First things first: While trying to pick up any significant equipment left in SoD, I learned that you can't get the Sundermaul +3 without a thief, even if you have 25 strength:
Luckily, I have 80 Bullets of Darkness +3, and I did invest my level 3 and level 6 skillpoints into **Quarterstaff, just because there are two +3 staffs available that I will certainly be able to use if I need melee weapons against Belhifet. While I got most of the neccessary items by just running around and doing quests under sanctuary, I eventually gathered up a big group of hill giants, ogres, displacer beasts etc. that I was forced to fight, because they just wouldn't stop following me around - I used a potion of speed and lots of kiting plus some necklace of missles charges:
At this point, I had more than enough potion buffs left to use them for minor encounters, so in order to protect against silence, I obtained a nearby amulet with the help of turn undead and a ton of useful buffs:
Julann and her companion were killed, because I didn't intend to do their quests and didn't want to face them during the siege:
Strunk suffered the same fate, because his water elementals can get really annoying if he doesn't die quickly:
Finally, I obtained the ring with +3 ac/saves against devils and demons and killed the Sentry of Tempus at the crusader camp in order to get a new shield:
Time to set up the barrel and poison any supplies. I killed the guards with relative ease thanks to all of my buffs - while Hephernaan was busy walking up to Iloïnen, I also took out one of the spawned crusaders guarding the elevator:
Instead of engaging Hephernaan, I just ran away:
With enough potions to buff with oil of speed, invulnerability, heroism, various types of giant strength, mind focusing and more if needed, I defended the coalition camp, also using some necklace of missles charges. Eventually, even Grimgor had to fall:
The siege turned out to be surprisingly easy: With full buffs (25 strength, 25 dexterity, 3 APR with a sling, additional buffs like heroism and power to further improve thac0) and all the precautions I had taken by taking out key defenders and poisoning the supplies, Iloïnen did enough damage to allow her to simply assist the coalition forces without engaging in melee combat or using any offensive spells. I encountered Ashatiel (after making sure not to step into any traps with the find traps spell) and agreed to her duel. I just activated a potion of magic shielding and attacked her, using the wand of the heavens once she hid under sanctuary (why does the wand even work on creatures under sanctuary? seems strange to me):
Avernus was left, and I slipped past the first couple of devils hasted and ignoring them. With full potion buffs, it was easy to take out any opposition before getting to Belhifet himself. THAT was a messy fight. I made at least two huge mistake and ended up surviving on sheer dumb luck. First things first, the dialogue options: I used the dialogue options provided by @Gate70 in the Adventurer's Lounge that should result in Caelar joining the battle on your side without joining the party. However, that's not what ended up happening: Instead, Belhifet simply killed Caelar in a cutscene and I had to face Belhifet, Hephernaan and his summons alone. I started by kiting Hephernaan and killing him with my regular sling bullets:
The Abishai were next, and with the Bullets of Darkness, I started to deal decent damage to Belhifet - at this point, everything was going well:
However, at a certain point, Belhifet started summoning allies, and he didn't stop - once the first devil appeared, he summoned more in the same regular intervals used on insane/LoB difficulties. A couple of mistakes during kiting caused Iloïnen to suffer some damage:
I should at this point have decided to first kill the gated devils and not just keep kiting Belhifet. This made kiting overall much more difficult, because once a couple of abishai appeared, they would constantly teleport to Iloïnens position, sometimes blocking my path, so I regularily suffered one or two hits. What I failed to realize is that even my longer prebuffs were running out at this point - and just like that, invulnerability and remove fear were gone, and I didn't see it in time - aura of fear hit me:
At this point, all I could do was hope and pray that Iloïnen would run around in a relatively smart way and never get stuck until the effect was over. I knew that the effect wouldn't be very long, but survival would be entirely based on luck. I had so many remove fear spells and additional protection potions left, but I just didn't notice that I needed them... argh.
Because Iloïnen is really lucky (she survived a timestop in early SoD, after all), she ran around in a very reasonable manner and never got stuck. The fear effect ended with her on 51 hp:
I immediately used a potion of magic shielding to cover all of my bases. While shooting more bullets at Belhifet, I started to drink healing potions:
And finally, Belhifet went down:
His death caused all of his gated in devils to disappear:
And I made my way through the epilogue, the SoA opening dungeon and the circus tent. Certainly an exciting final battle, but not for the reasons one would want it to be. I can't believe Iloïnen made it through SoD with that many mistakes on my part, and with triggering so many unknown traps. My lack of experience with solo play is certainly showing.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 143 part 123 4 Tynea, halfling Cleric (Gate70) Brave, human Skald (Grond0)
We just had time for a short session of 30 minutes or so. That's long enough to help a vampire to the west of Coastways Crossing, and reach the first ambush point. Orcs and trolls outside present no trouble, but Tynea gets a dose of criticals from the trolls inside and isn't wary enough to avoid the fatality of it.
Corthief XIII micro-update Traveling with: Shar-Teel, Khalid, Viconia, Imoen
I had thought Melium's area was going to be simple. And indeed Melium was - but apparently the EE Karhk is much harder than vanilla - but it was very nearly our deaths. If it weren't for Imoen's scorcher from her wand, he probaby would have won.
So we loot what we can, and try to make out escape - then run into a basilisk ambush!
We use our remaining invis potions, but forgot to turn off the AI and the duo promptly opened fire with their range weapons! I quickly ran south and somehow escaped without the basilisk attacking..whew!
I got every one raised and re-equipped - we'll handle Argain's area next.
@semiticgod Congrats on reaching Amn. It lookd like an epic battle, but so, so different to the times that I have beaten SoD. I must have made completely different choices to you and as a result my battles were simpler. It's such a long time since I got that far due to my new installation being "Challenging!"
Baldur's Gate is a brilliant game, but whoever came up with the idea of a basilisk ambush was an idiot.
You can usually just run like mad and you have a fair chance of surviving. However, if you have a potion of mirrored eyes handy it provides easy experience. I have a mod that gives you one of those in exchange for freeing a petrified adventurer. I used the scroll for the basilisk area which meant that when ambushed the basilisk was no problem. Moral, if you can afford it, keep one of those potions handy for emergencies.
This ends the first stage of my game. I hope I don’t die soon, because it took a fair chunk of time to type this up, and I’d hate to waste the effort. In fact, I’m not sure how long I can keep this up. I’m probably throwing too much role-playing stuff in here and wasted time covering the easiest part of the game. I guess I'll figure out how to cover this as I go....
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.
Read: I've lost a bunch of would-be NRL attempts because of Tarnesh (or the other stuff that y'all more familiar with the game consider to be early game). And that's without SCS. Reading about any sort of progress is good.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 143 part 123 4 Tynea, halfling Cleric (Gate70) Brave, human Skald (Grond0)
We just had time for a short session of 30 minutes or so. That's long enough to help a vampire to the west of Coastways Crossing, and reach the first ambush point. Orcs and trolls outside present no trouble, but Tynea gets a dose of criticals from the trolls inside and isn't wary enough to avoid the fatality of it.
That was one of those things. On the face of it the trolls shouldn't have had much chance, but neither of our characters did great damage in melee and after an initial skull trap thinned out the attackers we didn't use any magic. The criticals on Tynea started to add up and with her down to about 25 HPs I decided it was time to finish things off with a wand of fire scorcher (I think Gate70 thought similarly as I seem to remember a wand of heavens blast just at the end). The trolls thus only had seconds to live, but 3 of their last 4 attacks were criticals which meant that Tynea had even fewer seconds ...
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 144 - update 1 Melody (Elf Ranger, Grond0); Grisol (Dwarf Wizard Slayer, Gate70) End of MP 143
The last run I hosted had me with a monk and Gate70 with a wizard slayer. This time Lady Luck threw up a ranger for me - and another wizard slayer for Gate70. Let's see whether practice makes perfect .
Progress was smooth from Candlekeep to Shoal and on to Beregost. Melody had already shot down Imoen, Xzar and Montaron with the feeble excuse of not wanting to take the time to get them to join and loot their inventories. It was thus no surprise to see Neera acting like a pin cushion given that avoiding her encounter and getting the gem bag is actually a pretty good excuse for mayhem .
As usual Grisol hadn't spent any of his hard earned cash on armor, so visiting Nashkel to pick up the ankheg plate made good sense. His equipment got a further boost by shooting Greywolf before heading to the basilisk area. The monsters were all duly killed before Grisol took some pot shots at Mutamin. I think he would have suffered the indignity of 100% spell failure - if he hadn't managed to avoid that by dying.
Shooting at Kirian proved far less effective though and she surprisingly survived an initial assault helped by Korax making no impression. That led to a strategic retreat during which Lindin and Baerin followed, but were split up and overwhelmed. Going back to Kirian, one more shot finished her off and, though Peter managed to hold Melody, Grisol led him away to his doom.
A bit more equipment gathering went via Meilum (a critical there destroying his reputation as the best swordsman on the Sword Coast),
through the Cloud Peaks and the Lake area (to get Bjornin's shield for Grisol). A few sundry tasks in Beregost also saw Silke die before she realised her casting might be problematic.
The next major target was the Lighthouse, where the sirines should have been simple with Melody going to melee the initial group while protected by a potion of clarity. Unfortunately, while that potion prevented her being feeble-minded, it didn't protect her from being charmed (as a result of the interaction of the potion with elven charm resistance) and Grisol had to lead her away quickly from the sirines.
Although HPs on both characters were getting low, once Melody recovered she tried to find the sirines again rather than resting - only to be ambushed by one of them and hit by a poison arrow that took her down to single figure HPs.
After resting a number of times to get full HPs back the duo sought out the troublesome sirines again and beat them up one by one without further problems.
Sil's group were initially hit hard by ranged attacks and quickly died.
Grisol couldn't resist meleeing the golems though and was down to 12 HPs when the last of those fell.
He was indignant at the idea that was any possible problem though and proved that by seeking out and meleeing a couple of worgs on the way out of the area.
