I am trying again with a blackguard charname and sorcerer. I've tweaked my difficulty settings a bit. I got rid of the v1.3 poison as it is too strong for BG1, and I added a mod that prevents poison from going through mirror image and stoneskin. I also noticed that I'd somehow forgotten to install improved spiders in SCS, so I added that (though I'm not looking forward to the Cloadkwood so much, now).
I've had a great start to my next run. I went right at Tarnesh again (I know in a purist's sense that's dumb, but I really wanted to get those antidote potions from Landrin ASAP and the gem bag I added with Tweaks). I had no problems with Tarnesh this time. He fell to an onslaught of magic missiles, arrows from Imoen, and a poison bolt from my blackguard. This time I left Imoen with Khalid and Jaheira. I went upstairs and got the antidotes.
Outside I did Joia's quest and retrieved the ring of wizardry. I'm doing a shameless materialist run - no aspirations of poverty for me, though I admire those who are doing it. We then headed east to pick up Viconia, then headed south to Beregost.
In Beregost, we met Tiax. What a charming little fellow! We did Firebead's book quest for the scroll case, and cleared out the spiders for Landrin. We went back to the FAI for the reward and experience.
Next we headed south again for Nashkel. Cleaned up all the enemies there, got the boots of stealth for Tiax, and worked our way to Nashkel. From there we went south to the mines area. We scouted around the map until we ran into Prism. Greywolf came, but he fell to a command spell from Vicky, during which Tiax summoned his ghast. My sorcerer and blackguard pelted Greywolf with ranged while the ghast, well, ate him. We got enough experience from the kill that my blackguard, sorcerer and Vicky leveled up.
God bless Tiax and his ghast.
Not sure where we're going to head next, but I'm feeling good about this run. What could go wrong?
Every now and then we get a Trilogy success - just takes a while. And the world of Faerun is a very dangerous place - creatures that stone you, undead that hold you and make you helpless, mages, who cast fireballs at will or lightning bolts, and the list goes on. It's wonder any of us ever survive all these threats and make it to Godhood. How many fights/battles must the CHARNAME have done in a typical run? Hundreds of fights? Lots of chances to die...I think @Grond0 is close to finding them all...
We've actually gotten several successes fairly recently from @Neverused, @Enuhal, and @Mantis37, including the first no-reload Legacy of Bhaal tetralogy run ever.
Which reminds me: I still need to finish up Mae's run in ToB!
The first three levels of Durlag's Tower are no problem, mainly because I used to play multiplayer with a friend as some kinda thief multiclass so I remember where most of the traps are. Faldorn got lucky as we prepared to fight against the Dwarven Doomguards on level 2 by summoning a Greater Fire Elemental. Try as they might, their weapons were completely ineffective at hitting the elemental.
Then we hit the chess game. I always dread this part because at least 1 person in my party tends to die here. This time it was Montaron, making him the first casualty of the game thus far, due to an errant Horror spell.
Despite his loss, we still won the game of chess. Islanne's ghost teleported us out of the tower and we went to the Beregost temple to raise Monty.
We returned to the tower and descended back to where we were. The last level was cleared with no difficulty. Then it was time to fight the Demon Knight. We sent in some summons first, then Kagain and Ajantis followed after them. I was prepared to have Faldorn and myself cast a bunch of spells, but Monty got his revenge in the end by backstabbing the demon knight to death.
We returned to Ulgoth's Beard and had the Soultaker Dagger stolen from us. We survived the ambush but Tiax was heavily injured. They can have it for all I care, I'm not risking the fight with Aec'Letec for a mere 16k XP. Besides, Irenicus will steal it back from them somehow for the end of SoD. I'm skipping the werewolf island too, even though I could probably handle it. I just don't want to risk those claustrophobic fights in Balduran's ship. It's time to deal with Sarevok.
We killed the Greater Dopplegangers attacking the dukes, though Duke Jannath died and Belt was nearly killed.
Before entering the thieves' maze, there was a certain drow that needed to be dealt with. Invoking the legend of the famous overpowered Bearwere thread, Faldorn called for their aid against Drizzt.
They were able to get him to "injured" status but the ranger charmed both of the Bearweres, rendering them harmless. I tried to dominate one back to our side, but its magic resistance stopped me. With our only option of taking down Drizzt neutralized, we decided to give up and try killing Shandalar this time.
You only have 1 round to neutralize Shandalar before his Globe of Invulnerability goes up. My usual combo is Doom + Greater Malison + Wand of Paralyzation, but I'm the only mage in the party, so there is no one else to use the wand as I cast Greater Malison. Doom from Tiax and Curse from Faldorn would have to do. The initial volley hit Shandalar and I used the Wand of Paralyzation on him, but he saved against it and his Globe went up. That was our cue to flee Ulgoth's Beard. It's time to take the fight to Sarevok.
As we explored the thieves' maze, Monty leveled up and now has Poison Expertise. Avoiding Sarevok's vanguard party, we travel south through the Undercity's ruins. Tomoko meets us at the temple of Bhaal. By killing her, I level up to 12, gaining level 6 spell slots, not that I have any to put in there. It is time.
I'm more worried about Semaj than anyone else, even Sarevok himself. I don't have Imoen to place traps where he teleports over. I buff my tanks with potions of invulnerability to offset the Greater Malison he casts. I summon a Greater Fire Elemental, a spirit lion, Ghastly, and Faldorn's Dread Wolf. I send in the Wolf to keep Sarevok occupied at the throne while Semaj teleports over to us with his Greater Malison + Magic Missile contingency.
He tries to run over to the symbol of Bhaal to get us to trip its traps, but I don't fall for it. Ajantis and Kagain stay back as our hasted summons tear up Semaj, killing him.
Here comes Angelo with Arrows of Detonation. He fires about 3 before killing himself with them.
Out pops Tazok from invisibility. He is handily defeated.
Last enemy is Sarevok himself. Although he killed Faldorn's wolf, he's still waiting at the throne. Monty pulls him away and quaffs a potion of invisibility, letting our summons and tanks take the aggro. Monty gets behind him and BOOM!
Congratulations @Flashburn, well played. I understand that you're playing without XP cap, but what did you do to get so much XP with a full party? Level 12 as a mage, that's 750k XP.
Congratulations @Flashburn, well played. I understand that you're playing without XP cap, but what did you do to get so much XP with a full party? Level 12 as a mage, that's 750k XP.
Best of luck in either SoD or SoA!
Its only Faldorn and me who have a ton of XP. I did the pet basilisk XP loop with so I could get Faldorn's Fire Seeds for Monty to use with Poison Weapon to kill the Firewine Ghosts. I don't know who I'm going to use for SoD but I'm banking on the ghost's equipment being helpful there, whether by equipping new characters with them or by selling it for money.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever beaten Sarevok without relying on summons. There was the Wand of Monster Summoning in BGTutu, the Amulet of Wyvren Summoning in the Undergate run, the Wand of Monster Summoning again in the Seducer runs, and then a Fire Elemental and the Wand of Monster Summoning in Mae's run. The only exception was the poverty run, because Sarevok was erroneously magic-immune and bugged to deal no damage, and therefore required no Fire Elemental to tank him.
I still can't believe we were able to just slap him death. Seriously.
My next move was to go get the +1 two-hander from the half ogres north east of Nashkel. That was easy. Then I decided to return to the place of my last failure: the mines. I'm really starting to see the random variety of SCS. The kobolds were all over me this time. Sneaking up behind me even more than usual, and there were even more of them than usual. I'm guessing the entire levels were coming after me. It's interesting that this doesn't happen every time out. Further, the kobolds were targeting my sorcerer constantly, which they didn't do on my last play-through. It's a miracle I made it through, honestly. She kept getting hit and chugging healing potions to stay alive, plus running around to hide from the archers. The other members of my party were giving her their potions and I went through about eight in all. Damn, I can't wait for mirror image and stoneskin. Somehow, I made it through, but I won't lie, it was really close.
I didn't dare rest down there after last time (and after hearing your advice), so I plunged into Mulahey's cave without any sleep spells. I was able to take out the kobolds with melee and ranged without any problems. I kind of cheap-shotted Mulahey, but I didn't want to die in the mines again. I scouted the cave with Tiax (stealth) and then had Viconia cast a silence spell in there, effectively neutering not only Mulahey's spell casting, but his call for help. I then mopped him up. It's buggy how he won't fight back when silenced, but what can you do?
I then returned to Nashkel. Jeepers, SCS Nimbul gave me a scare, using stoneskin and mirror image (of course, right after I install a mod which prevents poison from getting through). Luckily I had Tiax's ghast and my blackguard tanking him. I got lucky with command spells, and used the wand of magic missiles to get rid of his mirror images. Then, to my chagrin, once I had his defenses down and was hurting him, Rassad landed the killing blow so I didn't get the experience. Aaaaaargh!
Anyway, at least I lived, and I've returned to Beregost to sell some gear, rest for awhile and figure out my next move. My party currently consists of charname, a sorcerer, Viconia and Tiax. I'm thinking of adding someone else. A mage at some point (so I can bulk up on invisibility spells per your sagely advice), and maybe another fighter. I'm in the mood to use Shar-Teel, but in a no-reload game I'm afraid of either killing her or losing a member of my party. We'll see....
The Assassinations questline obviates the need for fighting either vampires or the souped-up Aran Linvail of my install. After two incredibly easy and safe but still highly profitable fetch quests, we enter the Shadow Thief headquarters to deal with the typical SCS Shadow Thieves. I blind Mae in advance of the first fight so she can launch a trap on the mage. Once we hit the mage with a couple of Spell Thrust spells, she's perfectly vulnerable to a level 11 Special Snare.
I picked Spell Thrust just so I'd have a cheap option for removing high-level mages' Spell Shields, but they're actually quite good in these early fights, too. They let us land nasty anti-mage spells like Melf's Acid Arrow.
Our summons can tackle most of the dungeon. I use Invisibility 10' Radius to make sure that Onion-san doesn't suffer a fatal backstab that would leave us without a cleric.
Unfortunately, a summons-based strategy can fail horribly if you try to throw all of them at a high-level mage at once.
With no summons to aid us, we fall back, cast SI: Abjuration and SI: Divination, and then offload some Spell Thrusts on Haz, rendering him vulnerable to Melf's Acid Arrow. Onion-san uses True Seeing to make sure Haz's Mirror Image soak up the damage. But Haz ignores all the damage and somehow manages to get Sphere of Chaos off the ground.
Sphere of Chaos can instantly kill you on a failed save if you get hit by the wrong effect. After Onion-san makes one successful saving throw (which in retrospect should actually be guaranteed considering her halfling save bonuses, Protection from Evil, and Asriel's Spirit Armor should put her effective save vs. spell at 0), we fall back before anyone can get petrified or disintegrated.
Frisky Bits casts SI: Alteration and SI: Abjuration once more to safely check in on Haz, but the lingering damage of our Acid Arrows finished him off.
The fight with Aran Linvail is uneventful. We were practically humming with defensive spells and we had a whole bunch of reserve summons in wait, plus several really powerful traps and many, many spell slots, but because we hit Aran Linvail with double Spell Thrusts before Mae tossed her final Special Snare of the day...
...Aran Linvail had no MGOI or spell protections to block the paralysis effect of the Special Snare. One failed save later, and he's doomed.
Despite the significantly decreased difficulty of the Assassinations questline, we still get just as much XP as we would from Bodhi or Aran Linvail.
