No news in Brynnlaw but Asriel getting confused and trying to kill Calahan before we blinded him. The githyanki ambush is a major threat, though, because Mind Blast knocks you out on a failed save vs. spell. We keep everyone safe with Chaotic Commands and two or three Spirit Armor spells to guarantee a successful save.
At City Sushi, I CTRL-J too close to some sahuagin and Frisky Bits gets stunned by a stray bolt--and poisoned as well a moment later, forcing me to abandon an Invisibility spell in case Remove Paralysis doesn't work and we're left with an invisible poisoned stunned character whose poison we can't cure due to invisibility.
But Remove Paralysis is successful, and we rescue Frisky Bits from the poison.
It serves as a pointed reminder that Frisky Bits is only immune to disablers so long as we keep them properly buffed, and that immunity to poison is completely inaccessible to us without items or Spell Revisions (in which Neutralize Poison also grants long-duration immunity to poison and poison damage).
Fittingly enough, City Sushi has Nereids and therefore Water Weirds. I don't know if Horrid Wilting does extra damage to these critters, as it should, but it's not like Horrid Wilting really needs extra damage.
Our summons deal with all other threats in the city.
We enter the Underdark while invisible and line up at the western wall in order to cast our pre-buffs and summoning spells without being in the mod-introduced enemy drow party's field of vision (they start out neutral, so our summons don't trigger the fight, either). After setting up our defenses, laying some traps, and conjuring some critters, we use Farsight to study the situation. We have three high-level enemy mages on the map.
We send out Chara, Snowy Tae, and our planetar to distract the enemy mages while our sorcerers hang back; I want to use Project Image to spam Wish and I need Asriel and Carl to be able to kill Frisky Bits' Project Image clone if the enemy should approach our sorcerers (Project Images leaves the caster extremely, extremely vulnerable, and I've lost a run to mind flayers who got automatic hits on a solo mage under the effects of Project Image). Unfortunately, we lose almost all of our summons to a Death Spell.
We have two strong anti-mage options: Holy Word from our planetar (especially helpful because at least one of the drow mages erroneously has zero MR) and normal snares from Mae, currently under the effects of Frisky Bits' PW: Blind. An early Insect Plague also proves effective, though Fire Shield pre-buffs are supposed to cure it as well as block it.
Better still, the enemy is quite vulnerable to Nature's Beauty, though a True Seeing spell should cure it if the mages are smart enough to cast the spell.
Frisky Bits has landed a Wish-rest and therefore switches to casting Improved Alacrity so they can throw out a new planetar and some quick Wishes while the fight is going in our favor. Meanwhile, Mae's traps prove crippling.
The mages crumple, and our sorcerers finish off the wounded cleric.
A scorcher loop proves disappointing against the local elementals (which my mods make substantially tougher; the portals here are not just easy XP), but damage spells crush the vanilla drow ambush despite their sky-high MR.
We trigger the triple mind flayer ambush early while Frisky Bits is still immune to psionics and Frisky Bits uses their new Freedom spell to get Chara out of Psionic Maze early, freeing Vithal in the process.
Why Freedom? To be honest, I can't think of any time I've gotten anyone imprisoned in my install aside from the Kangaxx fight (which I have no reason to attempt), so countering Imprisonment is probably not going to be a threat, ever. But since using a scroll is simply not an option, I'm not willing to take the chance of getting caught off-guard.
Freedom could also prove useful to bring monsters out of Mae's Maze traps, once she finally hits level 21. Critters of different INT values return at different rates, but we could force them to come back all at the same time using Freedom.
The Balor proves overwhelmingly far more dangerous than I expected thanks to its Remove Magic and Firestorm spells and its powerful attacks and teleport spells--especially because I failed to buff our sorcerers with SI: Abjuration. Our other characters keep the demon distracted, however, and allow our sorcerers to kill it with Lower Resistance followed by spell damage.
I planned on tackling the Kuo-toa Prince simply by relying on spell damage, but it turns out that he's immune to electrical damage and acid damage and, like all kuo-toa, has 90% resistance to magical damage. We end up killing him with summons.
The Kuo-toa Prince is pretty sturdy, but he simply isn't as dangerous as the beholder hive or the mind flayer city, our other two choices for completing the Ust Natha questline.
Like always, I tackle the drow guarding the Underdark exit well before entering Ust Natha so Adalon doesn't teleport us on top of a dangerous ambush later on. Traps kill the first mage, but our summons prove unable to hold back the rest, and the enemy advances on the party. We respond with spell damage. The enemy has extremely high MR, but whenever we get past it, we hit really hard.
Before starting the Ust Natha questline, we set lots of traps on Chandrilla's spawn point as well as the mind flayer+umber hulk ambush site. Only Damien survives the first set of traps, and the second set of traps greatly simplifies the fight to save Phaere.
We also trap the beholder in the east quadrant of the city before we spawn it, relying on our summons to kill it while the party hides behind Invisibility 10' Radius.
Since I don't like fighting Qilue (and have the WIS to avoid that questline) and have little incentive to deal with the Deirex questline or do the pit fights in the tavern, I have lots of free resting periods, which means I can, over the course of the Ust Natha questline, set extra traps both on the Ghaunadaur priest spawn point and next to the Egg Guards. But I use Invisibility and talk-blocking to avoid talking to Taso Kala so I don't have to fight the Ghaunadauns, where I discover that you only need to send Charname, not the whole party, to speak with Phaere.
Note that if you have SCS installed and try to sneak to Phaere while invisible, one of the nearby mages will use a divination spell on you, which can result in talking with Taso Kala.
Onion-san gets a lucky hit on the Egg Guards, who thankfully only have 10 HP, and Mae's traps kill the other one, allowing us to steal the dragon eggs using Sanctuary to avoid fighting the golems.
One of my mods adds a mind flayer just outside Adalon's lair, who drags you over to the mind flayer city as punishment for rescuing Phaere. But he has no special defenses and we can kill him with Farsight and a planetar, which keeps us well away from the needlessly dangerous mind flayer city.
We hurry outside under Invisibility 10' Radius and make our way to Chapter 6.
We recruit both Drizzt and the Radiant Heart to tackle the vampire lair; I don't trust our party to handle the threat on its own. I arrive at the graveyard while invisible and rest to set the time to daylight so Bodhi's vampire ambush instantly vanishes.
But we still have another drow ambush to deal with, and the enemy appears to have lots of Death Spells, complicating my plans to swarm them with summons from afar.
Our dryads charm the Duergar (the drow have 90% resistance to charm on top of their MR) and discover that they have Web spells memorized for some reason, but are unable to cast them for some reason.
Expecting more Death Spells, I send in a steady stream of summons and provoke the enemy. Our Nymph hits the enemy with Blinding Beauty, which could explain why the enemy mage did nothing during his Time Stop.
It turns out that Conjure Earth Elemental is much stronger than I realized in my install, because the elementals can cast Earthquake just like Sunnis or a planetar. Frisky Bits follows up with Dragon's Breath, which also bypasses MR, and the fight is won.
Against the vampires, we start out strong with a planetar and Dragon's Breath, but after Frisky Bits hits Tanova with Secret Word, I discover that I've failed to protect them from Cloud of Bats. Frisky Bits' spellcasting is crippled.
Frisky Bits cast Wish a few seconds prior and chooses the Time Stop option to wait out the duration of Cloud of Bats. It seems Cloud of Bats doesn't actually impose spell failure; it just deals potentially disruptive piercing damage. This means Frisky Bits can cast certain fast-casting spells without disruption, but no others.
With immense difficulty, I get Frisky Bits back through the narrow hallway despite the summons and enemies crowding it up and manage to land a Wish-rest. Which is very important, because while our planetar got a kill on Tanova's Mislead clone, Tanova killed the planetar using CON drain.
Just as clear up the last of the enemies in the hallway, Tanova teleports over to us and casts Remove Magic. Frisky Bits avoids losing their buffs due to their higher levels and longer-lasting SI: Abjuration spells, but our other party members watch their defenses vanish.
Our planetar hampers Tanova's spellcasting with Holy Word and scores a vorpal hit when the last of her PFMW runs out.
Now I have to deal with Bodhi. And I've been anxious about Bodhi.
Bodhi has massive HP, 75% magic resistance, immunity to cold and electrical damage, immunity to level 1 and 2 spells, and 50% magic damage resistance. Cone of Cold, Chain Lightning, Magic Missile, Melf's Acid Arrow, and the scorcher loop are all useless, and even if we lower her MR to zero, Horrid Wilting and Skull Trap will work at half their normal efficiency. We have to be really careful if we're going to take her down.
After using our planetar to hit Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh with Holy Word, I send out Chara, our least valuable party member in this fight, to pour the Elven Holy Water into the blood pool. But no matter how many times I click it, I always get the same message.
It seems that we lost the holy word somewhere along the way, evidently because a character got killed while holding it and I never thought to recover their equipment, because we have none.
Things are look bad. Bodhi is not slowed, our Planetar is suffering from CON drain, Bodhi wipes out Chara and severely wounds Onion-san with a damage spell, and the enemy is approaching the party. We switch to spell damage and start bombing the enemy. As luck would have it, the mages are not immune to Horrid Wilting.
But the mages don't go down, and our planetar simply can't handle the CON drain. Nothing can survive an SCS vampire's CON drain; only PFMW can block it.
I need time to cast Wish and summon more monsters, so I send Onion-san running rather than have her fall back and bring the vampires to the party. She tries to hide, but it takes her two tries to cast Sanctuary. Meanwhile, the only remaining paladin from the Radiant Heart dies of CON drain.
Onion-san stays on the move; we still need more time. Manasseh loses a spell to Holy Word's spell failure, but otherwise, the situation looks grim. Drizzt is suffering from CON drain, a Wish Breach fails to do anything to the enemy, and the enemy finally finishes off Onion-san.
Frisky Bits gets a Wish Time Stop, but that, too, fails. It seems that if you have another character selected when that Time Stop triggers, the caster of Wish does not actually get to move during Time Stop--it's just 6 rounds of inaction on all sides.
Drizzt finally breaks through Manasseh's Stoneskins, only for a PFMW Contingency to pop up along with a new Stoneskin. Drizzt finally succumbs to CON drain.
Bodhi is abstracted from the fight, but the mages remain. We bomb them incessantly with Horrid Wilting spells and magic attacks while they fight our skeletons. They respond with Remove Magic, debuffing everyone but Frisky Bits, and it goes on like this for quite some time. It takes FIVE castings of Horrid Wilting before Manasseh dies, and that's not counting the Horrid Wilting spells and the Dragon's Breath we cast earlier on. Hazzerbazzer, though, clings to life.
Does it seem implausible that a vampire mage like Hazzerbazzer could survive all that and not even be at Badly Injured? It should.
He hits us with Slow, we counter with Improved Haste, he hits us with Confusion, and Asriel fails his save and engages in melee with Hazzerbazzer, who promptly murders him.
Finally we take down the last of Hazzerbazzer's defenses and start laying on Acid Arrows. But no matter how much damage we apply to him, his health bar refuses to budge.
Finally, I use CTRL-M to check his HP.
Hazzerbazzer is at FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE HIT POINTs despite suffering hundreds of damage over the preceding rounds. Why is that?
Because SCS vampires get a boost to their HP whenever they hit someone with CON drain. The HP bonuses lasts for tens of rounds and cannot be dispelled by any means. Hazzerbazzer has been gathering HP from every summons we throw at him, and he now has more maximum HP than an SCS dragon.
I can always just retreat, rest, and return, but I don't want to do that. Instead, I use the WoL trick to cast Wish 6 times with Frisky Bits' final level 9 spell slot. We get the Wish-rest we need and our new planetar, against the odds, kills Hazzerbazzer in a single hit.
We track down Bodhi and use more Wishes to bring back the party (though the healing part of Wish Resurrection takes a frustrating amount of time to trigger, leaving several of us at 1 HP for an uncomfortable length of time). Frisky Bits buffs with SI: Conjuration and SI: Necromancy to tank Bodhi.
We start casting Lower Resistance, hoping to kill Bodhi with Horrid Wilting and so forth, but the situation looks hopeless. Because of CON drain, she heals herself 25 HP per hit.
Summons have only made Bodhi and the vampires stronger. We need to blind her and isolate her so she can't heal herself with CON. We hit her with PW: Blind and follow up with spell damage, but make the mistake of throwing a Special Snare, which now imposes a Resilient Sphere effect instead of dealing damage
Then I realize that the solution to our problem is actually more summons, not less: Bodhi only has so much APR and can only heal herself by using CON drain on a single critter at a time. If we swarm her, we can overcome her artificial regeneration. We spend the next several rounds summoning critters.
She wipes them all out with a single spell, but we can summon more.
We Slow her and pile on the summons until she triggers her Near Death dialogue and returns to full HP. She wipes out our summons once again.
But here's the thing about Bodhi's transformation: once she delivers that dialogue line, she loses her MINHP1 item, which means she loses all of the immunities that come with it, and is left with only the immunity of a normal vampire.
Which means she is perfectly vulnerable to Imprisonment.
We bring her back with Freedom, but unfortunately, we cannot re-Imprison her for another 91,000 XP. She turns to mist and retreats to her coffin, where we have to stake her.
Mae finally hits level 21 and gets her Maze traps.
I check and double-check Frisky Bits' stats to make sure she can get through the Chosen of Cyric encounter without a fight, but in the end, the encounter never triggers. Instead, we get a normal ambush--which actually could have proven very dangerous if it weren't for Onion-san's fast-casting Holy Word spell, which disrupted a spell that could have been a fatal disabler.
We had, after all, arrived without buffs.
Suldannessellar is uneventful. Our planetar is woefully inadequate to handle a Greater Mithral Golem, but Imprisonment works just fine. Raamilaat falls when we tough out his PFMW, the rakshasas die to Horrid Wilting and Dragon's Breath, we give Nizidramanii'yt all of our worthless gold in exchange for the goblet, and Suneer dies to a blind normal snare (instant death effect at level 20 or 21, save vs. death at +4 negates) while his cronies die when we summon Rillifane.
But now... we're left with an important question.
How are we going to handle Irenicus in Hell?
He attacks during Time Stops, has lots of mage spells, and comes flanked by two Glabrezus and two Balors. I don't see how we can muster the sheer numbers just to kill those demons and outlast the Slayer. Half our party has PFMW, but the other half has absolutely nothing that could keep them alive during Time Stop, nor do we have the spellpower or utility options to disrupt his Time Stop spells (we have PW: Blind, but that leaves Frisky Bits' aura clouded and the hitstun from a normal snare's poison damage won't necessarily disrupt Time Stop). I can see it play out:
Round 1: We run away, but everyone except for our three sorcerers loses their buffs to the various introductory Remove Magic spells. We cast PFMW; Jon-bon casts Time Stop because he has PFMW and full defenses. Round 2: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills Chara. Round 3: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills Mae. Round 4: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills Onion-san. Round 5: A Death spell wipes out all our summons but our planetar. We cast PFMW; Jon-bon casts Time Stop because he has PFMW and full defenses. Round 6-8: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills our planetar.
After that, our sorcerers are all alone and all of the enemies are at max HP. Jon-bon has lost almost nothing; we have lost almost everything.
I can always just use Wish-resting to summon a whole bunch of planetars (entirely possible even in an unmodded game thanks to Project Image), or seed the area with so many traps that Jon-bon and his cronies just can't go anywhere without dying, or use the WoL trick to just get a zillion Wishes. But I don't know if I want to do that.
