks are off-limits, and tackling ankhegs is extremely costly because they can easily one-shot any of my level 1 followers. Tristan and Isolde wiped out my entire army, and without the ability to resurrect anyone, there is a very finite supply of followers to safely recruit. And if I lose my followers, I'm walking around with an unarmed character with 36 HP, 6 AC, and zero potions.
@Arctodus Now you know what makes no-reload so addictive. Those times when you all but die yet somehow survive give quite an adrenaline rush. Afterwards you can't quite believe that your run is still going.
I've just now realized that I completely forgot to make my main character immune to the rest opcode, which means all of the resting I just did to turn day to night to make stealth easier also healed my main character.
I'm not sure how to deal with HP loss in a restless poverty run. Without rests, healing spells are so scarce as to be useless. Without items, CON-based regeneration is impossible before late BG2, potions are gone, and you can't pay for healing at temples.
Now I'm stumped. I could use rests to restore healing spells to follower clerics, but my followers have been dropping like flies because they have terrible equipment and HP below 20. And I'm not sure it's realistic to make it to BG2, where follower clerics would be more sturdy.
I do still want to do something with the Seducer's new Recruit Follower ability, but I don't think I can make it in a restless run, and a poverty run is already extremely punishing.
@semiticgod Can you explain the new mechanic of your Seducer's ability ? For instance, can you still add classes to seduced enemies ? Can you still equip them with items ? If both these options are off the table now, maybe you can give yourself a break and do either a restless or a poverty run.
@Arctodus: Seduction changes the target's class to fighter if they don't already have a valid character class, simply to let the target use some basic items and gain levels (albeit at a 50% XP penalty). But since Recruit Follower makes the target into a familiar instead of a party member, and the follower can no longer gain levels or switch out new equipment, there is no need to switch the target to a fighter class. Instead, they retain their old class, which means ogre mages and similar critters should still have their spells.
So, no items for followers--not because of the poverty thing, but because only party members can be given items, and you can only have so many party members.
To get to Spellhold without dealing with Bodhi or Aran Linvail, we either have to deal with the Radiant Heart or a flamboyantly dressed gentlemen named Malficus. Malficus is part of the Assassinations questline but I'm pretty sure he's a decent guy.
Like the normal route, you have to perform three tasks, or else you'll have to pay 100,000 instead of 15,000. Our first quest is to deliver some documents to somebody in the Temple district.
Done. We get lots of XP for taking zero risks. The next job is to poison somebody. But that's also just a fetch quest with no real risk. The victim's friends do not take his death very seriously.
No fighting on our part is necessary. But we do still have to tackle Aran Linvail.
But we are in incredible luck. It seems that the Assassinations mod brings us to the original, unmodded Shadow Thief headquarters!
No horrible new traps or 50+ backstabs. Just crummy, low-end thieves and some mid-level spellcasters.
We send in a bunch of Hamadryads to blind and entangle the enemy, but their most important purpose is to absorb the enemy's opening Remove Magic spells.
Just because this is a normal SCS Aran Linvail fight doesn't mean the enemy is harmless. They still have those awful constantly invisible Aerial Servants, and when Protection from Normal Missiles forces Witch Dagger to rely on her fists to land hits on the second enemy mage instead of darts, the enemy gets a Sunfire off the ground which costs Mayday a spell.
Still, without any disablers on the field, our anti-mage capabilities remain intact. Witch Dagger can still impose crippling spell failure, and Killer can still use Detect Illusions.
The enemy has no tricks left to pull. Aran Linvail goes down.
That's it. That's the Assassinations questline. We get loads of XP without dealing with either souped-up thieves or SCS vampires. It's the easiest way to get to Spellhold by far.
I want to take care of a few more quests before leaving for Brynnlaw. Just for fun, I try out an Emotion: Hope-boosted, Long-Leggedy Beasties-boosted backstab on Sorcerous Amon.
Still not the craziest thing I've done in this game. Not even close, really.
Speaking of Long-Leggedy Beasties, it turns out there's another magical cordwainer in the Bridge District, just like the one in Nashkel. She sells all the same overpowered pumps.
As well as a special staff that casts a carbon copy of Insect Plague that SCS Fire Shields will fail to block...
...and has 50 charges. I don't want to rely on it, but it does pretty much make Witch Dagger's spell failure darts obsolete.
Right about now, I realize that while I already forged and used Thalantyr's Ring of Free Action +2, which merged the Ring of Protection +2 with the Ring of Free Action... I haven't actually forged the Ring of Free Action +1.
Edwin forces us to go fight Nevaziah. The fight is uninteresting; it was just throwing Fire Seeds at poor Killer until Nevaziah's PFMW spells ran out.
The party is roughly at 1.3 million XP, and I'm reasonably certain I normally go to Spellhold with more than that. But I simply don't have the patience to wade through a major questline when practically all loot has become meaningless. We hop on the boat (a CTD forces us to re-do several of our previous steps), fight some vampires, and tackle Prebek simply through force of habit. He buffs with PFMW and a bunch of illusion spells, which are no obstacle at all to Witch Dagger and Killer.
Fire Seeds on the Yuan-ti Mages in Spellhold, then on to the lich. Unfortunately for Killer, it seems that Greater Mummies have an area-effect paralysis aura in my install. And without Protection from Undead scrolls, Killer cannot approach without the lich noticing.
The lich stops time and focuses all of its power on Killer. She's doomed. But we're in luck--the lich uses Improved Alacrity to chain-cast Time Stop, and stops time right before Killer dies! This means he wastes several extremely powerful options on a character that he could have bumped off with a single Energy Blade.
Notice that Killer doesn't get chunked despite being almost down to -50 HP. This is because of the anti-chunking fix.
We run away, the lich teleports to us, and we apply spell failure with Fire Seeds. But we don't get the attack rolls (if only we had the Flesh Golem tome or a paralyzed summons prepared for a 95% or 100% hit rate) and the lich Breaches Mayday and summons a Cornugon, which attacks from the north while the demon's previously-summoned Pit Fiend catches up to us from the south.
Mae dodges the Remove Magic long enough to get SI: Abjuration up, but Mayday loses her Stoneskin and then her life.
Two more Cornugons have appeared from the south and Trash Mammal fails a save against a stun attack--and with no one to dispel the stun, she has no chance. Cornugons are bad news.
Half the party is dead, the lich is still on his feet, and we have few buffs active. Edwin tries to keep the Cornugons busy with the Wand of Water Elemental Summoning, but the summons appear more equipped to tackle SoD enemies than SCS Cornugons.