Right now we're in Trademeet. All we've done so far is trap the djinn, who have shown us, just like some imps back in SoD, that our Special Snares can paralyze non-humanoid targets, even though Near Infinity says it shouldn't be able to.
We're roughly at 1 million XP. Does anyone know the XP minimum for encountering a lich in Spellhold? My install apparently has near-maximum spawns for level-based encounter; they always spawn the hardest monsters short of liches.
I'm in the mood to use Shar-Teel, but in a no-reload game I'm afraid of either killing her or losing a member of my party. We'll see....
You can use ctrl+m to see how many current HPs any character has and thus ensure you don't kill them accidentally, e.g. by switching to darts if using ranged weapons. Or of course you can just use fists in melee to make it impossible to deal lethal damage (assuming you're not a monk ).
I wasn't even trying to play carefully any more, but still had no problems with a bit more work in Durlag's Tower followed by various sirines at the coast. I didn't prepare properly, however, for the sirines in the Beregost Temple and failed to kill any of those in an initial attack. With charmed characters preventing running away, no summons to provide a distraction and poison arrows taking HPs down quickly things looked grim. However, a mixture of making the most vulnerable characters invisible and the good range of slow poison available in the group kept them going - Washout eventually being saved with 3 HPs left after dragging charmed characters away from the sirines until they recovered and were able to cure him.
I did the rounds of a few more areas looking to pick up enough XP for another level before heading to the Nashkel Mine. Most of the work had been done before with this party, but I did decide to take on Kahrk as a new challenge. I've died plenty of times before against him though, so reverted briefly to my no risks policy. Essentially that meant using summons to drain most of his spells, drawing out a invisibility detection spell with a sorcerer that immediately disappeared again and then showing themselves at a distance from him to get the last of his spells out before magic missiling him to death.
The remaining XP required was then obtained by returning to the ankheg area to fully clear that.
Frisky Bits' run is going as planned, aside from Carl dying when he outside the range of Invisibility 10' Radius. We swarmed the Druid Grove with summons and traps and defeated Faldorn with an Insect Plague followed by Spirit Animals.
Over at the Umar Hills, we finally got the whole party disabled for the first time ever against the mimic. Not that it means much with a Totemic Druid in the party.
In the Temple Ruins, we discover that Onion-san is high enough level to blow up all the normal undead...
...only to find that, apparently, 1 million XP is enough to trigger lich spawns in my install.
A Farsight spell confirms that it's not just the optional fight near the lava room; it's also the mandatory fight next to the alphabet puzzle.
I am not remotely stupid enough to tackle a lich with an itemless party at level 12. This quest will remain incomplete until I deem this party fit to tackle the challenge.
It's funny--I only recently discovered that a Protection from Undead scroll can be used on a lich, instead of on a party member, to effectively shut down its spellcasting. It only requires a single scroll and from the brief testing I tried, it's even more effective than Wizard Slayer Fire Seeds. And yet I cannot use the trick in either of my runs due to item restrictions.
I wonder if a Protection from Undead scroll would screw with Bodhi's script, too? It should certainly work on troublesome Tanova, not to mention Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh from the Tactics mod.
Onto the significantly more difficult Siege of Dragonspear. I'm still playing on Core Rules so this won't be as difficult as it possibly could be with IWD-style horde fights for every encounter. That's fine. Some fights in SoD on Insane truly are insane. So, on to the starting dungeon. The first area is cleared with no trouble, though I am still amused by the improved AI on ranged attackers who will run around attempting to flee.
The second level of Korlasz's dungeon sees the Fire Elemental putting its immunity to normal weapons to good use.
I take extra care to disarm the dispel trap leading to the fight with Korlasz - its ruined my day several times before. I don't have to flex my mage-muscles too hard for this fight. Just a Hold Person and a Greater Malison while Faldorn shuts Korlasz down with Insect Plague.
After she falls, its time to say goodbye to the group. Kagain and Ajantis will both be missed dearly as there are no tank characters besides Khalid and possibly Jaheira in SoD. My party will be sorely lacking without Montaron backstabbing things with extreme prejudice. Faldorn was a great summoner, though I hardly got enough time to play around with her fire elemental. I will miss Tiax least of all. Even though I kept wanting to drop him for a more competent cleric, his cleric buffs weren't really needed but his ghast was just too good to say no to.
I pack everybody's stuff into my Bag of Holding and the Potion Case. I hope the game doesn't glitch out or something just because of the sheer number of items that have been packed into it. Its not just my companion's gear that's in there, its stuff I've been waiting since before Durlag's Tower to sell in SoD since all your money gets stolen by Communists.
So I recruit Minsc and Dynaheir, the latter of whom I plan on dropping and the former I kit into a Berserker since I changed his class with NPC_EE. I go to Sorcerous Sundries, and selling all the stuff that was in my gem bag is worth about 45k. I ask myself why I bothered to hoard so much stuff in my Bag of Holding if I already had this much cash stored in gems. Across the street, I get the Spectacles of Spectacle and fight the Al-Alai. 6000 XP vanishes into thin air as Corwin gets the last hit on it.
Soon we arrive at the Coast Way. I pick up Corwin and Viconia for the time being, and also recruit Glint to replace Monty and Tiax, kitting him into a Priest of Tyr for that sweet Acclamation ability I wanted way back at the beginning of BG1. We go to the Coast Way Forest and slay the vampire there and dump Dynaheir on the road. Back at the Coast Way, I recruit Baeloth and trade Viconia for M'khiin. Baeloth will assist me in the arcane arts and area of effect assaults. M'khiin will be replacing Faldorn. Corwin is staying until we can get to Khalid, though she is a fantastic ranged damage dealer. Here's what my party's looking like now, after about an hour of digging through my Bag of Hoarding to re-equip everyone, plus re-assigning some spell picks on M'khiin and Baeloth:
The Kahrk battle is one I’m not too familiar with, and it shows immediately when we have Vicky summon her first skeleton in front of Carsa. We assume for no good reason that Carsa will only speak when spoken to, but she addresses us as soon as Vicky’s casting breaks her invisibility. We demand Carsa to give us her jar, and Kahrk appears, prebuffed with a MGoI, a Fireshield Blue, Stoneskins and Mirror Images. He’s also permanently hasted, and he casts a Slow that affects invisible Kagain, Edwin and Tiax. Vicky, unaffected, bravely completes her casting, then quaffs an invisibility potion.
Away from our foe, Viconia and Tiax summon more skeletons who will show themselves to Kahrk one after the other, as soon as his MI expires. They soak up a couple of damage spells, including a Sunfire, all in the presence of Kain who stays close to inspire our minions with his song. At one point Kahrk senses Kain’s presence and reveals the Skald with a Detect Invisibility (a spell that according to ctrl + m wasn’t among his memorized spells; I checked him out later in EEKeeper and it says he’s a Conjurer in my current game, so casting a divination spell was pretty impressive of him).
Kain counters by quaffing an invisibility potion. The skeletons fail to provoke the ogre mage into wasting his non-damage spells, apart from a PW:Sleep. Our best candidate to deal with Kahrk’s magic is Shar-Teel. As a Barbarian she has two instant rages, and her +2 movement speed bonus is an advantage against the hasted ogre. She equips Icingdeath for its 50% fire resistance. With the Gift of Peace on her head and a Protection from Fire cast on her by Edwin, she becomes fully fire resistant. She seeks out Kahrk, enrages, and takes his Flame Arrow. Incurring only missile damage, Shar-Teel doesn’t get into trouble health-wise. She shrugs off one Chaos, but Kahrk is then clever enough to wait for her rage to expire before casting his second Chaos.
Shar-Teel has kept a good distance, so she can easily enrage again to counter the spell. Before her rage wears off she puts on Kagain’s helmet of charm protection so that she won’t be susceptible to Kahrk’s Dire Charm. Kahrk is now reduced to martial means to defeat Shar-Teel. He moves quite fast, and he has one Stoneskin up, one memorized and, as we discover later, one stored in a Contingency. We also find that Shar-Teel with the bracers of archery and with Kain’s song buff can only hit him with her boomerang dagger on rolls of 16 or higher. She does a bit of kiting, suffering a heavy blow in the process,
to get him surrounded by her invisible friends. Surrounding him isn’t strictly necessary but it will save us a lot of time. She slowly wears our enemy down with her throwing dagger until he falls.
Firewine ruins
Kain and Edwin cast Invisibility on all the companions, and we rest so that we have more Invisibilities at our disposal. We then enter the dreaded Firewine Ruins. Tiax disarms the traps on the way toward Lendarn and the ogre mage. We avoid the kobolds until we run into a few that block the path. The buggers do remarkably well against our undead, even after Viconia throws in a Confusion for good measure. Our summons barely defeat them. A second group we dispatch with a charge of the wand of monster summoning. We prevail and we continue until we reach Lendarn’s whereabouts. Our summons charge in to convince the wizard to start working his magic. He casts a Fireball and several Magic Missiles at them as well as two minor sequencered Chromatic Orbs (a spell that I’ve come to fear in LoB) before teleporting to Tiax and forcing the unprepared Gnome to drink an invisibility potion. From a safe distance, Kain uses another charge of the wand of monster summoning. The summons soak up a few more spells (Horror, Magic Missile) before they slay the wizard.
We return to the corridor that leads to the exit to Gullykin, and have Kagain deal with a group of kobold commandos from behind another invisible wall. Wearing the Cloak of Displacement and Elves’ Bane, he only gets hurt by critical hits.
Finally, we run into the ogre mage. Our ghast soaks up a Chromatic Orb, after which Tiax and Kagain take him and two ogrillons down from afar. In Gullykin, Jenkal escapes despite being surrounded by invisible blockers.
We return to Ulcaster to try our luck with Icharyd, but his self-heal dispels our invisibility. We run, go invisible again, and rest. When we come back he’s surrounded by a bunch of zombies, and a group of kobold archers. We decide to leave our foe for another day. The Firewine Plains pose little difficulty. We slay Arghain and the other half-ogres with range attacks and we defeat Ioin and his buddies with our undead army. In Spider Wood we meet some of Edwin’s friends and clear the surroundings of their ritual site.
The accursed tower
We aren’t eager to visit the Bandit Camp. So with Vicky close to 50,000 XP, we decide to see if we can squeeze enough XP out of Durlag’s Tower’s first lower level for her to get her skeleton warriors upgraded. The enemies on this floor are phase spiders, greater doppelgangers, flesh golems, skeleton warriors, mustard jellies, and the warders of course. Tiax boosts his thieving skills and disarms all the traps while invisible but waits with the looting. Shar-Teel kites one or two phase spiders. The doppelgangers we block with invisible party members while Kain’s Skald song neutralizes their Horror spells. The golems and the skeleton warriors can be kited pretty easily. The skeleton warriors are melee only, and their missile resistance is around 50% instead of the 90% resistance lowlier skeletons have. The kiting goes well but for one accident with Shar-Teel. Unaware of two mustard jellies that have crept up on her, she gets slowed and poisoned, and we underestimate the range of the jellies’ melee attacks: two hits and she’s down.
We have her patched up and return to loot the place. We clear the entire level save the jellies, completing Pride, Avarice, and Fear’s riddles but not Love’s, who’s wine we decide to keep for now.
