@Grond0: Your Charname is the Totemic Druid, right? Is there any reason why? I made my Charname one of the sorcerers so I'd have PFMW later on to deal with planetars and such.
Do you have Ascension installed? Because druids are notoriously quick to die against Ascension Melissan, as @JuliusBorisov's Totemic Druid Yahiko tragically showed us.
@semiticgod I do have Ascension installed, but I've never actually got further than the very start of ToB with it installed, so I have very little idea of what it demands . To be honest there was no particular thought about which character was best as the PC, given I wasn't optimistic about them making that much progress anyway - the totemic druid was just the first on the list of desirable classes I compiled. I seriously doubt whether that will make much difference to the group's prospects though. Even playing solo I almost never use PFMW, so the chances of that being used systematically within a group are extremely limited ...
@Grond0: With Ascension installed, you'll definitely need PFMW by ToB, unless you're willing to use a level 9 spell slot and spell pick for Absolute Immunity.
Even if you keep your mages away from everyone else, you're going to end up dealing with Fallen Solars and Illasera in the Ascension Melissan fight. Without PFMW or Absolute Immunity, the Fallen Solars will have an 85% chance of automatically removing your sorcerers' Stoneskins and Death Ward and a 15% chance of a vorpal strike (it also has a Dispel Magic effect, though at a non-scaling level 22, which you should be able to avoid if you get your sorcerers to level 27). As for Illasera, her arrows dispel magic at level 30 and impose a non-cumulative 40% spell failure for both priest and mage spells. Her other arrows deal nonmagical magic damage and stun and slow the target on a failed save vs. polymorph at -4.
That said, Illasera can't see through invisibility judging by her .cre file, so if you keep your sorcerers from ever breaking invisibility within her line of sight, you could keep them alive. But I wouldn't count on it, nor would I want my sorcerers to be unable to cast any summoning spells or any spells on any other character outside of Time Stop (which is a very bad spell to use because both Abazigal and Melissan are immune to it).
You should be able to keep Physical Mirror active as a pre-buff before both phases of the Throne of Bhaal fight, so your priests should be safe from those arrows.
It would be a very good idea to keep PFMW on Charname because Abazigal and Melissan both attack during Time Stop, and while you can use Focus to grant Charname immunity to Time Stop, it only lasts 5 rounds and you can only cast it every 10 rounds. Stacking Hardiness spells from Wish can also get the whole party's resistances up to 100%, but I'm guessing you'd avoid doing that, and it's awfully luck-dependent even if you were using the Wand of Lightning.
You might be able to survive the Ascension Melissan fight without PFMW or Absolute Immunity. But it would definitely require very well-timed Maze traps from your Bounty Hunter to make sure you could debuff Abazigal in time to disrupt his Time Stop spell (or a lucky Holy Word, or a very lucky damage-less spell disruption from a Fire Seed or some other area-effect spell), and there are just so many ways that plan could go horribly wrong and get two or three party members killed during a single Time Stop.
Unless Insect Plague bypasses magic resistance in your install, in which case you'd have a 100% lockdown on both Abazigal and Sendai, instead of 35% and 16%, respectively. Then you'd just have to worry about dealing with the enemy's humongous damage output and HP.
Melissan herself would be easier to handle despite being immune to spell failure. Take down her Spell Trap and you should be able to lock her down with Implosion (unless your install makes them once-per-day innate spells, which would require Wish-resting to make it last more than 3 rounds), which only requires a single sorcerer and a single priest to act in concert for one round. But dealing enough damage to kill her, while maintaining the defenses of your party, would be extremely complicated without taking down the Five first.
It's a ridiculously high-pressure environment. You're a talented player with brilliant plans and incredibly precise technical skill, @Grond0, but depending on your install and what options you're willing to choose, Ascension Melissan could be much tougher than all of BG1 and SoD combined.
Ascension Melissan could be much tougher than all of BG1 and SoD combined.
@semiticgod I don't doubt that at all. Even in the unmodded game I have trouble with her - partly due to not buffing sufficiently precisely, but largely because I can never remember just what each version of her does (consequence of both poor memory and relatively rarely getting there since I only play no-reload and don't ever practice fights in advance). I think my chances of getting past Ascension Melissan in this run are vanishingly small - but that's not a problem as there's always another opportunity waiting .
Getting away from 'what might be' to what currently is, the Opera have made a bit more progress in SoD.
At the Coast Way Crossing I tried using farsight to allow summons to infiltrate the bridge area, but even doing that triggered the fight before the summons could get inside. An invisibility purge was countered with invis 10' before too much damage was done to anyone and shortly after that Caelar called a truce. Naturally I couldn't allow that truce to hold though and spirit lions did most of the hard work in finishing off the opponents.
The XP from that contest got the party close to their next level, but they would in any case have got that just from the quest XP for arriving in Troll Claw Woods.
After Pauper had been brought back from the dead by Hardup the party tried out Skint's new cloudkill spell on various groups in the area - that proved to be a pretty efficient troll killer.
With the area cleared they travelled on to the Forest of Wyrms, using a few skull traps on a fungus-infested ambush area on the way. The exterior was soon dealt with there and after briefly fighting fair in a spider nest cloudkill wreaked havoc there as well.
Looking for a bit more of a challenge the party went to find Morentherene - though in fact she proved pretty easy as well. Two skull traps and a spirit fire badly injured her and she went to attack a spirit bear rather than the party. An insect plague and a couple of magic missiles then left her at the edge of death and a MMM pushed her over.
This fight included easily the most buffing the party has ever done to date, though that was wasted preparation. Various bugbears didn't last long - particularly when fighting in cloudkills against summons as the party moved into the temple proper.
In the temple, summons quickly worked through various guards. I did though get caught out by a trap - moving slightly further than intended before checking for traps. However, with everyone on full HPs to start with there was little chance of casualties there.
Ziatar was badly hurt by summons, but as always was able to put up a sanctuary - that didn't protect him from insect bites though.
The party then went to let the mad woman out of her cage, only to get caught in a never-ending cut scene (I presume as a result of the woman's icon getting hung up on one of the party when trying to walk away).
After reluctantly redoing the temple fights the Opera rested before producing new summons to beat up the Neothelid while they looked on invisibly.
They tried the same sort of thing against the Shadow Aspect, but paid for not buffing there when Pauper was confused and immediately attacked in melee - the rest of the party couldn't kill the Shadow Aspect quite in time to save him.
After reviving Pauper there was rather better preparation for Darskhelin. A pair of opening skull traps produced a couple of victims as an insect plague followed summons into the room. Darskhelin himself took the full force of a day's traps laid by Washout outside the door and died of continuing poison damage from those. A follow-up cloudkill then finished off the last of the mind-flayer's would-be protectors.
Akanna and her aerial servants were then pitched against summons - and were found wanting.
On the way to Boareskyr Bridge the Opera got a bit of gentle exercise killing some giants attacking a baby dragon.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L11, 75 HPs, 38 kills Pauper, Priest of Helm - L9, 80 HPs, 202 kills, 3 deaths Hardup, Shaman - L10, 69 HPs, 297 kills, 1 death Washout, Bounty Hunter - L11, 71 HPs, 66 kills, 1 death Aspire, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 420 kills, 0 deaths Skint, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 335 kills, 1 death Skint roared into second place in that session and made quite a bit of ground up on Aspire, thanks to the regular use of cloudkills to dissolve weaker opponents.
Mollyboo's Solo Legacy of Bhaal Run: Just Screwing Around
I badly underestimate the fights on the way up the elevator. Those LoB bonuses make little enemies much bigger. There's a lot of HP to cut through, and the Spell Breaker +2 alone won't do it.
It takes many rounds of Wand of Frost spamming--so many rounds, in fact, that the Potions of Power I've been stacking wear off. And when that happens, Mollyboo's current HP drops to its previous maximum. Notice the Bone Fiend is vulnerable to cold damage despite skeletons normally being immune to cold.
I drink another round of Potions of Power, but a previous potion wears off, and suddenly Mollyboo is down to 100 HP. It seems that while the HP boosts of Potions of Power stack temporarily, they take away lots of HP when they wear off.
Since this is a solo run and I neglected to create a bunch of dead characters to fill up the party, Caelar joins the group. To preserve the solo run, I let Caelar join the group but only let her operate via AI, replicating the effects of having Caelar as an ally but not as a party member.
It makes very little difference, really. Caelar, as a potential party member, does in fact receive no LoB bonuses, and she lasts about a single round against the demons.
I have a lot of enemies to take down if I'm going to safely kite Belhifet, so I switch to the Wand of Frost. Unfortunately, Belhifet has either 80% or 100% MR depending on which weapon he's using, and the wand isn't going to do much without Lower Resistance beforehand. Notice that Caelar is still taking damage despite being dead.
This isn't working very well. I deploy some summons from the Wand of Water Elemental Summoning, but all of them fail saves against Demon Fear simultaneously. Notice that Mollyboo has been drinking some more Potions of Power to make sure her HP is strong for the next 30-40 rounds, since the previous potions are gone.
Mollyboo uses a WoL Lower Resistance scroll on Belhifet, donning the Wizzard Hat for the casting speed bonus so she can hit Belhifet with 5 spells in 2 rounds instead of 2.5 rounds. But we've got a problem.
Even though I chose Mollyboo as the final target for the WoL (which is why you see the Lower Resistance icon on Mollyboo), casting Lower Resistance has broken her invisibility. Now the demons can teleport over to her and use their melee attacks. Mollyboo has to drink a Potion of Invisibility and flee, but we've still got the Erinyes to worry about. And despite Mollyboo having -15 AC vs. missile weapons, the Erinyes do not need to roll 20s to land a hit on her. Mollyboo has to use a Stoneskin scroll; she's already lost her previous skins.
I can't actually fight Belhifet without all those demons descending upon Mollyboo and tearing her apart. I need to clear the map in order to deal with Belhifet safely. I do the math and find that I can take down a single demon on average every round if I use the WoL Wand of Polymorphing (only available with certain mods installed, but still a vanilla weapon and therefore legal in this run). If the wand works, the enemy is forcibly equipped with a nonmagical melee weapon and their maximum HP is set to 5. Unfortunately, the odds are dicey and I can't use it without breaking invisibility. All of the demons teleport over to Mollyboo and box her in.
Mollyboo teleports away, but her defenses are running thin. She needs Potions of Magic Shielding to deal with fire damage and Potions of Invulnerability to improve her AC against those Erinyes' arrows, and either potion can improve her saves to make sure she doesn't get disabled or poisoned. I have to dedicate some of her rounds to her defenses.
The Wand of Frost doesn't deal enough damage and the Wand of Polymorphing isn't reliable enough against the lesser demons. Theoretically, the Wand of Polymorphing could work on Belhifet, but it only has a 10% chance of working, and that's only if I lower his MR to zero, dispel his Improved Invisibility, AND apply Greater Malison, which is a tall order considering how much pressure I'm already dealing with. I need to try something new.
I switch to the Martyr's Morningstar. It can take down 15% of Belhifet's HP on a critical hit, but since I was saving this for late SoA because of Critical Strike, I never put a pip into Single Weapon style, which means the chances of landing that critical are 5% per attack roll. I'd need to make 120 attack rolls on average to take down all 1,100 of his HP. Belhifet, however, does not need to roll critical hits to take me down.
Thanks to the item duplication trick, I always have more Potions of Power. But whenever a previous potion runs out, my HP drops dramatically.
I teleport away to recover and keep trying to land those critical hits, but the situation is dire. We've made no progress besides messing up a single Erinyes, and Belhifet summons a new demon or two every 4 rounds.
I can't count on having hundreds of HP as a buffer; I'm just going to revert back to my base 120. And based on my THAC0 and damage output, I can't expect to take down Belhifet in the 40-round time frame of a Potion of Power. And I've got over 10 more demons to deal with besides Belhifet because I spent the early rounds focusing on my defenses and accomplishing very little.
The reality sinks in. I don't know if I can actually take down Belhifet at this point. Mollyboo's resources are infinite thanks to the item duplication trick, but Belhifet's army grows larger every 4 rounds. I can't damage Belhifet without breaking invisibility, and breaking invisibility causes the demons to teleport around me and attack with massive collective APR, and I doubt Potions of Power will ward them off indefinitely. Nor can I take down the demons; Belhifet adds another 200+ HP to the army every 4 rounds, and I can't expect to deal over 50 damage per round with Mollyboo.
The numbers simply do not add up. Mollyboo has to do too many things to shore up her defenses, and she doesn't have enough time and breathing room to make any real progress. All she can do is run away and prolong the fight while Belhifet solidifies his advantage.
I think I lost my chance to take down Belhifet. I should have just cast Enchanted Weapon on Mollyboo and had her face Belhifet in melee early on; she might have been able to slay him within the 40-round window if she had just relied on healing potions and mage scrolls to keep herself alive. But I overestimated Belhifet's advantage in melee combat, and underestimated the importance of his summoned demons.
It's too late. I can restore Mollyboo's defenses, but Belhifet only grows stronger with every 4 rounds.
I make a gamble with the Wand of Polymorphing, but luck is against me. I run out of charges while only taking down about three demons.
Then I realize that, despite Mollyboo's poor THAC0, we can still get guaranteed hits on Belhifet by using Enchanted Weapon with Arrows of Detonation. The former allows any weapon to hit Belhifet (or in this case, his fellow demons, who are immune to +1 weapons like the arrows), and the latter hit automatically; no attack roll required.
But I do the math again, and I don't see how we can take down Belhifet even now. He regenerates 3 HP per second, or 18 per round. And I can't fire off even a single arrow without the whole crowd descending upon me, and I don't like the idea of using the bow in melee combat and giving everyone +4 to hit and damage against Mollyboo because she doesn't have a melee weapon equipped.
Then I realize that Enchanted Weapon will allow me to hit Belhifet with Acid Arrows, which deal the original 2d6 acid damage from BG1 in my install. But his MR blocks the damage.
The Acid Arrows won't be enough, either.
Kiting Belhifet is simply no longer possible; the enemy horde will just instantly teleport over to Mollyboo and box her in. Getting rid of the army is no longer possible; it has too much collective APR for Mollyboo to win out. Polymorphing Belhifet to drop his HP to 5 is no longer possible; I only have a single charge left in the wand. And killing Belhifet with the Martyr's Morningstar is a total crapshoot, considering we need to make 120 attack rolls to deal enough damage, during which Belhifet would regenerate 720 HP, requiring another 80-90 attack rolls.
Mollyboo can't survive 200 rounds in melee combat. Sooner or later, the enemies would just get a bunch of high rolls in a row and overwhelm her. The best we can do is simply engage Belhifet in melee combat and hope that the dice rolls go in our favor.
I can't believe it. We were doing so incredibly well, abusing the WoL trick in so many different ways and steamrolling the opposition despite not using the Wand of Meat Blobs. But now, by wasting the first 50 rounds of combat and allowing the enemy horde to grow, Mollyboo has lost any realistic chance of taking down Belhifet. Unless I'm willing to spend countless hours re-duplicating potions and Dimension Door scrolls until Mollyboo finally lands a string of critical hits in a row, this run is pretty much over.
Then I have a new idea. Why don't I just do the same thing I did in the poverty run?
Melf's Acid Arrow is a pretty weak spell, but with the WoL trick multiplying the effects, each one should do 120 lingering damage on average. All I have to do is use a WoL Lower Resistance scroll on him first.