Frisky Bits is at 4.5 million XP, but the rest of the group is at 2.5 million XP at best. In a normal run, the whole party would be at epic levels, but we've only got one character with HLAs. I avoided gathering lots of XP--even easy quests that would have taken little time--because I gained so much from the Ghoul Lord XP loop, but we've actually ended up weaker than a normal run, instead of stronger. I overcompensated for Frisky Bits' great power; they're only one level higher than they should be, while the rest of the party is two or three levels behind on average.
So, do I go around collecting XP (or repeatedly Imprisoning and freeing that Greater Mithril Golem) to make sure the party overall is as strong as they're supposed to be, or do I just smash Irenicus, refusing to pull any punches, and let the party hit epic levels in ToB?
We summon five skeletons and a ghast on the bridge, and manage to lure only Drasus our way. He enrages, becoming immune to our ghast's paralyzing attacks. But our summons stand their ground and with our party attacking with ranged waepons, he stands no chance.
Rather than resting up, we decide to send our summons ahead, together with invisible, singing Kain. The ghast paralyzes Kysus, which is quite a windfall. I consider him the most dangerous of the four. Genthore does well against our skeletons, so Kain retreats to use a charge from the wand of monster summoning. They new summons finish Kysus.
Kain then lures Genthore to the bridge, and slays him from behind his invisible companions. The same companions then surround Rezdan (who has already used his detection spell), so that he can't quaff an invisibility potions and walk off.
His death is inevitable.
Inside the mines
We use stealth and invisibility to explore the mines but having a lot of faith in our summons, decide to have a go at Hareishan. She teleports toward Viconia, who's visible from summoning her skeletons.
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A well-timed Sanctuary keeps our priestess safe. While our skeletons are about to lose their hold on the entrance to the kitchen, some good wand summons that include two ogres, soak up most of her spells - she almost exclusively casts Enchantment spells - and they seriously injure her.
Viconia saves against a Domination and Commands a near dead Hareishan, then finishes her off with Kagain.
We go invisible again and quickly move on to the next level.
There, Natasha is our next target. Unlike Hareishan, this one is more of an Invoker. Her damage spells can be deadly on LoB difficulty. Edwin throws a well-placed Malison at her, from out of sight,
and Kain Algernon-charms her. We buff her and take her to the ogre mage, but she goes hostile again.
Thankfully we have already summoned some skeletons, so they can draw her aggro, in the hall way rather than the ogre mage's room so that we may be spared the ogre mage's aggro. This works so well that the skeletons end up pursuing Natasha instead of the other way around.
(Note that Kain is always around to boost comrades and/or summons.)
We move on to Davaeorn, whom Shar-Teel shows her affinity with the ways of her mate, warrior poet Kain.
@JuliusBorisov's trick of first luring the battle horrors away, appeals to us, so we try the same. We make sure that only one battle horror sees our skeleton, and indeed it attacks the summon.
However this alarms Davaeorn, so he follows the battle horror. The party retreats, except for invisible Kagain, who gets stuck between our skeletons, and Kain, who's around singing his song. Kagain gets hit hard by a Cone of Cold before he can get away.
After that we have what we want anyway, because our ghast and our skeletons are simply brutal:
The guards keep coming in, so our skeletons that we instruct to focus on Davaeorn, won't last long.
I'm not used to playing without sound, but this part of the session I was due to RL circumstances. As a result I missed an Invocation incantation, a Sunfire that almost meant the end of this run:
Look at that damage, and that's Kain actually making his save This near death experience serves as a wake up call, and fills us with determination as @semiticgod would say. Edwin Malisons Davaeorn and the guards surrounding him from out of sight, and Kain assaults them with wand fireballs. The death of many guards give Tiax an extra Thief (7) level. When only three guards remain, Davaeorn is once more free to move around. Edwin has a Monster Summoning memorized and we have one last charge on our wand of monster summoning. Edwin's summons get some of Davaeorn's lower level spells cast at them, meaning he's run out of his best spells.
Unwilling to take unnecessary risks, we burn the wand of monster summoning. It proves to be enough.
Tiax loots the treasure chests under Sanctuary, we set the miners free, flood the mines, and leave. I'm aware that freeing the slaves is the 'good' cause of action, but killing dozens of miners to save 100 GP doesn't fit Kain.
We travel from area to area, always invisible, ready for any Wyvern, Spider, Ettercap ambushes, and ready too for Molkar or Lamalha, but not once do we get waylaid on our way to Baldur's Gate.
After that killing a Hamadryad was difficult but not dangerous.
We rescued Beador before wiping out a cave full of wyverns and returning to to the Druid Grove. The druids there proved to be extremely powerful and I was resigned to having my entire party wiped out. Through sheer luck Tenya survived as did I. Looking back I think that after using the clerics to buff me including protection from fear, the best ploy would have been to taken them on single handed, only using fireball from Dynaheir to wipe out all the insects after they had all started attacking me.
We then returned to Lathander's Temple where we raised and recuperated the rest of the party.
Unwilling to spend any time on side quests to get the party up to a reasonable level to face Irenicus in Hell, I decide to continue with the party as we are, and only slightly pull our punches against Jon-bon. So I'll Wish-rest before the fight and haul out a bunch of summons, but I'm not going to go in with 10 planetars or 50 traps.
First, we have to deal with Irenicus at the Tree of Life. Unfortunately, we don't get the rolls to score an instant kill with normal snares, and Jon-bon punishes the attempt with a party-wide Breach. Apparently Spell Shield and SI: Abjuration cannot block it in my install; Frisky Bits is also affected.
Frisky Bits' Spell Turning will prevent me from buffing them with Chaotic Commands or Death Ward, so I have them cast SI: Enchantment instead and have them fall back, away from reach. Onion-san launches Holy Word, and since Jon-bon has no Fire Shield, our planetar also contributes an Insect Plague. The Insect Plague bounces off of his Spell Turning and hits our planetar even though we targeted a Spirit Snake instead of Irenicus himself, but Holy Word appears to be holding true: Jon-bon uses a Minor Sequencer instead of Time Stop.
Frisky Bits uses Improved Alacrity to restore some of their buffs, but Asriel failed to escape Irenicus' reach. He casts PFMW a second too late.
Frisky Bits gets another Wish Time Stop, but once again, it fails completely, and I have to wait 36 for it to run out before the battle can resume.
But it's enough to wait out Irenicus' PFMW, and when time returns to normal, Irenicus has several summons and a bunch of Energy Blades coming at him. He loses his last spell.
Asriel died during the fight, but he is automatically resurrected when we enter Hell, though I don't know if that's normal EE behavior or the work of a mod.
Wraith Sarevok dies to our summons. He was never a real challenge, to be honest.
The beholders in the Fear trial are optional, but I'm worried that one of them will start wandering around and zapping people if I don't take them out. So I use Wish Time Stop to cast Imprisonment on the Elder Orb and the nuke the remainder.
Just for safety's sake, I make sure that Frisky Bits is buffed with both Spell Turning and SI: Abjuration, lest the Imprisonment somehow bounce back on them and end the run.
I don't like the idea of leaving the Elder Orb imprisoned there for all eternity (the golem was different; it had no mind), so I set some traps and cast Freedom. But the traps weren't enough to kill it, and suddenly the Elder Orb is firing off its rays.
I pull back Frisky Bits and turn them invisible while the rest of the party takes minor measures to ensure our safety. But Mae is the critical factor: she can Maze trap the beholder as soon as she gets out of visual range.
She sets a couple more Special Snares to buy us time (I don't know how long it'll take for the thing to come back). We finally free it with another Freedom spell, and it arrives on the scene already surrounded, with our party safely tucked behind a wall.
Frisky Bits sacrifices themself to save Chara and the last Tear of Bhaal is ours.
We seed the southern half of the main chamber with Special Snares so that we can force the enemy into a Maze trap if we need to flee. We summon a whole bunch of skeletons, plus a few spirit critters and elementals, but even though we could theoretically continue the process indefinitely due to Wish-resting, I settle for just two planetars.
We only have a single anti-mage option here, and the Slayer's MR can block it: Holy Word. Both the planetar and Onion-san can cast it, but I foolishly send Onion-san southward in the hopes of avoiding Remove Magic, instead of having her cast an extra Holy Word spell to try to inflict spell failure on the Slayer. In the end, she loses her buffs anyway; the Glabrezus both can cast Remove Magic and I think the Balors can as well. Since I don't know if Holy Word will work or not, I have all my sorcerers cast PFMW in anticipation of a fatal Time Stop.
We score a lucky vorpal strike and throw out another Holy Word. We see an indication that it's worked: the Slayer uses a Spell Sequencer instead of casting a spell.
Improved Invisibility should vanish immediately due to a pre-cast True Seeing spell, but it does not. Apparently the Slayer has SI: Divination as a pre-buff. Our sorcerers use Spell Thrust and Pierce Magic on the Slayer to remove it, while our planetars keep spamming Holy Word.
I constantly check the dialogue box to see if the Slayer is casting any spells, but all I see is the Slayer making attack rolls. And then I see true confirmation of the presence of spell failure: the Slayer resorts to a pitiful Minor Sequencer, because it has no better options to use.
But I am absolutely not going to trust this confirmation, however definitive it may seem. To make absolutely certain that we do not get caught off-guard by Time Stop, Frisky Bits pre-emptively re-casts PFMW a whole two rounds before it expires.
Yes, it's only been 10 seconds since the battle began.
We keep applying magic attacks to the Slayer while our summons take down another demon.
I still don't see the Slayer losing its Improved Invisibility, so I decide to re-cast True Seeing. Turns out we didn't have it active to begin with; too many rounds passed in between our pre-buffing phase and the battle itself. The cutscene must have been very long. But True Seeing works, and our struggle to take down the Slayer's nonexistent SI: Divination has also taken down its other spell protections.
The Slayer is totally vulnerable to single-target spells, though its PFMW is still up and its MR is still high. We start to counter both, but the Slayer responds with a crippling Spell Trigger that wipes out all of our summons except for our twin planetars.
Breach should have removed Frisky Bits' Spell Shield, but it failed somehow, so Frisky Bits doesn't have to re-cast Spell Shield. We drop the Slayer's magic resistance, and after our planetars kill the second Glabrezu and use Heal to recover from the enemy's powerful melee attacks, Carl finally lands Breach, robbing the Slayer of both PFMW and Stoneskin as well as its other buffs.
We get an early kill on the balor thanks to another vorpal strike, leaving the Slayer completely alone. The Slayer's PFMW Contingency activates, but with its MR at zero, Frisky Bits can hit it with PW: Blind and severely limit its damage output. Notice that Frisky Bits has Improved Alacrity active, as I wanted PFMW on line as well.
I'm unclear on how many rounds are left in the spell failure from Holy Word (it works via .eff files, so it has no spell notifications from Jimfix), so I throw out Insect Plague to make sure the Slayer's spell failure is at 100% for the next few rounds. With no MR and no spell protections, the Slayer has no defense against Insect Plague. It can't stop Carl's next Breach spell, either.
The planetar's sword dispels its own Insect Plague, but curiously enough, the Slayer does not begin casting spells--even though that should have dispelled the spell failure from Holy Word as well (plus PW: Blind). The Slayer is forced to rely on its melee attacks, but the planetars have Heal spells.
All the while, our mages throw out damage spells while Onion-san buffs up to use Seeking Sword. In the end, it's all overkill. We take down Jon-bon long before we run low on any resources.
But remember those Special Snares we laid to the south? Apparently the Maze effect can still affect Jon-bon, which breaks the cutscene, even if you use Freedom to bring him back. He says one last line, but the cutscene doesn't start.
I have to cure the bug by reloading. Rather than spend another half hour winning the fight a second time, I use a custom spell to help speed up his demise.
Victory! We enter Throne of Bhaal with only a single character at epic levels, and the rest of the party more than 500,000 XP below my original projections each.
The fights have been relatively easy despite the restrictions of the poverty run. But then, I knew long in advance that late SoA and ToB would be the easiest parts of the run, where planetars and Wish would break the difficulty beyond repair. I just need to tough it out and stay disciplined until the Throne of Bhaal.
This is always the most tense part of a tetralogy run for me. Most of ToB is not overly complex, but the final battle with Melissan will be... ugly. I am not sure how I am going to handle the enemy without Protection from Magic scrolls for Sendai and Abazigal. I might end up resorting to trap abuse or an army of celestials.
I'm sure it's possible to win the fight without bypassing the trap or summoning caps. But I'm not willing to gamble on it. I'd rather crush Melissan with a horde of planetars than die because I only had one.
Taking my new 100% no-holds-barred approach into action, I challenge the Guarded Compound. I have Anomen, Korgan, and Rasaad approach the summoning trigger and take out the glabrezu and the rest. An Efreeti was particuarly vexing as it kept changing into mist form and regenerating. I had enough and used a charged Improved Kitthix on it, surrounding it with 6 of the buggers so it couldn't move. When the Efreeti reformed for the 3rd time, it was eaten alive in 2 seconds.
We rest and I buff to capacity. Upon climbing the stairs, Nalia uses another charged Improved Kitthix. All 6 eat Stallman for breakfast as I haste our group.
They begin dining on Olaf Rassmussen but Sion slays them all with Death Spell, but Olaf gets webbed in place before they die.
After a Greater Malison + Slow volley, I cast Spell Immunity: Abjuration on myself and then use a charged Cacofiend to summon 3 Nabassus. Rasaad is Breached by Sion as the 3rd one is gated in, so I have him run into another room. The Nabassus paralyze and then eviscerate Sion.
Not wanting Rasaad to be discovered unprotected by the demons, we try attacking them. By doing this, the demons choose to teleport back home and call us fools instead of fight. Fighting is much easier when you're buffed up this much. With the spoils from their compound sold, Anomen buys Daeros Dragonspear's Full Plate +1 so he is 90% fire resistant in combination with a Helm of Defense. We head to Watcher's Keep to buy a Circlet of the Archmagi for myself, though I'm still short for a Staff of Wizardry.
The Silver Pantaloons are collected. Nalia is abducted by Isaea and then rescued. Travelling to the Umar Hills, we help Jermein and inherit his golem workshop.
Say hello to Fleshy MK I, the Greater Flesh Golem!
We return to the Promenade to gather some golem building supplies when Sir Ryan Trawl appears. It seems that despite the bug with Terl, Anomen's knighthood trial can still begin.
Anomen is knighted and gains a boost to his Wisdom and his alignment changes to LG.
We recruit Valygar temporarily to get him to open the Planar Sphere and then dismiss him. Inside the sphere I level up from Entu and Mogadish's group. Anomen and Korgan level up from fighting Lavok. Rasaad and Coran level up fighting demons outside the sphere; said demons were utterly dominated by a swarm of Hasted Improved Kitthix.
The planar sphere is returned home and Lavok passes ownership of it to me along with the golem laboratory inside. I'm going to be spending a lot of time here and making several visits. Teaching my students and building golems will really make it feel like the sphere belongs to me now.
I assign them the task of making my dagger. The wand is too unreliable and one of the students will die if the Ring of Protection is chosen. I forge 2 Citadel Helmets, which combine the powers of the Helms of Defense and Charm Protection. But this leaves me with insufficient funds to send the Solamnic Knights back home. Off to the Temple Ruins then.