Our adventure earns Vicky her coveted 7th level (and Tiax Cleric 6) plus quite a bit of gold, so we have Thalantyr upgrade the dagger of venom to a +3 weapon that grants an extra attack to increase Shar-Teel’s firepower. Thalantyr also makes a ring of protection +2 for Kagain out of two +1 rings, a diamond and two pearls. And he creates a +1 returning throwing dagger for Edwin. Since Kagain’s ring cost Vicky a ring of the princes, we travel north to kill Wenric’s zombies and to loot his home for a cloak of protection +1.
An unpleasant surprise
To me, one of the exciting things of playing evil with a low reputation is that it’s a new experience full of surprises. We have to be on our guards more than ever. I’ve played evil characters before but they would keep decent reputations. Our reputation has been 1 for some time now. This means for example that Officer Vai doesn’t offer us any gold for bandit scalps. Instead, she attacks us on sight. I didn't know about that. We now have law enforcers waiting for us in Feldepost’s, near the smithy, and in the Jovial Juggler. There are also three groups at the FAI, and several bounty hunters in Nashkel.
Another major surprise comes from Shandalar. We visit Ulgoth’s Beard merely for Tiax to pickpocket Dushai’s ring of free action and some scrolls. While we’re at it, we decide to have a go at Shandalar as well, but as soon as he sees us he sends us to the Ice Island against our will. We cast Invisibility on Tiax who, his thieving skills still boosted from Dushai, disarms all the traps. We then have Shar-Teel kill all the winter wolves, out of sight of any of the mages. That’s a lot of wolves because Unfinished Business adds a second level to this dungeon, with several extra winter wolves. We end up with 18 pelts. The only wizard on the second level is Dezkiel, surrounded by two snow golems. Kain successfully uses his Algernon’s charm on two polar bears; Vicky and Tiax summon our trusty undead army. Interestingly, Tiax can still summon his ghast after we’ve summons five skeleton warriors. (I was pretty sure the summoning cap was five, and I’m not playing with any mods that remove this cap.) We protect our summons and ourselves from evil, and have our bears and our undead attack. Invisible Kain contributes with his song. Dezkiel casts several spells but this is mostly irrelevant because the skeletons shake off most of the magic directed at them.
The snow golems are tough and hit hard, but they fall too.
So we have a scroll of Stoneskin that Edwin can actually use once scribed as he’s reached level 7, and we have Shandalar’s cloak, time to go home right? Ehm, no. We return to the first level to face the other wizards there. Cuchol is easily slain by our undead army. Garan is much trickier. Not only do his four ankhegs constitute a serious threat, he also casts a Chaos at Kain, inexplicably because Kain has been invisible the whole time.
There goes our only potion of magic shielding. We use a charge from a wand of monster summoning (we have two of those wands) to keep Garan busy. Shar-Teel enrages and joins the battle, poisoning our foe with the dagger of venom. Then Edwin, finally with some room in his spellbook for offensive spells, seals Garan’s fate with a Malison followed by a Hold Person.
We rest, have our undead dispatch the ankhegs, and rest again.
After skipping through the Nashkel Mine invisibly, Mulahey went silently to his grave (I didn't even bother killing the kobolds in his cave for once).
Nimbul was also silenced and, as he was standing outside, Beggar treated him to a shocking experience.
Tranzig lost out to summons before Raiken showed Beggar a back door to the Bandit Camp. There was no fighting there - Pauper looking through some papers under the protection of sanctuary and protection from lightning.
In the first Cloakwood area I intended to help Aldeth in order to open up the quest in Baldur's Gate - but mis-clicked and had to put him down. In the second area, Washout disarmed or triggered all the traps while invisible before the group cleared the area with the help of summons. In the third area, spell damage took down the druids and in the fourth invisible blockers allowed the wyvern cave to be emptied.
On the way to the Mine the amazons triggered, but everyone was invisible so I thought there was a good opportunity to take them on for once. The biggest problem with those is the invisible backstabbers, so Beggar threw up summons from behind an invisible wall to give the backstabbers a target. He and Pauper were held by the cleric, but by that stage the backstabbers were visible and the opposition didn't last long after that.
At the mine entrance webs and skull traps / call lightning meant the summons were pretty superflous. Traps and summons did most of the hard work in clearing out enemies inside the mine on the way down to Davaeorn. Against him I think I was about to kill him with a charmed and hasted guard, but tried to gild the lily by getting close enough to cast chant as well and activated Davaeorn. That required a retreat before coming back to web and skull trap the guards and drain Davaeorn of spells using summons.
Coming back from the Cloakwood, Molkar tried his luck. Without invisibility though there wasn't too much danger from them and webs slowed them down enough for spell damage to kill them. The remaining journey to the City was completed without incident. The party should soon be ready to take another level.
1. Why are you using the Spirit Bear? I always preferred Spirit Lions due to their much lower AC, despite slightly lower HP. 2. Is it really safe to sneak past all the kobolds in the Nashkel mines? I've noticed that kobolds will wander around, and I've been concerned about getting boxed in when navigating through a narrow tunnel. Does that Kobold Shaman at the end not use any divination spells? 3. What do you think is the optimal way to distribute your Bounty Hunter's skill points?
I started the fight as usual, sending the summons forward and then Webbing the area. The aim was to make bandits regroup, maybe leave their places not to stand in one room, also maybe to kill a few of them. Everything else depended on Hareishan's behavior.
Hareishan then appeared, and from behind! It was time to cast Invisibility, 10 Radius, and quick.
The group then retreated and rested. After that summons could deal with lone bandits.
Again, webs were used in the direction of the main chamber. Hareishan was there this time. Glod casted Spell Thrust to remove her spell protection - MGoI.
She succeeded each time in her saving throws against Web, though, and in the end entered the close combat with Glod. The rest of the bandits were either dead or held thanks to woodland beings' magic. A mage on the LoB is a good melee fighter, but Glod still won.
Invisibility, 10 Radius is a must just upon entering the next level of the Mines. That encounter is dangerous even not on the LoB. After finding a safe place to summon spirits and skeletons, the group defeated the entrance guards.
Natasha
Another creepy mage. Spirit Snakes first suffered from her lightning. Then they poisoned Natasha but on the LoB it's quite save for an enemy mage to be poisoned if there's no additional source of damage. And I dared not approach her fearing minor sequencers with Chromatic orbs.
She left her chamber and 2 skeleton warriors pursued till one of them was wiped down by Sunfire. At least her chromatic orbs were wasted on the skeleton.
Finally she ran out of spells (it required woodland beings as meatshield) and Uzume finished her with a backstab.
The Ogre Mage was much easier, not being under the MGoI he went down fast under constant attacks of 5 summons.
Davaeorn
So, the last battle before the city with Sorcerous Sundries and its wands, potions and other trinkets. There was no need to save anything. The battle went in 3 stages. At the first stage I moved the party to the West side of the area and then let 2 battle horrors, and only them, see my summons. Then I blinded both of them and used the wand of monster summoning to make them fight and not wander around. Cochrane used arrows of ice, Uzume kept backstabbing, Glod used his two-handed sword to suppor the summons.
The group rested (invisible, of course, and on the previous level). Now, the 2nd stage. One spirit snake was sent to Davaeorn, while 4 other summons were prepared to intervene and the party was invisible. Davaeorn kept moving around the rooms, teleporting and casting spells. I counted at least 4 sunfires, 4 lightning bolts. In the end, the approaching horde of guards killed my summons. No way I could handle it in any other way.
The 3rd stage. I waited till all the guards came and surrounded Davaeorn. A perfect place for multiple Webs, Grease and then all fireball trinkets the group had, don't you think?
@Neverused likes to use the scroll of Cloudkill in the Bandit Camp, I did it here, to improve the damage output (as the group didn't have an unlimited amount of fireballs: 5 from the wand, 3 from the necklace, 5 from potions. Several rounds of fire and poison followed.
Nearly all the guards were dead, but Davaeorn didn't fail his saving throw against Web and 2 Silence attempts. It was time to approach him. I was so focused on not letting the mage see my main character that forgot to take away Cochrane when I needed to retreat. A fight followed - basically, Davaeorn could always hit my party members with his minute meteors like he was a high-level archer, while my disabling spells couldn't stick. The LoB makes Dave a beast. And everytime my main character entered his line of sight even for a second, he stated to attack Jagen.
When all the guards were killed I found Davaeorn, who had previously left the battlefield using a potion of invisibility.
The woodland beings suffered another sunfire - Dave's 6th (!) in this fight. 6 level 5 spells, oh my! At one stage the woodland beings managed to dominate him, and I checked his remaining spells:
Nothing dangerous was left, I knew he already used his sequencer, and finally the whole group could enter the fight without fearing. It felt like an achievement, to see the mage defeated.
Jagen got a new level, and I chose Spook, Invisibility and Slow as new lvl 1-3 spells for him.
Here’re the current standings (122 days and 1 hour): Jagen, sorcerer, lvl 7, 37 HPs, 49 kills, Greater Basilisk (5% in the group) Glod, fighter/illusionist, lvl 5/5, 38 HPs, 231 kills, Davaeorn (26% in the group), 0 deaths Uzume, fighter/thief, lvl 5/6, 45 HPs, 233 kills, Greater Basilisk (26% in the group), 0 deaths Cochrane, archer, lvl 6, 51 HPs, 268 kills, Battle Horror (30% in the group), 1 death (Davaeorn) Sigyn, totemic druid, lvl 7, 51 HPs, 47 kills, Polar Bear (5% in the group), 1 death (Kysus) Dazbog, cleric/mage, lvl 6/5, 24 HPs, 42 kills, Lesser Basilisk (4% in the group), 4 deaths (2 by a kobold commando; 1 - Shoal; 1 - Mulahey)
1. Why are you using the Spirit Bear? I always preferred Spirit Lions due to their much lower AC, despite slightly lower HP. 2. Is it really safe to sneak past all the kobolds in the Nashkel mines? I've noticed that kobolds will wander around, and I've been concerned about getting boxed in when navigating through a narrow tunnel. Does that Kobold Shaman at the end not use any divination spells? 3. What do you think is the optimal way to distribute your Bounty Hunter's skill points?
1. The spirit bear has more HPs. Against enemies like ankhegs which can one shot a low-level spirit I think that's more important than the slightly worse AC. Against some types of enemies the fear effect is also useful. As levels get higher I tend to use the spirit lion more (spirit snake for mages and the odd other enemy like basilisks). At max level, spirit wolves will start to get used as well.
2. I don't think getting boxed in permanently is likely as if kobolds move once they're likely to move again. Getting close to the shaman is not totally safe, no. What I normally do is send a sorcerer forward on their own to edge in and out of view of the shaman a few times to tempt out a divination spell if it has one (if you place them correctly they should be pretty certain of being able to re-establish invisibility).
3. I would maximise set traps initially and then put find traps to whatever level you consider appropriate (mine is 70 in this run, though I've gone higher when intending to clear Durlag's). The next skill to be upgraded is detect illusion. I love stealth, but for the odd use even the starting percentage is enough, while full scouting duties can be carried out under invisibility (with both of my sorcerers having that it's easy to cast).
Bad news in Frisky Bits' poverty run. We were in Firkraag's dungeon and were relying on summons to take down monsters, but when some modded golems proved to be much tougher than the original kinds, I began casting Animate Dead and Invisibility 10' Radius, only to realize that the casting time was too long and the golems were too fast. They closed in on us before we could go invisible or put up a wall, and they chose the worst possible target.
