What definition are you using of a quest item? Algernon's Cloak is sought as part of a quest, though admittedly you don't know that at the point in the game where you confront Mulahey.
@Grond0: The original poverty challenge specified that quest items were items that were necessary to complete a quest, and they could only be used for that specific purpose. So you could grab the Ogre's Sword, but you can't hit anything with it. I could steal Algernon's Cloak if I had to deliver it to somebody, but I couldn't charm anybody.
When I first did the Insane Solo Poverty challenge for BG2, I made an exception for a quest-related dagger so I wouldn't have to re-cast Flame Blade all the time on my Kensai/Druid. In my previous poverty tetralogy run, I made an exception for the Rift Device because defeating the Unseeing Eye would genuinely not be possible in an SCS poverty run unless I was already at epic levels or something.
Making progress in the new poverty run. One of my sorcerers soaks up Tranzig's Slow and we apply pressure to the mage until he collapses; he doesn't do anything else but throw out some weak damage spells.
We nearly lose the same sorcerer to rest-spawning bandits in the Larswood, but a breath weapon wipes them out before they can land the final blow. Then Baeloth (!) appears out of nowhere and joins the party (I ditch our least important sorcerer to make room), giving our level 4 party a level 6 sorcerer with lots of bonus spell picks, including Fireball. I don't know if I can bring him into BG2, though, even if I drop him off in an SoD area and come back for him later.
Expeditious Retreat buys us enough time to escape Tazok's reach at the bandit camp, at which point Baeloth applies some Melf's Acid Arrow spells while Tazok murders our gibberlings. Once Tazok let us in, we covered four party members with Invisibility, our cleric with Sanctuary, and then kicked out our Shaman so we could enter the main tent without any visible party members. Basic buffs and Resist Elements were more than enough to keep the cleric alive despite the lightning bolt trap.
Expeditious Retreat got us out of both the Lamalha and Molkar ambushes; no invisibility was necessary. The enemy didn't even have time to cast a spell.
I spent a while wandering round the Castle courtyard after my last reported session, but that was pretty boring so I left before actually completing nearly all the tasks. That was a few days ago in real time and a combination of not feeling great and a bulge of work to do meant I didn't fancy immediately continuing this run as it requires more concentration than my typical runs and I wanted something less taxing for my free time. However, seeing @semiticgod already well on his way on another poverty run I thought it was about time to make more progress and went for a parley at Dead Man's Pass.
Shortly afterwards the Crusade attacked in the shape of trolls and ogres. They were confronted by a bunch of dwarves and a couple of skull traps and a spirit fire to open with hurt them significantly.
Aspire used MMMs to finish off some trolls, while the others concentrated on not letting anyone past. My skeleton pre-summons were wasted as I hadn't appreciated they would be stuck behind a barrier, but victory was easy anyway.
Shortly afterwards some wizards arrived, to be met by wizard-slayers. An initial insect plague helped subdue them initially, but that was quickly dispelled.
The same happened to a follow-up, but by then the mages were within seconds of death anyway.
The third group of crusaders were met with some war-mages and with several of them trying to fight the skeletons behind the barrier, they never posed a threat.
Dosia offered some instant rejuvenation before the final Crusader attack. With a full complement of summons attacking that didn't last long.
Grimgor attempted to use sanctuary and blade barrier to cause havoc, but continuing lightning damage soon put paid to that.
Moving on to Dragonspear Castle, I got confirmation that the Bwoosh had not been properly positioned as a result of me not being allowed to use the Stone Dowser.
I've not been in that position before, but after a bit of experimentation it appeared that meant I had to lead the way into the castle through a breach further along the wall - doing that invisibly was sufficient to trigger the destruction of the main gate though. Staying mainly behind the battle the Opera still picked up a bit of fireball damage before Washout worked his way to the west disarming traps. Ashatiel 'spotted' him and offered a one-on-one combat, but was denied that joy and soon went down fighting the coalition forces.
I had no idea what level of resources would be potentially required in the siege, so tried to mainly rely on shamanic summons and invisibility. There were real threats to that strategy from invisibility detection spells and missile weapons, but the Opera managed to snag a few decent victims to keep their XP edging higher.
Even insect plague didn't prevent the defenders using wands though,
which was a potentially severe danger and I had to use more resources up to finish that battle off.
That seemed to be the last of the Crusaders in the outer castle though and I decided it should be safe to rest before carrying on inside. Doing that soon led to the discovery of a hell-hole. I was thinking the Opera were about due to get some quest XP after all that hard work and entering the hole duly allowed everyone to take their final SoD levels.
A number of attempts finally resulted in a successful Abyssal rest, so the Opera are all in tip-top form and as ready as they'll ever be to move forward into hell ...
@Grond0: Good luck! You should be able to take down Belhifet as long as you stay on the move, keep the party defended against fire spells, Hold Person, fear, and charm, and make sure you don't cast Lower Resistance unless Belhifet's aura is fogged.
Don't make the mistake I did and underestimate the threat of the demons on the elevator. Seeking Sword may be necessary to get past their MR.
New run starting as a fighter but intending to dual to mage at level3. Yes, I know that dualling at level 6 or 7 gives a more powerful character later on, but I am only too aware that with this set-up my character would probably die before getting her fighter attributes back if I tried that.
Journal of Ælfmar
I was shocked to be attacked by an assassin in Candlekeep and even more shocked when he got the upper hand. I therefore fled outside where I was helped by a watcher to kill him. Upon examining his possessions I understood why he was winning. His equipment was far better than mine. Sadly I can user little of it myself. Two other assassins were killed quite easily. Whilst in candlekeep I had a raunchy interlude with a guard in the inn. The least said the better as I wouldn't want the world to know of my kinky desires. Somebody could take advantage of that knowledge.