But trying to kill Belhifet with scrolls will break Mollyboo's invisibility and also root her in place. She'd have to spend 10 whole rounds of aura just using the scrolls, all while she's taking full damage from the enemy horde. How would I survive that?
Well, it may be a lot of damage. But 10 rounds of aura, plus a few rounds to restore her defenses every now and then, is well within the 40-round window during which Potions of Power will keep her HP above 100.
As it happens, Mollyboo's last Potion of Power has worn off, so we can start boosting her HP immediately. Once I duplicate a bunch of Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls, I lead her in circles around the map to keep Belhifet off our backs. The previous rounds also included a lot of kiting; everyone's been chasing Mollyboo, even the demons who can't see through invisibility.
Once I've got her HP well north of 500, I send her over to a corner to begin casting Lower Resistance on Belhifet. Why a corner? Well, if her back is to the wall, that means enemies cannot flank her. This position actually cuts the enemy's effective APR in half.
With Belhifet's MR at 0, he is perfectly vulnerable to Melf's Acid Arrow. We begin the process of dissolving the demon.
Belhifet is too far away for him to hit us, but we've still got plenty of other enemies attacking us. Mollyboo may have -18 AC vs. melee weapons, but the enemy's APR is sky-high and her Stoneskins don't last long. We've got about 7 enemies attacking her at once.
But the plan is working. The WoL Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls are taking a toll on Belhifet's HP. After only a few rounds, he's lost a massive chunk of his HP.
Before long, he's dropped to half his maximum HP.
When the enemies start landing hits with unusually low attack rolls, I notice the Potion of Invulnerability has worn off. Mollyboo may have lots of HP and can weather a lot of attacks, but AC is a good investment in maintaining high HP. I have her drink another potion.
Mollyboo's portrait begins to go red. But Belhifet is in even worse shape, and Mollyboo can recover even more HP than he can if she uses a Potion of Healing.
I haven't bothered using Potions of Extra Healing; the basic kind is more than sufficient. In fact, we've barely used any healing potions at all, as Mollyboo has plenty of other defenses.
Mollyboo keeps applying Melf's Acid Arrows to Belhifet. Thanks to her strong AC, Potions of Power, and retreating to the corner to avoid being flanked, she keeps her HP extremely high even as Belhifet, shorn of his magic resistance, slowly dissolves in the acid. Finally, the demon goes down.
His summons all vanish, leaving only Hephernaan behind. Many rounds later, Hephernaan dies to the same spell as his master.
We escape from Avernus, kill Skie, and watch the people whose lives we just saved turn their backs on us in an instant. At our trial, the prosecution calls in witnesses to lie about Mollyboo, including a ridiculous tale about the symbol of Bhaal appearing on the Bridgefort bridge.
I teleported past that entire questline, so that never actually happened!
Despite the slander, Mollyboo's Chaotic Neutral alignment, and the fact that we poisoned the crusaders' supplies, we nonetheless get the "good" ending where Belt smuggles us out of prison. On the way, we notice Clara sitting in a cage for some reason.
The only fight left is an unwinnable encounter with respawning backstabbers from EET. All of them do nonlethal damage to make sure everyone survives the encounter. Notice that Minsc and Dynaheir are missing because I sent them off to fight a bear so I could steal their loot (which I never did end up using).
Siege of Dragonspear is over! On to Shadows of Amn!
As the title suggests, this run has been mostly just me screwing around, using glitches to duplicate items and teleport past entire questlines. But I am quite proud of the fight with Belhifet. I badly mismanaged the first rounds because I failed to appreciate the importance of engaging him in melee combat, but I'm very pleased with how it ended. I had almost given up on the run before I figured out I could get past his massive HP, massive MR, subterranean AC, and numerous allies just by relying on two different scrolls, and tucking Mollyboo into the corner was a great way to minimize pressure on her.
That corner is probably an excellent place to be in the late rounds of a solo LoB fight with Belhifet. When the enemies grow too numerous for the player to kite Belhifet, hiding in a corner can limit the number of enemies who can reach you.
Well done @semiticgod. The bug with potions of power sounds like the same one (now fixed) as with LMD in the EE - when multiple ones were used the HP gains from all of them disappeared when the first spell expired.
After preparing for Draconis with usual buffs + acid protection and some potions (I should also mention that I had the shadow dragon armor equipped), Iloïnen and summons took down his human form first:
The transformation destroyed all of my summons, and the dragon chased me to the edge of the map (I prefer to fight there, because it allows me to quickly flee to Amkethran). He dispelled all of my buffs, and when I activated my simmy, it disappeared right away (and I don't know why). With no buffs and no simmy, I decided to flee and go for a second try:
I returned with the plan to do the same thing that ended up working for my solo totemic druid (the only solo run I have ever done before) - trying to go for a max damage approach with simmy and energy blades, with a deva as a short-time distraction. However, the simmy got destroyed right away once again (still no idea why - no true sight, not enough damage to kill it... the combat log is giving me nothing to go on), and any further spellcasting attempts were disrupted. I made a quick attempt at magic resistance + harm, but it's just not possible to successfully use magic resistance against this opponent - so I ran away to return for my third try.
This time, I didn't return to the pocket plane to rest... and this might've resulted in Draconis not returning back to the middle of the map. Instead, he was standing right next to Iloïnen when she returned to his area. And right away, I got affected by dragon fear. What's the saving throw type and penalty for this one? I thought I'd be safe, but I was definitely wrong (didn't help that I had the Helm of Vhailor, not the Helm of Balduran equipped):
So now my survival was dependent entirely on luck. I survived a similiar situation against Belhifet, so there was a chance, at least. With a couple of hits and acid breath attacks, Iloïnen went to 56 hp, and I thought this would be the end:
- however, a few seconds after that, I regained control:
I managed to escape once again. This time, upon returning, Draconis wasn't in sight, and I was able to return to the pocket plane to buff up. Since previous tactics didn't work out at all, I decided to go for a new approach, based on damage resistance and survivability. I also summoned a deva before Draconis could get to me and disrupt the spell. This time, I got lucky: The deva managed to heal herself before Draconis could easily destroy her, giving me more time, and the dragon's remove magic failed to actually dispel my buffs!
An attempt at using the simmy got foiled again, but when I started to go for GWWs, I was finally starting to have some success - damage resistance was high enough to allow me to stand toe to toe with Draconis:
I had to use one RoR charge, but another two GWWs, and victory was mine:
Well, getting affected by dragon fear certainly wasn't a nice turn of events. Otherwise, this went about as well as I could've expected, considering previous experiences. Abazigal's Lair was easy to clear up until the final boss. I first took down his salamanders using my sling:
Once Abazigal changed forms, he, too, was quick to dispel my buffs, though I still had shield of the archons. Iloïnen was quickly knocked unconscious:
But the dragon wasn't able to seize this opportunity. I ran around for a bit, realized that Abazigal uses maze (I had, at this point, no idea what his script actually involves) and finally managed to get out of the dragon's sight in order to return to the pocket plane (didn't know this actually worked in this battle!):
- this allowed me to rebuff and return. However, I made the crucial mistake of not including shield of the archons in my buff list. As Abazigal instantly removed every single buff, I was left without defenses:
But it wasn't maze that affected me - once again, it was dragon fear - and this time, I actually had all negative saving throws:
I got down to 60 hp, 24 hp, 12 hp:
As a final mockery, Abazigal actually used maze, which would've killed me as soon as the animation finished - but it was another melee hit that ended my run.
Well... Not exactly an unexpected death, as I predicted this one to be really difficult given my extremely limited experience with soloing this encounter. I did end up finishing this run with another reload for Abazigal and, after easily taking down Balthazar and the Ravager, even more reloads for Amelyssan, so even if I had beaten Draconis, the final boss would've spelled my end (even after I figured out a reasonable tactic, I still needed three reloads to actually execute it successfully). Honestly, I mostly started this run in order to get the solo achievement (the last one I hadn't really done yet), so I guess I kind of achieved my goal here? I'm a bit sad I didn't get a cleric/ranger into the hall of heroes, though.
Good luck to everyone else - my next run will be with the 2.5 beta and a couple of mods, if I can get them to work!
Hard luck, @Enuhal. You played very well; this was indeed poor luck. More than once, I've watched my Charname slowly die while I was helpless to save them. But I'm glad to hear you pushed through and took down Melissan, reloads or no.
Looking at Dragon Fear in Near Infinity, it seems that the spell has a massive -4 penalty to its save vs. spell (a 10% chance of working against your character, judging by your -1 save vs. spell) and the fear effect lasts for 10 whole rounds. I had no idea it lasted so long. And since you have an unkitted character and the spell is schoolless, it's possible that the schoolless save bug worked against you, too, unless that's been fixed very recently. Very bad luck indeed.
There is an explanation for why your Simulacrum clone vanished without warning: all dispel magic effects, from Remove Magic to the Staff of the Magi to Carsomyr, have an effect on hit that also instantly kills any critter with a gender of "illusionary." Clones from Mislead, Project Image, and Simulacrum are assigned those genders by default, which means dispel magic effects instantly kill them, irrespective of caster level. There are a handful of enemies, like planetars and the Ravager, who dispel magic on hit, which means instant death for any clones they attack. The only defense against it is immunity to the spell or weapon, like SI: Abjuration for Remove Magic or PFMW in the case of a planetar.
True Seeing has the same effect; you'd need SI: Divination to block it. So for non-mages who use Vhailor's Helm to summon clones, the only way to keep them alive is to keep them out of range of dispelling effects and prevent the enemy from casting True Seeing, a daunting prospect.
Guys, it's truly becoming ridiculous... I had another really, really close call, even worst than in Ust Natha and Irenicus together. Miluiel is just fooling death at every corner...
So, because I muffed the egg quest, I had to kill Adalon. Not something I was happy to do, but I was forced to. We had no problem during the fight.
The fight before the exit was also not too problematic. I lured the Glabrezus with invisibility straight into traps laid by Alora, which killed one and soften the other before we killed it in melee.
The fight against the rest of the bunch was actually a bit more complicated than what I was expecting, because they were very aggressive with Dispel, which is dangerous in quick succession in IR (Dispelling screen renders you immune against a single Dispel magic; it's harder to keep on than Spell Immunity : Abjuration). We had to retreat, which split their group. We then picked them out one by one without too much of a problem, even if they managed to take down Alora at some point.
For the rest, we buffed up and meleed down the opposition until we could gladly get out of the Underdark.
So, here we are, free to roam around Athkatla again. After having talked to a few people in an other thread, it seems that I muffed the Kivan's mod questline. I had to talk to Aphril in Spellhold to see Kivan's wife in another plane so she could be revived later in Suldanessellar. It seems that, without her, Kivan just abandon you at the end of SoA to go die somewhere to rejoin his wife. So, I won't have Kivan in ToB. It's a bit sad, but I decide to be proactive about it, and switch him for someone else who I can build the way I want before ToB. We considered another fighter, but I believe I don't really need that. Well buffed, Gavin and Jaheira are superb meleers. So, we went arcane. I thought about Imoen, but since she turns on you in the final Ascension fight, and that fight really frightens me, I said screw it. We went with Tyris Flare, a fighter7 --> mage. Neeto. She's about 600 000 xp behind Kivan, but she'll be with us longer.
After that change, we did a small, innocent sidequest involving Ricar, an elf who's a friend of Xan and who got deceived by a woman drow : she possess important documents concerning Irenicus, which is why we hunted her down for Ricar. Ok. They're in the North Forest. It's just a group with a single cleric and a few melee goons, Nothing to write home about. We kill them and report to Ricar. I thought that this small arc - part of the Xan mod, obviously - was over. I get back to Waukeen's Promenade, we go to the Inn for a good night of sleep and then go the Adventurer's Mart to sell the stuff the drow had - merely generic +2 gear. Nothing fancy, but you get good money out of it.
However, that's at this exact moment that the shit hit the fan. As soon as I got out of the Adventurer's Mart, completely out of nowhere, a high level mage drow appeared and told me, because I killed an High Maiden of Lloth, he had to kill me. We're completely unbuffed, outside of Stoneskin. He starts with a Chain Contingency with ADHW and summons some monsters (I don't know which at this point). The party takes really high damage - Miluiel only has 35 hp left -, so we decide to flee back into the Adventurer's Mart. I use my first action to cast my Minor Spell Sequencer on myself, Invisibility with Mirror Images. Then, I hear the drow mage cast Time Stop. When time indeed gets stopped, the drow mage enters the Mart. Miluiel is right there besides him. She has only 35 hp left and no spell protection. The drow mage can do whatever the hell he wants. At this point, I'm not even nervous. I'm just thinking : ok, that's it, the run is over. ANY AoE damage would kill Miluiel outright. I'm already thinking about the message I'll write in this thread at this point. But the drow decides to buff up and summon more monsters : two Balors this time. So, when Time Stop is over, Miluiel actually survived. Here's a scene of the complete mayhem :
Even though we miraculously survived Time Stop, we're not in the clear. Far from it, actually. Alora and Jaheira are disabled by fear, Tyris is juuuust about to die - and she does a few moments later. We can only hope to get out of the Mart now. The drow mage blast Gavin and Xan with Chain Lightning and a Balor kills Alora in a single strike. Jaheira regains her senses and we both manage to get out. You remember that the drow mage summoned monsters through his Chain Contingency outside the Mart : these are two Greater Basilisks (Monster Summoning IX in SR). They hold Jaheira (SR replace petrification with a permanent Hold that can only be dispelled by scrolls or Stone to Flesh) and the drow mage kills her soon after. I can only do one thing : grab her stuff, stay out of their line of sight and get out.
I just can't believe it. Miluiel is still alive after all that. I'm in awe. I revive everyone with the Rod of Resurrection and Temple services and decide to get back at this freakin' drow. He spent most of his spells anyway, so we're not going to let him get away with it that easily. We heal, gear up and buff ourselves properly this time, we find that son of a $&?%$ and slay him outright.
All this bad shit craziness net us a really nice dagger for Miluiel : a +4 dagger that leeches hp on hit.
Sooo, to cool down, we went through something less complex : the Planar Sphere. We first fought a bunch of nasty halflings :
We then take down Lavok without any trouble : since I added another mage into our team, we can debuff SCS mages in no more than two rounds. We lost offensive damage without Kivan, but we gained flexibility. I think we gained more power in the end.
We slayed Tolgerias and his acolyte right after. The fight was a bit more complicated, because he too summoned two Greater Basilisks. We killed them at range before they caused too much trouble, though. After that, we freely debuffed and controlled Tolgerias without a problem.
The demon outside the Planar Sphere was bum-rushed. Fully buffed, we have over 20 APR in our team, so it was pretty straight forward. We carved his heart out and got out of the Sphere. End of the questline. Booya.
Good news : Xan is nearing level 16, which means he'll be able to cast Pierce Shield, which will help me greatly against Irenicus. Lesson of the day : never ever do mod quests completely blind during a no-reload run. Never.
Unlike @Enuhal. I've had my share (probably more than my share in fact) of problems with dragon fear and maze. It's not easy for a cleric/ranger (without a shorty bonus) to keep saving throws low enough to protect against dragon fear, so maintaining remove fear as a buff is a good precaution. That isn't a total answer as it's quite possible to get hit with remove magic and then be instantly afflicted with fear, so it's also helpful to be ready to switch equipment round to boost protection if you see a remove or dispel on the way.