Notice the large number of golems; my mods cause bigger golems to split in half and become miniature golems after they die. I hadn't buffed anyone since I had expected Chara's Totemic Druid summons to break down the golems, which meant Onion-san's AC was absolute abysmal. I ordered her to run, but these golems were very fast, and because the dead Mithril Golem had become two Lesser Mithril Golems, the enemy had extremely high APR and could hit her again less than a second later.
The hitstun proves too much for Onion-san to escape and the golems have deceptive range and high APR on top of high damage per hit. They take her down.
Notice I had neglected to apply Tresset's anti-chunking fix again. I can get her back if I win the fight a second time, but my rules only prevent chunking, not death. Onion-san still has to die if I re-do the fight.
I send her back in against the golems and let her die without getting chunked.
Onion-san is our only source of Raise Dead; we cannot bring her back until either Chara or one of our sorcerers hits epic levels and gets Mass Raise Dead or Summon Planetar, respectively. I was counting on Onion-san to keep our party afloat, but I failed to keep her invisible because I underestimated just how powerful golems were in my install. We have no choice but to proceed without her.
I don't often fight Samia fair, and this run is no different. If you have a Bounty Hunter, why not use it to its fullest?
Unfortunately, without Onion-san, I discover that we simply aren't strong enough to kill a Greater Mithral Golem. On top of their massive damage output, these golems have sky-high resistances, 110 HP, immunity to +2 weapons and below, and also rather fast regeneration for some reason. And Fire Elementals in my install appear to do much less damage than I thought they did.
Onion-san's Aerial Servant did much more damage and her skeletons also absorbed a lot of pressure that helped keep Chara's elementals afloat. Without those summons, our critters don't have the numbers to bring the golem below 50 HP.
And testing confirms that an old exploit no longer works in my install: casting spells on myself does not make them bypass enemies' magic resistance.
The golems are immune to Lower Resistance, but apparently Chara's Magic Resistance spell still works. We can drop a golem's MR down to 26 with a single spell, and while they're immune to Acid Arrow, they're still perfectly vulnerable to Magic Missile. We take it down.
It works just as well on Adamantite Golems.
We trap Conster and finally hit level 13 for Frisky Bits and Asriel, our highest-level sorcerers.
I choose Spirit Armor, Spell Shield, Death Fog, Secret Word, Animate Dead, and PFMW, though I'm a bit sketchy on what the optimal spell choices would really be. I want Spirit Armor so I can more easily stack the save vs. spell bonuses, which is especially important now that we have no cleric to cast Free Action or extra Chaotic Commands spells, and we'll need Secret Word to take down Spell Turning (Spell Thrust can't do that), and Animate Dead has a similar purpose: filling in for the skeletons that Onion-san used to summon for us. Spell Shield is just there to give Frisky Bits a little wiggle room when it comes to their defenses.
But Death Fog is an odd pick for me. I wasn't quite sure if I could safely land Cone of Cold to disrupt enemy mage spells due to its short range, so I thought Death Fog might be a more reliable option. But it could be very dangerous if I try to use it before Carl learns Protection from Acid. The notable advantage of Death Fog is that it can damage liches and hits multiple times (and Protection from Acid is an even rarer buff than Protection from Cold), but I'm not sure 8 acid damage is enough to reliably disrupt enemy spells. It's also considerably less party-friendly.
I'm honestly considering dropping off one or more party members in a room somewhere so that I can concentrate XP on Frisky Bits and get Summon Planetar early. With only five party members, we're scheduled to hit epic levels when a normal party is at about 2.5 million XP, which amounts to level 21 for a Bounty Hunter or just under level 17 for a mage, but that's still extremely late in SoA.
If we drop off one party member, that number goes down to 2 million XP for a normal party, about midway through SoA. Drop off two party members, that number goes down to 1.5 million XP, which is less than halfway through the game. That's pretty good. But that would leave us with a single Totemic Druid, a single Bounty Hunter, and a single sorcerer, Frisky Bits. Those are our most important characters, and winning fights with them alone would be extremely challenging.
That being said, this is the gentlest part of Shadows of Amn for me. If I'm going to temporarily remove party members, now is the time to do it. And I've always known that the critical turning point in this run comes when we get Summon Planetar.
My run is still going, though I haven't got as much playing done today as I'd like. We took care of Tranzig at Feldepost's Inn. He was a tough little bugger with SCS (and hasted, which was a pain). I'm still a noob with SCS and I guess I was lucky no one got roasted. Tiax got knocked out cold for what seemed like an hour in real time, but his ghast (currently the MVP in my party) kept Tranzig occupied enough while my sorcerer took down his mirror images.
After killing Tranzig, Samara couldn't help notice that another patron of the inn had a rather lovely cloak
My, what a nice cloak you have, Algernon!
Next, we went north to kill a few Ankhegs and were hired to assassinate an evil cleric on the Baldur's Gate bridge map. While Viconia distracted the cleric, Tiax snuck up from behind her house.
Tenya was in for a ghastly surprise.
After that we returned to Beregost for some retail therapy. I had just over 9000gp. I had to choose between the crossbow of speed, and the full-plate armour. I chose the full-plate armour, remembering the old adage, 'defense wins championships.' Whether that adage will help me on this run remains to be seen.
What is the definition of insanity? Bringing Neera on a no-reload. Seriously. The thing is, I want that stoneskin scroll from her quest, so she's coming along. The only proviso is she can't cast spells. She's a dedicated sling archer.
After stocking up at the smithy.
Now I'm just debating whether to risk the vampiric wolves on the temple map and then SCS basilisks. I'm only level three, so... I guess I should head to High Hedge for those petrification scrolls.
I opted to avoid the vampire wolves and basilisks. I felt like it was just asking for it. So I decided to wander around the southern maps, playing it safe and waiting for Neera's quest to trigger. I went to the screen you come out of the Nashkel mines on. I figured the cave with the one ghast would be safe enough to grab a quick 650 exp. points. I tried luring the ghast out by sending my blackguard in and out, but it wouldn't take the bait. Sooooo I went in with my whole party. First thing the ghast did, was go for my sorcerer. She was killed instantly. The rest of my party was able to kill the bastard, but I had to go back to the Nashkel temple for a resurrection.
Then, Neera's quest triggered. So I tried to make it to Adoy's Enclave, except we were ambushed by a ring of bandit archers. Guess who died? My sorcerer. So back to Nashkel for a resurrection. The priest there is getting to know us on a first-name basis.
We finally made it to Adoy's enclave. That was a tough fight, I must say. I'm really proud to have won without losing anyone. One of my best battles.
Victory in the enclave
Getting Edwin
After getting the stoneskin scroll, we went to the FAI where I said goodbye to Neera and stocked up on potions of genius and mind focusing. Then it was off to High Hedge to preemptively get scrolls for Edwin. Then it was off to Nashkel to actually get Edwin. I loaded up his spellbook, then headed off to do his quest. I took your advice on the invisibility spells for travel, and it's already paid dividends as we were ambushed by another ring of archers heading west. Both Edwin and Lamia were safely invisible. We made it to the first map and took out Sendai.
Thanks for the tip, you guys - mages are invisible!
I'm thrilled my run is still going. Not that I want it to end, but I'm at least at the point where I'm proud to have made it this far. Next: off to the gnoll fortress!
Before I went to fight Sarevok, I bought a metric asston of Paralysis and Monster Summoning Wands. They are clogging up my Bag of Hoarding, so I use the console to condense all of their charges into 1 wand each, instead of the 15+ of both wands collecting dust in the bag. I do the same to the Wands of Fear and the Heavens that I've collected over the course of BG1.
I reach the Dumathoin digsite and clear out the first level about halfway, then remember that the Menhir quest needs to be done for Crommus' stash to appear. I exit the cave and take care of it, and also unpetrify the stone statues.
With the quests outside the cave finished, I return to the digsite. Inside the repository of undeath, Minsc and M'khiin suffer heavy injuries fighting the bronze sentry. Even though I use Argent77's Improved Shamanic Dance mod, which allows you to move while dancing but at 25% speed, M'khiin could only just barely get away fast enough to get restored to normal speed. One more hit and she would've died.
The rest of the repository was fairly routine: initiate fights with Fireball carpet bombing, then have Minsc and spirits tank the survivors as Corwin picks off higher value targets.
Then we make it to Coldhearth. We return to Deepvein and get The Secret Revealed. I was feeling slightly nervous about this even with the Secret with me. Glint unlocks his secret door, and we let him buff up with all his protections, then strike him with the Secret Revealed, rendering him harmless. We take Coldhearth out and quickly smash his phylacteries, then Glint and I book it to the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Glint chucks it in there before Coldhearth can respawn, thankfully. I paralyze the two fire salamanders and everyone else catches up to kill them.
We return to Deepvein and get the dwarves to join us on the assault on Dragonspear. Our party buffs to capacity before starting bridge fight, as I remember this could get difficult. My worrying was for nothing, as our overwhelming spell power handily defeats the crusaders. Greater Malison + Insect Plague + Chant greatly impairs all of them, as an Emotion: Hopelessness disables their back line. I follow up with a Hold Person on the two fighters that Minsc is tanking.
With that over with, we're in the Troll Claw Woods. The troll cave is cleared, though I discover that trolls are apparently immune to Hold and Stun. The orc band in the south is decimated and the Glimmer of Hope +2 mace is recovered, given to Minsc to dual-wield with the Cudgel of Montgomer +1. Corwin levels up from a pack of spectral trolls, earning Grandmastery in Longbows. On the way to the Forest of Wyrms, we encounter orcs and trolls. Inside the troll cave and through the pool of water, I pick up the Firefly sling! +2 to saving throws is excellent.
We arrive at the Forest of Wyrms. The hill giant and his wolves that guard the Stalker Gauntlets are killed and we fight through wyverns to get to the spider's nest. In the first fight, Minsc gets webbed and I'm certain he's a goner.
Baeloth takes out some small spiders with a Fireball wand charge and I attempt Hold Monster on the spiders eating Minsc alive. It works.
Glint fries the sword spider with a Wand of the Heavens charge and the rest of the spiders are mopped up. Minsc breaks free just after they're all dead. The rest of the spiders are cleared out and the invading beetles present even less of a problem. Next we enter Morentherene's cave. I equip some throwing daggers that I'd been saving for her and hit, killing her instantly.
I'd saved some Protection from Poison scrolls for her too, just in case it glitched out like my last playthrough and caused her to awaken anyway. Next up we deal with the temple of Cyric.
In the City it didn't take long to get the next level in Ramazith's Tower.
I mis-clicked on the conversation with Desreta and lost the chance for that encounter, but plenty of other encounters were done easily enough despite a constant tendency to nod off after a hard day's work. Tiredness caught up with me in the thieves guild though when I killed the mage before completing the quest - resulting in the thieves all going hostile. Aspire was quickly backstabbed by Alatos, but survived and went invisible before the party produced some summons to help clear the guild.
After a night's rest, I didn't forget about the Shennara backstabbing twins this time at the Iron Throne. Webs and skull traps did most of the damage with various disablers thrown in for good measure. Alai was the only one who broke free of the web and he was scared by a Bhaal horror.
I was more concerned about the fight with the ogre magi on arrival at Candlekeep. The game didn't let me pause during the entrance scene, so the ogre magi all got the drop on my casters with their initial spells. Beggar scared one with Bhaal horror and Pauper successfully got true sight into action which was very helpful. Washout was held by one of those first spells, but had managed to get enough distance to be out of immediate danger. Aspire was targeted a couple of times and disappeared to save himself, but call lightning was hurting the ogre magi and they didn't have much left to offer.