After many attempts, Mae manages to slay the Pit Fiend with the Sorcerer's Staff. Witch Dagger gets hit hard and has to step back, but Mae scores another kill with the staff, this time much faster.
Finally, Witch Dagger breaks through the lich's Stoneskins using her throwing dagger. Mae hurries to help out and they finish him off.
No Rod of Resurrection and no cleric means no Raise Dead spells. But Witch Dagger can use Raise Dead scrolls despite being a druid. We're back on our feet soon enough.
I've just made my way through Watcher's Keep level 3, and it was a good idea to save this one as the last thing to do before the throne: It has been the most difficult part of ToB for my party so far. Reasons? Tight spaces, not a lot of time to establish summons, and, most importantly, two dead magic zones.
The first dead magic zone wasn't a huge problem for my party: I managed to snipe the cornugons as they were still fighting the balor, disrupting any attempt at spellcasting to avoid lightning bolts bouncing around the room (which still could be deadly for my party at this point). After that, it was all a matter of kiting the balor - I just had to avoid his vorpal attacks:
I made a deal with Tahazzar and moved on to the next no-magic zone - this one turned out to be quite problematic. First, I had to disarm the trap near the entrance. I also had to deal with demon fear - and no protection spells available. I was able to get four of my party members into guaranteed save range with items. For the other two (Aikar and Anomen) I had to find something else. As it happened, there were exactly two item-based ways to protect against fear available to me. The Dragonslayer longsword +2 and the Rune Hammer +5. Now, here's the problem: I couldn't just kite opponents who actually use spells, ranged attacks and invisibility, so I had to go into melee combat against powerful foes on LoB, without any protection spells. This is, as you can propably guess, always a bad idea, but it was pretty much unavoidable.
After disarming the trap, I sent Anomen into the room because he was a) the most replacable party member and b) not able to use any fighter HLAs, so he could use his aura for drinking potions and other defensive stuff. I also tried to reflect any velithuu attacks using The Reflex, but that didn't seem to work at all. Meanwhile, I achieved some battlefield control via smite:
I managed to take down one cornugon with HLAs before Anomen started to get into serious trouble, forcing me to burn a RoR charge to heal him. I also took down a velithuu, but at this point my faithful fighter/cleric got stunned, and his hitpoints were dropping quickly - to make things worse, the previously smite-stunned pit fiend was about to be free:
While I managed to heal him once again with another RoR charge, when the pit fiend joined in, I was unable to keep up his hitpoints - he died, but didn't get chunked - the first death for this party in ToB:
At this point, I had only the pit fiend and one velithuu to really worry about. My trump card was Nahema's juggernaut golem: He proved to be fully capable of replacing Anomen and tanking the pit fiend, allowing me to win this fight (I propably should've opened by summoning the golem, but I didn't think about item-based summons early on - my brain told me that summoning things in a no-magic zone would be impossible):
After resurrecting Anomen and resting in the pocket plane, the party had to enter the succubus room without any defensive buffs, as they just came from a no-magic zone, so they relied on their trusted charm-immunity equipment. A planetar + juggernaut golem turned out out to be quite helpful as well:
The next big battle was against Ka'rashur. This time, I was able to use all my buffs in preparation. I opened with planetar, elemental prince and smite to gain some inital control, kicking away the cornugons and getting most foes to attack my planetar. I had to deal with a bonefiend that just wouldn't leave my party alone, and quickly, Ka'rashur approached to take Mazzy down in melee range. However, he propably didn't expect to get stunned by smite until he was dead:
With our most dangerous foe gone, I went into full summons + ranged weapons mode and safely took down the remaining enemies from a safe position:
The wild magic zone with the tieflings wasn't a problem, as I a) could buff in the previous area and b) had Imoen instantly summon a planetar (AoP + Vecna) before the wild magic effect actually kicked in. This turned this fight into quite a trivial thing:
The battle against the demon knights went fairly well: I summoned an elemental prince, and all of my foes decided to waste all of their spells on him while my party did ranged damage:
Perfect timing - just as the skeleton warrior I had added to help Zaaman Ruul died, the last demon knight was killed as well.
The demon wraith was engaged with full buffs, and it soon turned out that my damage output against him was pretty pitiful. I prepared for a prolonged battle and even thought I might be in trouble when he started casting a necromancy spell, and I feared it could be an AHW (interrupting him didn't work). However, before the spell was finished, this happened:
Thanks, planetar! While playing against Aesgareth, I managed to win the spectral brand - I really wanted to get my hands on this one for Arbogast, so I was pretty happy with that result:
This was my only win, but I didn't expect anything more. Just a final note, I entered level 4, took down some mind flayers (a chain lightning would actually have been more dangerous, so I went with this option), and some devil shades joined the fight, but Anomen added a deva, and with two quick iMoD +2 hits, the devil shades were quickly gone:
For buffing in dead magic rooms, can't you pocket plane, buff there, return to the dead magic room, and continue? Or does the room also Dispel upon entrance? It's been awhile since I've gotten there.
@Enuhal: Spell protections like SotA are undispellable. Should be the same for spell immunity/deflection/turning/trap.
Magic items should activate normally, though I suppose a Greenstone Amulet may get dispelled every round, if it's anything like the dead magic zone in SoD. But golem tomes and Kitty and the horns of Valhalla should work just fine and the summoned critters will stay. Don't know if scrolls work in dead magic zones.
I'm not sure how to deal with HP loss in a restless poverty run. Without rests, healing spells are so scarce as to be useless. Without items, CON-based regeneration is impossible before late BG2, potions are gone, and you can't pay for healing at temples.
Are there racial restrictions on the class? If not then a dwarf or half-orc could use the con tome to trigger regeneration - it wouldn't be easy to access at level 1, but it would be possible.
@Wise_Grimwald: I won the Grey Clan fights, both at the FAI and in Beregost, by summoning Greater Wyverns from the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning from the Dark Horizons mod in my BWS install (that amulet can win basically any fight). I don't really see how the fight could be reasonably won without relying on mod resources of some sort--in fact, I'm shocked you were able to beat the FAI fights without reloading! How did you manage it exactly?
I have worked out a better strategy for dealing with the FAI Clan, one that relies less on luck. First of all cast iron skin on Jaheira and armour on Dynaheir, then change the spell selection of Jaheira and sleep in the area where the golem is that sends you upstairs. You don't get your sleep interrupted there.
Clear the lower floors and if necessary sleep again down there.
Just before going to the top floor cast bless and haste.