You could equip Kiel's helmet whenever Remove Magic was on the way, and only switch to the Helm of Balduran (or whichever helmet) when Remove Fear was restored. But it should be possible to get a cleric/ranger's save vs. spell to -3 with items alone:
Base save vs. spell at fighter level 17 (4.5 million XP): 6 Ring of Gaxx: -2 Ring/Cloak of Protection +2: -2 Hell bonus: -2 Helm of Balduran: -1 Amulet of Spell Warding: -2
Which should be enough to block Dragon Fear. I assume the schoolless save bug will be fixed in 2.5, so that's as low as you need to go.
If absolutely necessary, you could even bring in the Claw of Kazgaroth from BG1 (it should import into Chateau Irenicus) and equip the Shield of the Order and Fflar's Scabbard. That could get your save vs. spell down to -8.
I did try keeping remove fear up (I generally don't trust saving throws alone, due to various known bugs, and like to keep up immunity effects as well), though in both cases I got affected by the dragon fear, there was basically no time window between remove magic and dragon fear affecting my character. Definitely interesting to know there's a -4 penalty at work here. I would've changed up my equipment if I had known that - My tendency to figure out things step by step and not look them up beforehand definitely hurt me there quite a bit. I will keep that in mind for future fights.
Sadly, I don't have access to Kiel's helmet in BG2 (I would need EET for that, I think). No item-based fear immunity for a cleric/ranger in my installation. The Runehammer +5 would've been a great solution, but getting the rune to upgrade it isn't possible without a thief or the knock spell
What do you mean by equipping Fflar's Scabbard? At least in my game, this is just used to upgrade Foebane and has no stats by itself.
About the simulacrum: I guess that remove magic was the culprit in most cases, given your explanation, though I swear that quite a few times, the simmy was only hit by the dragon's breath weapon and nothing else, and the damage shouldn't have been high enough to kill it. I was a bit confused by this, because with my solo totemic druid, the simulacrum was an integral part of my eventual victory, as I had no way to deal enough damage without it being active during the entire fight. Very strange. Mabye there are changes in the EE compared to vanilla, or I've just been very lucky with the totemic druid.
@Arctodus Your run keeps getting more and more exciting! I really hope you make it!
After Gorion and I were ambushed I headed straight back to Candlekeep only to be denied access. Using stealth I returned to the site of the ambush and recovered a lot of Gorion's possessions and in addition found a diamond in a tree, presumably an old nest of a magpie.
After reading Gorion's note I decided not to follow the instructions therein as it was more than possible that our attackers had also read the note and could be waiting in ambush for us at the Friendly Arms Inn.
Instead I headed southwards to Beregost and High Hedge. In beregost I bought a better sling, calmed down Marl and gave a tome to Firebead.
At High Hedge I killed a number of gnoll before heading southwards. There I rescued Mellicamp from a wolf and returned him to High Hedge where a mage transformed him back to human form.
I told a former wizard's apprentice what had happened and he rewarded me with a tome that changes a mage into a conjurer.
I tried to restore a werewolf but was unsuccessful.
I then headed south of Beregost and aquired a set of boots that improves stealth.
Heading further south I killed several hobgoblins and found an amulet belonging to the Colquetle family.
Further south still, I was given a ring that boosts my charisma to 18.
At the carnival I had a dream after which I gained an extra ability to heal.
In Nashkel, I turned down a reward that rightfully belongs to Greywolf. I found some ankheg armour and headed south.
At Boareskyr Bridge the Opera cleared the external area first - Skint again picking up plenty of easy victims with cloudkill.
In the Crusader Camp Vichand realised too late he shouldn't have camped out of sight of his companions,
while inside the fort the party completed a few simple tasks - including exposing a rogue priestess.
After collecting the coalition forces the Opera hung back behind those while they worked through the crusaders. The Barghest and the mages proved a more difficult nut to crack and some wand of frost blasts damaged the party before call lightnings killed The Barghest and summons finished off the mages.
Spirit fire (which as a 4th level spell goes over MGoI) and cloudkill then prevented the mage doing much to save the bridge.
Moving on to the Coalition Camp everyone got a 15k XP bonus on arrival. I don't know all the quests in the Camp, so spent a while walking round talking to people to pick up a few thousand more XP before moving on to Dead Man's Pass. That was cleared using mainly summons and area damage, though Pauper did get the chance to practise his turn undead in a small crypt.
I'd also forgotten about the mimic in a cave and half the party were held there. Fortunately Washout was in position to invisibly block the otyugh from Aspire, while the others were able to kill the mimic just in time.
I also never picked up the bear pelt to make shoes from - I think I must just have killed that absent-mindedly.
Dragonspear Castle is shown on the map to the left of Dead Man's Pass, but can only be opened up by exiting from the right of the map. Doing that sent the Opera into a dead magic ambush zone. With no items or spells to blast away with the chances of killing the Shadowy Figure seemed vastly smaller than the chance for the party to die and they just ran away to Dragonspear. There they rescued Skie before trying to talk their way into the castle, only to be turned away (I think I have done that before, even though I've never actually gone inside, so I guess reputation is not high enough to be convincing).
Instead they moved on to Bloodbark Grove and cleared that. A vampire's cellar had some unique dread wolves that required fire to actually kill them.
I forgot there was a basilisk in the area and Beggar was actually visible when he came in sight of it, but managed to hastily retreat before being targeted.
Moving on to the Underground River there was another reminder to be more careful. Skint killed what appeared to be all of a large group of orcs with a cloudkill. However, while I was watching a shaman die I belatedly realised I'd taken a casualty myself from an orc raider backstabbing Skint.
A further attempted backstab bounced off Beggar's ironskins though before Hardup brought Skint back from the dead. I'd agreed to help the druids, so got some animal support when attacking the underground entrance guards - the spiders were particularly useful given the webs in the area. For a slight XP bonus I also finished off Julann and Rigah with the help of a few traps and an insect plague.
@Grond0: Good luck! Beware of the fight with Halatathlaer and the mages; I lost my first Seducer run to Halatathlaer's fear effect, and Remove Magic could easily dispel Pauper's Remove Fear.
That Greater Basilisk is actually harmless according to Near Infinity. It's erroneously flagged to have 0 APR, so it shouldn't be able to attack you at all. But I always buff with Protection from Petrification anyway.
I'm really excited to see you approaching the SoD endgame. I can't wait to see you tackle Belhifet.
@Grond0: Good luck! Beware of the fight with Halatathlaer and the mages; I lost my first Seducer run to Halatathlaer's fear effect, and Remove Magic could easily dispel Pauper's Remove Fear.
Kherriun starts out neutral if you walk to the right side of Kanaglym's pit to the Fugue Plane to avoid the cutscene with the human sacrifices. If you can damage Kherriun enough before she puts up her buffs (and then commands Halatathlaer to join the fight), the ghost jar will be broken and Hally will join in on your side instead.
On a side note, NWN has sucked me in again, which is why you haven't seen Brunash here lately.
Upon helping a dryad against some thugs I was badly injured but survived and thus was able to heal myself.
I then killed a few dire wolves before rescuing @Drienne's cat.
I then killed a very well-armed gnoll before heading east where I reunited Rufie with his owner.
Heading further east still I took on Greywolf and being close to death fled. I rested and healed myself before returning.
He was no longer hasted which meant that I had time to cast a "hold person" spell. That led to his demise.
I then used "Hold Person" against Zargos Flintblade. This enabled me to bring him to the point of death at which point he panicked. I was then able to kill him with my sling with little difficulty.
Heading back to where I met Mellicamp I killed some undead who were killed by keeping my distance and using my sling. I then lured Zargal away from his cohorts, used "Hold person" and then moved in to kill him with my flails.
Upon doing so I became a level 4 cleric, level 3 ranger.
The Opera made their way along the southern edge of the caverns, killing a few treants and such-like along the way. Eventually they bumped into Halatathlaer and considered what to do - I've not come across him before in SP, though I have a vague memory of an encounter in MP some time ago. As usual when considering the appropriate action I decided that random violence was the way forward and attacked . The dragon rushed to the attack in retaliation - and realised that it really should have checked its missile resistance first.
The party moved into the guarded area and a combination of summons and insect plague was working through some dark magicians when a nasty sight loomed up on the right of the screen - the ghost dragon apparently didn't want to stay dead.
Retreating to the entrance and laying a full day's traps saw the dragon once more fall.
I was low on summons by this stage, but was concerned about how long the dragon would stay dead this time, so ventured forth again to find the remaining mages. Another cloudkill left Kherriun all alone and when he eventually stayed still too long a spirit fire and 2 skull traps came his way. He resisted the spirit fire, but was still taken to near death and I was told a ghost jar had shattered.
Given @Flashburn's comment it seemed hopeful that would prevent Halatathlaer being a nuisance any more. Kherriun moved just in time to avoid follow-up skull traps, but a new spirit bear came out of hibernation to finish him off.
There was an apparent portal to the Fugue Plane in the area, but without any knowledge of that I didn't fancy the possibility of retreat being cut-off and left that alone. Instead I retreated back to find Ferrusk. He wanted a myconid bloom-sac, but I hadn't bothered picking that up after killing the myconids earlier. I convinced anyway him to withdraw support for Hephernaan and then planted an acorn expecting that to turn him hostile - but it didn't. Deciding not to kill him for the moment, in case he might make the siege easier, I went up onto the surface and confirmed that the good druids' quest had been completed.
Back in the caverns the Opera explored a bit more and found a cave full of undead. Pauper was drained a level there, but that wasn't enough to prevent him from using restoration.
Some ghosts in the cave talked about wanting to be moved to the Fugue Plane, so I decided to try the portal out on them after all - that worked, though the reward didn't seem particularly generous.
The next encounter was with Strunk. Summons were on the point of killing him when a crusader patrol happened by and decided to go hostile.
I wasn't sure if killing them would have any nasty consequences - but did it anyway (otherwise their propensity to follow even if you're invisible and the presence of my summons would have made movement a real pain). Near to that was what I thought was the appropriate location for the Bwoosh. My rules didn't allow me to equip the stone dowser, so even If I remembered the right location it might not activate properly - and there was no text message when I left it on the floor, so I suspect that it won't work. I hope that it's still possible to complete the siege, but we'll no doubt find out .
The door guards were all hostile (presumably as a result of killing the patrol), but they moved away from the door to attack summons and allowed the Opera to nip in invisibly behind them. Inside, they used the ogre elevator to get up to the next area, but were immediately confronted with a cleric using true seeing and invisible backstabbers. That looked like bad news, but they were at least able to run away back down the elevator. After resting, they came up with some buffing already done and Aspire used haste and invisibility to quickly poison the food and water. This time though the elevator back down was inoperative and Beggar had to show himself to Hephernaan before they were allowed to run away.
Leaving that area they found that guards had congregated outside the door and only Beggar was free to move.
He quickly went away a bit and used a spirit bear to create an exit and the party were eventually able to leave the caves invisibly.
My lack of knowledge made that session seem a bit iffy, but the Opera survived and have just arrived back at the courtyard of Dragonspear Castle - where I know absolutely nothing about the encounters .
We're near a store, so we'd better sell something. There's not much to sell though but at least we've noticed our reputation is 19 which means Farmer Brun is next followed by Ulgoth's Beard. (btw, this is on v2.5 beta)
Eeny suggests using invisibility to deal with Karlat. Myna fluffed that up so improvised.
Myna should have been careful about dealing with ankhegs but when you've got a trusty illusionist with you what can possibly go wrong. That's right, not much although we eventually went invisible and left the last few ankhegs when the last of the Sleep spells was used.
After purchasing a cloak, staff and amulet at ye olde bearde, we set off for Durlag's Tower. A couple of determined defenders were brushed aside, as were two more guarding the ramparts.
There was a bit of a runaround with ghasts inside, so we stepped outside for some fresh air basilisks.
Then down to Nashkel Mine to pull the legs off sleeping spiders.
We put up a stink for Mulahey, giving him little chance.
It was all going so well, and then the bandit circle of death arrived. Fortunately we had just enough hit points to escape this dozy lot.
Tranzig spilled his guts, with our assistance, and we headed off to the bandit camp. Not much to report there apart from being unable to get a fireball scroll for Eeny. The leaders caused a bit of a kerfuffle for us as Raemon craftily spotted Eeny. Still they were all blinded or glitterdusted, then taken apart.
This left us heading into Cloakwood. We breezed through there and left stinking clouds for Drasus and his blinded buddies. Drasus had evidently heard about Raemon, and craftily spotted Myna. He chased her around and it was touch and go until Eeny blinded him.
Mollyboo's Solo Legacy of Bhaal Run: Just Screwing Around
I admit I'm feeling kind of discouraged after hearing that the 2.5 patch will remove the item duplication trick. A lot of cool things are only possible by using the glitch. I've actually had doubts about even continuing this run, since a big part of it is featuring a trick that's about to die out.
Mollyboo uses the Promenade->Slums->Government District->City Gates->Umar Hills route to open up all the major Chapter 2 maps and then hikes out to Dragonspear Castle to recover the equipment she dropped at the end of SoD. Selling off the loose equipment gives us enough gold to bump our reputation up to 18 (though saving money is kind of pointless when you have access to the item duplication trick). I donate the money at the temple of Lathander near Beregost, since it won't trigger any SoA ambushes.
Mollyboo is already high enough level to trigger lich encounters, and while the first one in the Temple Ruins is optional, the second is not. I never actually got a Spell Immunity scroll in SoD, so fighting the Shade Lord is out of the question. But I can still collect some loot from the dungeon by using invisibility, Farsight, and WoL Dimension Door spells to teleport past the trigger that spawns the second lich fight. Bone Golems aren't fooled by invisibility, though.
I duplicate a whole bunch of Potions of Magic Shielding to get Mollyboo the Robe of Vecna and lots of other needlessly overpowered goodies. Since I want Mollyboo to gain levels fast, I start the main quest early, though I foolishly side with Bodhi when our limitless Protection from Undead scrolls would have made the vampires much easier to kill than the Shadow Thieves.
I haven't made much use of Web in this run since I've been letting my summons do most of the work, but I try my hand at fighting Mook and Arkanis Gath in melee, using stacked Web spells and Detect Illusions to ward off backstabs. Unfortunately, one of the Webs strays too far off course and turns Rylock hostile. Luckily, he has no PFMW, so an Arrow of Dispelling is enough to doom him.
Once I grab a Spell Immunity scroll and Kitty from Pai'Na, tackling the Shade Lord becomes doable. A Sunstone Bullet still instantly destroys the Shadow Altar in LoB mode, and Secret Word and Breach are enough to expose the Shade Lord himself to an Arrow of Dispelling while our summons keep the enemy distracted.
Even multiple Webs and Stinking Cloud spells aren't always going to disable critters in LoB mode, so I actually suffer some poison damage when wrestling with the Shadow Thieves. It seems one of my mods gives them Poison Weapon. Thanks to Stoneskin, we can negate their backstabs, but you have to be really careful in the upgraded Shadow Thief hideout; they have Kensai/Thieves with high APR that can quickly chew through Stoneskins.
Before accepting Bodhi's second task, I seed the second floor of the Shadow Thief hideout with traps. SI: Divination blocks a thief's Detect Illusions in my install, and I finally take advantage of it by launching WoL Potions of Firebreath from behind invisibility.
The upgraded Shadow Thief hideout is absolutely devastating. No resting, no escaping, lots of enemies including spellcasters and backstabbers, new traps, Clay Golems... the list just goes on and on.