Anomen cleans house by exploding all the undead inside the temple. We're high enough level to cause a lich to spawn!
I throw Protection from Undead onto everyone and lead Anomen into their little corner. Something unexpected happens.
The other enemies were apparently too strong to be turned by Anomen, but not the lich...somehow. Further ahead, another lich spawns. Let's see if Anomen can make lightning strike twice.
A bone golem resides across the tile puzzle. I lure it over to the group, but Fleshy MK I takes a critical from it, killing him.
I'll have to replace him once I'm out of here. The Shadow Dragon goes hostile as soon as I summoned the Improved Kitthix swarm. I had anticipated this, so I cast Haste on all of us and the little buggers start devouring him. But it throws up a PfMW. As Nalia Breaches him, I cast Pierce Magic. As we do so, the dragon uses its breath weapon on our backliners, blinding and level draining us. Nalia and I retreat as Coran goes in for a blind trap setting. His trap doesn't do much damage though. Soon its dead and the Tongue of Acid +3 is on its corpse.
The shade lord is prevented from doing anything on the second round by Anomen's False Dawn confusion. It is handily defeated. I go back to the Promenade and pay Ribald to send the Knights back home, and away they go. I build Fleshy MK II, but it seems he's got a real temper this time.
With the leftover funds from the Temple Ruins, I pay Gaelan and get the Ring of Protection +2 and Amulet of Power. Still more sidequests to do, and I still don't have enough money to get everything that I want just yet.
Illasera was boring because her companions never went hostile (neither did she, preventing traps from working) and she died rather quickly, but the first Pocket Plane trial was an absolute nightmare.
Once again, the SCS anti-chunking component overrode Tresset's fix, allowing Onion-san to be chunked when Irenicus got Time Stop off the ground and launched both Comet and Dragon's Breath. Ultimately, it hinged on two factors:
1. Onion-san didn't react fast enough to hit Jon-bon with Holy Word before he got Time Stop off the ground, allowing him to use all of his HLAs, including Summon Fallen Planetar, during Time Stop. 2. A Wish Magic Resistance bumped Mae's MR up to 40%, preventing her from being blinded by PW: Blind so she could use her Maze traps on Jon-bon and the Fallen Planetar so we could gain control of the situation.
We failed six times in a row to blind Mae. The odds of that happening are less than 5%--absolutely abysmally bad luck. Because we had no way of dealing with the Fallen Planetar, we were on the run for the entire fight, using Teleport Field and struggling to maintain our defenses despite rapidly decreasing spell slots. Worse yet, we failed to land any Wish rests and had to use the WoL trick to summon extra Magical Swords because my other sorcerers died to Insect Plague of all things. It was a long, miserable slog and I'm too tired to post on it in detail.
I don't think Ascension challenges are designed for parties with no items and less than 3 million XP per every party member.
Due to the chunking bug, I had to fight the thing all over again to get Onion-san back per my normal rules. But this time, I just spammed WoL Wishes mercilessly and filled the map with Skeleton Warriors, Fire Elementals, dryads, and planetars. We hit Irenicus with three or four Holy Word spells on the first round and then hammered him with magic attacks while he was helpless to fight back and his allies, Bodhi and Sarevok, were busy getting sat on by an army of summons. Finally we Breached him and he crumpled in seconds.
This is what the fight looked like the first time around, when the Fallen Planetar finally despawned and Frisky Bits had to fight Irenicus with her spellbook already nearly empty.
And this is what it looked like the second time around, when I stopped going easy on Jon-bon and just stomped him into the ground.
I think I'm going to change my rule about chunking: if I see another bug-related chunking, I'm not going to force myself to do the fight all over again. I'm just going to fix the problem and move on.
I don't like how the run is going. It's all about HLAs now. HLAs, summons, Maze traps, and Holy Word; the only other spells that really matter are pre-buffs. And I'm already familiar with all of these tools. The BG1 run was a lot more interesting; I was working on a strategy I'd never tried before. Now I'm just going through the same old motions I always do in ToB: spam high-level spells.
Things will probably be better once I get my other two sorcerers to epic levels. It won't make the gameplay any more complex, but it'll certainly make things a lot smoother when Frisky Bits is not the only competent character in the entire party.
I loved the original version. One thing that I loved about it was that it was before the devs stopped you doing certain things because they didn't want you to. Killing Tazok at the bandit camp for instance. This would be before ToSC of course. That would shorten the game considerably.
Using stealth you could come out of one of the tents, shoot him with a bow. Go back in and hide. Repeat as necessary, sometimes using other tent doors. If he couldn't see you, he didn't start talking. It meant that you got the experience, his bracers and decent armour, but most of all, you got the kick out of killing him. Nothing else changed much, so I couldn't understand why every time a new method was found of killing him, the game was changed so that you couldn't use that method.
The last successful method that I used was to use oil of speed and just keep my distance whilst shooting him with arrows. With SoD if he is in sight when he is near to death, you lose control of your character and he approaches you to talk. If however he is not in sight and you kill him with oil of fiery burning or suchlike, the game just crashes.
That should not happen in a well-designed game. I believe that it is all because the devs can't bring themselves to believe that the Iron Throne might ressurrect him to fight again, though I could be wrong. They could have even have written it into Saravok's script in the final battle that a certain conversation would start if Tazok had previously been killed. Saverok could be scripted to say, "You may have killed Tazok before, but now he is even more powerful!"
If the changes that cause the crash were done deliberately, it seems more than a little childish to me. If not, then slightly better programming was needed so that when he died he would say, "Curse you charname. You may have beaten me this time, but I WILL return!" Or as another character elsewhere said: "I'll be back!"
They do at least let you have his gauntlets which are now in the chest instead of on his body. I personally would say that this crashing is a bug, one that I have complained about before, so I'd better stop moaning about it since it doesn't seem to make any difference. Perhaps it is a difficult bug to iron out, but I wouldn't have thought so considering the amount of talent that there is amongst the programmers.
Everything seems to be going wrong at the moment. In my last post 4 party members were killed due mainly to swarms of insects. After raising them I am ambushed by ettercaps who cast web! If I had been on the ball, I would have equipped Isra with Spider's Bane. She was equipped with a better sword for most occasions, but not when being held was a possibility. Khalid was poisoned and died whilst held. Only I was immune to the web. I managed to save the day but not without losing two party members. Back at the temple now. Looking forward to being able to use harper's call.
There aren't many mod critters in ToB besides Ascension. The only important ones I can think of are the demons from the Wheels of Prophecy mod, including that awful Cambion that nearly ended my previous run by attacking during Time Stop. We see one of the lesser mod critters in Saradush, though she fails a save vs. death on a normal snare and dies instantly.
I finally create a custom buffing spell for each party member, allowing us to set up all of our buffs in 5 seconds instead of 30 or so.
It also looks very pretty, seeing all of the visual effects blossom at once.
There are some locked doors in the vampire area, and Mae has invested zero skill points in lockpicking, but Onion-san can bash locks with Holy Power and DUHM. Holy Word and blind traps get us past the mages before Gromnir.
As long as Frisky Bits is the only one with HLAs, I feel no guilt for spamming Wish. But since Wish alone can't win fights (the Horrid Wilting option no longer targets everyone on the map; it just fires one Horrid Wilting spell), we need the rest of the party to hold the fort while Frisky Bits buys time to summon planetars. We start by having Asriel use PW: Blind on Mae, but I accidentally use a normal snare instead of a Special Snare. It's very effective, but it doesn't get us the Maze effect we wanted.
Frisky Bits lands a Wish Time Stop and uses it to summon a planetar and Imprison Berena Elken, who I believe inflicts spell failure on hit (or maybe it's another enemy; I don't know). They also restore the blindness on Mae (Time Stop would have worn out the duration) and slay Lashar'ra using Energy Blades. And, of course, she re-casts Wish.
We apply a Holy Word to Karun the Black and use a Maze trap to make the enemy fighters vanish, though Karun is too far to the west to be affected.
Karun remains invisible and untouchable as far as I'm aware, so I just spam normal snares to deal poison damage through Stoneskin and use Holy Word to deafen him (I still don't know if deafness' spell failure stacks, or if Karun has any defense against Holy Word).
The Maze traps do a lot to control enemy pressure and let us focus on two enemies at a time (Gromnir appears immune to Maze, probably because of his rage ability). To my surprise, Chara lands the final blow on Gromnir... with Shillelagh, of all things.
Normal snares and Holy Word shut down Karun's spellcasting until his last PFMW runs out.
We use Freedom to bring back the golems and also Berena Elken since I don't like Imprisoning people and just leaving them there and promptly crush them.
I always hated the fire giant temple. The fights are all high-intensity slugfests that take many rounds and involve essentially no strategy. The worst part are the Fire Trolls, which are bugged to be utterly immortal in my install (they're even immune to vorpal strikes for some reason), and since I'm not willing to try Imprisonment on them because permanent Imprisonment feels wrong, I use CTRL-Q to pacify them once I've beaten them.
Aside from the first fight, when we arrived without summons, I've just been steamrolling the fire giants with a horde of summons, and I'll probably do the same for the rest of the fights up until Yaga-Shura... whom I will probably also kill with a horde of summons, honestly, because he's really nothing but a humongous bag of hit points with massive regeneration and 99% resistance to all forms of damage that slowly decreases as time goes on.
Unless you're using the Chaos Blade to score a fast kill with DEX drain, the only way to kill Yaga-Shura is to just punch him a million times. Every strategy is just a variant of that; he has no other defenses or special abilities that complicate the process. Much of ToB is just a contest of numbers, and Yaga-Shura exemplifies that.
The restrictions of the poverty run don't seem to have much impact on ToB gameplay besides making things slower.
@semiticgod, it's humbling to see you on your way to completing the tetralogy in an SCS/Ascension poverty run where I haven't even ever succeeded in any setup. But I ain't mad at cha, ain't got nuthin' but love fo' ya Keep up the excellent work!
Before reaching Baldur's Gate we re-recruit Kivan, and give Kagain a short break, so that we can fight Imanel Silversword and her wolves (a BG1 NPC Project addition). She's a melee warrior as are her wolves, so we defeat her easily with ranged attacks. She drops Kivan's bow, which we return to the ranger, and a suit of elven chain mail, which becomes Kain's armor.
Although we quest extensively for coin and XP in the big city, reporting can be fairly concise. The reason is that we take minimal risk. Even so, Kain somehow manages to add a third narrow escape to his CV (after Andris's Skull Trap on the Ice Island and Davaeorn's Sunfire). But we'll get to that later.
Our skeletons and ghast, often buffed with PfE 10' Radius, Haste, and occasionally Strangth of One (which also increases strength scores of all party members), are nearly unstoppable. They deal with Ordulinian after he goes hostile as we fail to pickpocket his cloak, Ragefast who refuses to relinquish his Nymph, Ramazith, Desreta (whose gauntlets go to Viconia) and Vay-ya, the ogre mage in the sewers, a basilisk, Jalantha Mistmyr, Marek, Yago, Niemain and his friends, and with Entillis Fulsom and Phandalyn whom we slay to keep our reputation at 1 for the best possible shop discounts. The only exception is Sunin with his two guards. Sunin's aides are actually strong enough to defeat our army, and Sunin manages to take down Tiax with collateral damage from a Sunfire.
Don't think that we leave everything to our summons though. This is Edwin taking care of Degrodel's guards.
(Note the companions forming an invisible wall as a safety net for Edwin.) The companions also charm and finish Lothander for a second pair of Paws of the Cheetah. They fight the Mountain Maulers alongside their summons and their new friends, the Merry Fools.
We also do a lot of shopping and thieving, and with the wealth and items we acquire, we have Thalantyr make us some new nice items. They include another Guard's Ring (from two rings of prtotection +1), two pairs of Gauntlets of Grandmastery (+2 Thac0, +2 damage, +1 AC) from gauntlets of weapon skill and expertise and bracers of AC7, and for Shar-Teel the Dagger of Venom +3 (+1 APR, Slow upon hit unless enemy saves vs death). She'll only use it once she gets her Barbarian levels back though.
Iron Throne
The most interesting battle is the Iron Throne battle. We enter the top floor invisibly and move to the back rooms. There Tiax and Vicky summon and buff our undead. Invisible Kain and a skeleton warrior approach Zhalimar Cloudwulfe, causing the two invisible Shennaras to go after the skeleton. (They start out hostile, unlike the other acolytes.) We retreat, ambushing the two aggressive rogues with our undead army. As always, Kain is nearby to lend support with his song. Shar-Teel, who further improved her Detect Illusions ability after I unintentionally allotted points to that skill at level 1, is detecting illusions to frustrate one invisibility potion glugging Shennara. Our army prevails.
With most of our summons still standing, we decide not to rest. Instead Kain attempts to charm Alai. An attempt with Algernon's cloak fails, and so do the first two attempts with Greagan's Harp. The third attempt however succeeds. We have just enough time to make him waste his spells before the Domination effect wears off. Our undead finish him. When we take another peak, we notice that the acolytes have now gone hostile. While the entire party except Kain stay in the backroom, our summons move to the frontline manage to take down Diyab before they're overwhelmed by the enemy.
Naaman casts a detection spell which prompts Kain to retreat and leave the summons to their own devices. Kain gets detected anyway, and worse even, Aasim Flamestrikes him from out of sight.
This screenshot may suggest that Aasim actually sees Kain, but look at the combat log. He was still getting hit by our skeleton warriors on the other side of the corridor. The combat log also shows the auto-pause: enemy sighted after the Flamestrike hit. I assume that Naaman's detection spell made Kain visible for just a moment and that Aasim instantly used his wand of the heavens and then went looking for Kain.
Anyway, Kain manages to go invisible before Aasim can finish his casting of Hold Person, and heals up. We call our skeletons back to occupy the cleric, but that doesn't stop him from casting a Purge Invisibility that reveals Tiax, Edwin, and Vicky.
Our last skeletons fall, so invisible Kain and Shar-Teel rush in to block the enemy. Viconia Confuses Gardush and a near dead Aasim with her Shar-given innate ability.
It results in Gardush slaying Aasim. Edwin summons new minions with the wand of monster summoning. They soak up some of Naaman's spells. When the summons are down Shar-Teel starts to explore the premises. She finds Naaman alone in one of the bedrooms and dispels his mirror images. Kagain then joins and melees the wizard under Defensive Stance while Shar-Teel guards the door.
This leaves only Zhalimar and Gardush (and a less imposing doppelganger) for us to deal with. Both warriors are in Thaldorn's room. Tiax Dooms Gardush, and Edwin Malisons and then Holds both.
This battle is won.
Back in Candlekeep
We report to Eltan and get teleported to Candlekeep. Shar-Teel shrugs off a Charm Person but Edwin gets hit by a Chromatic Orb and a Melf's Acid Arrow. He requires repetitive healing if he's to survive the latter spell. Things look dire for him when his morale breaks, but Kain's song offers solace.
We loot the library and we deal with Rieltar and company. No big deal thanks to our summons occupying Rieltar and thanks to the wand of paralyzation working on both Tuth and Brunos.
We clear the catacombs of spiders, ghasts and doppelgangers (we still want Shar-Teel's Barbarian level to reactivate) and take all treasure of course.