Send your hidden thief to the top floor.
There he attempts a backstab on the mage, preferably with a poisoned weapon.
On becoming visible he quickly moves to the far end of the room without going through to the next room. Upon chaos being cast, if he saves, he takes a potion of invisibility and goes to a spot where he cannot be seen to consume healing potions galore. If not, he just has to trust to luck. Doing that will lure the melee fighters so that they can no longer see the stairs.
Meanwhile the rest of the party buffs and in particular have true sight running. They go upstairs and cast spells to disable the mage, silence, insect swarm, web and the like. The mage then casts cloudkill so that any returning melee fighters get badly hurt. Meanwhile bow users use poisonous arrows against the mage. Dtnaheir can cast magic missiles to disrupt any mage spells and once she is dead the plan depends on whether or not your thief is under your control.
If not you will have to rely on fireballs and other area effect spells, and finally perhaps use melee attacks when the cloudkill is no longer operative. If your thief is under your control it will be possible to go and have another rest if necessary. However without the mage, and with their cleric's disabling spells having been cast, the rest of the Clan should be manageable.
We're in ToB for the first time! And I don't have Ascension installed. After our standard buffs and summons, we take on the first of the 5 with relative ease. The other Mage didn't get protections up in time, and a simple PW:Stun removes her from the fight:
Mazzy with Gesen's and a Skald song makes her 1 damage per shot weaker than an Archer of equal level. The difference is negligible. Illisera herself is under... either PfMW or Improved Mantle, and I send Sebastian with well-into-the-negative saves to irritate her while my ranged squadron picks off the fighters and thieves coming from the left. I think it was IM she was under, since when she renews her "protection" with PfMW, she's met with a salvo of normal missiles.
Sarevok is invited onto the team, replacing Valygar. He's immediately equipped with the items from the Demon Knights from the Underdark, including a Platemail that grants SI:Necromancy. We take on the first Planar Challenge, where I find that ToB is going to be unforgiving if I make any mistake. Like this.
So I had numerous ways to save Imoen from that Comet. I have at least 3 Fire Resist items she can use, I could've easily moved her away: I was moving Sarevok away from the radius when she died. But I did none of these, and I'm deprived of both my main mage and only Thief. But we have to finish the fight first.
Final time Jon takes someone from me this run. To recap, that's the 4th perma-death I've had: Cato, a generated Archer, Vista, a generated Illusionist/Thief, Jaheira, and now Imoen. I need a Thief, though, since I'm unfamiliar with the deadly traps of ToB and don't feel like finding out now. My options are Jan and Nalia or dualing Sarevok: Jan is recruited from this pool, seeming like the smallest opportunity cost. On the plus side, I have 100% Detect Illusions and 4 traps and eventually Thief HLAs. On the negative side, Jan's highest spell level is 6 and has 16 INT with almost no ways to increase that under IR.
We do a couple minor quests around Saradush, and have our first "real" engagement with Kiser Jhaeri. It's not a real challenge, apparently: we're barely injured by the end of the fight.
The Sewers are fought through, as well as the Vampire-infested dungeons. The named Vampire doesn't die, somehow, and just... disappears through a wall or something. Dunno what happened. But anyways, we ascend the tower one fight at a time, and under Mass Invisibility and the rest of our buffs, start the engagement vs Gromnir.
Gromnir actually falls first: I sent Sarevok to distract him, and Sarevok responds by winning the 1v1. A Dispel hit my frontline a bit before this, as can be seen by the lack of icons on Sebastian, Sarevok, Alina, Mazzy, and Jan. Only Baroque's buffs survived, probably due to Bardic levels.
A Magefight ensues, or rather, a Magestall. We make sure all the damage is on our frontlines this time, and we're starting to have the tools to interrupt through any type of spell. By the time the last mage falls, we're not too much further damaged.
Outside Saradush, the Master Wraith proves to be an irritant. It's mostly Level drain: I simply don't have enough methods to prevent it, so I'm trying to keep all 6 members constantly moving while trying to have one or two members firing. I'm more successful than I expect, and end with only 3 members Level Drained.
Alina has to memorize 4 spells for this: 3 Lesser Restorations (well, 2 Lesser and 1 Greater) as well as a Remove Curse: Sarevok's Armor is Cursed, and the SI:Necromancy will prevent Restorations as well as any healing spells.
Skeletal guardians are dealt with relatively easy, and we start our first Fire Giant fights. Surprisingly, they're not too much trouble even with their HLAs. I can't say the same thing about the Fire Lich. I simply have no answer to PfMW from Liches still, since it takes me too long to strip off the spell protections to Breach him in time. In the end, I have Sebastian tank the remainder of its spells after retreating twice: he has 100+ Fire resist through items, and can get immunity to ADHW from the Wave. Eventually, the defenses fail.
The battle probably took 15 minutes real-time, despite not being more than 2 turns long. Fire animations and cloud spells slow my graphics card to a crawl still. Oh well. As soon as we're out of the Fire Temple we'll be fine.
Alina keeps herself alive vs a Dragon with a Potion of Fire resistance as well as throwing a fire resistance ring on her, and Mazzy proves she's still the best dragon-slayer on the team.
And then Imix. Good grief, Imix. I should've rested before this fight: I wasn't ready for this at all. The "Fire Storm on everyone" caught me way off guard, as well as his methods of dispelling. Baroque's own Fire resistance was debuffed, and he's nowhere near this fight, having no way to renew it. Sarevok's Dispelled and killed, and the remaining 4 rally to deal enough damage the Fire Prince Zuko Imix
Yaga-Shura's mother is surrounded by summons and executed fairly quickly, and Yaga-Shura is probably the next easiest for my party: massive fighter stats aren't going to survive against a Skald-boosted Ranged damage party. Sarevok gets a Critical to end the fight.
Sarevok's old gang isn't too much trouble: Jan interrupts the only dangerous mage spells with a Chain Lightning, while the other members are revealed with True Seeing and shot down.
We're at the second level of Watcher's keep at the moment: level 1 was dealt with little trouble outside of a trap missed by Jan and activating on Sebastian... which he saves against. I'm not going to dare going further than the 2nd level, and will continue to Amkethran after finishing the FoA+5. As a note, I think one of Alina's HLAs, Energy Blades, is using her Archer levels for her level: she's only generating 17 Energy Blades, when according to the description should be giving 35. Oh well, 17 attacks at 9 APR is still going to do plenty.
Comments
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).