Fortunately, however, the WoL trick, combined with Farsight, lets us teleport through walls and send our summons anywhere on the map. I send a few skeletons right to Aran Linvail, but the enemy has massive damage output and kill every skeleton in less than a single round.
They make basically no progress, so I switch gears and throw out some Chaos spells from across the map. Even LoB enemies seldom make five consecutive saves vs. spell at -4.
The other enemies spot me, forcing me to teleport away, though I don't find the optimal spot to hide until the second try.
The skeletons still don't make much progress, so I just wait out Aran Linvail's weapon immunities until I can send five copies of Improved Kitthix over to web and poison everyone to death. Once the deed is done, I can teleport right onto their corpses, obviating the need for fussing with Haz and unlocking the door to Aran Linvail's room.
The process took much longer than that, but you get the idea.
Six clones of Kitty take down the Trademeet genies, and once I've teleported all the way across the map to Cernd in the druid grove, I can torch Dalok with six Efreet and nab Belm under invisibility. I let Cernd fight Faldorn (or rather, CTRL-Y does, because his victory is supposed to be guaranteed anyway and I'm impatient).
Most side quests are unnecessary since the XP is extraneous in a solo run and the gold is useless with the item duplication trick at our disposal. There are a few items I want to get before Spellhold, and the last on our list is the Ring of Gaxx.
I don't really need it at all, and I really should wait until epic levels so I can whomp him with the Martyr's Morningstar, but I think I can tackle Kangaxx using a new trick. Using a Protection from Undead scroll on your character will grant dispellable invisibility to liches, but if you use it on the lich itself, it completely wrecks its script and prevents it from casting any spells or even activating its pre-buffs.
Don't feel completely safe, though, if you decide to try this out. Liches do paralyze on hit, so a solo character with a high save vs. death and no immunity to paralysis could easily get killed. Many liches also have a fear aura depending on your install, and Nevaziah also imposes cumulative THAC0 penalties on a failed save that can prevent you from landing hits on him without rolling a 20.
The scroll works just as well on the Elemental Lich, but it doesn't seem to work perfectly on Kangaxx, and I end up fleeing the area to cancel the summoning spells that could get Mollyboo killed by a planetar or a demon.
The scroll does seem to prevent Kangaxx's transformation dialogue from triggering though, and only a reload can fix the bug.
The next time around, the scroll works better (maybe I didn't actually apply the scroll to Kangaxx the first time?) and he's unable to act. But, by using an Arrow of Dispelling to remove the scroll before he drops to 1 HP, I can get his dialogue to trigger.
But before Mollyboo has a chance to trigger his transformation, she fails a save vs. Kangaxx's fear effect. I'd been relying on subzero saving throws to avoid fear effects, so I had never buffed with Resist Fear!
Kangaxx summons some Magical Swords and Breaches Mollyboo, and I realize that the unthinkable might happen. Kangaxx fires off a Comet and takes Mollyboo to half HP while she's still disabled.
Finally, Mollyboo recovers. I'm faced with the decision to either run for the exit or drink a Potion of Extra Healing, a Potion of Magic Shielding, or an Oil of Speed before I make my escape. In the end, I settle for a Potion of Magic shielding and make it out without the swords finishing me off or failing a save against Dragon Fear.
Mathematically, it was a poor choice. The odds of failing another save against Dragon Fear were very slim, while the Magical Swords were able to land hits very easily against Mollyboo. Depending on speed factor and timing, one of the swords might have been able to finish her off in the split second before she escaped.
I try again, this time with better buffs, and successfully bring Kangaxx to Near Death using a Protection from Undead scroll before removing it with an Arrow of Dispelling, triggering his transformation.
I use the WoL trick to apply Protection from Undead to both of us, completely wrecking Kangaxx's ability to function and sending him flying around the room.
Unfortunately, I never upgraded the Mace of Disruption and Kangaxx is moving too fast for me to land many hits in melee combat, so my only option is to use the Sling of Everard, with which Mollyboo has poor THAC0 and APR.
The Potion of Firebreath is not an option, either. SCS Kangaxx has 100% magic resistance on top of his spell level immunities.
Even with an Oil of Speed, 25 STR, and Potions of Power to improve her THAC0, Mollyboo's damage output is almost exactly identical to Kangaxx's regeneration rate. On average, she deals less than a single point of net damage per round, so the fight drags on for in-game hours as Kangaxx's HP dips up and down. I can't emphasize enough how incredibly long this fight was--it was so bad that the time expended was simply not worth it.
If you're going to kill LoB Kangaxx with this method, your character should either have access to the upgraded Mace of Disruption or be very, very skilled with the Sling of Everard. Otherwise you will run out of Protection from Undead scrolls long before you kill him (I would have run out of scrolls if I hadn't been able to duplicate them).
Finally, I head to Spellhold. We don't need to tackle Perth the Adept, but I do it anyway for the Book of Daily spell. Check out Perth illegally casting Sunfire from a distance!
I fail to prevent Perth from casting his alteration spell, so I end up running outside and then staying on the move until eventually I ran into Perth when his defenses had run low. Arrows of Dispelling and Acid Arrows will take down most any mages without weapon immunity spells active.
I still go with Desharik for the extra XP.
We can completely skip all of Spellhold using WoL Dimension Door scrolls. We could hop right out of the area, nab Jon's key, and then go straight to the Underdark by teleporting to the portal!
But that would probably cost us the Slayer form, the Cloak of Mirroring, and a whole bunch of easy XP. So instead, I just teleport past the enemies in the labyrinth, completely avoiding the lich encounter by jumping past its spawn trigger outside the northwest door. You can use the other door as a target.
I skip a lot of fights by teleporting. Mollyboo turns into the Slayer and goes wild during our last test of sanity, but fortunately the local bureaucrats don't mind a friendly thrashing.
Only Jon-bon is left. But why fight him when we can just teleport outside the chamber to complete safety?
Mollyboo's clone spawns outside the chamber, too, but fails to go hostile.
The other inmates busy themselves with taking down Jon-bon's defenses. It doesn't take long; multiple mages can always overwhelm a higher-level mage by spamming magic attacks faster than he or she can put up new defenses. The only exception is if the single mage has Spell Trap and the lower-level mages don't have Ruby Ray of Reversal, Piece Shield, or Spellstrike. Once Jon-bon's defenses are down, we can just launch Melf's Acid Arrows through the walls.
If you do get your hands on a Dimension Door scroll thanks to a mod, or learn Dimension Jump from Spell Revisions, you can still achieve some level of safety from this fight without using the WoL trick to completely escape the area. You can also teleport to one of the little pods around the chamber; some of them should be out of reach of Jon-bon's Fallen Planetar.
SCS mages sometimes get confused when they can't see any main characters to fight, and Irenicus in particular does weird stuff when he can't see you, like hitting himself with Breach.
Jon-bon somehow gets Summon Fallen Planetar off the ground and the planetar mops the floor with the inmates.
With no one else to distract him, Jon-bon teleports right on top of Mollyboo--our teleportation was not a guarantee of safety.
But Mollyboo can slip around a corner and shut the door on him, forcing Jon-bon to waste his Time Stop.
Jon-bon can't open the door, so he's once again helpless to Melf's Acid Arrow.
This time, he does not recover.
Once we slay the Sahuagin Priestess for her Cloak of Mirroring, I use teleportation to get past most of the City Sushi fights. Teleportation also gets us past the drow ambushes, allowing us to go straight to the Balor and dissolve him with WoL Acid Arrows. Notice the Balor using Implosion, which would have been extremely dangerous if it weren't for the Ring of Free Action +2.
Next stop, Ust Natha. I avoid yet another drow ambush by using Farsight to spot the hostile drow who runs from you when you approach the city gate, giving me a valid target for the WoL Dimension Door trick.
Mollyboo's Solo Legacy of Bhaal Run: Just Screwing Around
I don't know if there's a timer on when you can rescue Phaere with Solaufein, so I don't spend time fighting N'ashtar and the gang. Instead, I just teleport to Solaufein, and once the fight is over, I teleport back to the gates of Ust Natha using a copy of Sarevok's diary, which I dropped earlier specifically because it makes a great target that won't vanish after 24 hours.
I forgot to get blood for the Ust Natha questline, so I stop by the mind flayer city. Why mind flayers? Well, for one thing, I do like the idea of teleporting through the city and killing stuff without ever walking over the trigger that gets you captured. Mollyboo has 48 INT thanks to a WoL Potion of Genius, so there's no real danger of dying to INT drain.
I do still walk over that trigger, though, since I don't want to cause a bug. Besides, I can always just teleport wherever I want anyway. Getting the circlets first allows me to duplicate them and then use the WoL trick to charm the enemies in the pit fights.
It's completely unnecessary when the item duplication trick already gives us infinite PFMW scrolls, but it's fun to try new things.
I don't feel like wading through all those mind flayer fights, counting hits and worrying about Mollyboo's INT status. Instead, I go right for the Master Brain. But why teleport to the thing when I can just melt it through the walls?
The doors open. Not that we really need doors when we have Dimension Door.
N'ashtar and the gang are wandering around outside, so I decide to get rid of them. More WoL Control Circlet silliness lets us kill the drow with INT drain once their PFMW spells go down.
I go through all the motions of the Ust Natha questline, even though I can probably cut it short with Dimension Door. I doubt I even need the blood, really; I never actually use the treasury key from Phaere.
You can teleport past almost everything in this game. As always, I sneak past Taso Kala (I'm not sure it's realistic in LoB mode to kill the Ghaunadans in the single hour you're allowed, and it's not necessary anyway), but for once, I let Adalon kill the drow guarding the exit. Turns out I can stay invisible the whole time and she really will take down all of them without exposing Mollyboo to any danger.
Mollyboo finally breaks out Critical Strike and the Martyr's Morningstar to land an early kill on the Kuo-toa Prince.
Notice all the Kuo-toa under the influence of Control Circlets. I send a small army of them, plus a few Gauths, over to fight the Death Knights. The Death Knights absolutely destroy them, but it doesn't matter; Mollyboo can smash the head Death Knight with Lower Resistance and Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls.
The Soul Reaver is one of the most overpowered weapons in the game and has enjoyed precious little attention. It applies a nonmagical, nondispellable, cumulative -2 to THAC0 on hit with no save, bypassing spell protections, which lasts 20 rounds, enough to cripple virtually any enemy that needs to make an attack roll in order to harm the player.
Back in Athkatla, I use duplicated Protection from Undead scrolls on the vampires in Bodhi's lair (as always, I rested to avoid the vampire ambush). The WoL trick allows me to maintain invisibility while doing so; I just need to pick Mollyboo as the final target.
I also buff Drizzt and company along with the paladins, who easily mow down the vampires. Tanova can't even cast spells.
Bodhi, unfortunately, is immune to critical hits, which means the Martyr's Morningstar is harmless, even with Critical Strike.
Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh have no helmets and therefore no such immunities, but it seems that their Stoneskins also block the 15% damage from the morningstar's critical hits. The Mace of Disruption works fine, though.
I lower Bodhi's MR, but Melf's Acid Arrow doesn't affect her; she's immune to level 1 and 2 spells. But Sunfire works just fine, and six Efreet apply further fire damage and hold Bodhi down while Mollyboo fires off a more effective kind of Acid Arrow, with Enchanted Weapon to make sure they can bypass Bodhi's immunity to +2 weapons and below.
I talk my way past the Chosen of Cyric encounter, but out of curiosity, I load a previous save to try my hand at taking them down. The first attempt results in a decisive victory for the enemy; Control Circlets can't nail all of them, and while we resist a Maze against the odds, we simply don't have enough rounds to apply all the defenses we need.
You always arrive at this fight with zero buffs. If you don't open with PFMW, Zaeron imposes 50% stacking spell failure on hit. If you don't open with Stoneskin and stick with PFMW instead, Venduris will land a backstab with a nonmagical weapon, and the cleric will also try to land Harm.
Long story short, you need to have a strong way of establishing your defenses early on. It kind of boils down to either Hardiness and the Defender of Easthaven or contingencies and triggers; nothing else would really be sufficient.
I try again with contingencies prepared and try a WoL Control Circlet. Everyone I charm ends up dead very quickly (the mage I charm loses all of her buffs to a dispel effect on hit from the halfling thief) except for Venduris, who still ends up contributing almost nothing to the fight due to a script that interrupts his attacks. The only backstab he lands fails because apparently Grok is a Barbarian.
I learn precious little in the process; the fight was very simple with Mollyboo's contingencies keeping her safe and the Control Circlets frustrating the enemy's basic strategy.
Anyway, I reload to the save where I talked my way out of the fight (my original plan) and head to Firkraag's lair when I realize we're missing out on an item-based source of fire resistance. We charm the Ruhk Transmuter with a Control Circlet, but when I discover that the rakshasa can do basically nothing to the other enemies and vice versa, I just overwhelm him with Kitty clones.
This is a long dungeon with lots of little fights that aren't very rewarding in a solo LoB run, so I teleport past all the doors and obstacles. I only engage in two fights, which is a bit misleading considering I just bombed them from complete safety.
I charm Conster with a Control Circlet, but he has a helmet for some reason, which means Critical Strike cannot get us an automatic Dispel Magic through PFMW. But he wastes his next round on a PFMW Spell Trigger, allowing us to shoot through his Stoneskins with nonmagical arrows.
Firkraag is embarrassingly easy. His breath weapon is useless thanks to Protection from Fire, his Remove Magic is useless thanks to SI: Abjuration, his Lower Fire Resistance is useless thanks to subzero saving throws, his physical attacks have a 95% miss rate thanks to the THAC0 penalties from a few hits of Soul Reaver, and when his Stoneskins are gone, automatic critical hit from Critical Strike and the Martyr's Morningstar take down his 1,732 HP in less than 2 rounds.
In a twist, I almost end the run by teleporting to the lost temple of Amaunator in the Unseeing Eye quest. If I did not have the Teleport spell to jump to other areas, I would have been stuck at the temple due to not having a valid target to use Dimension Door to get past the riddle bridge I skipped.
Speaking of the Teleport spell... it allows us to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers. We ditch the Unseeing Eye and escape before it even spots us, leaving it to murder our charmed Gauth.
The Rift Devices sets the enemy's HP to 40% of its maximum and dispels all dispellable effects. It bypasses EVERYTHING. And we can duplicate it infinitely, giving us a ridiculously powerful weapon for virtually any fight. Even without the item duplication trick, you can still use it multiple times, though, if you don't have the SCS component that prevents clones from using quick items.
And yes, it does work with the WoL trick. You can totally bring Yaga-Shura, Sendai, Abazigal, Illasera, Gromnir, and Sarevok down to 40% HP and dispel all of Sendai's and Abazigal's defenses in a single round in the Ascension Throne of Bhaal fight.
Note that if you do duplicate the Rift Device, using even one of them removes all copies of the device from your inventory. If you want to duplicate it, it's best to store a few copies in a safe location, and drop all but one copy from your inventory before you use it.
Anyway, I want to grab Haer'dalis' Chaos Blade to gain access to DEX drain. Fun fact: you don't actually need to kill the Warden if you have Dimension Door. You can just hop over the instant death trap that the Planar Prison Key normally blocks and talk to Raelis Shai. With the WoL trick, we don't even need to get close to the Warden; we can jump to Raelis from the start of the dungeon.
The Warden still gets his comeuppance, as the thralls we charmed with Control Circlets continue fighting him after we leave.
Who'd have thought that teleport spells could enable sequence breaking?