I tried resting in the keep quite a few times and eventually the guards gave up telling us that was forbidden. Inside, the Iron Throne Leaders were webbed and soon eaten by spirit animals before a doppleganger was stuck in a cage. In the catacombs the frustration of having to leave behind those lovely tomes was relieved by killing everything that moved. For Prat's gang the spiders were killed first to avoid them interfering, though that nearly went wrong when I wrongly thought all the phase spiders were accounted for - fortunately I noticed one of them had teleported in and was attacking in time to cure poison.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Cythandria died in traps. I was wary of someone being one-shotted by golems so set up a cordon in preparation for use of shamanic summons if necessary - but the standard summons did the job.
The next task was saving Duke Eltan.
Then I went in search of Slythe and Krystin. I decided they deserved no chance and a stack of pre-laid traps saw the end of Slythe.
There were more waiting in the inn for Krystin if necessary, but a series of summons drained her of spells making her easy to finish off anyway.
At the palace Washout pre-laid traps before summons and buffs were used. I went with nymphs (after wasting their domination spells) rather than skeletons to accompany the spirit bears (the chance of them scaring opposition seemed more valuable than the higher damage from the lions). One doppleganger was killed by traps, before the combined effect of 3 confusions and 2 horrors was to confuse 2 of the standard dopplegangers. With the assassin visible and occupied, Skint went to make Liia invisible, only to find her turning hostile. Reviewing the text showed up a slight flaw in my execution of that plan and seemed likely to prove fatal.
However, to my surprise Belt and the Flaming Fist didn't seem concerned about that . Summons mainly chased the doppleganger mage around, but it still took the opportunity to launch a couple of attacks on Pauper to take him down to single figure HPs before it was eventually chased down. Belt remained safely in the back room while Sarevok had his tantrum.
In the maze I started off by habit tripping the traps, until remembering I had a thief in the party . Washout's 70% find traps proved able to disarm all but one trap in the maze and all the inhabitants added just enough XP for everyone to take another level.
The Undercity party saw all but Gorf die to traps
and buffed summons lasted just long enough to take down a group of skeleton warriors. I decided though not to go straight after Sarevok, but instead seek to get up to the XP cap first. Neither sorcerer took stoneskin at level 8 (preferring to be able to help others with spirit armor and improved invisibility instead), so they remain very vulnerable to invisible attackers. It would also be nice to get maximum strength totemic summons.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L9, 72 HPs, 30 kills Pauper, Priest of Helm - L8, 71 HPs, 48 kills, 0 deaths Hardup, Shaman - L8, 60 HPs, 157 kills, 0 deaths Washout, Bounty Hunter - L9, 55 HPs, 51 kills, 0 deaths Aspire, Sorcerer - L8, 41 HPs, 142 kills, 0 deaths Skint, Sorcerer - L8, 39 HPs, 88 kills, 0 deaths Aspire, who took skull trap as his first level 3 spell, is rapidly catching Hardup and will probably take the lead in kills next time.
I'm in the mood to use Shar-Teel, but in a no-reload game I'm afraid of either killing her or losing a member of my party. We'll see....
You can use ctrl+m to see how many current HPs any character has and thus ensure you don't kill them accidentally, e.g. by switching to darts if using ranged weapons. Or of course you can just use fists in melee to make it impossible to deal lethal damage (assuming you're not a monk ).
There is a mod that makes her unkillable until she joins your parrty. Of course that won't stop you losing a member of your team.
@Flashburn, After all these years, I've still never taken out Sarevok with a back-stab or anything other than ranged. Nicely done.
That was the way that I ALWAYS used to kill him. Of course that was before the boss fight was changed. I used to use a solo Imoen who would be hasted and she would backstab, run round a statue, hide, backstab... etc etc. I even once killed him by backstabbing with my fists in a solo pacifist run with a fighter/thief. I was most upset that he died as I was wanting to finish BG 1 without killing anybody!!
That was the way that I ALWAYS used to kill him. Of course that was before the boss fight was changed. I used to use a solo Imoen who would be hasted and she would backstab, run round a statue, hide, backstab... etc etc. I even once killed him by backstabbing with my fists in a solo pacifist run with a fighter/thief. I was most upset that he died as I was wanting to finish BG 1 without killing anybody!!
Impressive. I've always found that there's so much chaos in that battle that trying to position a backstabber around Sarevok is one too many things to manage, so I'm generally content to snipe at him with range, while a hasted, magic-resistant character leads he and his lackeys on a merry chase through a web spell (I also take his lackeys out with spells and ranged). I've always been amazed by players who can kill him in other ways. Especially melee. I've tried with potions galore but I always miss and he always chews right through me.
As for pacifist runs - that's mind boggling. It must take incredible patience and skill.
Comments
SCS Blackguard Run #2
I am trying again with a blackguard charname and sorcerer. I've tweaked my difficulty settings a bit. I got rid of the v1.3 poison as it is too strong for BG1, and I added a mod that prevents poison from going through mirror image and stoneskin. I also noticed that I'd somehow forgotten to install improved spiders in SCS, so I added that (though I'm not looking forward to the Cloadkwood so much, now).Outside I did Joia's quest and retrieved the ring of wizardry. I'm doing a shameless materialist run - no aspirations of poverty for me, though I admire those who are doing it. We then headed east to pick up Viconia, then headed south to Beregost.
In Beregost, we met Tiax. What a charming little fellow! We did Firebead's book quest for the scroll case, and cleared out the spiders for Landrin. We went back to the FAI for the reward and experience.
Next we headed south again for Nashkel. Cleaned up all the enemies there, got the boots of stealth for Tiax, and worked our way to Nashkel. From there we went south to the mines area. We scouted around the map until we ran into Prism. Greywolf came, but he fell to a command spell from Vicky, during which Tiax summoned his ghast. My sorcerer and blackguard pelted Greywolf with ranged while the ghast, well, ate him. We got enough experience from the kill that my blackguard, sorcerer and Vicky leveled up.
God bless Tiax and his ghast.
Not sure where we're going to head next, but I'm feeling good about this run. What could go wrong?
Every now and then we get a Trilogy success - just takes a while. And the world of Faerun is a very dangerous place - creatures that stone you, undead that hold you and make you helpless, mages, who cast fireballs at will or lightning bolts, and the list goes on. It's wonder any of us ever survive all these threats and make it to Godhood. How many fights/battles must the CHARNAME have done in a typical run? Hundreds of fights? Lots of chances to die...I think @Grond0 is close to finding them all...
Which reminds me: I still need to finish up Mae's run in ToB!
Brunash "Vertically Unchallenged" the Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8The first three levels of Durlag's Tower are no problem, mainly because I used to play multiplayer with a friend as some kinda thief multiclass so I remember where most of the traps are. Faldorn got lucky as we prepared to fight against the Dwarven Doomguards on level 2 by summoning a Greater Fire Elemental. Try as they might, their weapons were completely ineffective at hitting the elemental.
Then we hit the chess game. I always dread this part because at least 1 person in my party tends to die here. This time it was Montaron, making him the first casualty of the game thus far, due to an errant Horror spell.
Despite his loss, we still won the game of chess. Islanne's ghost teleported us out of the tower and we went to the Beregost temple to raise Monty.
We returned to the tower and descended back to where we were. The last level was cleared with no difficulty. Then it was time to fight the Demon Knight. We sent in some summons first, then Kagain and Ajantis followed after them. I was prepared to have Faldorn and myself cast a bunch of spells, but Monty got his revenge in the end by backstabbing the demon knight to death.
We returned to Ulgoth's Beard and had the Soultaker Dagger stolen from us. We survived the ambush but Tiax was heavily injured. They can have it for all I care, I'm not risking the fight with Aec'Letec for a mere 16k XP. Besides, Irenicus will steal it back from them somehow for the end of SoD. I'm skipping the werewolf island too, even though I could probably handle it. I just don't want to risk those claustrophobic fights in Balduran's ship. It's time to deal with Sarevok.
We killed the Greater Dopplegangers attacking the dukes, though Duke Jannath died and Belt was nearly killed.
Before entering the thieves' maze, there was a certain drow that needed to be dealt with. Invoking the legend of the famous overpowered Bearwere thread, Faldorn called for their aid against Drizzt.
They were able to get him to "injured" status but the ranger charmed both of the Bearweres, rendering them harmless. I tried to dominate one back to our side, but its magic resistance stopped me. With our only option of taking down Drizzt neutralized, we decided to give up and try killing Shandalar this time.
You only have 1 round to neutralize Shandalar before his Globe of Invulnerability goes up. My usual combo is Doom + Greater Malison + Wand of Paralyzation, but I'm the only mage in the party, so there is no one else to use the wand as I cast Greater Malison. Doom from Tiax and Curse from Faldorn would have to do. The initial volley hit Shandalar and I used the Wand of Paralyzation on him, but he saved against it and his Globe went up. That was our cue to flee Ulgoth's Beard. It's time to take the fight to Sarevok.
As we explored the thieves' maze, Monty leveled up and now has Poison Expertise. Avoiding Sarevok's vanguard party, we travel south through the Undercity's ruins. Tomoko meets us at the temple of Bhaal. By killing her, I level up to 12, gaining level 6 spell slots, not that I have any to put in there. It is time.
I'm more worried about Semaj than anyone else, even Sarevok himself. I don't have Imoen to place traps where he teleports over. I buff my tanks with potions of invulnerability to offset the Greater Malison he casts. I summon a Greater Fire Elemental, a spirit lion, Ghastly, and Faldorn's Dread Wolf. I send in the Wolf to keep Sarevok occupied at the throne while Semaj teleports over to us with his Greater Malison + Magic Missile contingency.
He tries to run over to the symbol of Bhaal to get us to trip its traps, but I don't fall for it. Ajantis and Kagain stay back as our hasted summons tear up Semaj, killing him.
Here comes Angelo with Arrows of Detonation. He fires about 3 before killing himself with them.
Out pops Tazok from invisibility. He is handily defeated.
Last enemy is Sarevok himself. Although he killed Faldorn's wolf, he's still waiting at the throne. Monty pulls him away and quaffs a potion of invisibility, letting our summons and tanks take the aggro. Monty gets behind him and BOOM!
BALDUR'S GATE 1 COMPLETE!
I understand that you're playing without XP cap, but what did you do to get so much XP with a full party? Level 12 as a mage, that's 750k XP.
Best of luck in either SoD or SoA!
I still can't believe we were able to just slap him death. Seriously.
SCS Blackguard Run #2 - Part 2
I'm still alive!I didn't dare rest down there after last time (and after hearing your advice), so I plunged into Mulahey's cave without any sleep spells. I was able to take out the kobolds with melee and ranged without any problems. I kind of cheap-shotted Mulahey, but I didn't want to die in the mines again. I scouted the cave with Tiax (stealth) and then had Viconia cast a silence spell in there, effectively neutering not only Mulahey's spell casting, but his call for help. I then mopped him up. It's buggy how he won't fight back when silenced, but what can you do?
I then returned to Nashkel. Jeepers, SCS Nimbul gave me a scare, using stoneskin and mirror image (of course, right after I install a mod which prevents poison from getting through). Luckily I had Tiax's ghast and my blackguard tanking him. I got lucky with command spells, and used the wand of magic missiles to get rid of his mirror images. Then, to my chagrin, once I had his defenses down and was hurting him, Rassad landed the killing blow so I didn't get the experience. Aaaaaargh!