Remember Dushai is a HER, not a him. the wiki agrees with me. Remember, it's a poor defenseless female you are always picking on, not some guy. Now that I realize she's an unarmed female, I kill her a lot less, mostly my evil parties, my good characters leave her alone.
Previous updates:
After breezing through the Nashkel Mine Mulahey failed to complete a spell though I stayed by the entrance to be able to run away if necessary.
For Nimbul I took the precaution of using the Horn of Kazgaroth. That only lasts 3 rounds (immunity to level 1 and 2 spells, +5 AC vs missiles and +2 to saving throws at the expense of 10 HP damage) and that allowed Nimbul to get one lot of magic missiles through my defenses before he exploded into chunks.
In Beregost I talked to Officer Vai (to ensure that opportunity to gain reputation wouldn't disappear) before another Horn charge was used on Tranzig.
At the Bandit Camp, Taurgosz got hammered, but his armor was still in good enough condition to be worth transferring.
Inside Tazok's tent, Venkt failed to complete a spell. The others did get pretty lucky in the rest of the fight (getting 4 critical hits), but that wasn't enough to save them.
I went to the FAI to pick up the pantaloons - Tarnesh failing to put up much of a defense there.
Inside the mine I tried using horror to clear away the ambush on the 2nd level down, but was interrupted and had to fight through the hard way.
After flooding the mine and resting to get a second Bhaal horror I moved on to the City. A small donation and doing all the reputation quests there boosted rep back up to 20, while equipment and fighting improvements obtained included the dexterity tome, ring of protection +2, Helm & Cloak of Balduran, nymph cloak, Helm of Glory and another couple of Necklaces of Missiles. Here are a few sundry screenshots from those encounters, showing most of the mages were tackled from range for safety.
After the Helm of Glory allowed me to buy everything desired at minimum prices, a final trip into the wilderness saw the Red Wizards fireballed before Denak was the latest to feel a poisonous sting.
That just leaves the Iron Throne before heading back to Candlekeep.
Dwarven defender L8, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 396 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913526/#Comment_913526
At the Iron Throne I successfully charmed Zhalimar on first going up to the 5th floor.
In Candlekeep I went straight to the catacombs and as usual just relied on HPs against the traps while getting the tomes. For Prat's gang a fireball turned them hostile before horror sent everyone but Sakul running. He didn't get a chance to cast a spell and Bor also died before the horror ended. Tam then lost out in an acid arrow exchange, but it took a while to track Prat down and cost a potion of absorption to stay safe against his lightning bolts.
Back in the City, Slythe was on a loser in a melee contest.
At the Palace I entered properly, but was surprised by the dialogue options inside asking why I didn't have an invitation. Checking the previous text it appeared I must have knocked the keypad while shifting the keyboard and informed the guard that I didn't need an invitation.
After fighting through the maze I decided to leave the Undercity party alone this time and go straight to the temple (straight as in by a roundabout route
Arriving in SoD I see I've gone a bit too completionist again and amassed 433k XP
Dwarven defender L9, 127 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 449 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913526/#Comment_913526
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913597/#Comment_913597
All but one of Porios' guards ran in terror as I advanced on them, making it easy to open the door and persuade Porios to surrender. On the next level there was liberal use of necklace fireballs to dispose of the undead with minimal help from the Flaming Fist. For Korlasz I just buffed with DUHM and a single hit with a dispelling arrow followed up by an arrow of detonation saw her give up.
In Baldur's Gate the equipment from various NPCs funded some purchases before marching out. My equipment chest was emptied into a bag of holding to ensure nothing was forgotten before a vampire was helped to complete a critical mission (securing a source of regeneration in the process).
There were only a few hobgoblins to be cleared from the road at Troll Claw Woods before moving on. An ambush area with orcs and trolls was sorted out
After ensuring no guards would be coming to Ziatar's aid I attacked her, using both defensive stance and the Horn to get saves into negative territory. As usual she disappeared into sanctuary, but I decided this time I was having none of that and dropped some daggers on the floor to act as a target for the Ring of Energy.
To be safe against the Neothelid I used a potion of invulnerability (that also protected against a suspected charm trap in the corridor).
For Darskhelin I used another potion of invulnerability and added a potion of speed to make arrows of detonation more effective before finishing off in melee.
I tried making a straight attack on Akanna, but her aerial servants got a couple of lucky early blows in to make that seem a questionable technique. Fortunately Bhaal horror once more came up trumps to make finishing the contest simple.
On the way out I couldn't resist testing my dagger throwing ability. As with my last run the dragon seems to be much more sleepy on the way out than the way in and it was actually my third attack with a dagger that proved deadly.
I reckon by now I know the SoD content up to this point pretty well, so would have expected to get at least this far. Sterner challenges may lie ahead, however
Dwarven defender L9, 127 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 449 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913526/#Comment_913526
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913597/#Comment_913597
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913667/#Comment_913667
At Boareskyr Bridge I cleared the exterior of the map (in fact I had to do that twice due to a program crash - that seems relatively common in that area). Inside Bridgefort I had a dragonscale shield made up. That gives a bonus against save vs death and I decided that it was about time to put the Claw of Kazgaroth on - the save bonuses being much more attractive than the loss of 9 HPs and natural regeneration now that the vulnerability against death saves has been patched. With shield equipped that pushes my AC to -12, meaning standard enemies will struggle to get a hit in.
Vichand is just far enough away from others to be able to be attacked without alerting the camp
After telling Khalid to join in when he heard an attack I brought the Flaming Fist up to attack the crusaders. A few potions helped boost my damage and my attacks added to a firebreath accounted for the main crusader leaders.
After looting all the dead bodies, I exorcised a well spirit before moving on to the Coalition Camp. I looked for the Spectacles of Spectacle, but appear to have mislaid those at some point, so there was no genie offering goods. Instead I picked up some Bwoosh and poison and headed for Dead Man's Pass. On the way I bumped into a Shadowy Figure and his gang. Running round and fireballs reduced the odds a bit before I stood and fought. The Shadowy Figure soon decided he'd had enough and disappeared, but I fireballed myself just quickly enough to catch him in the fringes of the blast.
There was a reminder to be more careful at Dead Man's Pass when I saw a gargantuan spider coming and decided not to put on the ring of free action as a spell save of -1 would make me safe. Unfortunately though, its web tangle requires a save vs breath and 2 did not make me safe
There was still plenty of fighting on the way through the area, but I was more careful and made it through safely. Incidentally, if anyone (like me) has been confused about why Dragonspear Castle is sometimes shown as accessible from this map and sometimes not, I think it's because although the castle lies to the north-west according to the World Map, it's only opened up if you leave Dead Man's Pass on the eastern edge.