In the caves we show up invisibly. Tiax removes all snares and we patiently take out all the spiders with ranged attacks and some invisible blockers. Since we still have five stone to flesh scrolls from Degrodel we decide to try out the "basilisk loop". It works four times, but we mess up one time when we depetrify a basilisk before the XP from the petrification has registered. Still, we welcome over 3.5k XP per party member, enough for Kagain to reach level 8, his final level in BGEE. With the caves cleared of monsters, we summon five skeleton warriors and our ghast and we cast PfE and Haste on them (and on the party). Kagain and the summons confront Prat. The Dwarf gets singled out by our foes, and gets badly injured by Bor's darts and Tam's arrows in no time. On the plus side, our ghast paralyzes Sakul really early on.
Our summons then best Bor and Prat and Tam (in that order) thanks to their haste, Kain's song, and the sheer number of attacks they bring to the table.
At level 7, a summoned skeleton has 5/2 APR, 100 HPs and 50% slashing and 60% piercing resistance. Also the LoB damage bonus doesn't apply to summons. Five skeleton warriors, i.e. 500 HPs, high damage, elemental and magic resistances, and 12.5 APR means trouble even for many LoB enemies. The skeleton warriors only have 17 Strength but we can boost that to 18/75 with Strength of One. Tiax's ghast is slightly less sturdy at 84 HPs and it doesn't have all their resistances (only 100 poison resistance), but its 4 APR are a menace to any creature that's susceptible to paralyzation.
Our succesful navigation of the caves below Candlekeep marks this run as my most succesful LoB/SCS party run so far, so that's good!
Lower level 1 We had already cleared the upper levels and the entirety of the first lower level, except the four warders. Somewhat luckily we get to take them on one by one. We use the forge room as our basis of operations. Kagain taunts Fear. It has a ranged Hold attack, but the Dwarf is wearing a ring of free action. We take no risk and have Kagain finish it with his recently acquired returning throwing axe from behind two invisible blockers. Edwin, also protected by free action helps out with his returning throwing dagger though he only hits when rolling criticals.
Avarice is a nasty backstabber that goes invisible at will and drops cloudkills everytime he reappears. We have our poison-immune skeleton warriors surround it, with Kain singing and Shar-Teel detecting illusions from afar.
The same strategy works with Love (spell caster), while Pride (powerful warrior) is surrounded by invisible blockers and skeletons and slain by Kagain with his throwing axe.
Lower level 2 The second lower level is actually quite doable as the enemy skeleton warriors are all meleers except for one (which is no match for the combined strength of our summons), and the greater doppelgangers aren't that much of a threat thanks to our Skald song and summons. The doppelgangers that switch between the shapes of Durlag, Kiel, Fuernebol, and Islanne are a bit trickier. Islanne for example is a monster-summoning spell caster, and Durlag and Kiel are strong fighters. Kiel attacks with his morningstar (a blunt weapon), so he has little difficulty dealing with our skeleton warriors. We rely on invisibility and some charges of a wand of monster summoning to defeat them.
These kills make Shar-Teel reach level 8 as a Thief, thus regaining her Barbarian powers, and Edwin level 9, his final BGEE level. Shar-Teel places a second pip in shortbows so we finally have a good bow user in our midst. We loot Kiel's final resting place, slip past the guardians and move on to lower level 3.
Lower level 3 Shar-Teel and Kagain slay the greater wyverns with their ranged weapons. Tiax removes all the traps in the garden, and picks up Bala's Axe to add to Kagain's fine collection of axes. Our skeleton warriors take care of two ashirukurus whose backstabbing powers we respect.
Here we get the bug with the game over screen and all the portraits turned black.
It's a known bug, so I reload without hesitation. The elemental rooms are next. Our skeletons melee the phoenix guards while Kain blasts away with the wand of frost.
The air aspect and its invisible stalkers are quite a pain. Even with invisible party members blocking the air aspect Kagain and Shar-Teel are no match for the invisible stalkers. Maybe they are if they use potions but we only have so many potions, and we want to keep them for boss fights. Kagain ends up slaying our foes with ranged attacks from behind invisible companions.
The ice room is fairly straightforward with the bear and the winter wolves all attacking with ranged frost attacks. Kagain equips the belt of antipode and finishes them with ranged attacks. Last but not least, the fission slime in the earth room is a prey for Edwin and Kain with their wand scorchers:
We stay put to see if we get teleported to the chessboard, like @Serg_BlackStrider did, but alas, nothing happens so we have to use the console.
Chessboard We have to fight this battle twice because we get the same "game over" bug during our first try.
This happens pretty early on when the battle can still go both ways, so I'll just report on the second attempt. We're all invisible as we arrive, and we're quite nervous. After all, we're up against 16 powerful enemies, we can't flee the scene, and we don't get to summon our our undead army as that will only cause the enemy to attack before we can finish casting. Everyone is fully protected from electricity. Edwin and Kain have some armor buffs active. And Kagain and Shar-Teel are buffed with offensive and defensive potions (storm giant strength, invulnerability, heroism, speed, regen). Shar-Teel quaffs hers after reading a PfMagic scroll. It is our intention to take the fight to them, because hanging back too much will only lead to enemy pieces turning into queens. Their king starts out invisible, so our king first reveals theirs.
Shar-Teel then strikes first, with an arrow of dispelling, followed by several hits with Varscona and her upgraded Dagger of Venom. She suffers a number of blows herself as well, including one from the king for 44 damage.
This was kind of expected though. She quaffs an invisibility potion and makes place for Kagain. The Dwarf, still invisible, moves up to the king, activates defensive stance and attacks. He beats the king up pretty good until he suffers major damage from a bishop's Flamestrike. What's worse though, is that his morale fails.
Turns out I failed to properly restore Rogue Rebalancing's Skald song, at least as far as the level 9 version is concerned. The Dwarf falls,
but we continue. Edwin, Stoneskinned and thus safer than Kain, reveals himself to send some wand summons into the fray. They serve mainly to keep our enemy busy and to discourage them from casting detection spells. It prompts the queen to cast a Remove Magic at him, unfortunately just as he drinks an invisibility potion. He occupies a corner where that spell will only affect him.
The queen hits him with some Melf's Minute Meteors, but a second invisibility potion keeps him safe. Meanwhile Shar-Teel, fully recovered from her previous injuries, returns with a nice backstab,
and she poisons the king with her dagger of venom. She focuses all her aggro on the king, sipping from Durlag's Goblet whenever her health gets close to potentially morale failure inducing lows, and finishes her foe.
This was a very exciting battle. When this run became 'completionist' it was one of the first battles I came to dread. After it I repaired the Skald Song in NI, it should be working correctly now.
Lower level 4 After the chessboard the spiders, crypt crawlers and greater ghouls of this level don't feel like much of a challenge. We defeat these enemies with ranged attacks. Edwin kills a couple of helmed horrors with wand scorchers and magic missiles. Vicky get some nice weapon upgrades (Krotan's Skullcrusher, Arla's Dragonbane). We take lots of gold that we desperately wanted. And before we know it, the time has come to face the demon knight. We enter its abode and stick to the entrance. The demon knight can't see us there. Vicky and Tiax summon five skeletons. Tiax casts PfE 10' Radius, Vicky Strength of One, and Kain Haste. Kagain and Shar-Teel buff up similar to the way they did for the chessboard battle in case they need to melee, and Kain and Edwin buff with spells. The five summons then occupy the demon knight in close combat while Kagain and Shar-Teel attack with their throwing axe and shortbow respectively. Tiax and and Vicky try to contribute with spells (Doom, Silence), but the demon knight's MR thwarts their efforts. It doesn't really matter though, because Kagain, Shar-Teel and the skeleton warriors hit our foe all the time, causing most of its spell casting to fail anyway. Evenually even song-twisting Kain joins in to see if he can get the kill, but it's a skeleton warrior that deals the final blow. Here's a few screenshots. It's all pretty straightforward.
We pick up the demon knight's stuff, including a helmet of opposite alignment that might help us persuade some NPC to cross over to the dark side in the future, and leave the imposing tower behind us.
But killing tazok could make prefect sense from a game perspective. As a result he should just be absent in the final battle. It is not as if you meet him anywhere other than the bandit camp or end fight. Same with Angelo for instance.
@Wise_Grimwald: How would you kill Tazok at the bandit camp, and what would change if you succeeded?
Further to my previous answer, there are actually a multitude of ways to kill Tazok, so trying to stop them all is a waste of time. It is quite reasonable that upon being attacked by Tazok that the party flee the tile. When they return Tazok is back where he started in the camp.
The party can then set about laying traps at their leisure, by their thief plus skull traps and glyphs of warding. A member of the party can then lure Tazok into the traps after first weakening him with arrows.
As Tazok approaches the traps, web, cloudkill, fireballs, potions of explosions, oil of fiery burning, necklace of missiles can all be launched at him and the party can then flee if he is still alive and try again. If he is dead, end of story. @Iroumen also makes a very valid point in the previous post, but whether he dies or is resurrected is a decision for the writers. Either would be better than the current situation.
We rescued Maretha (She disappeared until we returned with a live Jaheira) and gave the good news to both Beador and Seniyad. In the process killed ettercaps galore and wyverns in transit. Better tactics worked well against the ettercaps. Whilst doing this fighting Dynaheirs level increased so that she can finally cast improved invisibility and this opens up the way for taking on the Section. So far we are doing well. At 1500 exp each, killing several of the Section Elite caused two more of my party to level up. Several levels still to go down, but as long as we don't make foolish mistakes, I can see us being ready to take on Davaeorn tomorrow, Big if!!
The only two wild cards in the fire giant temple are the Burning Men with their Dispel Magic ability that works regardless of level (and which I thought bypasses SI: Abjuration, but apparently does not) and the Fire Lich. But we don't need to get our mages close to the Burning Men and Holy Word is enough to break the Fire Lich. The only notable event is that Farsight appears to mess with the blind thief trick--a blind thief cannot set traps in a Farsighted area if an enemy is present because Farsight counts as the field of vision for the entire party.
Brimstone the dragon is more troublesome. We send out an army of summons, but Brimstone and the fire giants overwhelm them with pure damage, despite our party's support, and Chara dies to a breath weapon after Remove Magic. Worse yet, a Wing Buffet knocks Asriel clear through a Storm of Vengeance spell and a failed save vs. death means he dies rapidly from poison damage far from anyone who could cure the poison effect.
It's a telling reminder that Frisky Bits is not truly immune to poison, even with PFMW. A Storm of Vengeance spell could deal 72 poison damage over 18 seconds on a failed save vs. death. By itself, it wouldn't be fatal even if we were unable to cure the poison before it was over. But it would only take another 20 damage to end the run.
Anyway, Brimstone destroys our planetars even after we impose Wish intoxication that should have penalized his THAC0 by -12. We end up resorting to Mordenkainen's Swords, against which Brimstone is pretty much helpless, as all he can do is fire the occasional Magic Missile at them.
Yaga-Shura's concubine is hostile for some reason, and even charm can't fix her. Notice that she can move around despite ostensibly being shackled.
Luckily, we do not need to talk to her to complete the questline. We take the hearts to the swamp, use Holy Word to waste the Skeletal Mage's Time Stop, and mob Nyalee with summons.
Frisky Bits' clone vanishes and ambushes us later on, but it fails to erect its defenses before tackling us.
I summon a small army of elementals, celestials, skeletons, spirit critters, and dryads before having Mae walk a planetar out to Yaga-Shura to trigger his arrival and scare him off with a Magic Missile spell.
We turn our attention to the opposing army and wait for Yaga-Shura to return. Oddly enough, some of the fire giants here are vulnerable to charm spells.
Because Yaga-Shura is an absolute idiot, he comes back while still perfectly mortal and attacks us, instead of running away and figuring out how to restore his immortality.
I don't like the Lieutenant Mage he brings with him, so I use a couple of Holy Word spells on him.
In order to beat Yaga-Shura, we need to maintain our army of summons for many rounds so we'll be at full strength when Yaga-Shura's damage resistances starts to go down. To thin the enemy herd and decrease pressure on our summons, I have Mae go visible so Asriel can hit her with PW: Blind, allowing her to set a Maze trap in the thick of combat.
But before I set the trap, I notice that Yaga-Shura is already gone. What happened to him?
I check the combat log. To my disbelief, Yaga-Shura died less than 10 seconds into the fight... because he apparently is missing an immunity I'm all but positive he was supposed to have.
Looking at his .cre file in Near Infinity, it looks like his only immunity to vorpal strikes would have come from the SUREHP1.itm and INVULNER.itm files, both of which should have been removed when we did the Nyalee heart quests. Maybe he is supposed to be vulnerable to vorpal strikes; I don't know. I don't feel bad, though; the battlefield was already quite thoroughly stacked against him.
Chara finally hits level 15! Due to an install error I don't have SCS' Improved Shapeshifting component, but copying the DW#SHEAR.itm file to our override folder and consoling it in can emulate the effect.
The Earth Elemental token was never a big part of my strategy, but it's a nice little bonus that will give Chara something to do in combat besides watch our summons do all the work.
The Oasis has never been a challenging fight for me, but thanks to a mod, I can avoid it with a few dialogue options.
Sendai and Abazigal are going to be tough. In both cases, I'll be arriving in a closed area with very little time to bring out my summons, and Holy Word is not going to be any guarantee of spell failure on Sendai's statues considering her MR.
We're off to solve Trademeet's troubles. Coran pickpockets the Efreeti Flask. At the Druid Grove, we temporarily recruit Cernd because he'd die if he tried to challenge Faldorn by himself. If Anomen ever gets chunked somehow, he's going to be his replacement. I transform him into his Greater Werewolf form and he beats Faldorn fairly fast. I say a silent prayer for my former comrade and I level up for turning in the genie and druid quests.
Onto the Windspear Hills, we slay another former companion of mine, Ajantis. RIP. In Firkraag's dungeon, Fleshy MK II is killed by an Ancient Vampire.
1 second later...
One of the Baby Fleshies is killed by another vampire. The rest are dealt with using a Protection from Undead scroll. Rasaad lures Samia into a bunch of traps laid by Coran.
All of them are reduced to Near Death from the traps, and are easily finished off.
The remaining baby Fleshy is killed by a wraith when we try to rest. I learn to create Iron Golems. Conster dies instantly to some more of Coran's traps.
Then we take on Firkraag. I start off with the usual Hasted Improved Kitthix swarm, but they are fended off by Firkraag's fire breath, killing them or sending them into a panic.
They scatter too widely for a Remove Fear to be effective, so I have our fighters rush in. Things are looking okay for the first few rounds. But Firkraag hits hard and hits often. The first to fall is Rasaad due to his low HP.
Anomen gets hit repeatedly and suffers morale failure. Nalia casts a Resist Fear at him so he regains his composure, but he dies from another hit.
Things are looking pretty grim. Firkraag is only at Injured status and Korgan is almost dead. Nalia attempts to Improved Haste him, but it gets dispelled. Korgan backs off, desperate to cleanse his aura so he can either heal or haste himself again with an oil of speed so he can run away. Our summons take the heat off him just long enough for me to lower Firkraag's magic resistance and for Nalia to debuff him with Greater Malison. After that, I try a charged Polymorph Other, something I fondly remember killing Nizidramanii'yt with some years ago during my ctrl+q playthrough.
I raise our dead with the Rod of Resurrection that I forgot I had from killing Mekrath. Nalia and Rasaad level up from the mobs that spawn on the way out of the dungeon. Coran levels up from turning in the quest to Garren Windspear. The Horn of Valhalla gets upgraded to Iron. I return to my apprentices and they've finished making my dagger. This time I tell them to go for the Horrid Wilting scroll. Then I begin work on Fleshy MK III, a Perfect Flesh Golem.