Anyway, at least I lived, and I've returned to Beregost to sell some gear, rest for awhile and figure out my next move. My party currently consists of charname, a sorcerer, Viconia and Tiax. I'm thinking of adding someone else. A mage at some point (so I can bulk up on invisibility spells per your sagely advice), and maybe another fighter. I'm in the mood to use Shar-Teel, but in a no-reload game I'm afraid of either killing her or losing a member of my party. We'll see....
I picked Spell Thrust just so I'd have a cheap option for removing high-level mages' Spell Shields, but they're actually quite good in these early fights, too. They let us land nasty anti-mage spells like Melf's Acid Arrow.
Our summons can tackle most of the dungeon. I use Invisibility 10' Radius to make sure that Onion-san doesn't suffer a fatal backstab that would leave us without a cleric.
Unfortunately, a summons-based strategy can fail horribly if you try to throw all of them at a high-level mage at once.
With no summons to aid us, we fall back, cast SI: Abjuration and SI: Divination, and then offload some Spell Thrusts on Haz, rendering him vulnerable to Melf's Acid Arrow. Onion-san uses True Seeing to make sure Haz's Mirror Image soak up the damage. But Haz ignores all the damage and somehow manages to get Sphere of Chaos off the ground.
Sphere of Chaos can instantly kill you on a failed save if you get hit by the wrong effect. After Onion-san makes one successful saving throw (which in retrospect should actually be guaranteed considering her halfling save bonuses, Protection from Evil, and Asriel's Spirit Armor should put her effective save vs. spell at 0), we fall back before anyone can get petrified or disintegrated.
Frisky Bits casts SI: Alteration and SI: Abjuration once more to safely check in on Haz, but the lingering damage of our Acid Arrows finished him off.
The fight with Aran Linvail is uneventful. We were practically humming with defensive spells and we had a whole bunch of reserve summons in wait, plus several really powerful traps and many, many spell slots, but because we hit Aran Linvail with double Spell Thrusts before Mae tossed her final Special Snare of the day...
...Aran Linvail had no MGOI or spell protections to block the paralysis effect of the Special Snare. One failed save later, and he's doomed.
Despite the significantly decreased difficulty of the Assassinations questline, we still get just as much XP as we would from Bodhi or Aran Linvail.
Right now we're in Trademeet. All we've done so far is trap the djinn, who have shown us, just like some imps back in SoD, that our Special Snares can paralyze non-humanoid targets, even though Near Infinity says it shouldn't be able to.
We're roughly at 1 million XP. Does anyone know the XP minimum for encountering a lich in Spellhold? My install apparently has near-maximum spawns for level-based encounter; they always spawn the hardest monsters short of liches.
Previous updates
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I wasn't even trying to play carefully any more, but still had no problems with a bit more work in Durlag's Tower followed by various sirines at the coast. I didn't prepare properly, however, for the sirines in the Beregost Temple and failed to kill any of those in an initial attack. With charmed characters preventing running away, no summons to provide a distraction and poison arrows taking HPs down quickly things looked grim. However, a mixture of making the most vulnerable characters invisible and the good range of slow poison available in the group kept them going - Washout eventually being saved with 3 HPs left after dragging charmed characters away from the sirines until they recovered and were able to cure him.
I did the rounds of a few more areas looking to pick up enough XP for another level before heading to the Nashkel Mine. Most of the work had been done before with this party, but I did decide to take on Kahrk as a new challenge. I've died plenty of times before against him though, so reverted briefly to my no risks policy. Essentially that meant using summons to drain most of his spells, drawing out a invisibility detection spell with a sorcerer that immediately disappeared again and then showing themselves at a distance from him to get the last of his spells out before magic missiling him to death.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L7, 53 HPs, 19 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L6, 51 HPs, 29 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L6, 46 HPs, 123 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L7, 46 HPs, 30 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L6, 32 HPs, 38 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L6, 33 HPs, 37 kills, 0 deaths
Over at the Umar Hills, we finally got the whole party disabled for the first time ever against the mimic. Not that it means much with a Totemic Druid in the party.
In the Temple Ruins, we discover that Onion-san is high enough level to blow up all the normal undead...
...only to find that, apparently, 1 million XP is enough to trigger lich spawns in my install.
A Farsight spell confirms that it's not just the optional fight near the lava room; it's also the mandatory fight next to the alphabet puzzle.
I am not remotely stupid enough to tackle a lich with an itemless party at level 12. This quest will remain incomplete until I deem this party fit to tackle the challenge.
It's funny--I only recently discovered that a Protection from Undead scroll can be used on a lich, instead of on a party member, to effectively shut down its spellcasting. It only requires a single scroll and from the brief testing I tried, it's even more effective than Wizard Slayer Fire Seeds. And yet I cannot use the trick in either of my runs due to item restrictions.
I wonder if a Protection from Undead scroll would screw with Bodhi's script, too? It should certainly work on troublesome Tanova, not to mention Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh from the Tactics mod.
Brunash "King-Size" the Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9Onto the significantly more difficult Siege of Dragonspear. I'm still playing on Core Rules so this won't be as difficult as it possibly could be with IWD-style horde fights for every encounter. That's fine. Some fights in SoD on Insane truly are insane. So, on to the starting dungeon. The first area is cleared with no trouble, though I am still amused by the improved AI on ranged attackers who will run around attempting to flee.
The second level of Korlasz's dungeon sees the Fire Elemental putting its immunity to normal weapons to good use.
I take extra care to disarm the dispel trap leading to the fight with Korlasz - its ruined my day several times before. I don't have to flex my mage-muscles too hard for this fight. Just a Hold Person and a Greater Malison while Faldorn shuts Korlasz down with Insect Plague.
After she falls, its time to say goodbye to the group. Kagain and Ajantis will both be missed dearly as there are no tank characters besides Khalid and possibly Jaheira in SoD. My party will be sorely lacking without Montaron backstabbing things with extreme prejudice. Faldorn was a great summoner, though I hardly got enough time to play around with her fire elemental. I will miss Tiax least of all. Even though I kept wanting to drop him for a more competent cleric, his cleric buffs weren't really needed but his ghast was just too good to say no to.
I pack everybody's stuff into my Bag of Holding and the Potion Case. I hope the game doesn't glitch out or something just because of the sheer number of items that have been packed into it. Its not just my companion's gear that's in there, its stuff I've been waiting since before Durlag's Tower to sell in SoD since all your money gets stolen by Communists.
So I recruit Minsc and Dynaheir, the latter of whom I plan on dropping and the former I kit into a Berserker since I changed his class with NPC_EE. I go to Sorcerous Sundries, and selling all the stuff that was in my gem bag is worth about 45k. I ask myself why I bothered to hoard so much stuff in my Bag of Holding if I already had this much cash stored in gems. Across the street, I get the Spectacles of Spectacle and fight the Al-Alai. 6000 XP vanishes into thin air as Corwin gets the last hit on it.
Soon we arrive at the Coast Way. I pick up Corwin and Viconia for the time being, and also recruit Glint to replace Monty and Tiax, kitting him into a Priest of Tyr for that sweet Acclamation ability I wanted way back at the beginning of BG1. We go to the Coast Way Forest and slay the vampire there and dump Dynaheir on the road. Back at the Coast Way, I recruit Baeloth and trade Viconia for M'khiin. Baeloth will assist me in the arcane arts and area of effect assaults. M'khiin will be replacing Faldorn. Corwin is staying until we can get to Khalid, though she is a fantastic ranged damage dealer. Here's what my party's looking like now, after about an hour of digging through my Bag of Hoarding to re-equip everyone, plus re-assigning some spell picks on M'khiin and Baeloth:
SoD truly begins next update.
Brunash - Enchanter 12
Minsc - Berserker 9
Corwin - Archer 8
Glint - Priest of Tyr 8/Thief 9
M'khiin - Shaman 10
Baeloth - Sorcerer 10
1st report
2nd report
The mighty Kahrk
The Kahrk battle is one I’m not too familiar with, and it shows immediately when we have Vicky summon her first skeleton in front of Carsa. We assume for no good reason that Carsa will only speak when spoken to, but she addresses us as soon as Vicky’s casting breaks her invisibility. We demand Carsa to give us her jar, and Kahrk appears, prebuffed with a MGoI, a Fireshield Blue, Stoneskins and Mirror Images. He’s also permanently hasted, and he casts a Slow that affects invisible Kagain, Edwin and Tiax. Vicky, unaffected, bravely completes her casting, then quaffs an invisibility potion.
Kahrk is now reduced to martial means to defeat Shar-Teel. He moves quite fast, and he has one Stoneskin up, one memorized and, as we discover later, one stored in a Contingency. We also find that Shar-Teel with the bracers of archery and with Kain’s song buff can only hit him with her boomerang dagger on rolls of 16 or higher. She does a bit of kiting, suffering a heavy blow in the process,
Firewine ruins
Kain and Edwin cast Invisibility on all the companions, and we rest so that we have more Invisibilities at our disposal. We then enter the dreaded Firewine Ruins. Tiax disarms the traps on the way toward Lendarn and the ogre mage. We avoid the kobolds until we run into a few that block the path. The buggers do remarkably well against our undead, even after Viconia throws in a Confusion for good measure. Our summons barely defeat them. A second group we dispatch with a charge of the wand of monster summoning. We prevail and we continue until we reach Lendarn’s whereabouts. Our summons charge in to convince the wizard to start working his magic. He casts a Fireball and several Magic Missiles at them as well as two minor sequencered Chromatic Orbs (a spell that I’ve come to fear in LoB) before teleporting to Tiax and forcing the unprepared Gnome to drink an invisibility potion. From a safe distance, Kain uses another charge of the wand of monster summoning. The summons soak up a few more spells (Horror, Magic Missile) before they slay the wizard.
We return to Ulcaster to try our luck with Icharyd, but his self-heal dispels our invisibility. We run, go invisible again, and rest. When we come back he’s surrounded by a bunch of zombies, and a group of kobold archers. We decide to leave our foe for another day.
The Firewine Plains pose little difficulty. We slay Arghain and the other half-ogres with range attacks and we defeat Ioin and his buddies with our undead army. In Spider Wood we meet some of Edwin’s friends and clear the surroundings of their ritual site.
The accursed tower
We aren’t eager to visit the Bandit Camp. So with Vicky close to 50,000 XP, we decide to see if we can squeeze enough XP out of Durlag’s Tower’s first lower level for her to get her skeleton warriors upgraded. The enemies on this floor are phase spiders, greater doppelgangers, flesh golems, skeleton warriors, mustard jellies, and the warders of course. Tiax boosts his thieving skills and disarms all the traps while invisible but waits with the looting. Shar-Teel kites one or two phase spiders. The doppelgangers we block with invisible party members while Kain’s Skald song neutralizes their Horror spells. The golems and the skeleton warriors can be kited pretty easily. The skeleton warriors are melee only, and their missile resistance is around 50% instead of the 90% resistance lowlier skeletons have. The kiting goes well but for one accident with Shar-Teel. Unaware of two mustard jellies that have crept up on her, she gets slowed and poisoned, and we underestimate the range of the jellies’ melee attacks: two hits and she’s down.