After a visit to High Hedge though his constitution was boosted enough to trigger regeneration to help him recover from that type of situation.
Clearing the ankheg nest pushed reputation up to 20 and a bit of shopping was done in Ulgoth's Beard and the Carnival. It was then a toss-up whether to go to the Nashkel Mine or Durlag's Tower. The Tower won, though that proved something of a hurdle. Grisol struggled a bit against the battle horrors - his inability to wear magic items making him considerably more vulnerable than a standard fighter. Melody helped out a bit with stealth attacks though and the duo were eventually able to clear the exterior and head inside.
Moving onto the roof, Melody used a potion of mirrored eyes to kill the lesser basilisk and the first of the greater basilisks. With the potion about to expire, Melody should have just used another one. However, I had a bit of a brainstorm and reverted to single player mode by sending her behind a pillar to try and hide (in order to get next to the second greater basilisk before using another potion). Grisol was quite naturally advancing as Melody disappeared from view and immediately the basilisk switched targets.
Feeling that his input wouldn't necessarily be crucial on how to role play a statue Gate70 left the game at that point, while I quickly went to a temple to get a stone to flesh scroll and returned (after avoiding any encounters) to get the duo back together.
So I had a complete change of heart while I was crossing the map. I decided that I wasn’t going to let fear – no less assassins - dictate my life. In fact, I was going to bring the pain to them. Could there be one waiting at the FAI? I hoped so! In other words, I decided to risk Tarnesh. I know this is really dumb, but I just didn’t feel like playing a cowardly, risk averse game when I loaded up. Especially with a blackguard. I mean, they’re supposed to be kick ass and take names type of characters. Part of my thinking was also that I’ve been using Tiax a lot and, while I love him, I felt like a change. I also felt guilty about my plans to dump Imoen, which happens about half the time I play. So….
We went east to the road that leads to the FAI and told Elminster to PFO, and then headed north.
The Friendly Arm
We were attacked on site by SCS Tarnesh, but everything went our way. His mirror image was disrupted by Lamia casting a magic missile. Samara activated her poisoned weapon ability and started shooting her crossbow but missed. Imoen hit Tarnesh with an arrow. Tarnesh got off a sleep spell but all three characters made their save. It all could have ended there. Samara closed in with her two-hander but kept missing. Lamia struck with another magic missile. Imoen struck the killing blow with an arrow (a guard might have landed something in that fight, too). In any case, Tarnesh was finished without my blackguard landing a single blow.
We then went into inn, sold some loot from the ambush site and Tarnesh. We spoke to Khalid and Jahiera but they were such a wimpy pair we decided not to join them.
We did Joia’s quest and were rewarded with ring of wizardry (head cannon).
South to Beregost
We headed south towards Beregost. We left the main road to avoid marauders, but ran afoul of an ogre. He fell to a sleep spell and a poisoned crossbow bolt. Full disclosure: I’m using Tresset’s poison mod in SCS, so I have the v1.3 version of poison going. Anyway, the ogre had two magical belts. Lucky for us, one was a girdle of piercing, which will help against bandit archers and knife-tossing skellies.
Beregost
We paid Firebead a visit and I considered leaving Imoen there, but began feeling guilty once again and couldn’t do it. We went to Feldepost’s Inn to get Firebead’s book. We were challenged by a mouthpiece named Marl so Samara started swinging, only to realize she’d used the poison weapon on the ogre and Lamia had no sleep spells left. This could have been a disaster but the die rolls went my way and Marl was killed without taking any damage or breaking Samara’s two-hander.
We slept at Feldepost’s – in four star room - and drank fancy wines but heard no rumours. After resting we went and killed the spiders in Landrin’s house with sleep spells. We then headed back to FAI to get reward for spider quest (Imoen leveled up).
East and then south again
We left the FAI again and went east. We rescued Viconia and headed to Beregost to get her a sling and some bullets. It turns out that during her misadventures she had learned of a mace that was locked in a room in one of the inns. We went and got it.
Viconia had also heard about a murder in a field in Nashkel. The body, she said, might still have some nice armour if it hadn’t been found by other looters. So, we left for Nashkel.
On the way we fought half-ogres and retrieved gold and a message scroll. We ran afoul of the law farther down the road – killed 3 flaming fist (three suits of armour will fetch a nice price). Afraid of retaliation, we decided to leave the road and headed west into the forest. We ran into hobgoblins, took them out with sleep, arrows and bolts. Imoen scored boots of stealth and we found their cave with healing potions.
We moved south again to the next map. We battled through a pack of hobgoblins and found a poor slaughtered family with some jewelry – rumour had it this family was missing from Beregost. We went further south to Nashkel and found the body Viconia spoke of: it was indeed encased in a nice set of armour. We then headed to the village proper (killing Nuber on the way) and spoke to the mayor who offered us a contract to clear out the mines.
Back to Beregost
We then returned to Beregost to return Colquetle amulet, hoping for a reward. Samara and Lamia were furious when the family offered none and had to refrain from slaughtering them, but Imoen seemed happy to have done the right thing.
Returning the amulet to the Colquetles was a bit of metagaming. I wanted to get my reputation up to 10 so that my early Bhaal powers are cure light wounds. I RP’d that my characters were hoping for a nice reward, rather than doing the right thing.
My party in Beregost:
Now I’m trying to decide where to go to next. Probably the mines. They aren’t too hard and you get some sweet gear from Nimbul after. Viconia could use the priest's ring, and I consider the boots of avoidance one of the most powerful items in the game, all the more so in a no reload.
I also have to rethink my brazen attitude. Fighting Tarnesh was very risky, but it was a spur of the moment thing where I just said the hell with it. In my one-reload game I did that on the map east of the mines. I challenged the revenant and the wizard with the jellies when I wasn’t sufficiently leveled, and I did so recklessly, charging in there. I just got lucky then, as I did with Tarnesh. But I guess luck is always going to play a part in no-reload?
I just activated a potion of magic shielding and attacked her, using the wand of the heavens once she hid under sanctuary (why does the wand even work on creatures under sanctuary? seems strange to me)
Items don't check for invisibility. Wands and scrolls always work on invisible critters, provided you can see the critter's circle.
We slowly but surely forged our way through the Gnoll Stronghold resting on the way until we emerged in an area of grassland to the north. There we killed a polar bear and in so doing earned some good boots. We returned and were eventually able to rescue Aaron and liberate his ring to boot. We then returned to Aerie who identified a lot more equipment including four tomes two of which I used. We then headed for the ankheg nest which yielded precious experience particularly for Isra who levelled up. Having Isra in the party is actually quite a handicap as she doesn't join at anything like the same level as the other party members. She joined mainly for RP reasons.
I'd still like to give this group a chance to try their skills at a higher level, but am (as usual) finding it difficult to play safely to get them there. To give me a bit more motivation to do that I thought I would record progress this time from the perspective of aiming for a zero-risk run. I'll note how I've aimed to do that and any occasions where I think there was any risk.
Thus far I've made one significant mistake that could potentially have caused a death, but otherwise everything's gone pretty much to plan. For any masochists among you the spoiler below has details of progress to date.
Candlekeep - left without doing anything.
Cut-scene - didn't skip until the archer had fired his 3 arrows (to avoid the possibility of him firing in the cut-scene and the arrow continuing on into the main screen to cause a fatal hit).
Gorion's Graveyard - opened up areas to south and east without fighting anything. Travelled south without resting (if travelling by day there's no chance of an archer ambush there).
High Hedge - went straight to Shoal's area. There are no archer ambushes on that route, but a ghast tried an ambush. I was happy to fight that as the time vs XP equation is a good one and Washout succeeded with both his traps, so it didn't take long.
Shoal's area - Hardup summoned shamanic spirits before Skint tried blind on Shoal. She doesn't necessarily turn hostile immediately on taking damage, so blind is a better means to do that (causing the summons to attack). Slept a carrion crawler and gave Mad Arcand a ring back before setting traps for Arcand (causing a reputation drop, which I was happy to take). Some dogs tried an ambush on the way back to High Hedge, but they can be avoided with care (though I actually slept / blinded / commanded / trapped them).
High Hedge - gnolls were slept or blinded and finished off. Two traps were laid outside Sorcerous Sundries for each golem (resting by the map edge in between, in order to be able to run away in case of an ambush). Travelled to Beregost (no archer ambush on that route).
Beregost - immediately magic missiled Neera to ensure her encounter didn't trigger unexpectedly. Helped Firebead and calmed down Marl before setting traps outside the spider house and sleeping one survivor. Incidentally if you're not using traps / spells you need to be quick to move away after coming out of that house to avoid the spiders blocking you in as they exit. Everyone took a level or two at that point. Washout now had 100% in traps and set a couple of those to kill Karlat before attempting to return Perdue's sword, only to find I'd forgotten to pick it up. The latest version of BGEE introduces a 4 hour transition to the area to the south, but there's still no chance of an ambush there. That meant a pair of ogrillons could be slept along with various hobgoblins. Incidentally, it's just possible (though highly unlikely) that you may have wondered why Hardup has so many kills in runs with this party - that's because as a shaman he finds it easy to cast Shillelagh and with 19 strength he's very effective with it. Returned Mirianne's letter and Zhurlong's boots before killing the latter (barely worth it in a poverty run for 90 XP, but there's no reputation loss and I've got into that habit). Silke only has 29 HPs, so a pair of traps accounted for her.
Road south - bandits only have a chance of appearing if you arrive at the ambush point after 15.00 in the day-time, so it's easy enough to travel safely. I picked up Mr Colquetle's amulet on the way as that will disappear if left for long after you first enter that area. If you hug the eastern edge of that map there are no encounters.
Nashkel - spoke to Noober. At the Carnival, magic missiled Vitiare as soon as I entered the tent (once hostile he just tries to run away rather than fighting or pick-pocketing). After opening up map areas I rested there to get Bhaal LMD before travelling back up the road (always in day-time) to the north of Beregost.