At the Castle I rescued Skie
Inside the tunnels I persuaded a pair of sahuagin to hand over a wand of elemental summoning, but couldn't use it anyway. However, Ferrusk was willing to hand over an ankheg summoning amulet that I could use.
Next up will be the enemy assault on the Coalition Camp. The last time I was here I somehow overlooked an enemy slipping past the defences resulting in a scripted death - so I'll have to try and be more careful this time.
Dwarven defender L10, 121 HPs (incl. 5 from helm, -9 from Claw), 855 kills
My run came to an end trying to do the Grey Clan Episode. Æthelioba was the only one left alive after defeating the Clan at the FAI. Raising them again was no problem as gold was in plentiful supply. Thorin however was chunked.
Æthelioba was able to survive however.
They picked up Minsc as a replacement for Thorin and Gavin as a replacement for Drake. Gavin had quite good experience when he joined unlike some other NPCs.
In Beregost the Clan were just too much for the party. I think that I'll play it through a few times to see if I can discover a strategy that works. Perhaps loads of summoned monsters could do the trick. Backstabbing one of the mages with Vynd might also do the trick. He might get killed doing it, but by killing one of thee mages, the battle could be a lot easier.
Æthelioba cast true sight before going upstairs.
Dynaheir cast web first followed by cloudkill. Jaheira cast insect plague. She died fairly early on.
When Æthelioba and Thorin were affected by Chaos, Dynaheir and Vynd escaped downstairs and were followed by two of the Clan. That may have been crucial, two fewer to fight Æthelioba and Minsc!!
I don't know quite what was happening upstairs as I was desperately trying to keep Vynd and Dynaheir alive!!
A crucial factor may have been that Æthelioba did not move into the cloudkill whilst under the influence of Chaos. Thorin did.
Upon the deaths of Vynd and Dynaheir I looked to see what was happening upstairs. The mage was fighting melee from a position inside the cloudkill whilst Æthelioba was outside it.
I moved Thorin outside the cloudkill, but he was already on the point of death and healing potions didn't help.
As soon as the mage was dead Æthelioba took numerous healing potions to bring her up to full health.
Vynd and Dynaheir had both helped weaken the Clan members downstairs so that when Æthelioba fought them, the battle was already won to a large extent. Dynaheir hadn't been very effective as she couldn't get many spells off. Vynd however had done them some serious harm with his +3 short sword. As an assassin he was able to poison it!
All party members were at the experience cap.
So Æthelioba survived largely due to a large dose of luck. If she had wandered into the Cloudkill, she would have died.
I had a second go at them in Beregost and won. Slightly better tactics were sufficient. Minsc died and Vynd was on the point of death at the end.
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6SoD posts : 1, 2, 3, 4
SoA posts : 1, 2
Notable mods
- SCS (full prebuffs, full Tactical Challenges)
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalancing
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Refinements
Here we go, De'Arnise castle...
Our main strategy for fighting trolls was to rely on summons. It did the job just nice. The Yuan-ti mage on the second floor was taken out with the same strategy.
The golems were attacked next. Since I didn't have much +3 weapons - except Xan's Moonblade, but even with 3 level of fighter, he's quite poor with it - I decided to rely on Jaheira and the wonderful spell ... Shillelagh. Yeah, you read that right. It not only does good damage (2d4+3 crushing damage), but IR's Shillelagh count as +3 enchantment as soon as your druid hits level 9. Jaheira is a druid of level 11. With plenty of buffs, she makes for a great golem killer. Aided by two Earth Elementals and one Aerial Servant, she managed to kill 4 golems before dying. She only fell because she was cursed and couldn't heal herself. Gavin took out out a fifth one before going out to revive Jaheira. Once we did, we got back into the golem room to kill the Iron one.
So, TorGal himself... I lured him away from his goons with Invisibility and dealt a lot of damage to him very quickly, but I encountered the nasty bug where he refused to go down at Near Death for a looong time. He basically spent the whole fight at Near Death, but without dying. I tried to move people around to give him space to fall, that didn't change anything. It took so long that his goons finally rejoined him, and we were cornered by trolls, an Elder Umber Hulk and two Yuan-ti mages. Once, we were surrounded, he FINALLY fell to the ground, so Kivan shot him with a Fire Arrow to slay him.
This is when a Yuan-ti mage decided to cast Confusion. Half of my team failed their saving throw. Since Gavin was level 11, I didn't have enough spell slots for 6 Chaotic Commands, so we were bound to fail against those type of situation. I knew I was too low level to tackle that fight without danger.
Without the control of my team, I couldn't flee upstairs, because the underground of De'Arnise Castle is one of those area where "you need to gather your party before venturing forth". So, Miluiel drank an Invisibility potion and waited for her team to die in front of her before she could leave. The other Yuan-ti also casted Confusion and managed to take out the rest of my team from my control... I was simply at the enemy's mercy, reduced to hope that the Yuan-ti mages wound't cast True Seeing...
They didn't. My team died. I could flee. Here's the horrible result of that situation.
This has to be the ugliest save I made in my short no reload career. But we lived to fight another day, so I revided everyone and destroyed those fools when I got back in De'Arnise. I knew my team was a bit too low level for TorGal's team (around level 10), but I never expected to find myself in such a dire condition.
To give ourselves a bit of a break, we went into the Umar Hills. From there, we went into the Temple Ruins. Not much to say, except that I was afraid of having to fight a lich, because Miluiel attained level 14 not long ago. I was ok though, no lich appeared here.
We soon found ourselves against the Shade Lord. We buffed up real nice, mainly with Negative Plane Protection and scrolls of Protection from Undead. Those scrolls were GREATLY nerfed in IR. They now only give a small +2 boost to save, AC, hit and damage against undead, but also protect from Level Drain. Three scrolls and three spells from Gavin were enough to protect everyone. Miluiel casted Dispelling Screen to protect our buffs. Xan had another Dispelling Screen memorized just in case.
In the Shade's Lord lair, I summoned an Aerial Servant, had Kivan, Alora and Jaheira work on the Altar (Sunstone Bullets don't destroy it in one hit anymore under IR). Xan debuffed the Shade Lord while the Aerial Servant was doing great work on him. We won the fight without any trouble.
We got back in Umar Hills to collect our rewards. I'm happy that this quest went better than De'Arnise Castle; it gives us more confidence for what's to come next. Mae'Var questline is next on the list.