I decide to do the Shadow Thief questline up until Aran is ready to ship you off to Spellhold. Bodhi is a bit troublesome because I thought there were 3 vampires to stake instead of 2, so she caught me off-guard. The Improved Kitthix swarm dies after about a round and is replaced by the Berserk Warriors from the Horn of Valhalla, to little effect.
Korgan and Rasaad get level drained: Korgan through carelessness on my part and Rasaad was just because he got too close. Fleshy MK III is destroyed by Bodhi, splitting into two normal Fleshies.
The fight is won and we report back to Aran, which earns Sir Anomen and Coran a level. On to Rasaad's questline. Korgan, Rasaad, and I level up during this part. Nothing interesting happens, though I completely avoid all damage in the Room of Pain via Stoneskin and Mirror Image. Both Fleshies die in the assault on the Twofold Temple. We trawl the forest gathering XP and getting Coran the Mana Bow +4. My apprentices failed to make the Horrid Wilting scroll but they survived. I tell them to stop and they teleport out for their graduation. Fleshy MK IV gets built. Now its off to the Planar Prison.
I'm trembling as I write this... I forgot to prebuff before fighting Lonk the Sane, so I went into the Irenicus fight without any prebuffs... And we're talking about the SCS full prebuff type of fight... That was just so freaking tense, but I somehow managed to survived !!
No-reloading the BG saga is not good for your heart...
I'm trembling as I write this... I forgot to prebuff before fighting Lonk the Sane, so I went into the Irenicus fight without any prebuffs... And we're talking about the SCS full prebuff type of fight... That was just so freaking tense, but I somehow managed to survived !!
No-reloading the BG saga is not good for your heart...
I wonder if blowing a no-reload run late in the trilogy is a justifiable excuse to take a sick day at work.
I'm trembling as I write this... I forgot to prebuff before fighting Lonk the Sane, so I went into the Irenicus fight without any prebuffs... And we're talking about the SCS full prebuff type of fight... That was just so freaking tense, but I somehow managed to survived !!
No-reloading the BG saga is not good for your heart...
So long as you didn't damage your heart, this would have strengthened it.
Iloïnen encountered no trouble in Brynnlaw (where I skipped all quests and just killed Perth) or Spellhold - Irenicus and her clone both were killed in a single round with a GWW:
I entered the city of caverns to gain access to two valuable cloaks and made my way through the underdark. Mind flayers and demon knights can do little against cleric buffs, but elder eyes are a different story, which is why I skipped the southern tunnels. I also only needed the merchant items from Ust'Natha, so I avoided doing any sidequests in the drow city and just quickly completed the main questline.
Back at the surface, I bought some new items from Ribald, got some potions from Roger and forged Crom Faeyr. I also entered WK level 2 (to get access to the FoA +4 as soon as I enter ToB). I was getting a bit impatient and feeling a bit too powerful, so I got myself into the first situation that forced me to use "unplanned" safety measures since early SoA - Confronted on both sides by swarms of enemies, I used an invisibility potion to avoid any unpleasant combination of critical hits:
To be fair, I propably could've just destroyed these spiders with 1-2 GWWs, but why take the risk?
Just for fun (and because I hadn't hit the XP cap yet), I killled the chromatic demon with harm:
I don't actually plan to do WK level 3... I might change my mind, but it feels kind of unsafe for a solo character. Well, I certainly won't do it in SoA.
A quick final note: I took out Bodhi and her vampires (and hit the experience cap while clearing her lair) - Vampires are obviously very, very easy to kill for Iloïnen (with the iMoD +2, 25 strength, high level turn undead, multiple sunrays, devas and the like), though Eric stole the Bodhi kill:
Slowly but surely we are making our way down through the Section HQ in Beregost. Jaheira levelled up which means that we have insect plague which is a big step forward. It also means that if Dynaheir dies we will be able to raise her using Harper's Call.
EDIT
We have had to raise her once so far. This was due to Dynaheirs protections being dispelled. Quite a difficult dungeon, but we will survive. Perhaps.
Quick question Grimwald... don't you get teleported to the bottom and have to fight your way up? I wasn't planning on tackling it for now because of that.
I'm trembling as I write this... I forgot to prebuff before fighting Lonk the Sane, so I went into the Irenicus fight without any prebuffs... And we're talking about the SCS full prebuff type of fight... That was just so freaking tense, but I somehow managed to survived !!
No-reloading the BG saga is not good for your heart...
So long as you didn't damage your heart, this would have strengthened it.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger... or is that even true for no-reloads? Maybe something like "We never lose, we win or we learn" would be a better motto!
Comments
No news in Brynnlaw but Asriel getting confused and trying to kill Calahan before we blinded him. The githyanki ambush is a major threat, though, because Mind Blast knocks you out on a failed save vs. spell. We keep everyone safe with Chaotic Commands and two or three Spirit Armor spells to guarantee a successful save.
At City Sushi, I CTRL-J too close to some sahuagin and Frisky Bits gets stunned by a stray bolt--and poisoned as well a moment later, forcing me to abandon an Invisibility spell in case Remove Paralysis doesn't work and we're left with an invisible poisoned stunned character whose poison we can't cure due to invisibility.
But Remove Paralysis is successful, and we rescue Frisky Bits from the poison.
It serves as a pointed reminder that Frisky Bits is only immune to disablers so long as we keep them properly buffed, and that immunity to poison is completely inaccessible to us without items or Spell Revisions (in which Neutralize Poison also grants long-duration immunity to poison and poison damage).
Fittingly enough, City Sushi has Nereids and therefore Water Weirds. I don't know if Horrid Wilting does extra damage to these critters, as it should, but it's not like Horrid Wilting really needs extra damage.
Our summons deal with all other threats in the city.
We enter the Underdark while invisible and line up at the western wall in order to cast our pre-buffs and summoning spells without being in the mod-introduced enemy drow party's field of vision (they start out neutral, so our summons don't trigger the fight, either). After setting up our defenses, laying some traps, and conjuring some critters, we use Farsight to study the situation. We have three high-level enemy mages on the map.
We send out Chara, Snowy Tae, and our planetar to distract the enemy mages while our sorcerers hang back; I want to use Project Image to spam Wish and I need Asriel and Carl to be able to kill Frisky Bits' Project Image clone if the enemy should approach our sorcerers (Project Images leaves the caster extremely, extremely vulnerable, and I've lost a run to mind flayers who got automatic hits on a solo mage under the effects of Project Image). Unfortunately, we lose almost all of our summons to a Death Spell.
We have two strong anti-mage options: Holy Word from our planetar (especially helpful because at least one of the drow mages erroneously has zero MR) and normal snares from Mae, currently under the effects of Frisky Bits' PW: Blind. An early Insect Plague also proves effective, though Fire Shield pre-buffs are supposed to cure it as well as block it.
Better still, the enemy is quite vulnerable to Nature's Beauty, though a True Seeing spell should cure it if the mages are smart enough to cast the spell.
Frisky Bits has landed a Wish-rest and therefore switches to casting Improved Alacrity so they can throw out a new planetar and some quick Wishes while the fight is going in our favor. Meanwhile, Mae's traps prove crippling.
The mages crumple, and our sorcerers finish off the wounded cleric.
A scorcher loop proves disappointing against the local elementals (which my mods make substantially tougher; the portals here are not just easy XP), but damage spells crush the vanilla drow ambush despite their sky-high MR.
We trigger the triple mind flayer ambush early while Frisky Bits is still immune to psionics and Frisky Bits uses their new Freedom spell to get Chara out of Psionic Maze early, freeing Vithal in the process.
Why Freedom? To be honest, I can't think of any time I've gotten anyone imprisoned in my install aside from the Kangaxx fight (which I have no reason to attempt), so countering Imprisonment is probably not going to be a threat, ever. But since using a scroll is simply not an option, I'm not willing to take the chance of getting caught off-guard.
Freedom could also prove useful to bring monsters out of Mae's Maze traps, once she finally hits level 21. Critters of different INT values return at different rates, but we could force them to come back all at the same time using Freedom.
The Balor proves overwhelmingly far more dangerous than I expected thanks to its Remove Magic and Firestorm spells and its powerful attacks and teleport spells--especially because I failed to buff our sorcerers with SI: Abjuration. Our other characters keep the demon distracted, however, and allow our sorcerers to kill it with Lower Resistance followed by spell damage.
I planned on tackling the Kuo-toa Prince simply by relying on spell damage, but it turns out that he's immune to electrical damage and acid damage and, like all kuo-toa, has 90% resistance to magical damage. We end up killing him with summons.
The Kuo-toa Prince is pretty sturdy, but he simply isn't as dangerous as the beholder hive or the mind flayer city, our other two choices for completing the Ust Natha questline.
Like always, I tackle the drow guarding the Underdark exit well before entering Ust Natha so Adalon doesn't teleport us on top of a dangerous ambush later on. Traps kill the first mage, but our summons prove unable to hold back the rest, and the enemy advances on the party. We respond with spell damage. The enemy has extremely high MR, but whenever we get past it, we hit really hard.
Before starting the Ust Natha questline, we set lots of traps on Chandrilla's spawn point as well as the mind flayer+umber hulk ambush site. Only Damien survives the first set of traps, and the second set of traps greatly simplifies the fight to save Phaere.
We also trap the beholder in the east quadrant of the city before we spawn it, relying on our summons to kill it while the party hides behind Invisibility 10' Radius.
Since I don't like fighting Qilue (and have the WIS to avoid that questline) and have little incentive to deal with the Deirex questline or do the pit fights in the tavern, I have lots of free resting periods, which means I can, over the course of the Ust Natha questline, set extra traps both on the Ghaunadaur priest spawn point and next to the Egg Guards. But I use Invisibility and talk-blocking to avoid talking to Taso Kala so I don't have to fight the Ghaunadauns, where I discover that you only need to send Charname, not the whole party, to speak with Phaere.
Note that if you have SCS installed and try to sneak to Phaere while invisible, one of the nearby mages will use a divination spell on you, which can result in talking with Taso Kala.
Onion-san gets a lucky hit on the Egg Guards, who thankfully only have 10 HP, and Mae's traps kill the other one, allowing us to steal the dragon eggs using Sanctuary to avoid fighting the golems.
One of my mods adds a mind flayer just outside Adalon's lair, who drags you over to the mind flayer city as punishment for rescuing Phaere. But he has no special defenses and we can kill him with Farsight and a planetar, which keeps us well away from the needlessly dangerous mind flayer city.
We hurry outside under Invisibility 10' Radius and make our way to Chapter 6.
We recruit both Drizzt and the Radiant Heart to tackle the vampire lair; I don't trust our party to handle the threat on its own. I arrive at the graveyard while invisible and rest to set the time to daylight so Bodhi's vampire ambush instantly vanishes.
But we still have another drow ambush to deal with, and the enemy appears to have lots of Death Spells, complicating my plans to swarm them with summons from afar.
Our dryads charm the Duergar (the drow have 90% resistance to charm on top of their MR) and discover that they have Web spells memorized for some reason, but are unable to cast them for some reason.
Expecting more Death Spells, I send in a steady stream of summons and provoke the enemy. Our Nymph hits the enemy with Blinding Beauty, which could explain why the enemy mage did nothing during his Time Stop.
It turns out that Conjure Earth Elemental is much stronger than I realized in my install, because the elementals can cast Earthquake just like Sunnis or a planetar. Frisky Bits follows up with Dragon's Breath, which also bypasses MR, and the fight is won.
Against the vampires, we start out strong with a planetar and Dragon's Breath, but after Frisky Bits hits Tanova with Secret Word, I discover that I've failed to protect them from Cloud of Bats. Frisky Bits' spellcasting is crippled.
Frisky Bits cast Wish a few seconds prior and chooses the Time Stop option to wait out the duration of Cloud of Bats. It seems Cloud of Bats doesn't actually impose spell failure; it just deals potentially disruptive piercing damage. This means Frisky Bits can cast certain fast-casting spells without disruption, but no others.
With immense difficulty, I get Frisky Bits back through the narrow hallway despite the summons and enemies crowding it up and manage to land a Wish-rest. Which is very important, because while our planetar got a kill on Tanova's Mislead clone, Tanova killed the planetar using CON drain.
Just as clear up the last of the enemies in the hallway, Tanova teleports over to us and casts Remove Magic. Frisky Bits avoids losing their buffs due to their higher levels and longer-lasting SI: Abjuration spells, but our other party members watch their defenses vanish.
Our planetar hampers Tanova's spellcasting with Holy Word and scores a vorpal hit when the last of her PFMW runs out.
Now I have to deal with Bodhi. And I've been anxious about Bodhi.
Bodhi has massive HP, 75% magic resistance, immunity to cold and electrical damage, immunity to level 1 and 2 spells, and 50% magic damage resistance. Cone of Cold, Chain Lightning, Magic Missile, Melf's Acid Arrow, and the scorcher loop are all useless, and even if we lower her MR to zero, Horrid Wilting and Skull Trap will work at half their normal efficiency. We have to be really careful if we're going to take her down.
After using our planetar to hit Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh with Holy Word, I send out Chara, our least valuable party member in this fight, to pour the Elven Holy Water into the blood pool. But no matter how many times I click it, I always get the same message.
It seems that we lost the holy word somewhere along the way, evidently because a character got killed while holding it and I never thought to recover their equipment, because we have none.
Things are look bad. Bodhi is not slowed, our Planetar is suffering from CON drain, Bodhi wipes out Chara and severely wounds Onion-san with a damage spell, and the enemy is approaching the party. We switch to spell damage and start bombing the enemy. As luck would have it, the mages are not immune to Horrid Wilting.
But the mages don't go down, and our planetar simply can't handle the CON drain. Nothing can survive an SCS vampire's CON drain; only PFMW can block it.
I need time to cast Wish and summon more monsters, so I send Onion-san running rather than have her fall back and bring the vampires to the party. She tries to hide, but it takes her two tries to cast Sanctuary. Meanwhile, the only remaining paladin from the Radiant Heart dies of CON drain.
Onion-san stays on the move; we still need more time. Manasseh loses a spell to Holy Word's spell failure, but otherwise, the situation looks grim. Drizzt is suffering from CON drain, a Wish Breach fails to do anything to the enemy, and the enemy finally finishes off Onion-san.
Frisky Bits gets a Wish Time Stop, but that, too, fails. It seems that if you have another character selected when that Time Stop triggers, the caster of Wish does not actually get to move during Time Stop--it's just 6 rounds of inaction on all sides.
Drizzt finally breaks through Manasseh's Stoneskins, only for a PFMW Contingency to pop up along with a new Stoneskin. Drizzt finally succumbs to CON drain.
Bodhi is abstracted from the fight, but the mages remain. We bomb them incessantly with Horrid Wilting spells and magic attacks while they fight our skeletons. They respond with Remove Magic, debuffing everyone but Frisky Bits, and it goes on like this for quite some time. It takes FIVE castings of Horrid Wilting before Manasseh dies, and that's not counting the Horrid Wilting spells and the Dragon's Breath we cast earlier on. Hazzerbazzer, though, clings to life.
Does it seem implausible that a vampire mage like Hazzerbazzer could survive all that and not even be at Badly Injured? It should.