Crossroads - avoided any encounters while moving up the map to just out of sight of the ogre. Then followed that well known saying "let sleeping ogres dlie".
FAI - disposed of a few hobgoblins before continuing north (still during daytime).
Ankheg area - there's a chance of bandits spawning just north of where you enter the area, so I carefully moved forward to check things were empty. The fishermen were struck down before Pauper went into the ankheg nest. He immediately retreated before the ankheg noticed him and came in at a slightly different angle at extreme range (to ensure the ankheg would attack at range rather than try in melee). When the ankheg surfaced it was commanded (automatic success against ankhegs). The others came down and the ankheg saved against sleep, but fell to blind. That allowed Pauper to kill it with his Seeking Sword (creatures with large circles like ankhegs and basilisks can be attacked if you're careful from outside their blinded sight range even using range 1 weapons). A spirit bear was used to activate the next ankheg, which failed against sleep. The next saved vs sleep, but was again blinded though it did manage to kill the spirit bear at the same time and as a result disappeared underground. In line with my no risk policy I just left it while grabbing the body of the farmer's son (though leaving it there constituted its own type of risk - see below). After returning that I continued on north.
City entrance - a trap was laid under Tenya before talking to her to persuade her to give up immediately. Another trap should then have killed her after returning the bowl, but I must have interrupted the cast of that while writing these notes and it didn't activate - Tenya as a result managed to teleport away with 1 HP left. Command and blind ensured the nearby ankheg was not so lucky though. Resting is safe in that area so it's easy to ensure travel back to the FAI takes place during the day.
FAI - Joia got her ring back. Traps were then laid at the bottom of the steps before a spirit snake attacked Tarnesh. It missed and Tarnesh slept and killed it, but with no-one in sight he then made the mistake of advancing down the stairs to his death. Unshey got his girdle and Landrin various goods back.
City entrance - with another level close I went back to find a few more ankhegs in the nest. That resulted in the first risk of the run when, after I'd killed one I ran past the treasure cache to get to the next one. I'd forgotten though that I'd only blinded and not killed the one near the cache and it was fortuitous that their route wasn't in sight of it for long enough to attack - when it caught up with them it was slept and killed. One more ankheg after that was commanded and slept to allow everyone to level up again.
I don't even know what to say. My run is over. I went to the mines thinking it was a safe way to gradually build up experience and get to level 2. I mean, what is there to fear down there? Lowly kobolds and spiders that easily fall prey to sleep spells. Piece of cake. The trouble was, with improved calls for help I ended up using up all my sleep spells by the time I reached Mulahey's cave at the bottom of the mines. I decided to rest before confronting him. I took out the ghoul around the side of the cave and wedged my party into the back niche, with my sorcerer and Imoen against the wall in the corner, shielded by the heavily-armoured Viconia and Samara and protected from attack. However, I was ambushed during sleep.
Shouldn't have been a problem, except the kobolds spawned right on top of my party, with two of them wedged improbably between my front-liners and back-liners. I had no sleep or command spells left. Viconia had a hold person spell, but I opted to take them out with weapons. Unfortunately the die rolls didn't go my way. All my characters were missing wildly. It was like having a party of Imperial Storm Troopers. Imoen and Lamia were killed. Finally Vicky and my blackguard were able to take out the kobolds, but the damage was done. I could have left the mines and had them resurrected, but I decided to tip my king (to use that chess analogy again). It's simply too much work to trek all the way back to the Nashkel temple with all their gear, and it just smelled like failure.
This is a tough one to swallow. The kobolds spawned in a totally unrealistic way. It couldn't happen in real life. It's the same during an area transition, when you find yourself surrounded by a ring of archers. In no scenario, even going back to your very first play-through, would you ever allow such a thing to happen on a normal game map. @semiticgod brought up the example of basilisk ambushes. You just don't have a fighting chance. In a no-reload effort, you feel robbed. But getting killed by kobolds is a further indignity. Got your brains sucked out by a mindflayer, or barbecued by a dragon? No problem, you can still hold your head high. But kobolds... yeesh. Ah, well, back to the drawing board, as they say.
Thanks to those who've been following, and to those who've offered advice and encouragement. I'll also say it's been a pleasure hearing about your runs. I'm amazed that there are such good players.
Hard luck @OrlonKronsteen. Kobolds are actually pretty nasty creatures. The kobold commandos who give all of 35 XP can take down a party very rapidly and even the basic kobolds can do quite a bit of damage when they hit. Ambushes in the mine are a real problem, so the safe way to handle that is not to rest except on the entrance level or in Mulahey's cave itself. For the latter it's best to rest the moment you go in the entrance as, depending on your installation, he may otherwise sense you arriving and come to investigate (I've never known him do that after you've rested though).
I've always been very anxious about random spawns on resting, as both can be extremely fatal in the Nashkel mines and the Cloakwood mines. I use custom rest spells to replicate the effects of trudging back to the surface to rest safely.
For me, part of the difficulty of no-reload is the hassle of playing safely. That provides an ever-growing temptation to take 'just one more risk' as the run continues .
Also, I'm not aware of anywhere in the Cloakwood Mine map that's totally safe to rest - have I missed something @semiticgod?
@Grond0: If my memory is correct, the interior of the Cloakwood mines spawns guards that persist even after a successful rest, but no permanent spawns (or any spawns at all?) show up in the surface area, where you find Drasus, so an invisible party should be able to rest outside safely.
If the surface area does spawn permanent critters, which I've never seen, my only solution would be to sleep in the previous Cloakwood area to the west of the mines. That would cost each druid and mage an Ironskins/Stoneskin spell due to travel time, but should otherwise be safe.
Out of the Cloakwood, we go to the FAI to sell and take a wyvern head to Kelddath. I buy myself the Neutral Archmagi robe, but it makes me look like I'm wearing full plate! I can't suspend my disbelief that much, so I change my avatar to Mage Human Male instead.
From High Hedge, we make for Ulcaster and then move on to Gullykin. Alvenhendar's stone to flesh scrolls are all bought up. We move south to ambush the Gullykin assassins. Same procedure: move in the ghast and spirit snake, have them attack first, and then backstab.
Monty would have gone for Halacan first, but he suddenly moved away from him, so he had to settle for backstabbing Morvin instead. They bunch up, which means its time for Hold Person. Two of them fail their saves as Ajantis removes fear from the party, but the ghast paralyzes a third.
Halacan is taken out with a backstab. The rest are disposed with. We travel to Wyrm's Crossing and kill the ankheg that ate Nester. Through tossing its shell across the ground, we return to Beregost, sell the loot from our would-be assassins, and commission a set of ankheg armor for Faldorn.
Finally, we're in Baldur's Gate proper. First stop is the DEX tome, then Sorcerous Sundries for the Bag of Holding and more spells, so I can finally get something memorized for level 4 and 5.
I had expected a fight upstairs in Sundries but Monty's presence turned them neutral and they left the area. We're low on cash, I do nearly all the sidequests in the city, buying more stone to flesh scrolls as I circle the city clockwise. Montaron levels up by backstabbing Ramazith. Larze squished Quenash so I picked up her cloak (thanks @Enuhal!).
Lothander's boots of speed are now mine in case I need to make a quick getaway.
After most all of the sidequests in BG were done, I did a few in the wilderness. Picked up Faldorn's armor after a few days and went up to Ulgoth's Beard for some spell scrolls and Dushai's Ring of Freedom of Movement. Fought and killed both Droth and Shoal, choosing to sacrifice Faldorn as she is the easiest to re-equip. The Doomsayer was killed and Brage was returned to sanity. The Sirines along the coast were wiped out and I plundered the CON tome.
On the way back to Basilisk Country, the hunter became the hunted!
This could've been disastrous if I didn't have a potion of magic shielding to guarantee that Kagain would save against the petrification. We flee from it and arrive at our destination. I've got 97 stone to flesh scrolls. Farming takes at least a half hour of mind-numbing clicking...
I got 1 level and Faldorn got one as well, but STILL no fire seeds! Thankfully she's only a few thousand away from it. We clear out the ankheg nest, causing Kagain and Monty to level up. We return to BG and assault the Iron Throne.
This battle is the first time I really flex my mage-muscles. I get up all kinds of buffs on myself just to make doubly sure I don't get affected by anything the party upstairs can throw at me. Before going upstairs, I haste our group and turn myself, Faldorn, and Monty invisible. We three climb the stairs and get behind them so that Kagain and Ajantis can initiate.
Faldorn's Insect Plague shuts down all the casters as I expected, though I didn't count on it hitting every single enemy. As the Enchanter's job is be a force multiplier via debuffs, I cast Greater Malison followed by Chaos. The results send the enemy into complete disarray, even more so than before. The Iron Throne party is defeated.
But this is STILL not enough to get Faldorn's next level for Fire Seeds! I clear out Ulcaster's School and moved on to Karkh from Firewine. It may be unorthodox but I was going to attempt to tank Karhk using my spell protections after waiting for his Minor Globe to expire.
This didn't work out like I thought it would, as Karkh targeted other party members meleeing him. I'd had enough of him damaging Ajantis, so Faldorn cast her "screw this" spell and Karhk was down for the count.
We do more sidequests in the wilderness, just itching to get Faldorn's last level. Finally, it happens in the spider wood.
Faldorn now has access to Fire Seeds. The plan I've just been ITCHING to try ever since I thought it up begins: I'm going to kill the Firewine ghosts for their loot. Their gear is going to be very helpful.
I've got 97 stone to flesh scrolls. Farming takes at least a half hour of mind-numbing clicking...
The basilisk XP loop is by far the fastest way of gaining XP in BG1, but it's actually still too slow for me. On more than one occasion, I un-petrified and re-petrified a basilisk several times, did the math in Excel, dropped the right number of scrolls, and added the rest of the XP via the console. It's probably a testament to my impatience that I'd rather spend 2 minutes using the console than spend 30 minutes doing the basilisk XP loop, which already obviates the need for several hours of in-game XP gathering.