I managed to survive the Iron Throne fight (in which I've died many times) by luring them downstairs and having summons at the foot of each stair case to jam them. My characters were protected from magic effects with potions and generally chipped away from the center of the room, my mage adding to the fallen summons with the wand of summoning. Those bad guys sure have good saving throws.
I then did the upper floors at Durlag's Tower which were pretty easy, and then I headed off to Candlekeep. I screwed the pooch down in the caverns beyond the secret library catacombs and nearly lost half my party, not to mention charname. I revealed myself too soon to that party of ne'er do wells and Prat nailed us with a lightning bolt that bounced around, nearly killing charname, Vicky and my necromancer. Luckily my blackguard was able to interrupt his next spell with a poisoned bolt of lightning and my necromancer got a web off. A couple skull traps and fireballs later and I had dodged the bullet.
Next I went back to Durlag's Tower and did the first basement level. It all went pretty well, except I screwed up in the final fight and allowed Kagain to get charmed. Unfortunately, he was heffed up on a strength potion and had that +2 throwing axe (with *** in axes), so I had to throw some summons at him and hide the rest of my party until the spell wore off. My necromancer doesn't have stoneskin yet so that could have been a disaster, but I'm through the level.
Now... the next level is usually where I usually start to have big problems. I find those greater doppelgangers with the cloudkills and gas spells to be a real pain in the ass, not to mention some of them polymorph into wizards with robust spellbooks. I also find it hard to maneuver in the tight corridors down there. I could go down there, but as Han Solo would say, "I have a bad feeling about this."
On the other hand I could just go back to Baldur's Gate. Basically it would mean I'm guaranteed to make it to the final fight. But that feels kind of cheap. I haven't gone to Werewolf Island, either. Not sure what to do next.
Starting a new run with a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric
He has completed Candlekeep, but they won't allow him back in.
Upon reaching the Friendly Arms Inn, he cast resist fear and upon meeting Tarnesh cast command and quickly killed him with his flails.
I'm not sure how to deal with HP loss in a restless poverty run. Without rests, healing spells are so scarce as to be useless. Without items, CON-based regeneration is impossible before late BG2, potions are gone, and you can't pay for healing at temples.
Now I'm stumped. I could use rests to restore healing spells to follower clerics, but my followers have been dropping like flies because they have terrible equipment and HP below 20. And I'm not sure it's realistic to make it to BG2, where follower clerics would be more sturdy.
I do still want to do something with the Seducer's new Recruit Follower ability, but I don't think I can make it in a restless run, and a poverty run is already extremely punishing.
So, no items for followers--not because of the poverty thing, but because only party members can be given items, and you can only have so many party members.
I've just posted the updated Seducer kit, by the way.
Night in the Woods: Mae in Shadows of Amn
Part 12https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909103/#Comment_909103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909200/#Comment_909200
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909567/#Comment_909567
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/909861/#Comment_909861
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911181/#Comment_911181
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/911202/#Comment_911202
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912037/#Comment_912037
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912042/#Comment_912042
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912054/#Comment_912054
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912697/#Comment_912697
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/913059/#Comment_913059
To get to Spellhold without dealing with Bodhi or Aran Linvail, we either have to deal with the Radiant Heart or a flamboyantly dressed gentlemen named Malficus. Malficus is part of the Assassinations questline but I'm pretty sure he's a decent guy.
Like the normal route, you have to perform three tasks, or else you'll have to pay 100,000 instead of 15,000. Our first quest is to deliver some documents to somebody in the Temple district.
Done. We get lots of XP for taking zero risks. The next job is to poison somebody. But that's also just a fetch quest with no real risk. The victim's friends do not take his death very seriously.
No fighting on our part is necessary. But we do still have to tackle Aran Linvail.
But we are in incredible luck. It seems that the Assassinations mod brings us to the original, unmodded Shadow Thief headquarters!
No horrible new traps or 50+ backstabs. Just crummy, low-end thieves and some mid-level spellcasters.
We send in a bunch of Hamadryads to blind and entangle the enemy, but their most important purpose is to absorb the enemy's opening Remove Magic spells.
Just because this is a normal SCS Aran Linvail fight doesn't mean the enemy is harmless. They still have those awful constantly invisible Aerial Servants, and when Protection from Normal Missiles forces Witch Dagger to rely on her fists to land hits on the second enemy mage instead of darts, the enemy gets a Sunfire off the ground which costs Mayday a spell.
Still, without any disablers on the field, our anti-mage capabilities remain intact. Witch Dagger can still impose crippling spell failure, and Killer can still use Detect Illusions.
The enemy has no tricks left to pull. Aran Linvail goes down.
That's it. That's the Assassinations questline. We get loads of XP without dealing with either souped-up thieves or SCS vampires. It's the easiest way to get to Spellhold by far.
I want to take care of a few more quests before leaving for Brynnlaw. Just for fun, I try out an Emotion: Hope-boosted, Long-Leggedy Beasties-boosted backstab on Sorcerous Amon.
Still not the craziest thing I've done in this game. Not even close, really.
Speaking of Long-Leggedy Beasties, it turns out there's another magical cordwainer in the Bridge District, just like the one in Nashkel. She sells all the same overpowered pumps.
As well as a special staff that casts a carbon copy of Insect Plague that SCS Fire Shields will fail to block...
...and has 50 charges. I don't want to rely on it, but it does pretty much make Witch Dagger's spell failure darts obsolete.
Right about now, I realize that while I already forged and used Thalantyr's Ring of Free Action +2, which merged the Ring of Protection +2 with the Ring of Free Action... I haven't actually forged the Ring of Free Action +1.
Edwin forces us to go fight Nevaziah. The fight is uninteresting; it was just throwing Fire Seeds at poor Killer until Nevaziah's PFMW spells ran out.
The party is roughly at 1.3 million XP, and I'm reasonably certain I normally go to Spellhold with more than that. But I simply don't have the patience to wade through a major questline when practically all loot has become meaningless. We hop on the boat (a CTD forces us to re-do several of our previous steps), fight some vampires, and tackle Prebek simply through force of habit. He buffs with PFMW and a bunch of illusion spells, which are no obstacle at all to Witch Dagger and Killer.
Fire Seeds on the Yuan-ti Mages in Spellhold, then on to the lich. Unfortunately for Killer, it seems that Greater Mummies have an area-effect paralysis aura in my install. And without Protection from Undead scrolls, Killer cannot approach without the lich noticing.