@semiticgod said: "Who'd have thought that teleport spells could enable sequence breaking"
I think most people would. There was a reason that "Dimension Door" was made unavailable. It can actually break the game if used unwisely. One obvious thing that could happen is that you use it to get to an otherwise inaccessible area. You have no spells left to return and because there are enemies in sight, you cannot rest.
I let Cernd fight Faldorn (or rather, CTRL-Y does, because his victory is supposed to be guaranteed anyway and I'm impatient).
Victory is guaranteed in the unmodded game, but defeat is guaranteed if you've got SCS installed (and don't use Ctrl-Y ).
That always seemed like a bug to me. It's original game behavior for Cernd to be immortal during the fight, and for some reason SCS prevented him from shapeshifting, which is why he's no longer immortal (he's not given the right item). His SCS behavior doesn't even make sense--why would a Shapeshifter not shapeshift? Other SCS druids will gleefully switch back and forth between natural form and their shapeshifts, but not the one and only Shapeshifter in the entire saga.
So I don't think it's intentional. It seems contrary to the whole philosophy of the mod for Cernd to be dumber than in vanilla.
I vaguely remember raising it and being told it was intentional. I agree I don't like the result though - it's too much of a break with the original game. If it was an even fight such that sometimes Cernd wins and sometimes he loses (similar to Melicamp) that would seem more acceptable to me.
Comments
~WSR/SETUP-WSR.TP2~ #0 #302 // Revised Wizard Slayer item restrictions -> Moderate changes: v1.12
~WSR/SETUP-WSR.TP2~ #0 #999 // BG2-style icons for WSR content: v1.12
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #9 // Revised Thievery -> Use PnP thievery potions and prevent their effects from stacking: v4.91
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #999 // BG2-style icons for RR content: v4.91
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #100 // Restore innate infravision to Half-Orc characters: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #101 // Prevent skeletal and incorporeal undead from being affected by Illithids' Devour Brain attack: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #102 // Change Spiritual Hammer into a ranged force weapon: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #103 // Allow Dispel/Remove Magic to take down Globes of Invulnerability: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #104 // PnP Color Spray: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #105 // PnP Dimension Door: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #115 // Allow Mages to scribe memorized spells onto scrolls -> Scrolls can be scribed everywhere: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #120 // Restore innate disease immunity to Paladins: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #125 // Rangers' Animal Empathy improves with experience: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #130 // Additional racial traits for Dwarves: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #140 // Additional racial traits for Gnomes: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #201 // Instant casting for warrior innates: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #202 // Revised Bhaalpowers -> Enhance the Bhaalpowers and standardize their casting time: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #203 // Make druidic shapeshifting uninterruptable: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #204 // Prevent Mislead clones from singing Bard songs: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #205 // Prevent Project Image and Simulacrum clones from using quickslot items: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #211 // Make Death Ward protect against Vorpal Hits: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #210 // Restore the Dispel Magic vulnerability to Nishruu and Hakeashars: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #212 // Make alignment detection spells more accurate: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #213 // Expanded saving throw bonus tables for Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #216 // Bard songs break invisibility -> Only the Jester song breaks invisibility: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #261 // Altered XP rewards from locks, traps and scrolls -> Improved (lowered) XP rewards from locks, traps and scrolls: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #220 // Simple Thief script: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #230 // Simple Bard script: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #239 // Simple Cleric/Paladin script: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #324 // Use Icewind Dale's Dimension Door animation -> Fast animation speed, shorter delay between animation start and creature appearance/disappearance: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #310 // Distinctive creature coloring: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #315 // Distinctive creature soundsets: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #500 // Slightly expanded storage capacity for containers -> Use the recommended storage capacity value (999): v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #510 // Expanded temple services: v4.51 BWP Fix
~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #999 // BG2-style icons for aTweaks content: v4.51 BWP Fix
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #1010 // The Manual of War: 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2070 // Free Action does not prevent Haste or Movement Rate Bonus: 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2080 // Drop Equipment on Disintegration: 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2090 // Drop Equipment on Petrification: 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2100 // Drop Equipment on Imprisonment: 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2110 // Treat all Innate Abilities as Non-Magical (Unaffected by Wild/Dead Magic and Silence): 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Treat all Psionic Abilities as Non-Magical (Unaffected by Wild/Dead Magic and Silence): 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2130 // Treat all Bardsong Effects as Non-Magical (Unaffected by Wild/Dead Magic): 1.7
~KLATU/SETUP-KLATU.TP2~ #0 #2160 // Remove Delay from Improved Haste Spells: 1.7
~SETUP-BP-BGT-WORLDMAP.TP2~ #0 #0 // Worldmap for Baldur's Gate - including colored Baldur's Gate map icons: v10.2.2
~AREA_PATCHER/SETUP-AREA_PATCHER.TP2~ #0 #0 // Area Patcher: ALPHA 16
~AREA_PATCHER/SETUP-AREA_PATCHER.TP2~ #0 #5000 // Fix BG1NPC X#AJR1.ARE: ALPHA 16
~AREA_PATCHER/SETUP-AREA_PATCHER.TP2~ #0 #5001 // Fix BG1NPC X#CH11.ARE: ALPHA 16
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #102 // Choose a class for Imoen -> Make Imoen a multiclass mage/thief: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #121 // Choose a class for Jaheira -> Make Jaheira a druid: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #141 // Choose a class for Khalid -> Make Khalid a ranger/cleric: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #161 // Choose a class for Minsc -> Make Minsc a fighter: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #242 // Choose a class for Branwen -> Make Branwen a multiclass fighter/cleric: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #321 // Choose a class for Montaron -> Make Montaron a thief: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #583 // Choose a class for Viconia -> Make Viconia a cleric/thief: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #2000 // NPC kit choices: v2.8
~NPC_EE/NPC_EE.TP2~ #0 #3000 // multiclass kit choice: v2.8
// Recently Uninstalled: ~SETUP-BWS_FINAL.TP2~ #0 #0 // Make quick-logged WeiDU-entries visible
Even if you keep your mages away from everyone else, you're going to end up dealing with Fallen Solars and Illasera in the Ascension Melissan fight. Without PFMW or Absolute Immunity, the Fallen Solars will have an 85% chance of automatically removing your sorcerers' Stoneskins and Death Ward and a 15% chance of a vorpal strike (it also has a Dispel Magic effect, though at a non-scaling level 22, which you should be able to avoid if you get your sorcerers to level 27). As for Illasera, her arrows dispel magic at level 30 and impose a non-cumulative 40% spell failure for both priest and mage spells. Her other arrows deal nonmagical magic damage and stun and slow the target on a failed save vs. polymorph at -4.
That said, Illasera can't see through invisibility judging by her .cre file, so if you keep your sorcerers from ever breaking invisibility within her line of sight, you could keep them alive. But I wouldn't count on it, nor would I want my sorcerers to be unable to cast any summoning spells or any spells on any other character outside of Time Stop (which is a very bad spell to use because both Abazigal and Melissan are immune to it).
You should be able to keep Physical Mirror active as a pre-buff before both phases of the Throne of Bhaal fight, so your priests should be safe from those arrows.
It would be a very good idea to keep PFMW on Charname because Abazigal and Melissan both attack during Time Stop, and while you can use Focus to grant Charname immunity to Time Stop, it only lasts 5 rounds and you can only cast it every 10 rounds. Stacking Hardiness spells from Wish can also get the whole party's resistances up to 100%, but I'm guessing you'd avoid doing that, and it's awfully luck-dependent even if you were using the Wand of Lightning.
You might be able to survive the Ascension Melissan fight without PFMW or Absolute Immunity. But it would definitely require very well-timed Maze traps from your Bounty Hunter to make sure you could debuff Abazigal in time to disrupt his Time Stop spell (or a lucky Holy Word, or a very lucky damage-less spell disruption from a Fire Seed or some other area-effect spell), and there are just so many ways that plan could go horribly wrong and get two or three party members killed during a single Time Stop.
Unless Insect Plague bypasses magic resistance in your install, in which case you'd have a 100% lockdown on both Abazigal and Sendai, instead of 35% and 16%, respectively. Then you'd just have to worry about dealing with the enemy's humongous damage output and HP.
Melissan herself would be easier to handle despite being immune to spell failure. Take down her Spell Trap and you should be able to lock her down with Implosion (unless your install makes them once-per-day innate spells, which would require Wish-resting to make it last more than 3 rounds), which only requires a single sorcerer and a single priest to act in concert for one round. But dealing enough damage to kill her, while maintaining the defenses of your party, would be extremely complicated without taking down the Five first.
It's a ridiculously high-pressure environment. You're a talented player with brilliant plans and incredibly precise technical skill, @Grond0, but depending on your install and what options you're willing to choose, Ascension Melissan could be much tougher than all of BG1 and SoD combined.
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/924712/#Comment_924712
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/924969/#Comment_924969
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925415/#Comment_925415
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925665/#Comment_925665
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925927/#Comment_925927
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926333/#Comment_926333
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926724/#Comment_926724
Getting away from 'what might be' to what currently is, the Opera have made a bit more progress in SoD.
At the Coast Way Crossing I tried using farsight to allow summons to infiltrate the bridge area, but even doing that triggered the fight before the summons could get inside. An invisibility purge was countered with invis 10' before too much damage was done to anyone and shortly after that Caelar called a truce. Naturally I couldn't allow that truce to hold though and spirit lions did most of the hard work in finishing off the opponents.
The XP from that contest got the party close to their next level, but they would in any case have got that just from the quest XP for arriving in Troll Claw Woods.
After Pauper had been brought back from the dead by Hardup the party tried out Skint's new cloudkill spell on various groups in the area - that proved to be a pretty efficient troll killer.
Looking for a bit more of a challenge the party went to find Morentherene - though in fact she proved pretty easy as well. Two skull traps and a spirit fire badly injured her and she went to attack a spirit bear rather than the party. An insect plague and a couple of magic missiles then left her at the edge of death and a MMM pushed her over.
In the temple, summons quickly worked through various guards. I did though get caught out by a trap - moving slightly further than intended before checking for traps. However, with everyone on full HPs to start with there was little chance of casualties there.
After reluctantly redoing the temple fights the Opera rested before producing new summons to beat up the Neothelid while they looked on invisibly.
After reviving Pauper there was rather better preparation for Darskhelin. A pair of opening skull traps produced a couple of victims as an insect plague followed summons into the room. Darskhelin himself took the full force of a day's traps laid by Washout outside the door and died of continuing poison damage from those. A follow-up cloudkill then finished off the last of the mind-flayer's would-be protectors.
On the way to Boareskyr Bridge the Opera got a bit of gentle exercise killing some giants attacking a baby dragon.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L11, 75 HPs, 38 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L9, 80 HPs, 202 kills, 3 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L10, 69 HPs, 297 kills, 1 death
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L11, 71 HPs, 66 kills, 1 death
Aspire, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 420 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 335 kills, 1 death
Skint roared into second place in that session and made quite a bit of ground up on Aspire, thanks to the regular use of cloudkills to dissolve weaker opponents.
I badly underestimate the fights on the way up the elevator. Those LoB bonuses make little enemies much bigger. There's a lot of HP to cut through, and the Spell Breaker +2 alone won't do it.
It takes many rounds of Wand of Frost spamming--so many rounds, in fact, that the Potions of Power I've been stacking wear off. And when that happens, Mollyboo's current HP drops to its previous maximum. Notice the Bone Fiend is vulnerable to cold damage despite skeletons normally being immune to cold.
I drink another round of Potions of Power, but a previous potion wears off, and suddenly Mollyboo is down to 100 HP. It seems that while the HP boosts of Potions of Power stack temporarily, they take away lots of HP when they wear off.
Since this is a solo run and I neglected to create a bunch of dead characters to fill up the party, Caelar joins the group. To preserve the solo run, I let Caelar join the group but only let her operate via AI, replicating the effects of having Caelar as an ally but not as a party member.
It makes very little difference, really. Caelar, as a potential party member, does in fact receive no LoB bonuses, and she lasts about a single round against the demons.
I have a lot of enemies to take down if I'm going to safely kite Belhifet, so I switch to the Wand of Frost. Unfortunately, Belhifet has either 80% or 100% MR depending on which weapon he's using, and the wand isn't going to do much without Lower Resistance beforehand. Notice that Caelar is still taking damage despite being dead.
This isn't working very well. I deploy some summons from the Wand of Water Elemental Summoning, but all of them fail saves against Demon Fear simultaneously. Notice that Mollyboo has been drinking some more Potions of Power to make sure her HP is strong for the next 30-40 rounds, since the previous potions are gone.
Mollyboo uses a WoL Lower Resistance scroll on Belhifet, donning the Wizzard Hat for the casting speed bonus so she can hit Belhifet with 5 spells in 2 rounds instead of 2.5 rounds. But we've got a problem.
Even though I chose Mollyboo as the final target for the WoL (which is why you see the Lower Resistance icon on Mollyboo), casting Lower Resistance has broken her invisibility. Now the demons can teleport over to her and use their melee attacks. Mollyboo has to drink a Potion of Invisibility and flee, but we've still got the Erinyes to worry about. And despite Mollyboo having -15 AC vs. missile weapons, the Erinyes do not need to roll 20s to land a hit on her. Mollyboo has to use a Stoneskin scroll; she's already lost her previous skins.
I can't actually fight Belhifet without all those demons descending upon Mollyboo and tearing her apart. I need to clear the map in order to deal with Belhifet safely. I do the math and find that I can take down a single demon on average every round if I use the WoL Wand of Polymorphing (only available with certain mods installed, but still a vanilla weapon and therefore legal in this run). If the wand works, the enemy is forcibly equipped with a nonmagical melee weapon and their maximum HP is set to 5. Unfortunately, the odds are dicey and I can't use it without breaking invisibility. All of the demons teleport over to Mollyboo and box her in.
Mollyboo teleports away, but her defenses are running thin. She needs Potions of Magic Shielding to deal with fire damage and Potions of Invulnerability to improve her AC against those Erinyes' arrows, and either potion can improve her saves to make sure she doesn't get disabled or poisoned. I have to dedicate some of her rounds to her defenses.
The Wand of Frost doesn't deal enough damage and the Wand of Polymorphing isn't reliable enough against the lesser demons. Theoretically, the Wand of Polymorphing could work on Belhifet, but it only has a 10% chance of working, and that's only if I lower his MR to zero, dispel his Improved Invisibility, AND apply Greater Malison, which is a tall order considering how much pressure I'm already dealing with. I need to try something new.
I switch to the Martyr's Morningstar. It can take down 15% of Belhifet's HP on a critical hit, but since I was saving this for late SoA because of Critical Strike, I never put a pip into Single Weapon style, which means the chances of landing that critical are 5% per attack roll. I'd need to make 120 attack rolls on average to take down all 1,100 of his HP. Belhifet, however, does not need to roll critical hits to take me down.
Thanks to the item duplication trick, I always have more Potions of Power. But whenever a previous potion runs out, my HP drops dramatically.
I teleport away to recover and keep trying to land those critical hits, but the situation is dire. We've made no progress besides messing up a single Erinyes, and Belhifet summons a new demon or two every 4 rounds.
I can't count on having hundreds of HP as a buffer; I'm just going to revert back to my base 120. And based on my THAC0 and damage output, I can't expect to take down Belhifet in the 40-round time frame of a Potion of Power. And I've got over 10 more demons to deal with besides Belhifet because I spent the early rounds focusing on my defenses and accomplishing very little.