He hits us with Slow, we counter with Improved Haste, he hits us with Confusion, and Asriel fails his save and engages in melee with Hazzerbazzer, who promptly murders him.
Finally we take down the last of Hazzerbazzer's defenses and start laying on Acid Arrows. But no matter how much damage we apply to him, his health bar refuses to budge.
Finally, I use CTRL-M to check his HP.
Hazzerbazzer is at FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE HIT POINTs despite suffering hundreds of damage over the preceding rounds. Why is that?
Because SCS vampires get a boost to their HP whenever they hit someone with CON drain. The HP bonuses lasts for tens of rounds and cannot be dispelled by any means. Hazzerbazzer has been gathering HP from every summons we throw at him, and he now has more maximum HP than an SCS dragon.
I can always just retreat, rest, and return, but I don't want to do that. Instead, I use the WoL trick to cast Wish 6 times with Frisky Bits' final level 9 spell slot. We get the Wish-rest we need and our new planetar, against the odds, kills Hazzerbazzer in a single hit.
We track down Bodhi and use more Wishes to bring back the party (though the healing part of Wish Resurrection takes a frustrating amount of time to trigger, leaving several of us at 1 HP for an uncomfortable length of time). Frisky Bits buffs with SI: Conjuration and SI: Necromancy to tank Bodhi.
We start casting Lower Resistance, hoping to kill Bodhi with Horrid Wilting and so forth, but the situation looks hopeless. Because of CON drain, she heals herself 25 HP per hit.
Summons have only made Bodhi and the vampires stronger. We need to blind her and isolate her so she can't heal herself with CON. We hit her with PW: Blind and follow up with spell damage, but make the mistake of throwing a Special Snare, which now imposes a Resilient Sphere effect instead of dealing damage
Then I realize that the solution to our problem is actually more summons, not less: Bodhi only has so much APR and can only heal herself by using CON drain on a single critter at a time. If we swarm her, we can overcome her artificial regeneration. We spend the next several rounds summoning critters.
She wipes them all out with a single spell, but we can summon more.
We Slow her and pile on the summons until she triggers her Near Death dialogue and returns to full HP. She wipes out our summons once again.
But here's the thing about Bodhi's transformation: once she delivers that dialogue line, she loses her MINHP1 item, which means she loses all of the immunities that come with it, and is left with only the immunity of a normal vampire.
Which means she is perfectly vulnerable to Imprisonment.
We bring her back with Freedom, but unfortunately, we cannot re-Imprison her for another 91,000 XP. She turns to mist and retreats to her coffin, where we have to stake her.
Mae finally hits level 21 and gets her Maze traps.
I check and double-check Frisky Bits' stats to make sure she can get through the Chosen of Cyric encounter without a fight, but in the end, the encounter never triggers. Instead, we get a normal ambush--which actually could have proven very dangerous if it weren't for Onion-san's fast-casting Holy Word spell, which disrupted a spell that could have been a fatal disabler.
We had, after all, arrived without buffs.
Suldannessellar is uneventful. Our planetar is woefully inadequate to handle a Greater Mithral Golem, but Imprisonment works just fine. Raamilaat falls when we tough out his PFMW, the rakshasas die to Horrid Wilting and Dragon's Breath, we give Nizidramanii'yt all of our worthless gold in exchange for the goblet, and Suneer dies to a blind normal snare (instant death effect at level 20 or 21, save vs. death at +4 negates) while his cronies die when we summon Rillifane.
But now... we're left with an important question.
How are we going to handle Irenicus in Hell?
He attacks during Time Stops, has lots of mage spells, and comes flanked by two Glabrezus and two Balors. I don't see how we can muster the sheer numbers just to kill those demons and outlast the Slayer. Half our party has PFMW, but the other half has absolutely nothing that could keep them alive during Time Stop, nor do we have the spellpower or utility options to disrupt his Time Stop spells (we have PW: Blind, but that leaves Frisky Bits' aura clouded and the hitstun from a normal snare's poison damage won't necessarily disrupt Time Stop). I can see it play out:
Round 1: We run away, but everyone except for our three sorcerers loses their buffs to the various introductory Remove Magic spells. We cast PFMW; Jon-bon casts Time Stop because he has PFMW and full defenses.
Round 2: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills Chara.
Round 3: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills Mae.
Round 4: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills Onion-san.
Round 5: A Death spell wipes out all our summons but our planetar. We cast PFMW; Jon-bon casts Time Stop because he has PFMW and full defenses.
Round 6-8: Time Stop. Jon-bon kills our planetar.
After that, our sorcerers are all alone and all of the enemies are at max HP. Jon-bon has lost almost nothing; we have lost almost everything.
I can always just use Wish-resting to summon a whole bunch of planetars (entirely possible even in an unmodded game thanks to Project Image), or seed the area with so many traps that Jon-bon and his cronies just can't go anywhere without dying, or use the WoL trick to just get a zillion Wishes. But I don't know if I want to do that.
Frisky Bits is at 4.5 million XP, but the rest of the group is at 2.5 million XP at best. In a normal run, the whole party would be at epic levels, but we've only got one character with HLAs. I avoided gathering lots of XP--even easy quests that would have taken little time--because I gained so much from the Ghoul Lord XP loop, but we've actually ended up weaker than a normal run, instead of stronger. I overcompensated for Frisky Bits' great power; they're only one level higher than they should be, while the rest of the party is two or three levels behind on average.
So, do I go around collecting XP (or repeatedly Imprisoning and freeing that Greater Mithril Golem) to make sure the party overall is as strong as they're supposed to be, or do I just smash Irenicus, refusing to pull any punches, and let the party hit epic levels in ToB?
1st report
2nd report
3rd report
4th report
Drasus & Co.
We summon five skeletons and a ghast on the bridge, and manage to lure only Drasus our way. He enrages, becoming immune to our ghast's paralyzing attacks. But our summons stand their ground and with our party attacking with ranged waepons, he stands no chance.
Inside the mines
We use stealth and invisibility to explore the mines but having a lot of faith in our summons, decide to have a go at Hareishan. She teleports toward Viconia, who's visible from summoning her skeletons.
There, Natasha is our next target. Unlike Hareishan, this one is more of an Invoker. Her damage spells can be deadly on LoB difficulty. Edwin throws a well-placed Malison at her, from out of sight,
We move on to Davaeorn, whom Shar-Teel shows her affinity with the ways of her mate, warrior poet Kain.
I'm not used to playing without sound, but this part of the session I was due to RL circumstances. As a result I missed an Invocation incantation, a Sunfire that almost meant the end of this run:
This near death experience serves as a wake up call, and fills us with determination as @semiticgod would say. Edwin Malisons Davaeorn and the guards surrounding him from out of sight, and Kain assaults them with wand fireballs. The death of many guards give Tiax an extra Thief (7) level. When only three guards remain, Davaeorn is once more free to move around. Edwin has a Monster Summoning memorized and we have one last charge on our wand of monster summoning. Edwin's summons get some of Davaeorn's lower level spells cast at them, meaning he's run out of his best spells.
We travel from area to area, always invisible, ready for any Wyvern, Spider, Ettercap ambushes, and ready too for Molkar or Lamalha, but not once do we get waylaid on our way to Baldur's Gate.
Journal of Hrothgara
Miranda the witch forced us to kill her.The druids there proved to be extremely powerful and I was resigned to having my entire party wiped out. Through sheer luck Tenya survived as did I.
Looking back I think that after using the clerics to buff me including protection from fear, the best ploy would have been to taken them on single handed, only using fireball from Dynaheir to wipe out all the insects after they had all started attacking me.
We then returned to Lathander's Temple where we raised and recuperated the rest of the party.
Unwilling to spend any time on side quests to get the party up to a reasonable level to face Irenicus in Hell, I decide to continue with the party as we are, and only slightly pull our punches against Jon-bon. So I'll Wish-rest before the fight and haul out a bunch of summons, but I'm not going to go in with 10 planetars or 50 traps.
First, we have to deal with Irenicus at the Tree of Life. Unfortunately, we don't get the rolls to score an instant kill with normal snares, and Jon-bon punishes the attempt with a party-wide Breach. Apparently Spell Shield and SI: Abjuration cannot block it in my install; Frisky Bits is also affected.
Frisky Bits' Spell Turning will prevent me from buffing them with Chaotic Commands or Death Ward, so I have them cast SI: Enchantment instead and have them fall back, away from reach. Onion-san launches Holy Word, and since Jon-bon has no Fire Shield, our planetar also contributes an Insect Plague. The Insect Plague bounces off of his Spell Turning and hits our planetar even though we targeted a Spirit Snake instead of Irenicus himself, but Holy Word appears to be holding true: Jon-bon uses a Minor Sequencer instead of Time Stop.
Frisky Bits uses Improved Alacrity to restore some of their buffs, but Asriel failed to escape Irenicus' reach. He casts PFMW a second too late.
Frisky Bits gets another Wish Time Stop, but once again, it fails completely, and I have to wait 36 for it to run out before the battle can resume.
But it's enough to wait out Irenicus' PFMW, and when time returns to normal, Irenicus has several summons and a bunch of Energy Blades coming at him. He loses his last spell.
Asriel died during the fight, but he is automatically resurrected when we enter Hell, though I don't know if that's normal EE behavior or the work of a mod.
Wraith Sarevok dies to our summons. He was never a real challenge, to be honest.
The beholders in the Fear trial are optional, but I'm worried that one of them will start wandering around and zapping people if I don't take them out. So I use Wish Time Stop to cast Imprisonment on the Elder Orb and the nuke the remainder.
Just for safety's sake, I make sure that Frisky Bits is buffed with both Spell Turning and SI: Abjuration, lest the Imprisonment somehow bounce back on them and end the run.
I don't like the idea of leaving the Elder Orb imprisoned there for all eternity (the golem was different; it had no mind), so I set some traps and cast Freedom. But the traps weren't enough to kill it, and suddenly the Elder Orb is firing off its rays.
I pull back Frisky Bits and turn them invisible while the rest of the party takes minor measures to ensure our safety. But Mae is the critical factor: she can Maze trap the beholder as soon as she gets out of visual range.
She sets a couple more Special Snares to buy us time (I don't know how long it'll take for the thing to come back). We finally free it with another Freedom spell, and it arrives on the scene already surrounded, with our party safely tucked behind a wall.
Frisky Bits sacrifices themself to save Chara and the last Tear of Bhaal is ours.
We seed the southern half of the main chamber with Special Snares so that we can force the enemy into a Maze trap if we need to flee. We summon a whole bunch of skeletons, plus a few spirit critters and elementals, but even though we could theoretically continue the process indefinitely due to Wish-resting, I settle for just two planetars.
We only have a single anti-mage option here, and the Slayer's MR can block it: Holy Word. Both the planetar and Onion-san can cast it, but I foolishly send Onion-san southward in the hopes of avoiding Remove Magic, instead of having her cast an extra Holy Word spell to try to inflict spell failure on the Slayer. In the end, she loses her buffs anyway; the Glabrezus both can cast Remove Magic and I think the Balors can as well. Since I don't know if Holy Word will work or not, I have all my sorcerers cast PFMW in anticipation of a fatal Time Stop.
We score a lucky vorpal strike and throw out another Holy Word. We see an indication that it's worked: the Slayer uses a Spell Sequencer instead of casting a spell.
Improved Invisibility should vanish immediately due to a pre-cast True Seeing spell, but it does not. Apparently the Slayer has SI: Divination as a pre-buff. Our sorcerers use Spell Thrust and Pierce Magic on the Slayer to remove it, while our planetars keep spamming Holy Word.
I constantly check the dialogue box to see if the Slayer is casting any spells, but all I see is the Slayer making attack rolls. And then I see true confirmation of the presence of spell failure: the Slayer resorts to a pitiful Minor Sequencer, because it has no better options to use.
But I am absolutely not going to trust this confirmation, however definitive it may seem. To make absolutely certain that we do not get caught off-guard by Time Stop, Frisky Bits pre-emptively re-casts PFMW a whole two rounds before it expires.
Yes, it's only been 10 seconds since the battle began.
We keep applying magic attacks to the Slayer while our summons take down another demon.
I still don't see the Slayer losing its Improved Invisibility, so I decide to re-cast True Seeing. Turns out we didn't have it active to begin with; too many rounds passed in between our pre-buffing phase and the battle itself. The cutscene must have been very long. But True Seeing works, and our struggle to take down the Slayer's nonexistent SI: Divination has also taken down its other spell protections.
The Slayer is totally vulnerable to single-target spells, though its PFMW is still up and its MR is still high. We start to counter both, but the Slayer responds with a crippling Spell Trigger that wipes out all of our summons except for our twin planetars.
Breach should have removed Frisky Bits' Spell Shield, but it failed somehow, so Frisky Bits doesn't have to re-cast Spell Shield. We drop the Slayer's magic resistance, and after our planetars kill the second Glabrezu and use Heal to recover from the enemy's powerful melee attacks, Carl finally lands Breach, robbing the Slayer of both PFMW and Stoneskin as well as its other buffs.
We get an early kill on the balor thanks to another vorpal strike, leaving the Slayer completely alone. The Slayer's PFMW Contingency activates, but with its MR at zero, Frisky Bits can hit it with PW: Blind and severely limit its damage output. Notice that Frisky Bits has Improved Alacrity active, as I wanted PFMW on line as well.
I'm unclear on how many rounds are left in the spell failure from Holy Word (it works via .eff files, so it has no spell notifications from Jimfix), so I throw out Insect Plague to make sure the Slayer's spell failure is at 100% for the next few rounds. With no MR and no spell protections, the Slayer has no defense against Insect Plague. It can't stop Carl's next Breach spell, either.
The planetar's sword dispels its own Insect Plague, but curiously enough, the Slayer does not begin casting spells--even though that should have dispelled the spell failure from Holy Word as well (plus PW: Blind). The Slayer is forced to rely on its melee attacks, but the planetars have Heal spells.
All the while, our mages throw out damage spells while Onion-san buffs up to use Seeking Sword. In the end, it's all overkill. We take down Jon-bon long before we run low on any resources.
But remember those Special Snares we laid to the south? Apparently the Maze effect can still affect Jon-bon, which breaks the cutscene, even if you use Freedom to bring him back. He says one last line, but the cutscene doesn't start.
I have to cure the bug by reloading. Rather than spend another half hour winning the fight a second time, I use a custom spell to help speed up his demise.
Victory! We enter Throne of Bhaal with only a single character at epic levels, and the rest of the party more than 500,000 XP below my original projections each.
The fights have been relatively easy despite the restrictions of the poverty run. But then, I knew long in advance that late SoA and ToB would be the easiest parts of the run, where planetars and Wish would break the difficulty beyond repair. I just need to tough it out and stay disciplined until the Throne of Bhaal.
This is always the most tense part of a tetralogy run for me. Most of ToB is not overly complex, but the final battle with Melissan will be... ugly. I am not sure how I am going to handle the enemy without Protection from Magic scrolls for Sendai and Abazigal. I might end up resorting to trap abuse or an army of celestials.
I'm sure it's possible to win the fight without bypassing the trap or summoning caps. But I'm not willing to gamble on it. I'd rather crush Melissan with a horde of planetars than die because I only had one.