The lich stops time and focuses all of its power on Killer. She's doomed. But we're in luck--the lich uses Improved Alacrity to chain-cast Time Stop, and stops time right before Killer dies! This means he wastes several extremely powerful options on a character that he could have bumped off with a single Energy Blade.
Notice that Killer doesn't get chunked despite being almost down to -50 HP. This is because of the anti-chunking fix.
We run away, the lich teleports to us, and we apply spell failure with Fire Seeds. But we don't get the attack rolls (if only we had the Flesh Golem tome or a paralyzed summons prepared for a 95% or 100% hit rate) and the lich Breaches Mayday and summons a Cornugon, which attacks from the north while the demon's previously-summoned Pit Fiend catches up to us from the south.
Mae dodges the Remove Magic long enough to get SI: Abjuration up, but Mayday loses her Stoneskin and then her life.
Two more Cornugons have appeared from the south and Trash Mammal fails a save against a stun attack--and with no one to dispel the stun, she has no chance. Cornugons are bad news.
Half the party is dead, the lich is still on his feet, and we have few buffs active. Edwin tries to keep the Cornugons busy with the Wand of Water Elemental Summoning, but the summons appear more equipped to tackle SoD enemies than SCS Cornugons.
After many attempts, Mae manages to slay the Pit Fiend with the Sorcerer's Staff. Witch Dagger gets hit hard and has to step back, but Mae scores another kill with the staff, this time much faster.
Finally, Witch Dagger breaks through the lich's Stoneskins using her throwing dagger. Mae hurries to help out and they finish him off.
No Rod of Resurrection and no cleric means no Raise Dead spells. But Witch Dagger can use Raise Dead scrolls despite being a druid. We're back on our feet soon enough.
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
Part LII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/912977/#Comment_912977
I've just made my way through Watcher's Keep level 3, and it was a good idea to save this one as the last thing to do before the throne: It has been the most difficult part of ToB for my party so far. Reasons? Tight spaces, not a lot of time to establish summons, and, most importantly, two dead magic zones.
The first dead magic zone wasn't a huge problem for my party: I managed to snipe the cornugons as they were still fighting the balor, disrupting any attempt at spellcasting to avoid lightning bolts bouncing around the room (which still could be deadly for my party at this point). After that, it was all a matter of kiting the balor - I just had to avoid his vorpal attacks:
I made a deal with Tahazzar and moved on to the next no-magic zone - this one turned out to be quite problematic. First, I had to disarm the trap near the entrance. I also had to deal with demon fear - and no protection spells available. I was able to get four of my party members into guaranteed save range with items. For the other two (Aikar and Anomen) I had to find something else. As it happened, there were exactly two item-based ways to protect against fear available to me. The Dragonslayer longsword +2 and the Rune Hammer +5. Now, here's the problem: I couldn't just kite opponents who actually use spells, ranged attacks and invisibility, so I had to go into melee combat against powerful foes on LoB, without any protection spells. This is, as you can propably guess, always a bad idea, but it was pretty much unavoidable.
After disarming the trap, I sent Anomen into the room because he was a) the most replacable party member and b) not able to use any fighter HLAs, so he could use his aura for drinking potions and other defensive stuff. I also tried to reflect any velithuu attacks using The Reflex, but that didn't seem to work at all. Meanwhile, I achieved some battlefield control via smite:
I managed to take down one cornugon with HLAs before Anomen started to get into serious trouble, forcing me to burn a RoR charge to heal him. I also took down a velithuu, but at this point my faithful fighter/cleric got stunned, and his hitpoints were dropping quickly - to make things worse, the previously smite-stunned pit fiend was about to be free:
While I managed to heal him once again with another RoR charge, when the pit fiend joined in, I was unable to keep up his hitpoints - he died, but didn't get chunked - the first death for this party in ToB:
At this point, I had only the pit fiend and one velithuu to really worry about. My trump card was Nahema's juggernaut golem: He proved to be fully capable of replacing Anomen and tanking the pit fiend, allowing me to win this fight (I propably should've opened by summoning the golem, but I didn't think about item-based summons early on - my brain told me that summoning things in a no-magic zone would be impossible):
After resurrecting Anomen and resting in the pocket plane, the party had to enter the succubus room without any defensive buffs, as they just came from a no-magic zone, so they relied on their trusted charm-immunity equipment. A planetar + juggernaut golem turned out out to be quite helpful as well:
The next big battle was against Ka'rashur. This time, I was able to use all my buffs in preparation. I opened with planetar, elemental prince and smite to gain some inital control, kicking away the cornugons and getting most foes to attack my planetar. I had to deal with a bonefiend that just wouldn't leave my party alone, and quickly, Ka'rashur approached to take Mazzy down in melee range. However, he propably didn't expect to get stunned by smite until he was dead:
With our most dangerous foe gone, I went into full summons + ranged weapons mode and safely took down the remaining enemies from a safe position:
The wild magic zone with the tieflings wasn't a problem, as I a) could buff in the previous area and b) had Imoen instantly summon a planetar (AoP + Vecna) before the wild magic effect actually kicked in. This turned this fight into quite a trivial thing:
The battle against the demon knights went fairly well: I summoned an elemental prince, and all of my foes decided to waste all of their spells on him while my party did ranged damage:
Perfect timing - just as the skeleton warrior I had added to help Zaaman Ruul died, the last demon knight was killed as well.
The demon wraith was engaged with full buffs, and it soon turned out that my damage output against him was pretty pitiful. I prepared for a prolonged battle and even thought I might be in trouble when he started casting a necromancy spell, and I feared it could be an AHW (interrupting him didn't work). However, before the spell was finished, this happened:
Thanks, planetar!
While playing against Aesgareth, I managed to win the spectral brand - I really wanted to get my hands on this one for Arbogast, so I was pretty happy with that result:
This was my only win, but I didn't expect anything more.
Just a final note, I entered level 4, took down some mind flayers (a chain lightning would actually have been more dangerous, so I went with this option), and some devil shades joined the fight, but Anomen added a deva, and with two quick iMoD +2 hits, the devil shades were quickly gone:
Let's see what else level 4 holds for our party!
Enuhal
Magic items should activate normally, though I suppose a Greenstone Amulet may get dispelled every round, if it's anything like the dead magic zone in SoD. But golem tomes and Kitty and the horns of Valhalla should work just fine and the summoned critters will stay. Don't know if scrolls work in dead magic zones.
Clear the lower floors and if necessary sleep again down there.
Just before going to the top floor cast bless and haste.
Send your hidden thief to the top floor.