Thanks all for the insights on resting, and in earlier posts on what time of day it's safe to travel. These are things I never gave a thought to before trying no-reload. It's interesting that random encounters and ambushes are now part of my game. I used to consider them nuisances and sometimes wished I could toggle random encounters off as they'd just ruin my role-playing vibe.
As for actually dealing with these encounters, most of the time I find I reduce the risk by placing weak characters against objects or the edge of the map and surrounding them with armoured tanks, but I just learned the hard way that there's just no accounting for every possible scenario. I'm definitely getting a Feldepost's Inn membership card on my next run. Camping sucks on the Sword Coast!
I've got 97 stone to flesh scrolls. Farming takes at least a half hour of mind-numbing clicking...
The basilisk XP loop is by far the fastest way of gaining XP in BG1, but it's actually still too slow for me. On more than one occasion, I un-petrified and re-petrified a basilisk several times, did the math in Excel, dropped the right number of scrolls, and added the rest of the XP via the console. It's probably a testament to my impatience that I'd rather spend 2 minutes using the console than spend 30 minutes doing the basilisk XP loop, which already obviates the need for several hours of in-game XP gathering.
I know I could've done it like that, but I did it manually just so I can say I've done it the hard way before. I'm not putting myself through that clickfest again. I'll use the console next time I set the loop up correctly.
Early Shadows of Amn is going smoothly for Frisky Bits. A level 12 Totemic Druid is enough to mop the floor with most of the early fights in Athkatla. All I really need to do is keep Frisky Bits and Onion-san, our cleric, buffed with Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Invisibility when necessary. My only mistake was casting Invisibility 10' Radius out in the open, which could be dangerous later on--we're a mage-heavy party, and cannot pay for a magic license.
Things will get more complicated in later quests. The limitations of the poverty run will be most visible when we're dealing with stuff like demons, liches, and Yuan-ti Mages. Demons are usually best fought using weapons, liches are best handled with Protection from Undead scrolls, and our party just isn't optimized to handle the Coiled Cabal.
I honestly don't see how we would tackle liches before epic levels. If we find one in Spellhold, I think we're just going to have to kite it to death, using area transitions to escape its demons. We have three mages, but you'd really need at least four to interrupt a lich's introductory Time Stop: one mage to take down Spell Shield, a second mage to take down Spell Turning/Deflection/Trap/Immunity: Abjuration, a third mage to take down PFMW, and a fourth one to take down the PFMW Contingency, followed by Minute Meteors.
We will be siding with neither Aran Linvail nor Bodhi. Instead, we're going to pursue the Assassinations questline, which is largely risk-free and lets us fight the original Aran Linvail instead of the modded Shadow Thief headquarters in my install with all those Clay Golems and Kensai/Thieves and (worst of all) the sealed exits that prevent resting and returning. I simply don't think we're equipped to handle that map.
But then, if you think about it, you're not really equipped for anything when your party has no equipment.
Now that Faldorn has Fire Seeds, I console in a whole bunch of them just to save myself the time instead of spending an eternity creating a couple hundred at an inn or something. We enter the Firewine Ruins and clear it out far enough to get to where the ghost knights stand. This will take a while. Ghost Knights are immune to all damage types EXCEPT poison. Since I can't lower their 100% magic resistance yet, its up to Monty to kill them.
Tiax summons his ghast, which I Protect from Fire. I Haste everyone then go invisible; Monty equips the Fire Seeds and poisons them, then hucks them at Ghastly. I must continuously command the ghast to stay where it is because it wants to retaliate against Monty despite being immune to fire and poison.
Monty can poison his weapons twice a day for 1d3 damage on contact, with a save vs. death on every hit to prevent more damage over time. The ghost knights' saves are all 1, and Monty doesn't have Poison Expertise yet to make his poison harder to resist, so he can only do about 20-30 damage to the knights per rest. Kobolds ambush us occasionally but they are easily fended off.
After quite a few rest sessions, the ghost knights begin to die off.
After two more rests, 4 of the 6 knights are dead. I decide this is good enough and return the broken armor to the knights remaining. So what was worth this much effort? A set of Full Plate +1, Plate Mail +1, normal Full Plate, some +1 shields, several Helmets of Charm Protection, and a few magical weapons. I could've killed another knight for another set of Plate Mail +1 but decided not to. Ajantis should be much better protected by using Full Plate +1 instead of Ankheg Plate.
Monty backstabs both the ogre mage and Lendarn, so neither of them cause us any trouble on the way out. I never want to spend that long in Firewine ever again.
On to the return to Candlekeep. Monty makes it up to the top of the keep and steals the magical stuff, evading the watchers via stealth. The catacombs are cleared and I use both the STR and WIS books on myself. Might as well since I can't carry them over to BG2.
In the Candlekeep Cave, Ghastly and a Spirit Wolf attacked Prat's group. They didn't immediately go hostile as they attacked and killed Prat, like I expected them to. Only when one of his three lackeys were attacked did they fight back. The one with the bow was gibbed by Monty and the other two were so easily disposed of, none of us even had to come help.
Now that our trip to Candlekeep is over, we return to the city and Husam gets us into the Undercellar, where we kill Sarevok's assassins. A piece prize from Slythe:
With the invitations, we rescue Duke Eltan from his doppleganger healer. We leave the city and do the Ice Island, cheesing encounters with Tiax and Faldorn's summons again. With that finished, Durlag's Tower looms before us.
@Grond0: If my memory is correct, the interior of the Cloakwood mines spawns guards that persist even after a successful rest, but no permanent spawns (or any spawns at all?) show up in the surface area, where you find Drasus, so an invisible party should be able to rest outside safely.
If the surface area does spawn permanent critters, which I've never seen, my only solution would be to sleep in the previous Cloakwood area to the west of the mines. That would cost each druid and mage an Ironskins/Stoneskin spell due to travel time, but should otherwise be safe.
OK. I thought by resting safely you meant no ambushes. In the unmodded game the guards within the mine disappear after resting, but that may not be the same in your installation.
Incidentally, you were concerned about killing liches at below epic levels. Remember that druids get a 7th level spell at only 1.5m XP and they don't call it 'creeping doom' for nothing (particularly with a MMM storm added). Prior to that a series of skeleton warriors should be able to tank a lich easily enough as long as you keep your party out of the way.
Through tossing its shell across the ground, we return to Beregost, sell the loot from our would-be assassins, and commission a set of ankheg armor for Faldorn.
With a relatively high level party I would be inclined to keep a strength of one spell memorised. That's both a pretty good buff for summons and helpful for carrying stuff if you have a bunch of weaklings .
In the unmodded game the guards within the mine disappear after resting, but that may not be the same in your installation.
Incidentally, you were concerned about killing liches at below epic levels. Remember that druids get a 7th level spell at only 1.5m XP and they don't call it 'creeping doom' for nothing (particularly with a MMM storm added). Prior to that a series of skeleton warriors should be able to tank a lich easily enough as long as you keep your party out of the way.
I actually don't know for certain if the rest ambush guards at the Cloakwood are permanent; I just heard they were and therefore resolved not to rest deep in the mine. Now that I think about it, the first level of the mines was relatively safe to rest in: it only spawned a single, non-permanent guard instead of a whole group, though the odds of the guard appearing on rest was extremely high.
I'm afraid that Fire Shields block both Insect Plague and Creeping Doom in my SCS install, and Fire Shields seem pretty ubiquitous among high-level mages in SCS, including liches. Minute Meteors will fail against PFMW.
Skeleton Warriors may work, but I'm a little anxious about them. I've seen liches in my install Dimension Door right on top of the party from across the map, and their summons can make short work of Skeleton Warriors. While Cornugons would do very little damage, a Balor or Pit Fiend could take down a single skeleton in 2 rounds, a Fallen Planetar could do it in one hit if they land a successful vorpal strike (25% chance, save vs. death at -2 negates), and the shortest-lived summons, the planetar, will still last for 23 rounds. If I can't keep up a constant supply of summons for the full duration, the lich will teleport to my party, at which point Remove Magic and any disabler could get my cleric killed.
But now that I think about it, if I can get my cleric to 1.35 million XP, I could cast Holy Word for an instant 50% spell failure. It would be no guarantee of success, but if I can cast it twice, it should completely break the lich, since last I checked, deafness spell failure stacked.
@OrlonKronsteen, hopefully we will see a new Bhaalspawn of yours soon. One more piece of advice in addition to the tips you've already been given: Invisibility is your friend, when resting in the wilderness or in dungeons, and also when traveling. In my current LoB run, all my level 2 slots (my Skald has 2, Edwin has 4) are filled with Invisibility. You won't have enough castings early on to cover a full party, but even then it can be worthwhile to protect at least Charname and a squishy mage.
@Enuhal, luck or not, you've completed SoD with a solo character! I'm kind of getting used to you being successful but that doesn't make it any less impressive. Well done man.
@Flashburn, highly enjoyable stuff, and convincing too for a new no-reloader! My Illusionist thanks you for the tip on using the quick loot function to move heavy items. Hadn't occurred to me to use it that way. Good luck in Durlag's Tower!
@semiticgod, you're a fantastic player. Your reports, which clearly show your preparation, your throughness and your skill are a joy to read. Congrats on beating first BGEE and now SoD in your poverty run.
But now that I think about it, if I can get my cleric to 1.35 million XP, I could cast Holy Word for an instant 50% spell failure. It would be no guarantee of success, but if I can cast it twice, it should completely break the lich, since last I checked, deafness spell failure stacked.
I recall @CrevsDaak mentioning once that SCS casters stop casting spells as soon as they incur a 50% spell failure penalty. Have you tested this?
I'm afraid that Fire Shields block both Insect Plague and Creeping Doom in my SCS install, and Fire Shields seem pretty ubiquitous among high-level mages in SCS, including liches. Minute Meteors will fail against PFMW.