The reality sinks in. I don't know if I can actually take down Belhifet at this point. Mollyboo's resources are infinite thanks to the item duplication trick, but Belhifet's army grows larger every 4 rounds. I can't damage Belhifet without breaking invisibility, and breaking invisibility causes the demons to teleport around me and attack with massive collective APR, and I doubt Potions of Power will ward them off indefinitely. Nor can I take down the demons; Belhifet adds another 200+ HP to the army every 4 rounds, and I can't expect to deal over 50 damage per round with Mollyboo.
The numbers simply do not add up. Mollyboo has to do too many things to shore up her defenses, and she doesn't have enough time and breathing room to make any real progress. All she can do is run away and prolong the fight while Belhifet solidifies his advantage.
I think I lost my chance to take down Belhifet. I should have just cast Enchanted Weapon on Mollyboo and had her face Belhifet in melee early on; she might have been able to slay him within the 40-round window if she had just relied on healing potions and mage scrolls to keep herself alive. But I overestimated Belhifet's advantage in melee combat, and underestimated the importance of his summoned demons.
It's too late. I can restore Mollyboo's defenses, but Belhifet only grows stronger with every 4 rounds.
I make a gamble with the Wand of Polymorphing, but luck is against me. I run out of charges while only taking down about three demons.
Then I realize that, despite Mollyboo's poor THAC0, we can still get guaranteed hits on Belhifet by using Enchanted Weapon with Arrows of Detonation. The former allows any weapon to hit Belhifet (or in this case, his fellow demons, who are immune to +1 weapons like the arrows), and the latter hit automatically; no attack roll required.
But I do the math again, and I don't see how we can take down Belhifet even now. He regenerates 3 HP per second, or 18 per round. And I can't fire off even a single arrow without the whole crowd descending upon me, and I don't like the idea of using the bow in melee combat and giving everyone +4 to hit and damage against Mollyboo because she doesn't have a melee weapon equipped.
Then I realize that Enchanted Weapon will allow me to hit Belhifet with Acid Arrows, which deal the original 2d6 acid damage from BG1 in my install. But his MR blocks the damage.
The Acid Arrows won't be enough, either.
Kiting Belhifet is simply no longer possible; the enemy horde will just instantly teleport over to Mollyboo and box her in. Getting rid of the army is no longer possible; it has too much collective APR for Mollyboo to win out. Polymorphing Belhifet to drop his HP to 5 is no longer possible; I only have a single charge left in the wand. And killing Belhifet with the Martyr's Morningstar is a total crapshoot, considering we need to make 120 attack rolls to deal enough damage, during which Belhifet would regenerate 720 HP, requiring another 80-90 attack rolls.
Mollyboo can't survive 200 rounds in melee combat. Sooner or later, the enemies would just get a bunch of high rolls in a row and overwhelm her. The best we can do is simply engage Belhifet in melee combat and hope that the dice rolls go in our favor.
I can't believe it. We were doing so incredibly well, abusing the WoL trick in so many different ways and steamrolling the opposition despite not using the Wand of Meat Blobs. But now, by wasting the first 50 rounds of combat and allowing the enemy horde to grow, Mollyboo has lost any realistic chance of taking down Belhifet. Unless I'm willing to spend countless hours re-duplicating potions and Dimension Door scrolls until Mollyboo finally lands a string of critical hits in a row, this run is pretty much over.
Then I have a new idea. Why don't I just do the same thing I did in the poverty run?
Melf's Acid Arrow is a pretty weak spell, but with the WoL trick multiplying the effects, each one should do 120 lingering damage on average. All I have to do is use a WoL Lower Resistance scroll on him first.
But trying to kill Belhifet with scrolls will break Mollyboo's invisibility and also root her in place. She'd have to spend 10 whole rounds of aura just using the scrolls, all while she's taking full damage from the enemy horde. How would I survive that?
Well, it may be a lot of damage. But 10 rounds of aura, plus a few rounds to restore her defenses every now and then, is well within the 40-round window during which Potions of Power will keep her HP above 100.
As it happens, Mollyboo's last Potion of Power has worn off, so we can start boosting her HP immediately. Once I duplicate a bunch of Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls, I lead her in circles around the map to keep Belhifet off our backs. The previous rounds also included a lot of kiting; everyone's been chasing Mollyboo, even the demons who can't see through invisibility.
Once I've got her HP well north of 500, I send her over to a corner to begin casting Lower Resistance on Belhifet. Why a corner? Well, if her back is to the wall, that means enemies cannot flank her. This position actually cuts the enemy's effective APR in half.
With Belhifet's MR at 0, he is perfectly vulnerable to Melf's Acid Arrow. We begin the process of dissolving the demon.
Belhifet is too far away for him to hit us, but we've still got plenty of other enemies attacking us. Mollyboo may have -18 AC vs. melee weapons, but the enemy's APR is sky-high and her Stoneskins don't last long. We've got about 7 enemies attacking her at once.
But the plan is working. The WoL Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls are taking a toll on Belhifet's HP. After only a few rounds, he's lost a massive chunk of his HP.
Before long, he's dropped to half his maximum HP.
When the enemies start landing hits with unusually low attack rolls, I notice the Potion of Invulnerability has worn off. Mollyboo may have lots of HP and can weather a lot of attacks, but AC is a good investment in maintaining high HP. I have her drink another potion.
Mollyboo's portrait begins to go red. But Belhifet is in even worse shape, and Mollyboo can recover even more HP than he can if she uses a Potion of Healing.
I haven't bothered using Potions of Extra Healing; the basic kind is more than sufficient. In fact, we've barely used any healing potions at all, as Mollyboo has plenty of other defenses.
Mollyboo keeps applying Melf's Acid Arrows to Belhifet. Thanks to her strong AC, Potions of Power, and retreating to the corner to avoid being flanked, she keeps her HP extremely high even as Belhifet, shorn of his magic resistance, slowly dissolves in the acid. Finally, the demon goes down.
His summons all vanish, leaving only Hephernaan behind. Many rounds later, Hephernaan dies to the same spell as his master.
We escape from Avernus, kill Skie, and watch the people whose lives we just saved turn their backs on us in an instant. At our trial, the prosecution calls in witnesses to lie about Mollyboo, including a ridiculous tale about the symbol of Bhaal appearing on the Bridgefort bridge.
I teleported past that entire questline, so that never actually happened!
Despite the slander, Mollyboo's Chaotic Neutral alignment, and the fact that we poisoned the crusaders' supplies, we nonetheless get the "good" ending where Belt smuggles us out of prison. On the way, we notice Clara sitting in a cage for some reason.
The only fight left is an unwinnable encounter with respawning backstabbers from EET. All of them do nonlethal damage to make sure everyone survives the encounter. Notice that Minsc and Dynaheir are missing because I sent them off to fight a bear so I could steal their loot (which I never did end up using).
Siege of Dragonspear is over! On to Shadows of Amn!
As the title suggests, this run has been mostly just me screwing around, using glitches to duplicate items and teleport past entire questlines. But I am quite proud of the fight with Belhifet. I badly mismanaged the first rounds because I failed to appreciate the importance of engaging him in melee combat, but I'm very pleased with how it ended. I had almost given up on the run before I figured out I could get past his massive HP, massive MR, subterranean AC, and numerous allies just by relying on two different scrolls, and tucking Mollyboo into the corner was a great way to minimize pressure on her.
That corner is probably an excellent place to be in the late rounds of a solo LoB fight with Belhifet. When the enemies grow too numerous for the player to kite Belhifet, hiding in a corner can limit the number of enemies who can reach you.
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
Part VIII: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/920872/#Comment_920872
Part IX: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/923305/#Comment_923305
Part X: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925317/#Comment_925317
Part XI: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926586/#Comment_926586
After preparing for Draconis with usual buffs + acid protection and some potions (I should also mention that I had the shadow dragon armor equipped), Iloïnen and summons took down his human form first:
The transformation destroyed all of my summons, and the dragon chased me to the edge of the map (I prefer to fight there, because it allows me to quickly flee to Amkethran). He dispelled all of my buffs, and when I activated my simmy, it disappeared right away (and I don't know why). With no buffs and no simmy, I decided to flee and go for a second try:
I returned with the plan to do the same thing that ended up working for my solo totemic druid (the only solo run I have ever done before) - trying to go for a max damage approach with simmy and energy blades, with a deva as a short-time distraction. However, the simmy got destroyed right away once again (still no idea why - no true sight, not enough damage to kill it... the combat log is giving me nothing to go on), and any further spellcasting attempts were disrupted. I made a quick attempt at magic resistance + harm, but it's just not possible to successfully use magic resistance against this opponent - so I ran away to return for my third try.
This time, I didn't return to the pocket plane to rest... and this might've resulted in Draconis not returning back to the middle of the map. Instead, he was standing right next to Iloïnen when she returned to his area. And right away, I got affected by dragon fear. What's the saving throw type and penalty for this one? I thought I'd be safe, but I was definitely wrong (didn't help that I had the Helm of Vhailor, not the Helm of Balduran equipped):
So now my survival was dependent entirely on luck. I survived a similiar situation against Belhifet, so there was a chance, at least. With a couple of hits and acid breath attacks, Iloïnen went to 56 hp, and I thought this would be the end:
- however, a few seconds after that, I regained control:
I managed to escape once again. This time, upon returning, Draconis wasn't in sight, and I was able to return to the pocket plane to buff up. Since previous tactics didn't work out at all, I decided to go for a new approach, based on damage resistance and survivability. I also summoned a deva before Draconis could get to me and disrupt the spell. This time, I got lucky: The deva managed to heal herself before Draconis could easily destroy her, giving me more time, and the dragon's remove magic failed to actually dispel my buffs!
An attempt at using the simmy got foiled again, but when I started to go for GWWs, I was finally starting to have some success - damage resistance was high enough to allow me to stand toe to toe with Draconis:
I had to use one RoR charge, but another two GWWs, and victory was mine:
Well, getting affected by dragon fear certainly wasn't a nice turn of events. Otherwise, this went about as well as I could've expected, considering previous experiences. Abazigal's Lair was easy to clear up until the final boss. I first took down his salamanders using my sling:
Once Abazigal changed forms, he, too, was quick to dispel my buffs, though I still had shield of the archons. Iloïnen was quickly knocked unconscious:
But the dragon wasn't able to seize this opportunity. I ran around for a bit, realized that Abazigal uses maze (I had, at this point, no idea what his script actually involves) and finally managed to get out of the dragon's sight in order to return to the pocket plane (didn't know this actually worked in this battle!):
- this allowed me to rebuff and return. However, I made the crucial mistake of not including shield of the archons in my buff list. As Abazigal instantly removed every single buff, I was left without defenses:
But it wasn't maze that affected me - once again, it was dragon fear - and this time, I actually had all negative saving throws:
I got down to 60 hp, 24 hp, 12 hp:
As a final mockery, Abazigal actually used maze, which would've killed me as soon as the animation finished - but it was another melee hit that ended my run.
Well... Not exactly an unexpected death, as I predicted this one to be really difficult given my extremely limited experience with soloing this encounter. I did end up finishing this run with another reload for Abazigal and, after easily taking down Balthazar and the Ravager, even more reloads for Amelyssan, so even if I had beaten Draconis, the final boss would've spelled my end (even after I figured out a reasonable tactic, I still needed three reloads to actually execute it successfully). Honestly, I mostly started this run in order to get the solo achievement (the last one I hadn't really done yet), so I guess I kind of achieved my goal here? I'm a bit sad I didn't get a cleric/ranger into the hall of heroes, though.
Good luck to everyone else - my next run will be with the 2.5 beta and a couple of mods, if I can get them to work!
Enuhal
Looking at Dragon Fear in Near Infinity, it seems that the spell has a massive -4 penalty to its save vs. spell (a 10% chance of working against your character, judging by your -1 save vs. spell) and the fear effect lasts for 10 whole rounds. I had no idea it lasted so long. And since you have an unkitted character and the spell is schoolless, it's possible that the schoolless save bug worked against you, too, unless that's been fixed very recently. Very bad luck indeed.
There is an explanation for why your Simulacrum clone vanished without warning: all dispel magic effects, from Remove Magic to the Staff of the Magi to Carsomyr, have an effect on hit that also instantly kills any critter with a gender of "illusionary." Clones from Mislead, Project Image, and Simulacrum are assigned those genders by default, which means dispel magic effects instantly kill them, irrespective of caster level. There are a handful of enemies, like planetars and the Ravager, who dispel magic on hit, which means instant death for any clones they attack. The only defense against it is immunity to the spell or weapon, like SI: Abjuration for Remove Magic or PFMW in the case of a planetar.
True Seeing has the same effect; you'd need SI: Divination to block it. So for non-mages who use Vhailor's Helm to summon clones, the only way to keep them alive is to keep them out of range of dispelling effects and prevent the enemy from casting True Seeing, a daunting prospect.
Miluiel, the elven bard
BG1 posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6SoD posts : 1, 2, 3, 4
SoA posts : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Notable mods
- SCS (full prebuffs, full Tactical Challenges)
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalancing
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Refinements
Guys, it's truly becoming ridiculous... I had another really, really close call, even worst than in Ust Natha and Irenicus together. Miluiel is just fooling death at every corner...
So, because I muffed the egg quest, I had to kill Adalon. Not something I was happy to do, but I was forced to. We had no problem during the fight.
The fight before the exit was also not too problematic. I lured the Glabrezus with invisibility straight into traps laid by Alora, which killed one and soften the other before we killed it in melee.
The fight against the rest of the bunch was actually a bit more complicated than what I was expecting, because they were very aggressive with Dispel, which is dangerous in quick succession in IR (Dispelling screen renders you immune against a single Dispel magic; it's harder to keep on than Spell Immunity : Abjuration). We had to retreat, which split their group. We then picked them out one by one without too much of a problem, even if they managed to take down Alora at some point.
For the rest, we buffed up and meleed down the opposition until we could gladly get out of the Underdark.
So, here we are, free to roam around Athkatla again. After having talked to a few people in an other thread, it seems that I muffed the Kivan's mod questline. I had to talk to Aphril in Spellhold to see Kivan's wife in another plane so she could be revived later in Suldanessellar. It seems that, without her, Kivan just abandon you at the end of SoA to go die somewhere to rejoin his wife. So, I won't have Kivan in ToB. It's a bit sad, but I decide to be proactive about it, and switch him for someone else who I can build the way I want before ToB. We considered another fighter, but I believe I don't really need that. Well buffed, Gavin and Jaheira are superb meleers. So, we went arcane. I thought about Imoen, but since she turns on you in the final Ascension fight, and that fight really frightens me, I said screw it. We went with Tyris Flare, a fighter7 --> mage. Neeto. She's about 600 000 xp behind Kivan, but she'll be with us longer.
After that change, we did a small, innocent sidequest involving Ricar, an elf who's a friend of Xan and who got deceived by a woman drow : she possess important documents concerning Irenicus, which is why we hunted her down for Ricar. Ok. They're in the North Forest. It's just a group with a single cleric and a few melee goons, Nothing to write home about. We kill them and report to Ricar. I thought that this small arc - part of the Xan mod, obviously - was over. I get back to Waukeen's Promenade, we go to the Inn for a good night of sleep and then go the Adventurer's Mart to sell the stuff the drow had - merely generic +2 gear. Nothing fancy, but you get good money out of it.