There he attempts a backstab on the mage, preferably with a poisoned weapon.
On becoming visible he quickly moves to the far end of the room without going through to the next room.
Upon chaos being cast, if he saves, he takes a potion of invisibility and goes to a spot where he cannot be seen to consume healing potions galore. If not, he just has to trust to luck. Doing that will lure the melee fighters so that they can no longer see the stairs.
Meanwhile the rest of the party buffs and in particular have true sight running. They go upstairs and cast spells to disable the mage, silence, insect swarm, web and the like. The mage then casts cloudkill so that any returning melee fighters get badly hurt. Meanwhile bow users use poisonous arrows against the mage. Dtnaheir can cast magic missiles to disrupt any mage spells and once she is dead the plan depends on whether or not your thief is under your control.
If not you will have to rely on fireballs and other area effect spells, and finally perhaps use melee attacks when the cloudkill is no longer operative. If your thief is under your control it will be possible to go and have another rest if necessary. However without the mage, and with their cleric's disabling spells having been cast, the rest of the Clan should be manageable.
Baroque, Human Skald, update 9
Previous updates:
Update 1
Update 2
Update 3,
BG1 end
Update 4, SoA start
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7
Update 8
We're in ToB for the first time! And I don't have Ascension installed. After our standard buffs and summons, we take on the first of the 5 with relative ease. The other Mage didn't get protections up in time, and a simple PW:Stun removes her from the fight:
Mazzy with Gesen's and a Skald song makes her 1 damage per shot weaker than an Archer of equal level. The difference is negligible. Illisera herself is under... either PfMW or Improved Mantle, and I send Sebastian with well-into-the-negative saves to irritate her while my ranged squadron picks off the fighters and thieves coming from the left. I think it was IM she was under, since when she renews her "protection" with PfMW, she's met with a salvo of normal missiles.
Sarevok is invited onto the team, replacing Valygar. He's immediately equipped with the items from the Demon Knights from the Underdark, including a Platemail that grants SI:Necromancy. We take on the first Planar Challenge, where I find that ToB is going to be unforgiving if I make any mistake. Like this.
So I had numerous ways to save Imoen from that Comet. I have at least 3 Fire Resist items she can use, I could've easily moved her away: I was moving Sarevok away from the radius when she died. But I did none of these, and I'm deprived of both my main mage and only Thief. But we have to finish the fight first.
Final time Jon takes someone from me this run. To recap, that's the 4th perma-death I've had: Cato, a generated Archer, Vista, a generated Illusionist/Thief, Jaheira, and now Imoen. I need a Thief, though, since I'm unfamiliar with the deadly traps of ToB and don't feel like finding out now. My options are Jan and Nalia or dualing Sarevok: Jan is recruited from this pool, seeming like the smallest opportunity cost. On the plus side, I have 100% Detect Illusions and 4 traps and eventually Thief HLAs. On the negative side, Jan's highest spell level is 6 and has 16 INT with almost no ways to increase that under IR.
We do a couple minor quests around Saradush, and have our first "real" engagement with Kiser Jhaeri. It's not a real challenge, apparently: we're barely injured by the end of the fight.
The Sewers are fought through, as well as the Vampire-infested dungeons. The named Vampire doesn't die, somehow, and just... disappears through a wall or something. Dunno what happened. But anyways, we ascend the tower one fight at a time, and under Mass Invisibility and the rest of our buffs, start the engagement vs Gromnir.
Gromnir actually falls first: I sent Sarevok to distract him, and Sarevok responds by winning the 1v1. A Dispel hit my frontline a bit before this, as can be seen by the lack of icons on Sebastian, Sarevok, Alina, Mazzy, and Jan. Only Baroque's buffs survived, probably due to Bardic levels.
A Magefight ensues, or rather, a Magestall. We make sure all the damage is on our frontlines this time, and we're starting to have the tools to interrupt through any type of spell. By the time the last mage falls, we're not too much further damaged.
Outside Saradush, the Master Wraith proves to be an irritant. It's mostly Level drain: I simply don't have enough methods to prevent it, so I'm trying to keep all 6 members constantly moving while trying to have one or two members firing. I'm more successful than I expect, and end with only 3 members Level Drained.
Alina has to memorize 4 spells for this: 3 Lesser Restorations (well, 2 Lesser and 1 Greater) as well as a Remove Curse: Sarevok's Armor is Cursed, and the SI:Necromancy will prevent Restorations as well as any healing spells.
Skeletal guardians are dealt with relatively easy, and we start our first Fire Giant fights. Surprisingly, they're not too much trouble even with their HLAs. I can't say the same thing about the Fire Lich. I simply have no answer to PfMW from Liches still, since it takes me too long to strip off the spell protections to Breach him in time. In the end, I have Sebastian tank the remainder of its spells after retreating twice: he has 100+ Fire resist through items, and can get immunity to ADHW from the Wave. Eventually, the defenses fail.
The battle probably took 15 minutes real-time, despite not being more than 2 turns long. Fire animations and cloud spells slow my graphics card to a crawl still. Oh well. As soon as we're out of the Fire Temple we'll be fine.
Alina keeps herself alive vs a Dragon with a Potion of Fire resistance as well as throwing a fire resistance ring on her, and Mazzy proves she's still the best dragon-slayer on the team.
And then Imix. Good grief, Imix. I should've rested before this fight: I wasn't ready for this at all. The "Fire Storm on everyone" caught me way off guard, as well as his methods of dispelling. Baroque's own Fire resistance was debuffed, and he's nowhere near this fight, having no way to renew it. Sarevok's Dispelled and killed, and the remaining 4 rally to deal enough damage the Fire Prince
ZukoImixYaga-Shura's mother is surrounded by summons and executed fairly quickly, and Yaga-Shura is probably the next easiest for my party: massive fighter stats aren't going to survive against a Skald-boosted Ranged damage party. Sarevok gets a Critical to end the fight.
Sarevok's old gang isn't too much trouble: Jan interrupts the only dangerous mage spells with a Chain Lightning, while the other members are revealed with True Seeing and shot down.
We're at the second level of Watcher's keep at the moment: level 1 was dealt with little trouble outside of a trap missed by Jan and activating on Sebastian... which he saves against. I'm not going to dare going further than the 2nd level, and will continue to Amkethran after finishing the FoA+5. As a note, I think one of Alina's HLAs, Energy Blades, is using her Archer levels for her level: she's only generating 17 Energy Blades, when according to the description should be giving 35. Oh well, 17 attacks at 9 APR is still going to do plenty.