Our adventure earns Vicky her coveted 7th level (and Tiax Cleric 6) plus quite a bit of gold, so we have Thalantyr upgrade the dagger of venom to a +3 weapon that grants an extra attack to increase Shar-Teel’s firepower. Thalantyr also makes a ring of protection +2 for Kagain out of two +1 rings, a diamond and two pearls. And he creates a +1 returning throwing dagger for Edwin. Since Kagain’s ring cost Vicky a ring of the princes, we travel north to kill Wenric’s zombies and to loot his home for a cloak of protection +1.
An unpleasant surprise
To me, one of the exciting things of playing evil with a low reputation is that it’s a new experience full of surprises. We have to be on our guards more than ever. I’ve played evil characters before but they would keep decent reputations. Our reputation has been 1 for some time now. This means for example that Officer Vai doesn’t offer us any gold for bandit scalps. Instead, she attacks us on sight. I didn't know about that. We now have law enforcers waiting for us in Feldepost’s, near the smithy, and in the Jovial Juggler. There are also three groups at the FAI, and several bounty hunters in Nashkel.
Another major surprise comes from Shandalar. We visit Ulgoth’s Beard merely for Tiax to pickpocket Dushai’s ring of free action and some scrolls. While we’re at it, we decide to have a go at Shandalar as well, but as soon as he sees us he sends us to the Ice Island against our will.
We cast Invisibility on Tiax who, his thieving skills still boosted from Dushai, disarms all the traps. We then have Shar-Teel kill all the winter wolves, out of sight of any of the mages. That’s a lot of wolves because Unfinished Business adds a second level to this dungeon, with several extra winter wolves. We end up with 18 pelts.
The only wizard on the second level is Dezkiel, surrounded by two snow golems. Kain successfully uses his Algernon’s charm on two polar bears; Vicky and Tiax summon our trusty undead army. Interestingly, Tiax can still summon his ghast after we’ve summons five skeleton warriors. (I was pretty sure the summoning cap was five, and I’m not playing with any mods that remove this cap.) We protect our summons and ourselves from evil, and have our bears and our undead attack. Invisible Kain contributes with his song. Dezkiel casts several spells but this is mostly irrelevant because the skeletons shake off most of the magic directed at them.
So we have a scroll of Stoneskin that Edwin can actually use once scribed as he’s reached level 7, and we have Shandalar’s cloak, time to go home right? Ehm, no. We return to the first level to face the other wizards there. Cuchol is easily slain by our undead army. Garan is much trickier. Not only do his four ankhegs constitute a serious threat, he also casts a Chaos at Kain, inexplicably because Kain has been invisible the whole time.
We use a charge from a wand of monster summoning (we have two of those wands) to keep Garan busy. Shar-Teel enrages and joins the battle, poisoning our foe with the dagger of venom. Then Edwin, finally with some room in his spellbook for offensive spells, seals Garan’s fate with a Malison followed by a Hold Person.
To be continued.
Previous updates
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/917550/#Comment_917550
After skipping through the Nashkel Mine invisibly, Mulahey went silently to his grave (I didn't even bother killing the kobolds in his cave for once).
Tranzig lost out to summons before Raiken showed Beggar a back door to the Bandit Camp. There was no fighting there - Pauper looking through some papers under the protection of sanctuary and protection from lightning.
In the first Cloakwood area I intended to help Aldeth in order to open up the quest in Baldur's Gate - but mis-clicked and had to put him down. In the second area, Washout disarmed or triggered all the traps while invisible before the group cleared the area with the help of summons. In the third area, spell damage took down the druids and in the fourth invisible blockers allowed the wyvern cave to be emptied.
On the way to the Mine the amazons triggered, but everyone was invisible so I thought there was a good opportunity to take them on for once. The biggest problem with those is the invisible backstabbers, so Beggar threw up summons from behind an invisible wall to give the backstabbers a target. He and Pauper were held by the cleric, but by that stage the backstabbers were visible and the opposition didn't last long after that.
At the mine entrance webs and skull traps / call lightning meant the summons were pretty superflous. Traps and summons did most of the hard work in clearing out enemies inside the mine on the way down to Davaeorn. Against him I think I was about to kill him with a charmed and hasted guard, but tried to gild the lily by getting close enough to cast chant as well and activated Davaeorn. That required a retreat before coming back to web and skull trap the guards and drain Davaeorn of spells using summons.
Coming back from the Cloakwood, Molkar tried his luck. Without invisibility though there wasn't too much danger from them and webs slowed them down enough for spell damage to kill them. The remaining journey to the City was completed without incident. The party should soon be ready to take another level.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L7, 53 HPs, 25 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L6, 51 HPs, 32 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L6, 46 HPs, 139 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L7, 46 HPs, 35 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L6, 32 HPs, 85 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L6, 33 HPs, 56 kills, 0 deaths
1. Why are you using the Spirit Bear? I always preferred Spirit Lions due to their much lower AC, despite slightly lower HP.
2. Is it really safe to sneak past all the kobolds in the Nashkel mines? I've noticed that kobolds will wander around, and I've been concerned about getting boxed in when navigating through a narrow tunnel. Does that Kobold Shaman at the end not use any divination spells?
3. What do you think is the optimal way to distribute your Bounty Hunter's skill points?
1. Prologue
2. First Steps
3. First Level Ups
4. First Real Challenges
5. First Casualties
6. First Wands
7. Sometimes they do roll 1 during their HP rolls!
8. Surviving the ambush
9. Molkar and Lamalha groups are defeated
10. Taking on the full Bandit Camp
11. Drasus, Rezdan, Genthore, and Kysus
Hareishan
I started the fight as usual, sending the summons forward and then Webbing the area. The aim was to make bandits regroup, maybe leave their places not to stand in one room, also maybe to kill a few of them. Everything else depended on Hareishan's behavior.
Hareishan then appeared, and from behind! It was time to cast Invisibility, 10 Radius, and quick.
The group then retreated and rested. After that summons could deal with lone bandits.
Again, webs were used in the direction of the main chamber. Hareishan was there this time. Glod casted Spell Thrust to remove her spell protection - MGoI.
She succeeded each time in her saving throws against Web, though, and in the end entered the close combat with Glod. The rest of the bandits were either dead or held thanks to woodland beings' magic. A mage on the LoB is a good melee fighter, but Glod still won.
Invisibility, 10 Radius is a must just upon entering the next level of the Mines. That encounter is dangerous even not on the LoB. After finding a safe place to summon spirits and skeletons, the group defeated the entrance guards.
Natasha
Another creepy mage. Spirit Snakes first suffered from her lightning. Then they poisoned Natasha but on the LoB it's quite save for an enemy mage to be poisoned if there's no additional source of damage. And I dared not approach her fearing minor sequencers with Chromatic orbs.
She left her chamber and 2 skeleton warriors pursued till one of them was wiped down by Sunfire. At least her chromatic orbs were wasted on the skeleton.
Finally she ran out of spells (it required woodland beings as meatshield) and Uzume finished her with a backstab.
The Ogre Mage was much easier, not being under the MGoI he went down fast under constant attacks of 5 summons.
Davaeorn
So, the last battle before the city with Sorcerous Sundries and its wands, potions and other trinkets. There was no need to save anything. The battle went in 3 stages. At the first stage I moved the party to the West side of the area and then let 2 battle horrors, and only them, see my summons. Then I blinded both of them and used the wand of monster summoning to make them fight and not wander around. Cochrane used arrows of ice, Uzume kept backstabbing, Glod used his two-handed sword to suppor the summons.
The group rested (invisible, of course, and on the previous level). Now, the 2nd stage. One spirit snake was sent to Davaeorn, while 4 other summons were prepared to intervene and the party was invisible. Davaeorn kept moving around the rooms, teleporting and casting spells. I counted at least 4 sunfires, 4 lightning bolts. In the end, the approaching horde of guards killed my summons. No way I could handle it in any other way.
The 3rd stage. I waited till all the guards came and surrounded Davaeorn. A perfect place for multiple Webs, Grease and then all fireball trinkets the group had, don't you think?
@Neverused likes to use the scroll of Cloudkill in the Bandit Camp, I did it here, to improve the damage output (as the group didn't have an unlimited amount of fireballs: 5 from the wand, 3 from the necklace, 5 from potions. Several rounds of fire and poison followed.
Nearly all the guards were dead, but Davaeorn didn't fail his saving throw against Web and 2 Silence attempts. It was time to approach him. I was so focused on not letting the mage see my main character that forgot to take away Cochrane when I needed to retreat. A fight followed - basically, Davaeorn could always hit my party members with his minute meteors like he was a high-level archer, while my disabling spells couldn't stick. The LoB makes Dave a beast. And everytime my main character entered his line of sight even for a second, he stated to attack Jagen.
When all the guards were killed I found Davaeorn, who had previously left the battlefield using a potion of invisibility.
The woodland beings suffered another sunfire - Dave's 6th (!) in this fight. 6 level 5 spells, oh my! At one stage the woodland beings managed to dominate him, and I checked his remaining spells:
Nothing dangerous was left, I knew he already used his sequencer, and finally the whole group could enter the fight without fearing. It felt like an achievement, to see the mage defeated.
Jagen got a new level, and I chose Spook, Invisibility and Slow as new lvl 1-3 spells for him.
Here’re the current standings (122 days and 1 hour):
Jagen, sorcerer, lvl 7, 37 HPs, 49 kills, Greater Basilisk (5% in the group)
Glod, fighter/illusionist, lvl 5/5, 38 HPs, 231 kills, Davaeorn (26% in the group), 0 deaths
Uzume, fighter/thief, lvl 5/6, 45 HPs, 233 kills, Greater Basilisk (26% in the group), 0 deaths
Cochrane, archer, lvl 6, 51 HPs, 268 kills, Battle Horror (30% in the group), 1 death (Davaeorn)
Sigyn, totemic druid, lvl 7, 51 HPs, 47 kills, Polar Bear (5% in the group), 1 death (Kysus)
Dazbog, cleric/mage, lvl 6/5, 24 HPs, 42 kills, Lesser Basilisk (4% in the group), 4 deaths (2 by a kobold commando; 1 - Shoal; 1 - Mulahey)
2. I don't think getting boxed in permanently is likely as if kobolds move once they're likely to move again.
Getting close to the shaman is not totally safe, no. What I normally do is send a sorcerer forward on their own to edge in and out of view of the shaman a few times to tempt out a divination spell if it has one (if you place them correctly they should be pretty certain of being able to re-establish invisibility).
3. I would maximise set traps initially and then put find traps to whatever level you consider appropriate (mine is 70 in this run, though I've gone higher when intending to clear Durlag's). The next skill to be upgraded is detect illusion. I love stealth, but for the odd use even the starting percentage is enough, while full scouting duties can be carried out under invisibility (with both of my sorcerers having that it's easy to cast).
Notice the large number of golems; my mods cause bigger golems to split in half and become miniature golems after they die. I hadn't buffed anyone since I had expected Chara's Totemic Druid summons to break down the golems, which meant Onion-san's AC was absolute abysmal. I ordered her to run, but these golems were very fast, and because the dead Mithril Golem had become two Lesser Mithril Golems, the enemy had extremely high APR and could hit her again less than a second later.
The hitstun proves too much for Onion-san to escape and the golems have deceptive range and high APR on top of high damage per hit. They take her down.
Notice I had neglected to apply Tresset's anti-chunking fix again. I can get her back if I win the fight a second time, but my rules only prevent chunking, not death. Onion-san still has to die if I re-do the fight.
I send her back in against the golems and let her die without getting chunked.