But now that I think about it, if I can get my cleric to 1.35 million XP, I could cast Holy Word for an instant 50% spell failure. It would be no guarantee of success, but if I can cast it twice, it should completely break the lich, since last I checked, deafness spell failure stacked.
I did nerf insect plague when I first installed SCS, but I later decided it was unreasonable to do so - although it's an incredible spell in itself I think it helps provide a better balance for the druid class over the whole game.
You could consider chain-casting false dawn instead of holy word. That's a long-casting spell, but your buffs should survive a single round while it casts. Once the lich is confused you should be free to re-cast it on the following round, though that's more safely done in confined areas where the lich can't wander out of the area of effect.
Oh dear. There was another significant mistake in this 'zero-risk' run at Durlag's Tower . Rather than just being a source of potential danger as in the ankheg nest, this time the danger was definitely actual and everyone only survived thanks to a good dose of luck.
I also caught myself several times later on taking unnecessary risks, e.g. travelling without invisibility on a couple of occasions when dangerous ambushes were possible and attacking an ogre in melee when a maximum value critical would I think have been fatal.
Writing up more detailed notes of approaches was intended to help me avoid risks, so that's obviously not worked. I'll probably therefore cut down or out on the detail for future updates.
Basilisk area - travelled by day to get there. The party made their way down and round the edge of the map to get to the lone basilisk to the east of Mutamin. The sorcerers used PfP and blinded it before Pauper finished it off with his Seeking Sword (carefully positioning himself to be outside its sight range). The lone basilisk to the south of Mutamin was next - Hardup having to finish it off when Seeking Sword expired. Normally Mutamin's pet lesser basilisk is just to the north-east of him, but there is a chance it is located to the west near the statue so you need to be careful moving round there. In this case though that basilisk was in its normal position and both the ones slightly north of there were blinded and struck down by Hardup's Shillelagh.
After resting, Korax was recruited and guided in to attack Mutamin by a stealthed Washout. Korax died of an acid arrow, but was able to paralyse Mutamin first and a spirit snake and magic missiles ensured he didn't recover.
The spirit snake is immune to petrification and was then able to kill the two basilisks. In the meantime Washout had placed a couple of back-up traps, so found a gnoll to lead through those. To the south the westernmost basilisk is slightly separated from the others and, if you activate it and move away immediately it will only call for help to one other lesser basilisk. They are easily dealt with using traps and blindness, leaving the same treatment for the last lesser and single greater basilisk. For Kirian, Washout laid traps while he was hiding behind a pillar, so that the traps were in line of sight of the party. That got them their next level.
Durlag's Tower - both sorcerers took invisibility as their first level 2 spell, so have the ability to let the party travel and rest pretty much without danger. Invisibility also allows enemies to be stuck in choke points, such as the 2 battle horrors on the path who were magic missiled to death. You can check if placement is correct in that sort of situation by seeing whether another party member has to bump the invisible blocker out of the way as they move past. Where no choke point is handy you can put individual enemies into an invisible cage.
On the wall the skeletons can be killed using invisibility or magic missiles (they will also follow along the wall to the end where shamanic summons can be used to exhaust their arrows, which is a helpful strategy in a LoB game). The battle horror will also follow to the end of the wall where you can kill it at your leisure - including using melee weapons if you have range 2 (or attack invisibly as here).
Careful placement allows a single invisible character to block the stairs on the other side to deal with the Doom Guard. Inside the Tower invisible blockers, traps between levels, magic missiles while running are all viable strategies and most of the ghasts were soon despatched. However, you need to be aware of the possibility of surprise when they move between levels, including them using more than 1 staircase. In this case I'd been trying and failing to get the last two to move into a trap and had given up on that when I suddenly realised that they'd unexpectedly switched levels when no-one was even on the same level as them - and were in among the party who were all standing close to the stairs. Hardup and Washout were paralysed before I realised what was happening and the mages made both of them invisible to prevent them being finished off. Skint though was paralysed herself in the process, which meant the others needed to offer themselves as targets to protect her. She was anyway taken down to a single HP and Aspire was also paralysed. However, one of the ghasts was already near death when they came down and Beggar's LMD came in handy to finish it off, while Pauper (more by luck than judgement) was successful meleeing the last one with his Seeking Sword.
The basilisks on the roof were put in invisible cages then allowed to chase the sorcerers into killing traps once they were out of magic missiles. Riggilo was also caged, with a spirit lion offering him a target to tempt him back out of invisibility.
Southern areas - travelling invisibly, the party went to find Greywolf. He just survived being MM in a cage and was eventually doomed and commanded to die. Samuel was picked up and taken back to the FAI (resting once to re-establish invisibility as Samuel won't die that quickly). Back in the Cloud Peaks, I helped find Rufie and killed Zal and Vax (putting the latter in an invisible cage as his darts don't have the range of magic missiles). Caldo & Krumm have no range attack and neither do Gnarl & Hairtooth - making them easy victims. In the area to the north of the Gnoll Stronghold a polar bear was magic missiled and ogre berserkers were trapped on the bridge with invisible blockers and either magic missiled or slept (once rage expired). A winter wolf attempted a travel ambush, but got locked in a cage (it's breath weapon is also short ranged) to nearly get everyone their next level.
That finally came in the xvart area where a cave bear offered enough XP to bother killing it.
False Dawn could help. It wouldn't get me many rounds to act, but I wouldn't be using it to wait out PFMW; I'd be using it to buy my mages enough time to use magic attacks on the lich. My only problem is making sure that I can get if off the ground. False Dawn takes a whole round to cast and I won't be able to land it before Time Stop, and while my cleric's maximum potential AC is -8 (two pips in Single Weapon Style, Spirit Armor, 21+ DEX from DUHM, Defensive Harmony), a single Minute Meteor or a hit from the skeletons or mummies could disrupt it if I don't take them out first.
I do think the SCS nerf to Insect Plague is a little excessive. Insect Plague is incredibly overpowered (enough to easily neutralize any mage in SoD, BG2, and ToB), but it's the primary reason druids are competitive with other classes to begin with. The only other class that received any kind of nerf was the Inquisitor, but the Inquisitor had plenty of other advantages still left.
Making high-level mages effectively immune to Insect Plague is a bit like making Berserker rage dispellable. Or adding a saving throw to Maze traps. Or removing Kensai damage bonuses, or Wizard Slayer spell failure, or giving sorcerers the same spell progression as mages.
Personally, if you want mages to have some defense against Insect Plague, it would be better to give them SI: Conjuration than a Fire Shield spell that's just as hard to take down as PFMW.
I disagree with you guys. I like the Insect Plague/Creeping Doom nerf. Unnerfed, it's an "I win" button not only against mages, but also against clerics and druids (which have no real defense against it even in its nerfed version). With a high level druid, mage fights then becomes cowboy duel : the first who pull the trigger wins. A bit boring for a difficulty mod.
Also, druids have other tools in their posession to make them competitive : high level summons and Nature's Beauty comes to mind. So, I wouldn't call IP/CD spells the defining ability for druids to be relevant in the end game. It's more in the line of a balance tweak in my opinion.
If we're to continue this discussion, we should probably head to the Adventurer's Lounge though.
Comments
Previous posts:
Part II: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/916040/#Comment_916040
Part III: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/916127/#Comment_916127
Part IV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/916767/#Comment_916767
First things first: While trying to pick up any significant equipment left in SoD, I learned that you can't get the Sundermaul +3 without a thief, even if you have 25 strength:
Luckily, I have 80 Bullets of Darkness +3, and I did invest my level 3 and level 6 skillpoints into **Quarterstaff, just because there are two +3 staffs available that I will certainly be able to use if I need melee weapons against Belhifet.
While I got most of the neccessary items by just running around and doing quests under sanctuary, I eventually gathered up a big group of hill giants, ogres, displacer beasts etc. that I was forced to fight, because they just wouldn't stop following me around - I used a potion of speed and lots of kiting plus some necklace of missles charges:
At this point, I had more than enough potion buffs left to use them for minor encounters, so in order to protect against silence, I obtained a nearby amulet with the help of turn undead and a ton of useful buffs:
Julann and her companion were killed, because I didn't intend to do their quests and didn't want to face them during the siege:
Strunk suffered the same fate, because his water elementals can get really annoying if he doesn't die quickly:
Finally, I obtained the ring with +3 ac/saves against devils and demons and killed the Sentry of Tempus at the crusader camp in order to get a new shield:
Time to set up the barrel and poison any supplies. I killed the guards with relative ease thanks to all of my buffs - while Hephernaan was busy walking up to Iloïnen, I also took out one of the spawned crusaders guarding the elevator:
Instead of engaging Hephernaan, I just ran away:
With enough potions to buff with oil of speed, invulnerability, heroism, various types of giant strength, mind focusing and more if needed, I defended the coalition camp, also using some necklace of missles charges. Eventually, even Grimgor had to fall:
The siege turned out to be surprisingly easy: With full buffs (25 strength, 25 dexterity, 3 APR with a sling, additional buffs like heroism and power to further improve thac0) and all the precautions I had taken by taking out key defenders and poisoning the supplies, Iloïnen did enough damage to allow her to simply assist the coalition forces without engaging in melee combat or using any offensive spells. I encountered Ashatiel (after making sure not to step into any traps with the find traps spell) and agreed to her duel. I just activated a potion of magic shielding and attacked her, using the wand of the heavens once she hid under sanctuary (why does the wand even work on creatures under sanctuary? seems strange to me):
Avernus was left, and I slipped past the first couple of devils hasted and ignoring them. With full potion buffs, it was easy to take out any opposition before getting to Belhifet himself. THAT was a messy fight. I made at least two huge mistake and ended up surviving on sheer dumb luck. First things first, the dialogue options: I used the dialogue options provided by @Gate70 in the Adventurer's Lounge that should result in Caelar joining the battle on your side without joining the party. However, that's not what ended up happening: Instead, Belhifet simply killed Caelar in a cutscene and I had to face Belhifet, Hephernaan and his summons alone. I started by kiting Hephernaan and killing him with my regular sling bullets:
The Abishai were next, and with the Bullets of Darkness, I started to deal decent damage to Belhifet - at this point, everything was going well:
However, at a certain point, Belhifet started summoning allies, and he didn't stop - once the first devil appeared, he summoned more in the same regular intervals used on insane/LoB difficulties. A couple of mistakes during kiting caused Iloïnen to suffer some damage:
I should at this point have decided to first kill the gated devils and not just keep kiting Belhifet. This made kiting overall much more difficult, because once a couple of abishai appeared, they would constantly teleport to Iloïnens position, sometimes blocking my path, so I regularily suffered one or two hits.