Brunash "Height-Based Pun" the Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9SoD: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
SoA: 1, 2
Taking my new 100% no-holds-barred approach into action, I challenge the Guarded Compound. I have Anomen, Korgan, and Rasaad approach the summoning trigger and take out the glabrezu and the rest. An Efreeti was particuarly vexing as it kept changing into mist form and regenerating. I had enough and used a charged Improved Kitthix on it, surrounding it with 6 of the buggers so it couldn't move. When the Efreeti reformed for the 3rd time, it was eaten alive in 2 seconds.
We rest and I buff to capacity. Upon climbing the stairs, Nalia uses another charged Improved Kitthix. All 6 eat Stallman for breakfast as I haste our group.
They begin dining on Olaf Rassmussen but Sion slays them all with Death Spell, but Olaf gets webbed in place before they die.
After a Greater Malison + Slow volley, I cast Spell Immunity: Abjuration on myself and then use a charged Cacofiend to summon 3 Nabassus. Rasaad is Breached by Sion as the 3rd one is gated in, so I have him run into another room. The Nabassus paralyze and then eviscerate Sion.
Not wanting Rasaad to be discovered unprotected by the demons, we try attacking them. By doing this, the demons choose to teleport back home and call us fools instead of fight. Fighting is much easier when you're buffed up this much. With the spoils from their compound sold, Anomen buys Daeros Dragonspear's Full Plate +1 so he is 90% fire resistant in combination with a Helm of Defense. We head to Watcher's Keep to buy a Circlet of the Archmagi for myself, though I'm still short for a Staff of Wizardry.
The Silver Pantaloons are collected. Nalia is abducted by Isaea and then rescued. Travelling to the Umar Hills, we help Jermein and inherit his golem workshop.
Say hello to Fleshy MK I, the Greater Flesh Golem!
We return to the Promenade to gather some golem building supplies when Sir Ryan Trawl appears. It seems that despite the bug with Terl, Anomen's knighthood trial can still begin.
Anomen is knighted and gains a boost to his Wisdom and his alignment changes to LG.
We recruit Valygar temporarily to get him to open the Planar Sphere and then dismiss him. Inside the sphere I level up from Entu and Mogadish's group. Anomen and Korgan level up from fighting Lavok. Rasaad and Coran level up fighting demons outside the sphere; said demons were utterly dominated by a swarm of Hasted Improved Kitthix.
The planar sphere is returned home and Lavok passes ownership of it to me along with the golem laboratory inside. I'm going to be spending a lot of time here and making several visits. Teaching my students and building golems will really make it feel like the sphere belongs to me now.
I assign them the task of making my dagger. The wand is too unreliable and one of the students will die if the Ring of Protection is chosen. I forge 2 Citadel Helmets, which combine the powers of the Helms of Defense and Charm Protection. But this leaves me with insufficient funds to send the Solamnic Knights back home. Off to the Temple Ruins then.
Anomen cleans house by exploding all the undead inside the temple. We're high enough level to cause a lich to spawn!
I throw Protection from Undead onto everyone and lead Anomen into their little corner. Something unexpected happens.
The other enemies were apparently too strong to be turned by Anomen, but not the lich...somehow. Further ahead, another lich spawns. Let's see if Anomen can make lightning strike twice.
A bone golem resides across the tile puzzle. I lure it over to the group, but Fleshy MK I takes a critical from it, killing him.
I'll have to replace him once I'm out of here. The Shadow Dragon goes hostile as soon as I summoned the Improved Kitthix swarm. I had anticipated this, so I cast Haste on all of us and the little buggers start devouring him. But it throws up a PfMW. As Nalia Breaches him, I cast Pierce Magic. As we do so, the dragon uses its breath weapon on our backliners, blinding and level draining us. Nalia and I retreat as Coran goes in for a blind trap setting. His trap doesn't do much damage though. Soon its dead and the Tongue of Acid +3 is on its corpse.
The shade lord is prevented from doing anything on the second round by Anomen's False Dawn confusion. It is handily defeated. I go back to the Promenade and pay Ribald to send the Knights back home, and away they go. I build Fleshy MK II, but it seems he's got a real temper this time.
With the leftover funds from the Temple Ruins, I pay Gaelan and get the Ring of Protection +2 and Amulet of Power. Still more sidequests to do, and I still don't have enough money to get everything that I want just yet.
Brunash - Enchanter 15
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 17
Korgan - Berserker 16
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 17
Coran - Fighter 12/Bounty Hunter 15
Nalia - Sorcerer 15
Once again, the SCS anti-chunking component overrode Tresset's fix, allowing Onion-san to be chunked when Irenicus got Time Stop off the ground and launched both Comet and Dragon's Breath. Ultimately, it hinged on two factors:
1. Onion-san didn't react fast enough to hit Jon-bon with Holy Word before he got Time Stop off the ground, allowing him to use all of his HLAs, including Summon Fallen Planetar, during Time Stop.
2. A Wish Magic Resistance bumped Mae's MR up to 40%, preventing her from being blinded by PW: Blind so she could use her Maze traps on Jon-bon and the Fallen Planetar so we could gain control of the situation.
We failed six times in a row to blind Mae. The odds of that happening are less than 5%--absolutely abysmally bad luck. Because we had no way of dealing with the Fallen Planetar, we were on the run for the entire fight, using Teleport Field and struggling to maintain our defenses despite rapidly decreasing spell slots. Worse yet, we failed to land any Wish rests and had to use the WoL trick to summon extra Magical Swords because my other sorcerers died to Insect Plague of all things. It was a long, miserable slog and I'm too tired to post on it in detail.
I don't think Ascension challenges are designed for parties with no items and less than 3 million XP per every party member.
Due to the chunking bug, I had to fight the thing all over again to get Onion-san back per my normal rules. But this time, I just spammed WoL Wishes mercilessly and filled the map with Skeleton Warriors, Fire Elementals, dryads, and planetars. We hit Irenicus with three or four Holy Word spells on the first round and then hammered him with magic attacks while he was helpless to fight back and his allies, Bodhi and Sarevok, were busy getting sat on by an army of summons. Finally we Breached him and he crumpled in seconds.
This is what the fight looked like the first time around, when the Fallen Planetar finally despawned and Frisky Bits had to fight Irenicus with her spellbook already nearly empty.
And this is what it looked like the second time around, when I stopped going easy on Jon-bon and just stomped him into the ground.
I think I'm going to change my rule about chunking: if I see another bug-related chunking, I'm not going to force myself to do the fight all over again. I'm just going to fix the problem and move on.
I don't like how the run is going. It's all about HLAs now. HLAs, summons, Maze traps, and Holy Word; the only other spells that really matter are pre-buffs. And I'm already familiar with all of these tools. The BG1 run was a lot more interesting; I was working on a strategy I'd never tried before. Now I'm just going through the same old motions I always do in ToB: spam high-level spells.
Things will probably be better once I get my other two sorcerers to epic levels. It won't make the gameplay any more complex, but it'll certainly make things a lot smoother when Frisky Bits is not the only competent character in the entire party.
The last successful method that I used was to use oil of speed and just keep my distance whilst shooting him with arrows. With SoD if he is in sight when he is near to death, you lose control of your character and he approaches you to talk. If however he is not in sight and you kill him with oil of fiery burning or suchlike, the game just crashes.
That should not happen in a well-designed game. I believe that it is all because the devs can't bring themselves to believe that the Iron Throne might ressurrect him to fight again, though I could be wrong. They could have even have written it into Saravok's script in the final battle that a certain conversation would start if Tazok had previously been killed. Saverok could be scripted to say, "You may have killed Tazok before, but now he is even more powerful!"
If the changes that cause the crash were done deliberately, it seems more than a little childish to me. If not, then slightly better programming was needed so that when he died he would say, "Curse you charname. You may have beaten me this time, but I WILL return!" Or as another character elsewhere said: "I'll be back!"
They do at least let you have his gauntlets which are now in the chest instead of on his body.
Journal of Hrothgara
Everything seems to be going wrong at the moment. In my last post 4 party members were killed due mainly to swarms of insects. After raising them I am ambushed by ettercaps who cast web! If I had been on the ball, I would have equipped Isra with Spider's Bane. She was equipped with a better sword for most occasions, but not when being held was a possibility. Khalid was poisoned and died whilst held. Only I was immune to the web. I managed to save the day but not without losing two party members.There aren't many mod critters in ToB besides Ascension. The only important ones I can think of are the demons from the Wheels of Prophecy mod, including that awful Cambion that nearly ended my previous run by attacking during Time Stop. We see one of the lesser mod critters in Saradush, though she fails a save vs. death on a normal snare and dies instantly.
I finally create a custom buffing spell for each party member, allowing us to set up all of our buffs in 5 seconds instead of 30 or so.
It also looks very pretty, seeing all of the visual effects blossom at once.
There are some locked doors in the vampire area, and Mae has invested zero skill points in lockpicking, but Onion-san can bash locks with Holy Power and DUHM. Holy Word and blind traps get us past the mages before Gromnir.
As long as Frisky Bits is the only one with HLAs, I feel no guilt for spamming Wish. But since Wish alone can't win fights (the Horrid Wilting option no longer targets everyone on the map; it just fires one Horrid Wilting spell), we need the rest of the party to hold the fort while Frisky Bits buys time to summon planetars. We start by having Asriel use PW: Blind on Mae, but I accidentally use a normal snare instead of a Special Snare. It's very effective, but it doesn't get us the Maze effect we wanted.
Frisky Bits lands a Wish Time Stop and uses it to summon a planetar and Imprison Berena Elken, who I believe inflicts spell failure on hit (or maybe it's another enemy; I don't know). They also restore the blindness on Mae (Time Stop would have worn out the duration) and slay Lashar'ra using Energy Blades. And, of course, she re-casts Wish.
We apply a Holy Word to Karun the Black and use a Maze trap to make the enemy fighters vanish, though Karun is too far to the west to be affected.
Karun remains invisible and untouchable as far as I'm aware, so I just spam normal snares to deal poison damage through Stoneskin and use Holy Word to deafen him (I still don't know if deafness' spell failure stacks, or if Karun has any defense against Holy Word).
The Maze traps do a lot to control enemy pressure and let us focus on two enemies at a time (Gromnir appears immune to Maze, probably because of his rage ability). To my surprise, Chara lands the final blow on Gromnir... with Shillelagh, of all things.
Normal snares and Holy Word shut down Karun's spellcasting until his last PFMW runs out.
We use Freedom to bring back the golems and also Berena Elken since I don't like Imprisoning people and just leaving them there and promptly crush them.
I always hated the fire giant temple. The fights are all high-intensity slugfests that take many rounds and involve essentially no strategy. The worst part are the Fire Trolls, which are bugged to be utterly immortal in my install (they're even immune to vorpal strikes for some reason), and since I'm not willing to try Imprisonment on them because permanent Imprisonment feels wrong, I use CTRL-Q to pacify them once I've beaten them.
Aside from the first fight, when we arrived without summons, I've just been steamrolling the fire giants with a horde of summons, and I'll probably do the same for the rest of the fights up until Yaga-Shura... whom I will probably also kill with a horde of summons, honestly, because he's really nothing but a humongous bag of hit points with massive regeneration and 99% resistance to all forms of damage that slowly decreases as time goes on.
Unless you're using the Chaos Blade to score a fast kill with DEX drain, the only way to kill Yaga-Shura is to just punch him a million times. Every strategy is just a variant of that; he has no other defenses or special abilities that complicate the process. Much of ToB is just a contest of numbers, and Yaga-Shura exemplifies that.
The restrictions of the poverty run don't seem to have much impact on ToB gameplay besides making things slower.
But I ain't mad at cha, ain't got nuthin' but love fo' ya
Kain, NE LoB Skald (6th report)
1st report
2nd report
3rd report
4th report
5th report
In Baldur's Gate
Before reaching Baldur's Gate we re-recruit Kivan, and give Kagain a short break, so that we can fight Imanel Silversword and her wolves (a BG1 NPC Project addition). She's a melee warrior as are her wolves, so we defeat her easily with ranged attacks. She drops Kivan's bow, which we return to the ranger, and a suit of elven chain mail, which becomes Kain's armor.
Although we quest extensively for coin and XP in the big city, reporting can be fairly concise. The reason is that we take minimal risk. Even so, Kain somehow manages to add a third narrow escape to his CV (after Andris's Skull Trap on the Ice Island and Davaeorn's Sunfire). But we'll get to that later.
Our skeletons and ghast, often buffed with PfE 10' Radius, Haste, and occasionally Strangth of One (which also increases strength scores of all party members), are nearly unstoppable. They deal with Ordulinian after he goes hostile as we fail to pickpocket his cloak, Ragefast who refuses to relinquish his Nymph, Ramazith, Desreta (whose gauntlets go to Viconia) and Vay-ya, the ogre mage in the sewers, a basilisk, Jalantha Mistmyr, Marek, Yago, Niemain and his friends, and with Entillis Fulsom and Phandalyn whom we slay to keep our reputation at 1 for the best possible shop discounts.
The only exception is Sunin with his two guards. Sunin's aides are actually strong enough to defeat our army, and Sunin manages to take down Tiax with collateral damage from a Sunfire.
Don't think that we leave everything to our summons though. This is Edwin taking care of Degrodel's guards.
We also do a lot of shopping and thieving, and with the wealth and items we acquire, we have Thalantyr make us some new nice items. They include another Guard's Ring (from two rings of prtotection +1), two pairs of Gauntlets of Grandmastery (+2 Thac0, +2 damage, +1 AC) from gauntlets of weapon skill and expertise and bracers of AC7, and for Shar-Teel the Dagger of Venom +3 (+1 APR, Slow upon hit unless enemy saves vs death). She'll only use it once she gets her Barbarian levels back though.
Iron Throne
The most interesting battle is the Iron Throne battle. We enter the top floor invisibly and move to the back rooms. There Tiax and Vicky summon and buff our undead. Invisible Kain and a skeleton warrior approach Zhalimar Cloudwulfe, causing the two invisible Shennaras to go after the skeleton. (They start out hostile, unlike the other acolytes.) We retreat, ambushing the two aggressive rogues with our undead army. As always, Kain is nearby to lend support with his song. Shar-Teel, who further improved her Detect Illusions ability after I unintentionally allotted points to that skill at level 1, is detecting illusions to frustrate one invisibility potion glugging Shennara. Our army prevails.
When we take another peak, we notice that the acolytes have now gone hostile. While the entire party except Kain stay in the backroom, our summons move to the frontline manage to take down Diyab before they're overwhelmed by the enemy.
Anyway, Kain manages to go invisible before Aasim can finish his casting of Hold Person, and heals up. We call our skeletons back to occupy the cleric, but that doesn't stop him from casting a Purge Invisibility that reveals Tiax, Edwin, and Vicky.
It results in Gardush slaying Aasim. Edwin summons new minions with the wand of monster summoning. They soak up some of Naaman's spells. When the summons are down Shar-Teel starts to explore the premises. She finds Naaman alone in one of the bedrooms and dispels his mirror images. Kagain then joins and melees the wizard under Defensive Stance while Shar-Teel guards the door.
Back in Candlekeep
We report to Eltan and get teleported to Candlekeep. Shar-Teel shrugs off a Charm Person but Edwin gets hit by a Chromatic Orb and a Melf's Acid Arrow. He requires repetitive healing if he's to survive the latter spell. Things look dire for him when his morale breaks, but Kain's song offers solace.
We clear the catacombs of spiders, ghasts and doppelgangers (we still want Shar-Teel's Barbarian level to reactivate) and take all treasure of course.