Onion-san is our only source of Raise Dead; we cannot bring her back until either Chara or one of our sorcerers hits epic levels and gets Mass Raise Dead or Summon Planetar, respectively. I was counting on Onion-san to keep our party afloat, but I failed to keep her invisible because I underestimated just how powerful golems were in my install. We have no choice but to proceed without her.
I don't often fight Samia fair, and this run is no different. If you have a Bounty Hunter, why not use it to its fullest?
Unfortunately, without Onion-san, I discover that we simply aren't strong enough to kill a Greater Mithral Golem. On top of their massive damage output, these golems have sky-high resistances, 110 HP, immunity to +2 weapons and below, and also rather fast regeneration for some reason. And Fire Elementals in my install appear to do much less damage than I thought they did.
Onion-san's Aerial Servant did much more damage and her skeletons also absorbed a lot of pressure that helped keep Chara's elementals afloat. Without those summons, our critters don't have the numbers to bring the golem below 50 HP.
And testing confirms that an old exploit no longer works in my install: casting spells on myself does not make them bypass enemies' magic resistance.
The golems are immune to Lower Resistance, but apparently Chara's Magic Resistance spell still works. We can drop a golem's MR down to 26 with a single spell, and while they're immune to Acid Arrow, they're still perfectly vulnerable to Magic Missile. We take it down.
It works just as well on Adamantite Golems.
We trap Conster and finally hit level 13 for Frisky Bits and Asriel, our highest-level sorcerers.
I choose Spirit Armor, Spell Shield, Death Fog, Secret Word, Animate Dead, and PFMW, though I'm a bit sketchy on what the optimal spell choices would really be. I want Spirit Armor so I can more easily stack the save vs. spell bonuses, which is especially important now that we have no cleric to cast Free Action or extra Chaotic Commands spells, and we'll need Secret Word to take down Spell Turning (Spell Thrust can't do that), and Animate Dead has a similar purpose: filling in for the skeletons that Onion-san used to summon for us. Spell Shield is just there to give Frisky Bits a little wiggle room when it comes to their defenses.
But Death Fog is an odd pick for me. I wasn't quite sure if I could safely land Cone of Cold to disrupt enemy mage spells due to its short range, so I thought Death Fog might be a more reliable option. But it could be very dangerous if I try to use it before Carl learns Protection from Acid. The notable advantage of Death Fog is that it can damage liches and hits multiple times (and Protection from Acid is an even rarer buff than Protection from Cold), but I'm not sure 8 acid damage is enough to reliably disrupt enemy spells. It's also considerably less party-friendly.
I'm honestly considering dropping off one or more party members in a room somewhere so that I can concentrate XP on Frisky Bits and get Summon Planetar early. With only five party members, we're scheduled to hit epic levels when a normal party is at about 2.5 million XP, which amounts to level 21 for a Bounty Hunter or just under level 17 for a mage, but that's still extremely late in SoA.
If we drop off one party member, that number goes down to 2 million XP for a normal party, about midway through SoA. Drop off two party members, that number goes down to 1.5 million XP, which is less than halfway through the game. That's pretty good. But that would leave us with a single Totemic Druid, a single Bounty Hunter, and a single sorcerer, Frisky Bits. Those are our most important characters, and winning fights with them alone would be extremely challenging.
That being said, this is the gentlest part of Shadows of Amn for me. If I'm going to temporarily remove party members, now is the time to do it. And I've always known that the critical turning point in this run comes when we get Summon Planetar.
SCS Blackguard Run #2 - Part 3
Staying alive!
My run is still going, though I haven't got as much playing done today as I'd like. We took care of Tranzig at Feldepost's Inn. He was a tough little bugger with SCS (and hasted, which was a pain). I'm still a noob with SCS and I guess I was lucky no one got roasted. Tiax got knocked out cold for what seemed like an hour in real time, but his ghast (currently the MVP in my party) kept Tranzig occupied enough while my sorcerer took down his mirror images.After killing Tranzig, Samara couldn't help notice that another patron of the inn had a rather lovely cloak
My, what a nice cloak you have, Algernon!
Next, we went north to kill a few Ankhegs and were hired to assassinate an evil cleric on the Baldur's Gate bridge map. While Viconia distracted the cleric, Tiax snuck up from behind her house.
Tenya was in for a ghastly surprise.
After that we returned to Beregost for some retail therapy. I had just over 9000gp. I had to choose between the crossbow of speed, and the full-plate armour. I chose the full-plate armour, remembering the old adage, 'defense wins championships.' Whether that adage will help me on this run remains to be seen.
What is the definition of insanity? Bringing Neera on a no-reload. Seriously. The thing is, I want that stoneskin scroll from her quest, so she's coming along. The only proviso is she can't cast spells. She's a dedicated sling archer.
After stocking up at the smithy.
Now I'm just debating whether to risk the vampiric wolves on the temple map and then SCS basilisks. I'm only level three, so... I guess I should head to High Hedge for those petrification scrolls.
SCS Blackguard Run #2 - Part 4
It's been a wild night.With Neera
Then, Neera's quest triggered. So I tried to make it to Adoy's Enclave, except we were ambushed by a ring of bandit archers. Guess who died? My sorcerer. So back to Nashkel for a resurrection. The priest there is getting to know us on a first-name basis.
We finally made it to Adoy's enclave. That was a tough fight, I must say. I'm really proud to have won without losing anyone. One of my best battles.
Victory in the enclave
Getting Edwin
Thanks for the tip, you guys - mages are invisible!
I'm thrilled my run is still going. Not that I want it to end, but I'm at least at the point where I'm proud to have made it this far. Next: off to the gnoll fortress!
Brunash "Double-Wide except Vertically" the Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9SoD: 1
Before I went to fight Sarevok, I bought a metric asston of Paralysis and Monster Summoning Wands. They are clogging up my Bag of Hoarding, so I use the console to condense all of their charges into 1 wand each, instead of the 15+ of both wands collecting dust in the bag. I do the same to the Wands of Fear and the Heavens that I've collected over the course of BG1.
I reach the Dumathoin digsite and clear out the first level about halfway, then remember that the Menhir quest needs to be done for Crommus' stash to appear. I exit the cave and take care of it, and also unpetrify the stone statues.
With the quests outside the cave finished, I return to the digsite. Inside the repository of undeath, Minsc and M'khiin suffer heavy injuries fighting the bronze sentry. Even though I use Argent77's Improved Shamanic Dance mod, which allows you to move while dancing but at 25% speed, M'khiin could only just barely get away fast enough to get restored to normal speed. One more hit and she would've died.
The rest of the repository was fairly routine: initiate fights with Fireball carpet bombing, then have Minsc and spirits tank the survivors as Corwin picks off higher value targets.
Then we make it to Coldhearth. We return to Deepvein and get The Secret Revealed. I was feeling slightly nervous about this even with the Secret with me. Glint unlocks his secret door, and we let him buff up with all his protections, then strike him with the Secret Revealed, rendering him harmless. We take Coldhearth out and quickly smash his phylacteries, then Glint and I book it to the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Glint chucks it in there before Coldhearth can respawn, thankfully. I paralyze the two fire salamanders and everyone else catches up to kill them.
We return to Deepvein and get the dwarves to join us on the assault on Dragonspear. Our party buffs to capacity before starting bridge fight, as I remember this could get difficult. My worrying was for nothing, as our overwhelming spell power handily defeats the crusaders. Greater Malison + Insect Plague + Chant greatly impairs all of them, as an Emotion: Hopelessness disables their back line. I follow up with a Hold Person on the two fighters that Minsc is tanking.
With that over with, we're in the Troll Claw Woods. The troll cave is cleared, though I discover that trolls are apparently immune to Hold and Stun. The orc band in the south is decimated and the Glimmer of Hope +2 mace is recovered, given to Minsc to dual-wield with the Cudgel of Montgomer +1. Corwin levels up from a pack of spectral trolls, earning Grandmastery in Longbows. On the way to the Forest of Wyrms, we encounter orcs and trolls. Inside the troll cave and through the pool of water, I pick up the Firefly sling! +2 to saving throws is excellent.
We arrive at the Forest of Wyrms. The hill giant and his wolves that guard the Stalker Gauntlets are killed and we fight through wyverns to get to the spider's nest. In the first fight, Minsc gets webbed and I'm certain he's a goner.
Baeloth takes out some small spiders with a Fireball wand charge and I attempt Hold Monster on the spiders eating Minsc alive. It works.
Glint fries the sword spider with a Wand of the Heavens charge and the rest of the spiders are mopped up. Minsc breaks free just after they're all dead. The rest of the spiders are cleared out and the invading beetles present even less of a problem. Next we enter Morentherene's cave. I equip some throwing daggers that I'd been saving for her and hit, killing her instantly.
I'd saved some Protection from Poison scrolls for her too, just in case it glitched out like my last playthrough and caused her to awaken anyway. Next up we deal with the temple of Cyric.
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In the City it didn't take long to get the next level in Ramazith's Tower.
After a night's rest, I didn't forget about the Shennara backstabbing twins this time at the Iron Throne. Webs and skull traps did most of the damage with various disablers thrown in for good measure. Alai was the only one who broke free of the web and he was scared by a Bhaal horror.
I was more concerned about the fight with the ogre magi on arrival at Candlekeep. The game didn't let me pause during the entrance scene, so the ogre magi all got the drop on my casters with their initial spells. Beggar scared one with Bhaal horror and Pauper successfully got true sight into action which was very helpful. Washout was held by one of those first spells, but had managed to get enough distance to be out of immediate danger. Aspire was targeted a couple of times and disappeared to save himself, but call lightning was hurting the ogre magi and they didn't have much left to offer.
I tried resting in the keep quite a few times and eventually the guards gave up telling us that was forbidden. Inside, the Iron Throne Leaders were webbed and soon eaten by spirit animals before a doppleganger was stuck in a cage. In the catacombs the frustration of having to leave behind those lovely tomes was relieved by killing everything that moved. For Prat's gang the spiders were killed first to avoid them interfering, though that nearly went wrong when I wrongly thought all the phase spiders were accounted for - fortunately I noticed one of them had teleported in and was attacking in time to cure poison.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Cythandria died in traps. I was wary of someone being one-shotted by golems so set up a cordon in preparation for use of shamanic summons if necessary - but the standard summons did the job.
At the palace Washout pre-laid traps before summons and buffs were used. I went with nymphs (after wasting their domination spells) rather than skeletons to accompany the spirit bears (the chance of them scaring opposition seemed more valuable than the higher damage from the lions). One doppleganger was killed by traps, before the combined effect of 3 confusions and 2 horrors was to confuse 2 of the standard dopplegangers. With the assassin visible and occupied, Skint went to make Liia invisible, only to find her turning hostile. Reviewing the text showed up a slight flaw in my execution of that plan and seemed likely to prove fatal.
In the maze I started off by habit tripping the traps, until remembering I had a thief in the party
Washout's 70% find traps proved able to disarm all but one trap in the maze and all the inhabitants added just enough XP for everyone to take another level.
The Undercity party saw all but Gorf die to traps
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L9, 72 HPs, 30 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L8, 71 HPs, 48 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L8, 60 HPs, 157 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L9, 55 HPs, 51 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L8, 41 HPs, 142 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L8, 39 HPs, 88 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, who took skull trap as his first level 3 spell, is rapidly catching Hardup and will probably take the lead in kills next time.
As for pacifist runs - that's mind boggling. It must take incredible patience and skill.