What I failed to realize is that even my longer prebuffs were running out at this point - and just like that, invulnerability and remove fear were gone, and I didn't see it in time - aura of fear hit me:
At this point, all I could do was hope and pray that Iloïnen would run around in a relatively smart way and never get stuck until the effect was over. I knew that the effect wouldn't be very long, but survival would be entirely based on luck. I had so many remove fear spells and additional protection potions left, but I just didn't notice that I needed them... argh.
Because Iloïnen is really lucky (she survived a timestop in early SoD, after all), she ran around in a very reasonable manner and never got stuck. The fear effect ended with her on 51 hp:
I immediately used a potion of magic shielding to cover all of my bases. While shooting more bullets at Belhifet, I started to drink healing potions:
And finally, Belhifet went down:
His death caused all of his gated in devils to disappear:
And I made my way through the epilogue, the SoA opening dungeon and the circus tent. Certainly an exciting final battle, but not for the reasons one would want it to be. I can't believe Iloïnen made it through SoD with that many mistakes on my part, and with triggering so many unknown traps. My lack of experience with solo play is certainly showing.
Tynea, halfling Cleric (Gate70)
Brave, human Skald (Grond0)
We just had time for a short session of 30 minutes or so. That's long enough to help a vampire to the west of Coastways Crossing, and reach the first ambush point. Orcs and trolls outside present no trouble, but Tynea gets a dose of criticals from the trolls inside and isn't wary enough to avoid the fatality of it.
Traveling with: Shar-Teel, Khalid, Viconia, Imoen
I had thought Melium's area was going to be simple. And indeed Melium was - but apparently the EE Karhk is much harder than vanilla - but it was very nearly our deaths. If it weren't for Imoen's scorcher from her wand, he probaby would have won.
So we loot what we can, and try to make out escape - then run into a basilisk ambush!
We use our remaining invis potions, but forgot to turn off the AI and the duo promptly opened fire with their range weapons! I quickly ran south and somehow escaped without the basilisk attacking..whew!
I got every one raised and re-equipped - we'll handle Argain's area next.
Read: I've lost a bunch of would-be NRL attempts because of Tarnesh (or the other stuff that y'all more familiar with the game consider to be early game). And that's without SCS. Reading about any sort of progress is good.
Melody (Elf Ranger, Grond0); Grisol (Dwarf Wizard Slayer, Gate70)
End of MP 143
The last run I hosted had me with a monk and Gate70 with a wizard slayer. This time Lady Luck threw up a ranger for me - and another wizard slayer for Gate70. Let's see whether practice makes perfect
Progress was smooth from Candlekeep to Shoal and on to Beregost. Melody had already shot down Imoen, Xzar and Montaron with the feeble excuse of not wanting to take the time to get them to join and loot their inventories. It was thus no surprise to see Neera acting like a pin cushion given that avoiding her encounter and getting the gem bag is actually a pretty good excuse for mayhem
As usual Grisol hadn't spent any of his hard earned cash on armor, so visiting Nashkel to pick up the ankheg plate made good sense. His equipment got a further boost by shooting Greywolf before heading to the basilisk area. The monsters were all duly killed before Grisol took some pot shots at Mutamin. I think he would have suffered the indignity of 100% spell failure - if he hadn't managed to avoid that by dying.
A bit more equipment gathering went via Meilum (a critical there destroying his reputation as the best swordsman on the Sword Coast),
After resting a number of times to get full HPs back the duo sought out the troublesome sirines again and beat them up one by one without further problems.
Clearing the ankheg nest pushed reputation up to 20 and a bit of shopping was done in Ulgoth's Beard and the Carnival. It was then a toss-up whether to go to the Nashkel Mine or Durlag's Tower. The Tower won, though that proved something of a hurdle. Grisol struggled a bit against the battle horrors - his inability to wear magic items making him considerably more vulnerable than a standard fighter. Melody helped out a bit with stealth attacks though and the duo were eventually able to clear the exterior and head inside.
Melody, Ranger 6, 57 HPs, 92 kills
Grisol, Wizard Slayer 6, 75 HPs, 107 kills, 0 deaths
Orlon’s first SCS Blackguard no-reload run – 2
1, 2On the road
We went east to the road that leads to the FAI and told Elminster to PFO, and then headed north.
The Friendly Arm
We then went into inn, sold some loot from the ambush site and Tarnesh. We spoke to Khalid and Jahiera but they were such a wimpy pair we decided not to join them.
We did Joia’s quest and were rewarded with ring of wizardry (head cannon).
South to Beregost
Beregost
We slept at Feldepost’s – in four star room - and drank fancy wines but heard no rumours. After resting we went and killed the spiders in Landrin’s house with sleep spells. We then headed back to FAI to get reward for spider quest (Imoen leveled up).
East and then south again
We left the FAI again and went east. We rescued Viconia and headed to Beregost to get her a sling and some bullets. It turns out that during her misadventures she had learned of a mace that was locked in a room in one of the inns. We went and got it.
Viconia had also heard about a murder in a field in Nashkel. The body, she said, might still have some nice armour if it hadn’t been found by other looters. So, we left for Nashkel.
On the way we fought half-ogres and retrieved gold and a message scroll. We ran afoul of the law farther down the road – killed 3 flaming fist (three suits of armour will fetch a nice price). Afraid of retaliation, we decided to leave the road and headed west into the forest. We ran into hobgoblins, took them out with sleep, arrows and bolts. Imoen scored boots of stealth and we found their cave with healing potions.
We moved south again to the next map. We battled through a pack of hobgoblins and found a poor slaughtered family with some jewelry – rumour had it this family was missing from Beregost. We went further south to Nashkel and found the body Viconia spoke of: it was indeed encased in a nice set of armour. We then headed to the village proper (killing Nuber on the way) and spoke to the mayor who offered us a contract to clear out the mines.
Back to Beregost
Returning the amulet to the Colquetles was a bit of metagaming. I wanted to get my reputation up to 10 so that my early Bhaal powers are cure light wounds. I RP’d that my characters were hoping for a nice reward, rather than doing the right thing.
My party in Beregost:
Now I’m trying to decide where to go to next. Probably the mines. They aren’t too hard and you get some sweet gear from Nimbul after. Viconia could use the priest's ring, and I consider the boots of avoidance one of the most powerful items in the game, all the more so in a no reload.
I also have to rethink my brazen attitude. Fighting Tarnesh was very risky, but it was a spur of the moment thing where I just said the hell with it. In my one-reload game I did that on the map east of the mines. I challenged the revenant and the wizard with the jellies when I wasn’t sufficiently leveled, and I did so recklessly, charging in there. I just got lucky then, as I did with Tarnesh. But I guess luck is always going to play a part in no-reload?
Journal of Hrothgara
We slowly but surely forged our way through the Gnoll Stronghold resting on the way until we emerged in an area of grassland to the north. There we killed a polar bear and in so doing earned some good boots. We returned and were eventually able to rescue Aaron and liberate his ring to boot. We then returned to Aerie who identified a lot more equipment including four tomes two of which I used. We then headed for the ankheg nest which yielded precious experience particularly for Isra who levelled up. Having Isra in the party is actually quite a handicap as she doesn't join at anything like the same level as the other party members. She joined mainly for RP reasons.Previous run
I'd still like to give this group a chance to try their skills at a higher level, but am (as usual) finding it difficult to play safely to get them there. To give me a bit more motivation to do that I thought I would record progress this time from the perspective of aiming for a zero-risk run. I'll note how I've aimed to do that and any occasions where I think there was any risk.
Thus far I've made one significant mistake that could potentially have caused a death, but otherwise everything's gone pretty much to plan. For any masochists among you the spoiler below has details of progress to date.
Cut-scene - didn't skip until the archer had fired his 3 arrows (to avoid the possibility of him firing in the cut-scene and the arrow continuing on into the main screen to cause a fatal hit).
Gorion's Graveyard - opened up areas to south and east without fighting anything. Travelled south without resting (if travelling by day there's no chance of an archer ambush there).
High Hedge - went straight to Shoal's area. There are no archer ambushes on that route, but a ghast tried an ambush. I was happy to fight that as the time vs XP equation is a good one and Washout succeeded with both his traps, so it didn't take long.
Shoal's area - Hardup summoned shamanic spirits before Skint tried blind on Shoal. She doesn't necessarily turn hostile immediately on taking damage, so blind is a better means to do that (causing the summons to attack). Slept a carrion crawler and gave Mad Arcand a ring back before setting traps for Arcand (causing a reputation drop, which I was happy to take). Some dogs tried an ambush on the way back to High Hedge, but they can be avoided with care (though I actually slept / blinded / commanded / trapped them).
High Hedge - gnolls were slept or blinded and finished off. Two traps were laid outside Sorcerous Sundries for each golem (resting by the map edge in between, in order to be able to run away in case of an ambush). Travelled to Beregost (no archer ambush on that route).