However, that's at this exact moment that the shit hit the fan. As soon as I got out of the Adventurer's Mart, completely out of nowhere, a high level mage drow appeared and told me, because I killed an High Maiden of Lloth, he had to kill me. We're completely unbuffed, outside of Stoneskin. He starts with a Chain Contingency with ADHW and summons some monsters (I don't know which at this point). The party takes really high damage - Miluiel only has 35 hp left -, so we decide to flee back into the Adventurer's Mart. I use my first action to cast my Minor Spell Sequencer on myself, Invisibility with Mirror Images. Then, I hear the drow mage cast Time Stop. When time indeed gets stopped, the drow mage enters the Mart. Miluiel is right there besides him. She has only 35 hp left and no spell protection. The drow mage can do whatever the hell he wants. At this point, I'm not even nervous. I'm just thinking : ok, that's it, the run is over. ANY AoE damage would kill Miluiel outright. I'm already thinking about the message I'll write in this thread at this point. But the drow decides to buff up and summon more monsters : two Balors this time. So, when Time Stop is over, Miluiel actually survived. Here's a scene of the complete mayhem :
Even though we miraculously survived Time Stop, we're not in the clear. Far from it, actually. Alora and Jaheira are disabled by fear, Tyris is juuuust about to die - and she does a few moments later. We can only hope to get out of the Mart now. The drow mage blast Gavin and Xan with Chain Lightning and a Balor kills Alora in a single strike. Jaheira regains her senses and we both manage to get out. You remember that the drow mage summoned monsters through his Chain Contingency outside the Mart : these are two Greater Basilisks (Monster Summoning IX in SR). They hold Jaheira (SR replace petrification with a permanent Hold that can only be dispelled by scrolls or Stone to Flesh) and the drow mage kills her soon after. I can only do one thing : grab her stuff, stay out of their line of sight and get out.
I just can't believe it. Miluiel is still alive after all that. I'm in awe. I revive everyone with the Rod of Resurrection and Temple services and decide to get back at this freakin' drow. He spent most of his spells anyway, so we're not going to let him get away with it that easily. We heal, gear up and buff ourselves properly this time, we find that son of a $&?%$ and slay him outright.
All this bad shit craziness net us a really nice dagger for Miluiel : a +4 dagger that leeches hp on hit.
Sooo, to cool down, we went through something less complex : the Planar Sphere. We first fought a bunch of nasty halflings :
We then take down Lavok without any trouble : since I added another mage into our team, we can debuff SCS mages in no more than two rounds. We lost offensive damage without Kivan, but we gained flexibility. I think we gained more power in the end.
We slayed Tolgerias and his acolyte right after. The fight was a bit more complicated, because he too summoned two Greater Basilisks. We killed them at range before they caused too much trouble, though. After that, we freely debuffed and controlled Tolgerias without a problem.
The demon outside the Planar Sphere was bum-rushed. Fully buffed, we have over 20 APR in our team, so it was pretty straight forward. We carved his heart out and got out of the Sphere. End of the questline. Booya.
Good news : Xan is nearing level 16, which means he'll be able to cast Pierce Shield, which will help me greatly against Irenicus. Lesson of the day : never ever do mod quests completely blind during a no-reload run. Never.
Holy. Cow.
Unlike @Enuhal
Base save vs. spell at fighter level 17 (4.5 million XP): 6
Ring of Gaxx: -2
Ring/Cloak of Protection +2: -2
Hell bonus: -2
Helm of Balduran: -1
Amulet of Spell Warding: -2
Which should be enough to block Dragon Fear. I assume the schoolless save bug will be fixed in 2.5, so that's as low as you need to go.
If absolutely necessary, you could even bring in the Claw of Kazgaroth from BG1 (it should import into Chateau Irenicus) and equip the Shield of the Order and Fflar's Scabbard. That could get your save vs. spell down to -8.
I did try keeping remove fear up (I generally don't trust saving throws alone, due to various known bugs, and like to keep up immunity effects as well), though in both cases I got affected by the dragon fear, there was basically no time window between remove magic and dragon fear affecting my character. Definitely interesting to know there's a -4 penalty at work here. I would've changed up my equipment if I had known that - My tendency to figure out things step by step and not look them up beforehand definitely hurt me there quite a bit. I will keep that in mind for future fights.
Sadly, I don't have access to Kiel's helmet in BG2 (I would need EET for that, I think). No item-based fear immunity for a cleric/ranger in my installation. The Runehammer +5 would've been a great solution, but getting the rune to upgrade it isn't possible without a thief or the knock spell
What do you mean by equipping Fflar's Scabbard? At least in my game, this is just used to upgrade Foebane and has no stats by itself.
About the simulacrum: I guess that remove magic was the culprit in most cases, given your explanation, though I swear that quite a few times, the simmy was only hit by the dragon's breath weapon and nothing else, and the damage shouldn't have been high enough to kill it. I was a bit confused by this, because with my solo totemic druid, the simulacrum was an integral part of my eventual victory, as I had no way to deal enough damage without it being active during the entire fight. Very strange. Mabye there are changes in the EE compared to vanilla, or I've just been very lucky with the totemic druid.
@Arctodus Your run keeps getting more and more exciting! I really hope you make it!
Journal of Ælfweald
After Gorion and I were ambushed I headed straight back to Candlekeep only to be denied access. Using stealth I returned to the site of the ambush and recovered a lot of Gorion's possessions and in addition found a diamond in a tree, presumably an old nest of a magpie.After reading Gorion's note I decided not to follow the instructions therein as it was more than possible that our attackers had also read the note and could be waiting in ambush for us at the Friendly Arms Inn.
Instead I headed southwards to Beregost and High Hedge. In beregost I bought a better sling, calmed down Marl and gave a tome to Firebead.
At High Hedge I killed a number of gnoll before heading southwards. There I rescued Mellicamp from a wolf and returned him to High Hedge where a mage transformed him back to human form.
I told a former wizard's apprentice what had happened and he rewarded me with a tome that changes a mage into a conjurer.
I tried to restore a werewolf but was unsuccessful.
I then headed south of Beregost and aquired a set of boots that improves stealth.
Heading further south I killed several hobgoblins and found an amulet belonging to the Colquetle family.
Further south still, I was given a ring that boosts my charisma to 18.
At the carnival I had a dream after which I gained an extra ability to heal.
In Nashkel, I turned down a reward that rightfully belongs to Greywolf. I found some ankheg armour and headed south.
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/924712/#Comment_924712
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/924969/#Comment_924969
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925415/#Comment_925415
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925665/#Comment_925665
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925927/#Comment_925927
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926333/#Comment_926333
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926724/#Comment_926724
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/927339/#Comment_927339
At Boareskyr Bridge the Opera cleared the external area first - Skint again picking up plenty of easy victims with cloudkill.
Moving on to the Coalition Camp everyone got a 15k XP bonus on arrival. I don't know all the quests in the Camp, so spent a while walking round talking to people to pick up a few thousand more XP before moving on to Dead Man's Pass. That was cleared using mainly summons and area damage, though Pauper did get the chance to practise his turn undead in a small crypt.
Dragonspear Castle is shown on the map to the left of Dead Man's Pass, but can only be opened up by exiting from the right of the map. Doing that sent the Opera into a dead magic ambush zone. With no items or spells to blast away with the chances of killing the Shadowy Figure seemed vastly smaller than the chance for the party to die and they just ran away to Dragonspear. There they rescued Skie before trying to talk their way into the castle, only to be turned away (I think I have done that before, even though I've never actually gone inside, so I guess reputation is not high enough to be convincing).
Instead they moved on to Bloodbark Grove and cleared that. A vampire's cellar had some unique dread wolves that required fire to actually kill them.
Moving on to the Underground River there was another reminder to be more careful. Skint killed what appeared to be all of a large group of orcs with a cloudkill. However, while I was watching a shaman die I belatedly realised I'd taken a casualty myself from an orc raider backstabbing Skint.
Next up - going underground.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L11, 75 HPs, 50 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L9, 80 HPs, 204 kills, 3 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L10, 69 HPs, 313 kills, 1 death
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L11, 71 HPs, 78 kills, 1 death
Aspire, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 488 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 468 kills, 2 deaths
That Greater Basilisk is actually harmless according to Near Infinity. It's erroneously flagged to have 0 APR, so it shouldn't be able to attack you at all. But I always buff with Protection from Petrification anyway.
I'm really excited to see you approaching the SoD endgame. I can't wait to see you tackle Belhifet.
On a side note, NWN has sucked me in again, which is why you haven't seen Brunash here lately.
Journal of Ælfweald
Upon helping a dryad against some thugs I was badly injured but survived and thus was able to heal myself.I then killed a few dire wolves before rescuing @Drienne's cat.
I then killed a very well-armed gnoll before heading east where I reunited Rufie with his owner.
Heading further east still I took on Greywolf and being close to death fled. I rested and healed myself before returning.
He was no longer hasted which meant that I had time to cast a "hold person" spell. That led to his demise.
I then used "Hold Person" against Zargos Flintblade. This enabled me to bring him to the point of death at which point he panicked. I was then able to kill him with my sling with little difficulty.
Heading back to where I met Mellicamp I killed some undead who were killed by keeping my distance and using my sling. I then lured Zargal away from his cohorts, used "Hold person" and then moved in to kill him with my flails.
Upon doing so I became a level 4 cleric, level 3 ranger.
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/924712/#Comment_924712
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/924969/#Comment_924969
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925415/#Comment_925415
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925665/#Comment_925665
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/925927/#Comment_925927
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926333/#Comment_926333
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/926724/#Comment_926724
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/927339/#Comment_927339
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/927917/#Comment_927917
The Opera made their way along the southern edge of the caverns, killing a few treants and such-like along the way. Eventually they bumped into Halatathlaer and considered what to do - I've not come across him before in SP, though I have a vague memory of an encounter in MP some time ago. As usual when considering the appropriate action I decided that random violence was the way forward and attacked
The party moved into the guarded area and a combination of summons and insect plague was working through some dark magicians when a nasty sight loomed up on the right of the screen - the ghost dragon apparently didn't want to stay dead.
There was an apparent portal to the Fugue Plane in the area, but without any knowledge of that I didn't fancy the possibility of retreat being cut-off and left that alone. Instead I retreated back to find Ferrusk. He wanted a myconid bloom-sac, but I hadn't bothered picking that up after killing the myconids earlier. I convinced anyway him to withdraw support for Hephernaan and then planted an acorn expecting that to turn him hostile - but it didn't. Deciding not to kill him for the moment, in case he might make the siege easier, I went up onto the surface and confirmed that the good druids' quest had been completed.
Back in the caverns the Opera explored a bit more and found a cave full of undead. Pauper was drained a level there, but that wasn't enough to prevent him from using restoration.
The next encounter was with Strunk. Summons were on the point of killing him when a crusader patrol happened by and decided to go hostile.
The door guards were all hostile (presumably as a result of killing the patrol), but they moved away from the door to attack summons and allowed the Opera to nip in invisibly behind them. Inside, they used the ogre elevator to get up to the next area, but were immediately confronted with a cleric using true seeing and invisible backstabbers. That looked like bad news, but they were at least able to run away back down the elevator. After resting, they came up with some buffing already done and Aspire used haste and invisibility to quickly poison the food and water. This time though the elevator back down was inoperative and Beggar had to show himself to Hephernaan before they were allowed to run away.
My lack of knowledge made that session seem a bit iffy, but the Opera survived and have just arrived back at the courtyard of Dragonspear Castle - where I know absolutely nothing about the encounters
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L11, 75 HPs, 50 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L9, 80 HPs, 204 kills, 3 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L10, 69 HPs, 317 kills, 1 death
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L11, 71 HPs, 82 kills, 1 death
Aspire, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 500 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L10, 54 HPs, 477 kills, 2 deaths
Myna (Bard, Gate70); Eeny (Illusionist, Grond0)
We're near a store, so we'd better sell something. There's not much to sell though but at least we've noticed our reputation is 19 which means Farmer Brun is next followed by Ulgoth's Beard.
(btw, this is on v2.5 beta)
Eeny suggests using invisibility to deal with Karlat. Myna fluffed that up so improvised.
fresh airbasilisks.This left us heading into Cloakwood. We breezed through there and left stinking clouds for Drasus and his blinded buddies. Drasus had evidently heard about Raemon, and craftily spotted Myna. He chased her around and it was touch and go until Eeny blinded him.
I admit I'm feeling kind of discouraged after hearing that the 2.5 patch will remove the item duplication trick. A lot of cool things are only possible by using the glitch. I've actually had doubts about even continuing this run, since a big part of it is featuring a trick that's about to die out.
Mollyboo uses the Promenade->Slums->Government District->City Gates->Umar Hills route to open up all the major Chapter 2 maps and then hikes out to Dragonspear Castle to recover the equipment she dropped at the end of SoD. Selling off the loose equipment gives us enough gold to bump our reputation up to 18 (though saving money is kind of pointless when you have access to the item duplication trick). I donate the money at the temple of Lathander near Beregost, since it won't trigger any SoA ambushes.
Mollyboo is already high enough level to trigger lich encounters, and while the first one in the Temple Ruins is optional, the second is not. I never actually got a Spell Immunity scroll in SoD, so fighting the Shade Lord is out of the question. But I can still collect some loot from the dungeon by using invisibility, Farsight, and WoL Dimension Door spells to teleport past the trigger that spawns the second lich fight. Bone Golems aren't fooled by invisibility, though.
I duplicate a whole bunch of Potions of Magic Shielding to get Mollyboo the Robe of Vecna and lots of other needlessly overpowered goodies. Since I want Mollyboo to gain levels fast, I start the main quest early, though I foolishly side with Bodhi when our limitless Protection from Undead scrolls would have made the vampires much easier to kill than the Shadow Thieves.
I haven't made much use of Web in this run since I've been letting my summons do most of the work, but I try my hand at fighting Mook and Arkanis Gath in melee, using stacked Web spells and Detect Illusions to ward off backstabs. Unfortunately, one of the Webs strays too far off course and turns Rylock hostile. Luckily, he has no PFMW, so an Arrow of Dispelling is enough to doom him.
Once I grab a Spell Immunity scroll and Kitty from Pai'Na, tackling the Shade Lord becomes doable. A Sunstone Bullet still instantly destroys the Shadow Altar in LoB mode, and Secret Word and Breach are enough to expose the Shade Lord himself to an Arrow of Dispelling while our summons keep the enemy distracted.
Even multiple Webs and Stinking Cloud spells aren't always going to disable critters in LoB mode, so I actually suffer some poison damage when wrestling with the Shadow Thieves. It seems one of my mods gives them Poison Weapon. Thanks to Stoneskin, we can negate their backstabs, but you have to be really careful in the upgraded Shadow Thief hideout; they have Kensai/Thieves with high APR that can quickly chew through Stoneskins.
Before accepting Bodhi's second task, I seed the second floor of the Shadow Thief hideout with traps. SI: Divination blocks a thief's Detect Illusions in my install, and I finally take advantage of it by launching WoL Potions of Firebreath from behind invisibility.
The upgraded Shadow Thief hideout is absolutely devastating. No resting, no escaping, lots of enemies including spellcasters and backstabbers, new traps, Clay Golems... the list just goes on and on.
Fortunately, however, the WoL trick, combined with Farsight, lets us teleport through walls and send our summons anywhere on the map. I send a few skeletons right to Aran Linvail, but the enemy has massive damage output and kill every skeleton in less than a single round.
They make basically no progress, so I switch gears and throw out some Chaos spells from across the map. Even LoB enemies seldom make five consecutive saves vs. spell at -4.