In the caves we show up invisibly. Tiax removes all snares and we patiently take out all the spiders with ranged attacks and some invisible blockers. Since we still have five stone to flesh scrolls from Degrodel we decide to try out the "basilisk loop". It works four times, but we mess up one time when we depetrify a basilisk before the XP from the petrification has registered. Still, we welcome over 3.5k XP per party member, enough for Kagain to reach level 8, his final level in BGEE.
With the caves cleared of monsters, we summon five skeleton warriors and our ghast and we cast PfE and Haste on them (and on the party). Kagain and the summons confront Prat. The Dwarf gets singled out by our foes, and gets badly injured by Bor's darts and Tam's arrows in no time. On the plus side, our ghast paralyzes Sakul really early on.
At level 7, a summoned skeleton has 5/2 APR, 100 HPs and 50% slashing and 60% piercing resistance. Also the LoB damage bonus doesn't apply to summons. Five skeleton warriors, i.e. 500 HPs, high damage, elemental and magic resistances, and 12.5 APR means trouble even for many LoB enemies. The skeleton warriors only have 17 Strength but we can boost that to 18/75 with Strength of One. Tiax's ghast is slightly less sturdy at 84 HPs and it doesn't have all their resistances (only 100 poison resistance), but its 4 APR are a menace to any creature that's susceptible to paralyzation.
Our succesful navigation of the caves below Candlekeep marks this run as my most succesful LoB/SCS party run so far, so that's good!
1st report
2nd report
3rd report
4th report
5th report
6th report
Durlag's tower
Lower level 1
We had already cleared the upper levels and the entirety of the first lower level, except the four warders. Somewhat luckily we get to take them on one by one. We use the forge room as our basis of operations. Kagain taunts Fear. It has a ranged Hold attack, but the Dwarf is wearing a ring of free action. We take no risk and have Kagain finish it with his recently acquired returning throwing axe from behind two invisible blockers. Edwin, also protected by free action helps out with his returning throwing dagger though he only hits when rolling criticals.
Lower level 2
The second lower level is actually quite doable as the enemy skeleton warriors are all meleers except for one (which is no match for the combined strength of our summons), and the greater doppelgangers aren't that much of a threat thanks to our Skald song and summons. The doppelgangers that switch between the shapes of Durlag, Kiel, Fuernebol, and Islanne are a bit trickier. Islanne for example is a monster-summoning spell caster, and Durlag and Kiel are strong fighters. Kiel attacks with his morningstar (a blunt weapon), so he has little difficulty dealing with our skeleton warriors. We rely on invisibility and some charges of a wand of monster summoning to defeat them.
Lower level 3
Shar-Teel and Kagain slay the greater wyverns with their ranged weapons. Tiax removes all the traps in the garden, and picks up Bala's Axe to add to Kagain's fine collection of axes. Our skeleton warriors take care of two ashirukurus whose backstabbing powers we respect.
The elemental rooms are next. Our skeletons melee the phoenix guards while Kain blasts away with the wand of frost.
Chessboard
We have to fight this battle twice because we get the same "game over" bug during our first try.
We're all invisible as we arrive, and we're quite nervous. After all, we're up against 16 powerful enemies, we can't flee the scene, and we don't get to summon our our undead army as that will only cause the enemy to attack before we can finish casting. Everyone is fully protected from electricity. Edwin and Kain have some armor buffs active. And Kagain and Shar-Teel are buffed with offensive and defensive potions (storm giant strength, invulnerability, heroism, speed, regen). Shar-Teel quaffs hers after reading a PfMagic scroll. It is our intention to take the fight to them, because hanging back too much will only lead to enemy pieces turning into queens. Their king starts out invisible, so our king first reveals theirs.
Lower level 4
After the chessboard the spiders, crypt crawlers and greater ghouls of this level don't feel like much of a challenge. We defeat these enemies with ranged attacks. Edwin kills a couple of helmed horrors with wand scorchers and magic missiles. Vicky get some nice weapon upgrades (Krotan's Skullcrusher, Arla's Dragonbane). We take lots of gold that we desperately wanted. And before we know it, the time has come to face the demon knight.
We enter its abode and stick to the entrance. The demon knight can't see us there. Vicky and Tiax summon five skeletons. Tiax casts PfE 10' Radius, Vicky Strength of One, and Kain Haste. Kagain and Shar-Teel buff up similar to the way they did for the chessboard battle in case they need to melee, and Kain and Edwin buff with spells. The five summons then occupy the demon knight in close combat while Kagain and Shar-Teel attack with their throwing axe and shortbow respectively. Tiax and and Vicky try to contribute with spells (Doom, Silence), but the demon knight's MR thwarts their efforts. It doesn't really matter though, because Kagain, Shar-Teel and the skeleton warriors hit our foe all the time, causing most of its spell casting to fail anyway. Evenually even song-twisting Kain joins in to see if he can get the kill, but it's a skeleton warrior that deals the final blow. Here's a few screenshots. It's all pretty straightforward.
Same with Angelo for instance.
When they return Tazok is back where he started in the camp.
The party can then set about laying traps at their leisure, by their thief plus skull traps and glyphs of warding. A member of the party can then lure Tazok into the traps after first weakening him with arrows.
As Tazok approaches the traps, web, cloudkill, fireballs, potions of explosions, oil of fiery burning, necklace of missiles can all be launched at him and the party can then flee if he is still alive and try again. If he is dead, end of story. @Iroumen also makes a very valid point in the previous post, but whether he dies or is resurrected is a decision for the writers. Either would be better than the current situation.
Journal of Hrothgara
We rescued Maretha (She disappeared until we returned with a live Jaheira) and gave the good news to both Beador and Seniyad. In the process killed ettercaps galore and wyverns in transit. Better tactics worked well against the ettercaps.The only two wild cards in the fire giant temple are the Burning Men with their Dispel Magic ability that works regardless of level (and which I thought bypasses SI: Abjuration, but apparently does not) and the Fire Lich. But we don't need to get our mages close to the Burning Men and Holy Word is enough to break the Fire Lich. The only notable event is that Farsight appears to mess with the blind thief trick--a blind thief cannot set traps in a Farsighted area if an enemy is present because Farsight counts as the field of vision for the entire party.
Brimstone the dragon is more troublesome. We send out an army of summons, but Brimstone and the fire giants overwhelm them with pure damage, despite our party's support, and Chara dies to a breath weapon after Remove Magic. Worse yet, a Wing Buffet knocks Asriel clear through a Storm of Vengeance spell and a failed save vs. death means he dies rapidly from poison damage far from anyone who could cure the poison effect.
It's a telling reminder that Frisky Bits is not truly immune to poison, even with PFMW. A Storm of Vengeance spell could deal 72 poison damage over 18 seconds on a failed save vs. death. By itself, it wouldn't be fatal even if we were unable to cure the poison before it was over. But it would only take another 20 damage to end the run.
Anyway, Brimstone destroys our planetars even after we impose Wish intoxication that should have penalized his THAC0 by -12. We end up resorting to Mordenkainen's Swords, against which Brimstone is pretty much helpless, as all he can do is fire the occasional Magic Missile at them.
Yaga-Shura's concubine is hostile for some reason, and even charm can't fix her. Notice that she can move around despite ostensibly being shackled.
Luckily, we do not need to talk to her to complete the questline. We take the hearts to the swamp, use Holy Word to waste the Skeletal Mage's Time Stop, and mob Nyalee with summons.
Frisky Bits' clone vanishes and ambushes us later on, but it fails to erect its defenses before tackling us.
I summon a small army of elementals, celestials, skeletons, spirit critters, and dryads before having Mae walk a planetar out to Yaga-Shura to trigger his arrival and scare him off with a Magic Missile spell.
We turn our attention to the opposing army and wait for Yaga-Shura to return. Oddly enough, some of the fire giants here are vulnerable to charm spells.
Because Yaga-Shura is an absolute idiot, he comes back while still perfectly mortal and attacks us, instead of running away and figuring out how to restore his immortality.
I don't like the Lieutenant Mage he brings with him, so I use a couple of Holy Word spells on him.
In order to beat Yaga-Shura, we need to maintain our army of summons for many rounds so we'll be at full strength when Yaga-Shura's damage resistances starts to go down. To thin the enemy herd and decrease pressure on our summons, I have Mae go visible so Asriel can hit her with PW: Blind, allowing her to set a Maze trap in the thick of combat.
But before I set the trap, I notice that Yaga-Shura is already gone. What happened to him?
I check the combat log. To my disbelief, Yaga-Shura died less than 10 seconds into the fight... because he apparently is missing an immunity I'm all but positive he was supposed to have.
Looking at his .cre file in Near Infinity, it looks like his only immunity to vorpal strikes would have come from the SUREHP1.itm and INVULNER.itm files, both of which should have been removed when we did the Nyalee heart quests. Maybe he is supposed to be vulnerable to vorpal strikes; I don't know. I don't feel bad, though; the battlefield was already quite thoroughly stacked against him.
Chara finally hits level 15! Due to an install error I don't have SCS' Improved Shapeshifting component, but copying the DW#SHEAR.itm file to our override folder and consoling it in can emulate the effect.
The Earth Elemental token was never a big part of my strategy, but it's a nice little bonus that will give Chara something to do in combat besides watch our summons do all the work.
The Oasis has never been a challenging fight for me, but thanks to a mod, I can avoid it with a few dialogue options.
Sendai and Abazigal are going to be tough. In both cases, I'll be arriving in a closed area with very little time to bring out my summons, and Holy Word is not going to be any guarantee of spell failure on Sendai's statues considering her MR.
Brunash the Skyscraping Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9SoD: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
SoA: 1, 2, 3
We're off to solve Trademeet's troubles. Coran pickpockets the Efreeti Flask. At the Druid Grove, we temporarily recruit Cernd because he'd die if he tried to challenge Faldorn by himself. If Anomen ever gets chunked somehow, he's going to be his replacement. I transform him into his Greater Werewolf form and he beats Faldorn fairly fast. I say a silent prayer for my former comrade and I level up for turning in the genie and druid quests.
Onto the Windspear Hills, we slay another former companion of mine, Ajantis. RIP. In Firkraag's dungeon, Fleshy MK II is killed by an Ancient Vampire.
1 second later...
One of the Baby Fleshies is killed by another vampire. The rest are dealt with using a Protection from Undead scroll. Rasaad lures Samia into a bunch of traps laid by Coran.
All of them are reduced to Near Death from the traps, and are easily finished off.
The remaining baby Fleshy is killed by a wraith when we try to rest. I learn to create Iron Golems. Conster dies instantly to some more of Coran's traps.
Then we take on Firkraag. I start off with the usual Hasted Improved Kitthix swarm, but they are fended off by Firkraag's fire breath, killing them or sending them into a panic.
They scatter too widely for a Remove Fear to be effective, so I have our fighters rush in. Things are looking okay for the first few rounds. But Firkraag hits hard and hits often. The first to fall is Rasaad due to his low HP.
Anomen gets hit repeatedly and suffers morale failure. Nalia casts a Resist Fear at him so he regains his composure, but he dies from another hit.
Things are looking pretty grim. Firkraag is only at Injured status and Korgan is almost dead. Nalia attempts to Improved Haste him, but it gets dispelled. Korgan backs off, desperate to cleanse his aura so he can either heal or haste himself again with an oil of speed so he can run away. Our summons take the heat off him just long enough for me to lower Firkraag's magic resistance and for Nalia to debuff him with Greater Malison. After that, I try a charged Polymorph Other, something I fondly remember killing Nizidramanii'yt with some years ago during my ctrl+q playthrough.
I raise our dead with the Rod of Resurrection that I forgot I had from killing Mekrath. Nalia and Rasaad level up from the mobs that spawn on the way out of the dungeon. Coran levels up from turning in the quest to Garren Windspear. The Horn of Valhalla gets upgraded to Iron. I return to my apprentices and they've finished making my dagger. This time I tell them to go for the Horrid Wilting scroll. Then I begin work on Fleshy MK III, a Perfect Flesh Golem.
I decide to do the Shadow Thief questline up until Aran is ready to ship you off to Spellhold. Bodhi is a bit troublesome because I thought there were 3 vampires to stake instead of 2, so she caught me off-guard. The Improved Kitthix swarm dies after about a round and is replaced by the Berserk Warriors from the Horn of Valhalla, to little effect.
Korgan and Rasaad get level drained: Korgan through carelessness on my part and Rasaad was just because he got too close. Fleshy MK III is destroyed by Bodhi, splitting into two normal Fleshies.
The fight is won and we report back to Aran, which earns Sir Anomen and Coran a level. On to Rasaad's questline. Korgan, Rasaad, and I level up during this part. Nothing interesting happens, though I completely avoid all damage in the Room of Pain via Stoneskin and Mirror Image. Both Fleshies die in the assault on the Twofold Temple. We trawl the forest gathering XP and getting Coran the Mana Bow +4. My apprentices failed to make the Horrid Wilting scroll but they survived. I tell them to stop and they teleport out for their graduation. Fleshy MK IV gets built. Now its off to the Planar Prison.
Brunash - Enchanter 17
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 19
Korgan - Berserker 18
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 19
Coran - Fighter 13/Bounty Hunter 16
Nalia - Sorcerer 16
No-reloading the BG saga is not good for your heart...
Previous posts:
Part II: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/916040/#Comment_916040
Part III: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/916127/#Comment_916127
Part IV: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/916767/#Comment_916767
Part V: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/917078/#Comment_917078
Part VI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/917934/#Comment_917934
Part VII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/918418/#Comment_918418
Iloïnen encountered no trouble in Brynnlaw (where I skipped all quests and just killed Perth) or Spellhold - Irenicus and her clone both were killed in a single round with a GWW:
I entered the city of caverns to gain access to two valuable cloaks and made my way through the underdark. Mind flayers and demon knights can do little against cleric buffs, but elder eyes are a different story, which is why I skipped the southern tunnels. I also only needed the merchant items from Ust'Natha, so I avoided doing any sidequests in the drow city and just quickly completed the main questline.
Back at the surface, I bought some new items from Ribald, got some potions from Roger and forged Crom Faeyr. I also entered WK level 2 (to get access to the FoA +4 as soon as I enter ToB). I was getting a bit impatient and feeling a bit too powerful, so I got myself into the first situation that forced me to use "unplanned" safety measures since early SoA - Confronted on both sides by swarms of enemies, I used an invisibility potion to avoid any unpleasant combination of critical hits:
To be fair, I propably could've just destroyed these spiders with 1-2 GWWs, but why take the risk?
Just for fun (and because I hadn't hit the XP cap yet), I killled the chromatic demon with harm:
I don't actually plan to do WK level 3... I might change my mind, but it feels kind of unsafe for a solo character. Well, I certainly won't do it in SoA.
A quick final note: I took out Bodhi and her vampires (and hit the experience cap while clearing her lair) - Vampires are obviously very, very easy to kill for Iloïnen (with the iMoD +2, 25 strength, high level turn undead, multiple sunrays, devas and the like), though Eric stole the Bodhi kill:
Next time, I will try to finish SoA.
Enuhal
Journal of Hrothgara
Slowly but surely we are making our way down through the Section HQ in Beregost.Jaheira levelled up which means that we have insect plague which is a big step forward. It also means that if Dynaheir dies we will be able to raise her using Harper's Call.
EDIT
We have had to raise her once so far. This was due to Dynaheirs protections being dispelled.