Beregost - immediately magic missiled Neera to ensure her encounter didn't trigger unexpectedly. Helped Firebead and calmed down Marl before setting traps outside the spider house and sleeping one survivor. Incidentally if you're not using traps / spells you need to be quick to move away after coming out of that house to avoid the spiders blocking you in as they exit. Everyone took a level or two at that point. Washout now had 100% in traps and set a couple of those to kill Karlat before attempting to return Perdue's sword, only to find I'd forgotten to pick it up. The latest version of BGEE introduces a 4 hour transition to the area to the south, but there's still no chance of an ambush there. That meant a pair of ogrillons could be slept along with various hobgoblins. Incidentally, it's just possible (though highly unlikely) that you may have wondered why Hardup has so many kills in runs with this party - that's because as a shaman he finds it easy to cast Shillelagh and with 19 strength he's very effective with it. Returned Mirianne's letter and Zhurlong's boots before killing the latter (barely worth it in a poverty run for 90 XP, but there's no reputation loss and I've got into that habit). Silke only has 29 HPs, so a pair of traps accounted for her.
Road south - bandits only have a chance of appearing if you arrive at the ambush point after 15.00 in the day-time, so it's easy enough to travel safely. I picked up Mr Colquetle's amulet on the way as that will disappear if left for long after you first enter that area. If you hug the eastern edge of that map there are no encounters.
Nashkel - spoke to Noober. At the Carnival, magic missiled Vitiare as soon as I entered the tent (once hostile he just tries to run away rather than fighting or pick-pocketing). After opening up map areas I rested there to get Bhaal LMD before travelling back up the road (always in day-time) to the north of Beregost.
Crossroads - avoided any encounters while moving up the map to just out of sight of the ogre. Then followed that well known saying "let sleeping ogres d
lie".FAI - disposed of a few hobgoblins before continuing north (still during daytime).
Ankheg area - there's a chance of bandits spawning just north of where you enter the area, so I carefully moved forward to check things were empty. The fishermen were struck down before Pauper went into the ankheg nest. He immediately retreated before the ankheg noticed him and came in at a slightly different angle at extreme range (to ensure the ankheg would attack at range rather than try in melee). When the ankheg surfaced it was commanded (automatic success against ankhegs). The others came down and the ankheg saved against sleep, but fell to blind. That allowed Pauper to kill it with his Seeking Sword (creatures with large circles like ankhegs and basilisks can be attacked if you're careful from outside their blinded sight range even using range 1 weapons). A spirit bear was used to activate the next ankheg, which failed against sleep. The next saved vs sleep, but was again blinded though it did manage to kill the spirit bear at the same time and as a result disappeared underground. In line with my no risk policy I just left it while grabbing the body of the farmer's son (though leaving it there constituted its own type of risk - see below). After returning that I continued on north.
City entrance - a trap was laid under Tenya before talking to her to persuade her to give up immediately. Another trap should then have killed her after returning the bowl, but I must have interrupted the cast of that while writing these notes and it didn't activate - Tenya as a result managed to teleport away with 1 HP left. Command and blind ensured the nearby ankheg was not so lucky though. Resting is safe in that area so it's easy to ensure travel back to the FAI takes place during the day.
FAI - Joia got her ring back. Traps were then laid at the bottom of the steps before a spirit snake attacked Tarnesh. It missed and Tarnesh slept and killed it, but with no-one in sight he then made the mistake of advancing down the stairs to his death. Unshey got his girdle and Landrin various goods back.
City entrance - with another level close I went back to find a few more ankhegs in the nest. That resulted in the first risk of the run when, after I'd killed one I ran past the treasure cache to get to the next one. I'd forgotten though that I'd only blinded and not killed the one near the cache and it was fortuitous that their route wasn't in sight of it for long enough to attack - when it caught up with them it was slept and killed. One more ankheg after that was commanded and slept to allow everyone to level up again.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L3, 23 HPs, 6 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L3, 27 HPs, 7 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L3, 27 HPs, 29 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L4, 25 HPs, 9 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L3, 17 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L3, 16 HPs, 3 kills, 0 deaths
Orlon’s first SCS Blackguard no-reload run – 3
Death by kobold is so undignified
I don't even know what to say. My run is over. I went to the mines thinking it was a safe way to gradually build up experience and get to level 2. I mean, what is there to fear down there? Lowly kobolds and spiders that easily fall prey to sleep spells. Piece of cake. The trouble was, with improved calls for help I ended up using up all my sleep spells by the time I reached Mulahey's cave at the bottom of the mines. I decided to rest before confronting him. I took out the ghoul around the side of the cave and wedged my party into the back niche, with my sorcerer and Imoen against the wall in the corner, shielded by the heavily-armoured Viconia and Samara and protected from attack. However, I was ambushed during sleep.Shouldn't have been a problem, except the kobolds spawned right on top of my party, with two of them wedged improbably between my front-liners and back-liners. I had no sleep or command spells left. Viconia had a hold person spell, but I opted to take them out with weapons. Unfortunately the die rolls didn't go my way. All my characters were missing wildly. It was like having a party of Imperial Storm Troopers. Imoen and Lamia were killed. Finally Vicky and my blackguard were able to take out the kobolds, but the damage was done. I could have left the mines and had them resurrected, but I decided to tip my king (to use that chess analogy again). It's simply too much work to trek all the way back to the Nashkel temple with all their gear, and it just smelled like failure.
This is a tough one to swallow. The kobolds spawned in a totally unrealistic way. It couldn't happen in real life. It's the same during an area transition, when you find yourself surrounded by a ring of archers. In no scenario, even going back to your very first play-through, would you ever allow such a thing to happen on a normal game map. @semiticgod brought up the example of basilisk ambushes. You just don't have a fighting chance. In a no-reload effort, you feel robbed. But getting killed by kobolds is a further indignity. Got your brains sucked out by a mindflayer, or barbecued by a dragon? No problem, you can still hold your head high. But kobolds... yeesh. Ah, well, back to the drawing board, as they say.
Thanks to those who've been following, and to those who've offered advice and encouragement. I'll also say it's been a pleasure hearing about your runs. I'm amazed that there are such good players.
Also, I'm not aware of anywhere in the Cloakwood Mine map that's totally safe to rest - have I missed something @semiticgod?
If the surface area does spawn permanent critters, which I've never seen, my only solution would be to sleep in the previous Cloakwood area to the west of the mines. That would cost each druid and mage an Ironskins/Stoneskin spell due to travel time, but should otherwise be safe.
Brunash the Large Halfling Collider Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6Out of the Cloakwood, we go to the FAI to sell and take a wyvern head to Kelddath. I buy myself the Neutral Archmagi robe, but it makes me look like I'm wearing full plate! I can't suspend my disbelief that much, so I change my avatar to Mage Human Male instead.
From High Hedge, we make for Ulcaster and then move on to Gullykin. Alvenhendar's stone to flesh scrolls are all bought up. We move south to ambush the Gullykin assassins. Same procedure: move in the ghast and spirit snake, have them attack first, and then backstab.
Monty would have gone for Halacan first, but he suddenly moved away from him, so he had to settle for backstabbing Morvin instead. They bunch up, which means its time for Hold Person. Two of them fail their saves as Ajantis removes fear from the party, but the ghast paralyzes a third.
Halacan is taken out with a backstab. The rest are disposed with. We travel to Wyrm's Crossing and kill the ankheg that ate Nester. Through tossing its shell across the ground, we return to Beregost, sell the loot from our would-be assassins, and commission a set of ankheg armor for Faldorn.
Finally, we're in Baldur's Gate proper. First stop is the DEX tome, then Sorcerous Sundries for the Bag of Holding and more spells, so I can finally get something memorized for level 4 and 5.
I had expected a fight upstairs in Sundries but Monty's presence turned them neutral and they left the area. We're low on cash, I do nearly all the sidequests in the city, buying more stone to flesh scrolls as I circle the city clockwise. Montaron levels up by backstabbing Ramazith. Larze squished Quenash so I picked up her cloak (thanks @Enuhal!).
Lothander's boots of speed are now mine in case I need to make a quick getaway.
After most all of the sidequests in BG were done, I did a few in the wilderness. Picked up Faldorn's armor after a few days and went up to Ulgoth's Beard for some spell scrolls and Dushai's Ring of Freedom of Movement. Fought and killed both Droth and Shoal, choosing to sacrifice Faldorn as she is the easiest to re-equip. The Doomsayer was killed and Brage was returned to sanity. The Sirines along the coast were wiped out and I plundered the CON tome.
On the way back to Basilisk Country, the hunter became the hunted!
This could've been disastrous if I didn't have a potion of magic shielding to guarantee that Kagain would save against the petrification. We flee from it and arrive at our destination. I've got 97 stone to flesh scrolls. Farming takes at least a half hour of mind-numbing clicking...
I got 1 level and Faldorn got one as well, but STILL no fire seeds! Thankfully she's only a few thousand away from it. We clear out the ankheg nest, causing Kagain and Monty to level up. We return to BG and assault the Iron Throne.
This battle is the first time I really flex my mage-muscles. I get up all kinds of buffs on myself just to make doubly sure I don't get affected by anything the party upstairs can throw at me. Before going upstairs, I haste our group and turn myself, Faldorn, and Monty invisible. We three climb the stairs and get behind them so that Kagain and Ajantis can initiate.
Faldorn's Insect Plague shuts down all the casters as I expected, though I didn't count on it hitting every single enemy. As the Enchanter's job is be a force multiplier via debuffs, I cast Greater Malison followed by Chaos. The results send the enemy into complete disarray, even more so than before. The Iron Throne party is defeated.
But this is STILL not enough to get Faldorn's next level for Fire Seeds! I clear out Ulcaster's School and moved on to Karkh from Firewine. It may be unorthodox but I was going to attempt to tank Karhk using my spell protections after waiting for his Minor Globe to expire.
This didn't work out like I thought it would, as Karkh targeted other party members meleeing him. I'd had enough of him damaging Ajantis, so Faldorn cast her "screw this" spell and Karhk was down for the count.
We do more sidequests in the wilderness, just itching to get Faldorn's last level. Finally, it happens in the spider wood.
Faldorn now has access to Fire Seeds. The plan I've just been ITCHING to try ever since I thought it up begins: I'm going to kill the Firewine ghosts for their loot. Their gear is going to be very helpful.