The other enemies spot me, forcing me to teleport away, though I don't find the optimal spot to hide until the second try.
The skeletons still don't make much progress, so I just wait out Aran Linvail's weapon immunities until I can send five copies of Improved Kitthix over to web and poison everyone to death. Once the deed is done, I can teleport right onto their corpses, obviating the need for fussing with Haz and unlocking the door to Aran Linvail's room.
The process took much longer than that, but you get the idea.
Six clones of Kitty take down the Trademeet genies, and once I've teleported all the way across the map to Cernd in the druid grove, I can torch Dalok with six Efreet and nab Belm under invisibility. I let Cernd fight Faldorn (or rather, CTRL-Y does, because his victory is supposed to be guaranteed anyway and I'm impatient).
Most side quests are unnecessary since the XP is extraneous in a solo run and the gold is useless with the item duplication trick at our disposal. There are a few items I want to get before Spellhold, and the last on our list is the Ring of Gaxx.
I don't really need it at all, and I really should wait until epic levels so I can whomp him with the Martyr's Morningstar, but I think I can tackle Kangaxx using a new trick. Using a Protection from Undead scroll on your character will grant dispellable invisibility to liches, but if you use it on the lich itself, it completely wrecks its script and prevents it from casting any spells or even activating its pre-buffs.
Don't feel completely safe, though, if you decide to try this out. Liches do paralyze on hit, so a solo character with a high save vs. death and no immunity to paralysis could easily get killed. Many liches also have a fear aura depending on your install, and Nevaziah also imposes cumulative THAC0 penalties on a failed save that can prevent you from landing hits on him without rolling a 20.
The scroll works just as well on the Elemental Lich, but it doesn't seem to work perfectly on Kangaxx, and I end up fleeing the area to cancel the summoning spells that could get Mollyboo killed by a planetar or a demon.
The scroll does seem to prevent Kangaxx's transformation dialogue from triggering though, and only a reload can fix the bug.
The next time around, the scroll works better (maybe I didn't actually apply the scroll to Kangaxx the first time?) and he's unable to act. But, by using an Arrow of Dispelling to remove the scroll before he drops to 1 HP, I can get his dialogue to trigger.
But before Mollyboo has a chance to trigger his transformation, she fails a save vs. Kangaxx's fear effect. I'd been relying on subzero saving throws to avoid fear effects, so I had never buffed with Resist Fear!
Kangaxx summons some Magical Swords and Breaches Mollyboo, and I realize that the unthinkable might happen. Kangaxx fires off a Comet and takes Mollyboo to half HP while she's still disabled.
Finally, Mollyboo recovers. I'm faced with the decision to either run for the exit or drink a Potion of Extra Healing, a Potion of Magic Shielding, or an Oil of Speed before I make my escape. In the end, I settle for a Potion of Magic shielding and make it out without the swords finishing me off or failing a save against Dragon Fear.
Mathematically, it was a poor choice. The odds of failing another save against Dragon Fear were very slim, while the Magical Swords were able to land hits very easily against Mollyboo. Depending on speed factor and timing, one of the swords might have been able to finish her off in the split second before she escaped.
I try again, this time with better buffs, and successfully bring Kangaxx to Near Death using a Protection from Undead scroll before removing it with an Arrow of Dispelling, triggering his transformation.
I use the WoL trick to apply Protection from Undead to both of us, completely wrecking Kangaxx's ability to function and sending him flying around the room.
Unfortunately, I never upgraded the Mace of Disruption and Kangaxx is moving too fast for me to land many hits in melee combat, so my only option is to use the Sling of Everard, with which Mollyboo has poor THAC0 and APR.
The Potion of Firebreath is not an option, either. SCS Kangaxx has 100% magic resistance on top of his spell level immunities.
Even with an Oil of Speed, 25 STR, and Potions of Power to improve her THAC0, Mollyboo's damage output is almost exactly identical to Kangaxx's regeneration rate. On average, she deals less than a single point of net damage per round, so the fight drags on for in-game hours as Kangaxx's HP dips up and down. I can't emphasize enough how incredibly long this fight was--it was so bad that the time expended was simply not worth it.
If you're going to kill LoB Kangaxx with this method, your character should either have access to the upgraded Mace of Disruption or be very, very skilled with the Sling of Everard. Otherwise you will run out of Protection from Undead scrolls long before you kill him (I would have run out of scrolls if I hadn't been able to duplicate them).
Finally, I head to Spellhold. We don't need to tackle Perth the Adept, but I do it anyway for the Book of Daily spell. Check out Perth illegally casting Sunfire from a distance!
I fail to prevent Perth from casting his alteration spell, so I end up running outside and then staying on the move until eventually I ran into Perth when his defenses had run low. Arrows of Dispelling and Acid Arrows will take down most any mages without weapon immunity spells active.
I still go with Desharik for the extra XP.
We can completely skip all of Spellhold using WoL Dimension Door scrolls. We could hop right out of the area, nab Jon's key, and then go straight to the Underdark by teleporting to the portal!
But that would probably cost us the Slayer form, the Cloak of Mirroring, and a whole bunch of easy XP. So instead, I just teleport past the enemies in the labyrinth, completely avoiding the lich encounter by jumping past its spawn trigger outside the northwest door. You can use the other door as a target.
I skip a lot of fights by teleporting. Mollyboo turns into the Slayer and goes wild during our last test of sanity, but fortunately the local bureaucrats don't mind a friendly thrashing.
Only Jon-bon is left. But why fight him when we can just teleport outside the chamber to complete safety?
Mollyboo's clone spawns outside the chamber, too, but fails to go hostile.
The other inmates busy themselves with taking down Jon-bon's defenses. It doesn't take long; multiple mages can always overwhelm a higher-level mage by spamming magic attacks faster than he or she can put up new defenses. The only exception is if the single mage has Spell Trap and the lower-level mages don't have Ruby Ray of Reversal, Piece Shield, or Spellstrike. Once Jon-bon's defenses are down, we can just launch Melf's Acid Arrows through the walls.
If you do get your hands on a Dimension Door scroll thanks to a mod, or learn Dimension Jump from Spell Revisions, you can still achieve some level of safety from this fight without using the WoL trick to completely escape the area. You can also teleport to one of the little pods around the chamber; some of them should be out of reach of Jon-bon's Fallen Planetar.
SCS mages sometimes get confused when they can't see any main characters to fight, and Irenicus in particular does weird stuff when he can't see you, like hitting himself with Breach.
Jon-bon somehow gets Summon Fallen Planetar off the ground and the planetar mops the floor with the inmates.
With no one else to distract him, Jon-bon teleports right on top of Mollyboo--our teleportation was not a guarantee of safety.
But Mollyboo can slip around a corner and shut the door on him, forcing Jon-bon to waste his Time Stop.
Jon-bon can't open the door, so he's once again helpless to Melf's Acid Arrow.
This time, he does not recover.
Once we slay the Sahuagin Priestess for her Cloak of Mirroring, I use teleportation to get past most of the City Sushi fights. Teleportation also gets us past the drow ambushes, allowing us to go straight to the Balor and dissolve him with WoL Acid Arrows. Notice the Balor using Implosion, which would have been extremely dangerous if it weren't for the Ring of Free Action +2.
Next stop, Ust Natha. I avoid yet another drow ambush by using Farsight to spot the hostile drow who runs from you when you approach the city gate, giving me a valid target for the WoL Dimension Door trick.
I don't know if there's a timer on when you can rescue Phaere with Solaufein, so I don't spend time fighting N'ashtar and the gang. Instead, I just teleport to Solaufein, and once the fight is over, I teleport back to the gates of Ust Natha using a copy of Sarevok's diary, which I dropped earlier specifically because it makes a great target that won't vanish after 24 hours.
I forgot to get blood for the Ust Natha questline, so I stop by the mind flayer city. Why mind flayers? Well, for one thing, I do like the idea of teleporting through the city and killing stuff without ever walking over the trigger that gets you captured. Mollyboo has 48 INT thanks to a WoL Potion of Genius, so there's no real danger of dying to INT drain.
I do still walk over that trigger, though, since I don't want to cause a bug. Besides, I can always just teleport wherever I want anyway. Getting the circlets first allows me to duplicate them and then use the WoL trick to charm the enemies in the pit fights.
It's completely unnecessary when the item duplication trick already gives us infinite PFMW scrolls, but it's fun to try new things.
I don't feel like wading through all those mind flayer fights, counting hits and worrying about Mollyboo's INT status. Instead, I go right for the Master Brain. But why teleport to the thing when I can just melt it through the walls?
The doors open. Not that we really need doors when we have Dimension Door.
N'ashtar and the gang are wandering around outside, so I decide to get rid of them. More WoL Control Circlet silliness lets us kill the drow with INT drain once their PFMW spells go down.
I go through all the motions of the Ust Natha questline, even though I can probably cut it short with Dimension Door. I doubt I even need the blood, really; I never actually use the treasury key from Phaere.
You can teleport past almost everything in this game. As always, I sneak past Taso Kala (I'm not sure it's realistic in LoB mode to kill the Ghaunadans in the single hour you're allowed, and it's not necessary anyway), but for once, I let Adalon kill the drow guarding the exit. Turns out I can stay invisible the whole time and she really will take down all of them without exposing Mollyboo to any danger.
Mollyboo finally breaks out Critical Strike and the Martyr's Morningstar to land an early kill on the Kuo-toa Prince.
Notice all the Kuo-toa under the influence of Control Circlets. I send a small army of them, plus a few Gauths, over to fight the Death Knights. The Death Knights absolutely destroy them, but it doesn't matter; Mollyboo can smash the head Death Knight with Lower Resistance and Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls.
The Soul Reaver is one of the most overpowered weapons in the game and has enjoyed precious little attention. It applies a nonmagical, nondispellable, cumulative -2 to THAC0 on hit with no save, bypassing spell protections, which lasts 20 rounds, enough to cripple virtually any enemy that needs to make an attack roll in order to harm the player.
Back in Athkatla, I use duplicated Protection from Undead scrolls on the vampires in Bodhi's lair (as always, I rested to avoid the vampire ambush). The WoL trick allows me to maintain invisibility while doing so; I just need to pick Mollyboo as the final target.
I also buff Drizzt and company along with the paladins, who easily mow down the vampires. Tanova can't even cast spells.
Bodhi, unfortunately, is immune to critical hits, which means the Martyr's Morningstar is harmless, even with Critical Strike.
Hazzerbazzer and Manasseh have no helmets and therefore no such immunities, but it seems that their Stoneskins also block the 15% damage from the morningstar's critical hits. The Mace of Disruption works fine, though.
I lower Bodhi's MR, but Melf's Acid Arrow doesn't affect her; she's immune to level 1 and 2 spells. But Sunfire works just fine, and six Efreet apply further fire damage and hold Bodhi down while Mollyboo fires off a more effective kind of Acid Arrow, with Enchanted Weapon to make sure they can bypass Bodhi's immunity to +2 weapons and below.
I talk my way past the Chosen of Cyric encounter, but out of curiosity, I load a previous save to try my hand at taking them down. The first attempt results in a decisive victory for the enemy; Control Circlets can't nail all of them, and while we resist a Maze against the odds, we simply don't have enough rounds to apply all the defenses we need.
You always arrive at this fight with zero buffs. If you don't open with PFMW, Zaeron imposes 50% stacking spell failure on hit. If you don't open with Stoneskin and stick with PFMW instead, Venduris will land a backstab with a nonmagical weapon, and the cleric will also try to land Harm.
Long story short, you need to have a strong way of establishing your defenses early on. It kind of boils down to either Hardiness and the Defender of Easthaven or contingencies and triggers; nothing else would really be sufficient.
I try again with contingencies prepared and try a WoL Control Circlet. Everyone I charm ends up dead very quickly (the mage I charm loses all of her buffs to a dispel effect on hit from the halfling thief) except for Venduris, who still ends up contributing almost nothing to the fight due to a script that interrupts his attacks. The only backstab he lands fails because apparently Grok is a Barbarian.
I learn precious little in the process; the fight was very simple with Mollyboo's contingencies keeping her safe and the Control Circlets frustrating the enemy's basic strategy.
Anyway, I reload to the save where I talked my way out of the fight (my original plan) and head to Firkraag's lair when I realize we're missing out on an item-based source of fire resistance. We charm the Ruhk Transmuter with a Control Circlet, but when I discover that the rakshasa can do basically nothing to the other enemies and vice versa, I just overwhelm him with Kitty clones.
This is a long dungeon with lots of little fights that aren't very rewarding in a solo LoB run, so I teleport past all the doors and obstacles. I only engage in two fights, which is a bit misleading considering I just bombed them from complete safety.
I charm Conster with a Control Circlet, but he has a helmet for some reason, which means Critical Strike cannot get us an automatic Dispel Magic through PFMW. But he wastes his next round on a PFMW Spell Trigger, allowing us to shoot through his Stoneskins with nonmagical arrows.
Firkraag is embarrassingly easy. His breath weapon is useless thanks to Protection from Fire, his Remove Magic is useless thanks to SI: Abjuration, his Lower Fire Resistance is useless thanks to subzero saving throws, his physical attacks have a 95% miss rate thanks to the THAC0 penalties from a few hits of Soul Reaver, and when his Stoneskins are gone, automatic critical hit from Critical Strike and the Martyr's Morningstar take down his 1,732 HP in less than 2 rounds.
In a twist, I almost end the run by teleporting to the lost temple of Amaunator in the Unseeing Eye quest. If I did not have the Teleport spell to jump to other areas, I would have been stuck at the temple due to not having a valid target to use Dimension Door to get past the riddle bridge I skipped.
Speaking of the Teleport spell... it allows us to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers. We ditch the Unseeing Eye and escape before it even spots us, leaving it to murder our charmed Gauth.
The Rift Devices sets the enemy's HP to 40% of its maximum and dispels all dispellable effects. It bypasses EVERYTHING. And we can duplicate it infinitely, giving us a ridiculously powerful weapon for virtually any fight. Even without the item duplication trick, you can still use it multiple times, though, if you don't have the SCS component that prevents clones from using quick items.
And yes, it does work with the WoL trick. You can totally bring Yaga-Shura, Sendai, Abazigal, Illasera, Gromnir, and Sarevok down to 40% HP and dispel all of Sendai's and Abazigal's defenses in a single round in the Ascension Throne of Bhaal fight.
Note that if you do duplicate the Rift Device, using even one of them removes all copies of the device from your inventory. If you want to duplicate it, it's best to store a few copies in a safe location, and drop all but one copy from your inventory before you use it.
Anyway, I want to grab Haer'dalis' Chaos Blade to gain access to DEX drain. Fun fact: you don't actually need to kill the Warden if you have Dimension Door. You can just hop over the instant death trap that the Planar Prison Key normally blocks and talk to Raelis Shai. With the WoL trick, we don't even need to get close to the Warden; we can jump to Raelis from the start of the dungeon.
The Warden still gets his comeuppance, as the thralls we charmed with Control Circlets continue fighting him after we leave.
Who'd have thought that teleport spells could enable sequence breaking?
I think most people would. There was a reason that "Dimension Door" was made unavailable. It can actually break the game if used unwisely. One obvious thing that could happen is that you use it to get to an otherwise inaccessible area. You have no spells left to return and because there are enemies in sight, you cannot rest.
So I don't think it's intentional. It seems contrary to the whole philosophy of the mod for Cernd to be dumber than in vanilla.