Brunash - Enchanter 11
Kagain - Dwarven Defender 7
Ajantis - Cavalier 7
Montaron - Fighter 6/Assassin 6
Faldorn - Totemic Druid 11
Tiax - Priest of Talos 6/Thief 6
As for actually dealing with these encounters, most of the time I find I reduce the risk by placing weak characters against objects or the edge of the map and surrounding them with armoured tanks, but I just learned the hard way that there's just no accounting for every possible scenario. I'm definitely getting a Feldepost's Inn membership card on my next run. Camping sucks on the Sword Coast!
Things will get more complicated in later quests. The limitations of the poverty run will be most visible when we're dealing with stuff like demons, liches, and Yuan-ti Mages. Demons are usually best fought using weapons, liches are best handled with Protection from Undead scrolls, and our party just isn't optimized to handle the Coiled Cabal.
I honestly don't see how we would tackle liches before epic levels. If we find one in Spellhold, I think we're just going to have to kite it to death, using area transitions to escape its demons. We have three mages, but you'd really need at least four to interrupt a lich's introductory Time Stop: one mage to take down Spell Shield, a second mage to take down Spell Turning/Deflection/Trap/Immunity: Abjuration, a third mage to take down PFMW, and a fourth one to take down the PFMW Contingency, followed by Minute Meteors.
We will be siding with neither Aran Linvail nor Bodhi. Instead, we're going to pursue the Assassinations questline, which is largely risk-free and lets us fight the original Aran Linvail instead of the modded Shadow Thief headquarters in my install with all those Clay Golems and Kensai/Thieves and (worst of all) the sealed exits that prevent resting and returning. I simply don't think we're equipped to handle that map.
But then, if you think about it, you're not really equipped for anything when your party has no equipment.
Brunash "Extra T H I C C," the Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7Now that Faldorn has Fire Seeds, I console in a whole bunch of them just to save myself the time instead of spending an eternity creating a couple hundred at an inn or something. We enter the Firewine Ruins and clear it out far enough to get to where the ghost knights stand. This will take a while. Ghost Knights are immune to all damage types EXCEPT poison. Since I can't lower their 100% magic resistance yet, its up to Monty to kill them.
Tiax summons his ghast, which I Protect from Fire. I Haste everyone then go invisible; Monty equips the Fire Seeds and poisons them, then hucks them at Ghastly. I must continuously command the ghast to stay where it is because it wants to retaliate against Monty despite being immune to fire and poison.
Monty can poison his weapons twice a day for 1d3 damage on contact, with a save vs. death on every hit to prevent more damage over time. The ghost knights' saves are all 1, and Monty doesn't have Poison Expertise yet to make his poison harder to resist, so he can only do about 20-30 damage to the knights per rest. Kobolds ambush us occasionally but they are easily fended off.
After quite a few rest sessions, the ghost knights begin to die off.
After two more rests, 4 of the 6 knights are dead. I decide this is good enough and return the broken armor to the knights remaining. So what was worth this much effort? A set of Full Plate +1, Plate Mail +1, normal Full Plate, some +1 shields, several Helmets of Charm Protection, and a few magical weapons. I could've killed another knight for another set of Plate Mail +1 but decided not to. Ajantis should be much better protected by using Full Plate +1 instead of Ankheg Plate.
Monty backstabs both the ogre mage and Lendarn, so neither of them cause us any trouble on the way out. I never want to spend that long in Firewine ever again.
On to the return to Candlekeep. Monty makes it up to the top of the keep and steals the magical stuff, evading the watchers via stealth. The catacombs are cleared and I use both the STR and WIS books on myself. Might as well since I can't carry them over to BG2.
In the Candlekeep Cave, Ghastly and a Spirit Wolf attacked Prat's group. They didn't immediately go hostile as they attacked and killed Prat, like I expected them to. Only when one of his three lackeys were attacked did they fight back. The one with the bow was gibbed by Monty and the other two were so easily disposed of, none of us even had to come help.
Now that our trip to Candlekeep is over, we return to the city and Husam gets us into the Undercellar, where we kill Sarevok's assassins. A piece prize from Slythe:
With the invitations, we rescue Duke Eltan from his doppleganger healer. We leave the city and do the Ice Island, cheesing encounters with Tiax and Faldorn's summons again. With that finished, Durlag's Tower looms before us.
Incidentally, you were concerned about killing liches at below epic levels. Remember that druids get a 7th level spell at only 1.5m XP and they don't call it 'creeping doom' for nothing (particularly with a MMM storm added). Prior to that a series of skeleton warriors should be able to tank a lich easily enough as long as you keep your party out of the way.
With a relatively high level party I would be inclined to keep a strength of one spell memorised. That's both a pretty good buff for summons and helpful for carrying stuff if you have a bunch of weaklings
I'm afraid that Fire Shields block both Insect Plague and Creeping Doom in my SCS install, and Fire Shields seem pretty ubiquitous among high-level mages in SCS, including liches. Minute Meteors will fail against PFMW.
Skeleton Warriors may work, but I'm a little anxious about them. I've seen liches in my install Dimension Door right on top of the party from across the map, and their summons can make short work of Skeleton Warriors. While Cornugons would do very little damage, a Balor or Pit Fiend could take down a single skeleton in 2 rounds, a Fallen Planetar could do it in one hit if they land a successful vorpal strike (25% chance, save vs. death at -2 negates), and the shortest-lived summons, the planetar, will still last for 23 rounds. If I can't keep up a constant supply of summons for the full duration, the lich will teleport to my party, at which point Remove Magic and any disabler could get my cleric killed.
But now that I think about it, if I can get my cleric to 1.35 million XP, I could cast Holy Word for an instant 50% spell failure. It would be no guarantee of success, but if I can cast it twice, it should completely break the lich, since last I checked, deafness spell failure stacked.
@OrlonKronsteen, hopefully we will see a new Bhaalspawn of yours soon. One more piece of advice in addition to the tips you've already been given: Invisibility is your friend, when resting in the wilderness or in dungeons, and also when traveling. In my current LoB run, all my level 2 slots (my Skald has 2, Edwin has 4) are filled with Invisibility. You won't have enough castings early on to cover a full party, but even then it can be worthwhile to protect at least Charname and a squishy mage.
@Enuhal, luck or not, you've completed SoD with a solo character! I'm kind of getting used to you being successful but that doesn't make it any less impressive. Well done man.
@Flashburn, highly enjoyable stuff, and convincing too for a new no-reloader! My Illusionist thanks you for the tip on using the quick loot function to move heavy items. Hadn't occurred to me to use it that way.
Good luck in Durlag's Tower!
@semiticgod, you're a fantastic player. Your reports, which clearly show your preparation, your throughness and your skill are a joy to read. Congrats on beating first BGEE and now SoD in your poverty run. I recall @CrevsDaak mentioning once that SCS casters stop casting spells as soon as they incur a 50% spell failure penalty. Have you tested this?
You could consider chain-casting false dawn instead of holy word. That's a long-casting spell, but your buffs should survive a single round while it casts. Once the lich is confused you should be free to re-cast it on the following round, though that's more safely done in confined areas where the lich can't wander out of the area of effect.
Previous updates
Oh dear. There was another significant mistake in this 'zero-risk' run at Durlag's Tower
I also caught myself several times later on taking unnecessary risks, e.g. travelling without invisibility on a couple of occasions when dangerous ambushes were possible and attacking an ogre in melee when a maximum value critical would I think have been fatal.
Writing up more detailed notes of approaches was intended to help me avoid risks, so that's obviously not worked. I'll probably therefore cut down or out on the detail for future updates.
Durlag's Tower - both sorcerers took invisibility as their first level 2 spell, so have the ability to let the party travel and rest pretty much without danger. Invisibility also allows enemies to be stuck in choke points, such as the 2 battle horrors on the path who were magic missiled to death. You can check if placement is correct in that sort of situation by seeing whether another party member has to bump the invisible blocker out of the way as they move past. Where no choke point is handy you can put individual enemies into an invisible cage.
Southern areas - travelling invisibly, the party went to find Greywolf. He just survived being MM in a cage and was eventually doomed and commanded to die. Samuel was picked up and taken back to the FAI (resting once to re-establish invisibility as Samuel won't die that quickly). Back in the Cloud Peaks, I helped find Rufie and killed Zal and Vax (putting the latter in an invisible cage as his darts don't have the range of magic missiles). Caldo & Krumm have no range attack and neither do Gnarl & Hairtooth - making them easy victims. In the area to the north of the Gnoll Stronghold a polar bear was magic missiled and ogre berserkers were trapped on the bridge with invisible blockers and either magic missiled or slept (once rage expired). A winter wolf attempted a travel ambush, but got locked in a cage (it's breath weapon is also short ranged) to nearly get everyone their next level.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L6, 43 HPs, 14 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L5, 44 HPs, 23 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L5, 36 HPs, 50 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L6, 38 HPs, 18 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L5, 28 HPs, 12 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L5, 27 HPs, 19 kills, 0 deaths
I do think the SCS nerf to Insect Plague is a little excessive. Insect Plague is incredibly overpowered (enough to easily neutralize any mage in SoD, BG2, and ToB), but it's the primary reason druids are competitive with other classes to begin with. The only other class that received any kind of nerf was the Inquisitor, but the Inquisitor had plenty of other advantages still left.
Making high-level mages effectively immune to Insect Plague is a bit like making Berserker rage dispellable. Or adding a saving throw to Maze traps. Or removing Kensai damage bonuses, or Wizard Slayer spell failure, or giving sorcerers the same spell progression as mages.
Personally, if you want mages to have some defense against Insect Plague, it would be better to give them SI: Conjuration than a Fire Shield spell that's just as hard to take down as PFMW.
Also, druids have other tools in their posession to make them competitive : high level summons and Nature's Beauty comes to mind. So, I wouldn't call IP/CD spells the defining ability for druids to be relevant in the end game. It's more in the line of a balance tweak in my opinion.
If we're to continue this discussion, we should probably head to the Adventurer's Lounge though.