In the first portion of the Abyss Illaruel's ability to see through invisible and shoot from a distance meant the party took a small amount of damage and they rested again before moving on. Pauper was commanded to die there, but got up before he could do so - another rest sorted out his damage.
Next up was Thrix. Summons thinned out most of his helpers, but Thrix himself was able to stay alive thanks to a bit of healing. He was resisting most spells, so both sorcerers gave him a lower resistance and after he chased the Opera into some traps magic missiles were able to finish him off.
After resting once more the next area proved to be a giant lift. Long-term buffs were used at the bottom of that before activating it. There are 3 lots of attacks during the journey upwards and the Opera dealt with those using just shamanic dancing and one spirit lion. Some short-term buffs and more summons were added after the last attack before they reached the destination. Unfortunately the cut-scene lasted longer than I expected and the short-term buffs had nearly all run out by the time Belhifet finished his conversation and Caelar agreed to fight together against the devil.
However, Aspire was able to re-establish spell immunity protection quickly and rely on that to safely drag a dispel magic away from the others.
I hadn't realised that summons wouldn't transfer at the top of the lift, so Beggar had no more spirit animals left, but he did immediately produce a pair of mountain bears to engage the demons.
Pauper used the distraction Caelar provided to nip in and use magic resistance on Belhifet and there were follow-up lower resistances from the sorcerers.
However, at that point fear struck Hardup and I noted no-one in fact had fear protection active.
That spell is supposed to have an hour's duration and I hadn't thought anything remotely close to that had expired, but never mind. Pauper protected the rest of the party again, but Hardup had run too far away to get included in that and was left for now (Aspire had resist fear, but chose to take the window of opportunity to attack Belhifet with magic resistance down rather than try to help Hardup). Shortly after that summons and Caelar finished off Hephernaan and turned to attack Belhifet again.
After a bit more running Hardup recovered from his fright, but Aspire immediately turned to run himself. I could have sworn he was covered by the renewed remove fear (everyone else was shown as still protected), but I suppose it's possible a pillar intervened or something like that. A cornugon joined the fight here, with Belhifet down to badly wounded, but a nymph quickly held it and Belhifet was all alone again.
He couldn't have that and managed to summon another Cornugon as well as send Hardup running again - but it was his final effort (leaving the 6 traps Washout had stacked up to the side available for future adventurers to benefit from).
After suffering through the trial the Opera were still a few thousand shy of the SoD XP cap, so it seemed only reasonable to get a bit more XP from Bence Duncan while repaying him for a few insults.
They duly came to the end of the game in the middle of nowhere and have just popped up in a new game in Jon's dungeon.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L12, 77 HPs, 0 kills (55 in BG1) Pauper, Priest of Helm - L10, 82 HPs, 0 kills (204 in BG1), 3 deaths Hardup, Shaman - L11, 71 HPs, 0 kills (320 in BG1), 1 death Washout, Bounty Hunter - L12, 73 HPs, 0 kills (84 in BG1), 1 death Aspire, Sorcerer - L11, 55 HPs, 0 kills (515 in BG1), 0 deaths Skint, Sorcerer - L11, 55 HPs, 0 kills (502 in BG1), 2 deaths
@Grond0: No items. No reloads. No exploits. Not even normal stuff like individual level ups or legal stuff like goodberries or whatever. Just brilliant gameplay and good planning.
Woo! @Grond0's in BG2! I have no idea what your plans are for SoA, but I can't wait to see how you approach Chapter 2. Are you on Insane difficulty with bonus damage disabled? Testing found that was the only difficulty where the enemy cast Remove Magic.
What's the deal with Bence Duncan, anyway? I've never run into him before.
For future reference, the elevator ride is indeed deceptively long (the time it takes to reach Belhifet is partly dependent on how long it takes to kill the demons on the way) and it's entirely possible for 50-round buffs like Remove Fear to expire midway through combat. As for SI: Abjuration, there is a way to keep it from expiring during the cutscene: just use the Esc key to skip the cutscene entirely.
Woo! @Grond0's in BG2! I have no idea what your plans are for SoA, but I can't wait to see how you approach Chapter 2. Are you on Insane difficulty with bonus damage disabled? Testing found that was the only difficulty where the enemy cast Remove Magic.
What's the deal with Bence Duncan, anyway? I've never run into him before.
Plans, I don't need no steenking plans! Well at least I haven't thought about any so far - I know SoA pretty well though so would expect to try and muddle through. I'm just on Core - that was quite enough for me in SoD .
Bence obviously had a bone to pick with me on the way out. Corwin was originally also after me, but in a conversation switched sides and tried to protect me - I let the fight between them run out of interest and Bence beat him up pretty easily before I killed him. I think I've seen him before on the way out, but I've not actually killed him - normally I just run through to finish the game as quickly as possible.
I just lost two characters to Phase Spiders in the Cloakwood. I don't have enough Invisibility spells to cover everyone before the Phase Spiders teleport on top of the party, I don't have reliable disablers to keep the Phase Spiders at bay, I can't evade all of the spiders even with Expeditious Retreat without straying too far west and triggering the web trap, we don't have enough healing or Slow Poison spells to counter the spider's attacks, and there is no place to run. Invisibility in SR only lasts 8 hours and the area transition takes 16 hours, so we arrive unbuffed by default.
Invisibility Sphere is the only realistic option, and would be a very easy fix, in fact, but the spell wouldn't be available until level 6.
I battled my way southward clearing the way to Nashkel as I went. Just north of nashkel I was given a charisma-boosting ring. I rested at the Carnival until I gained the ability to heal and then headed south-west where I fought Krumm thus helpeng a dryad. It was a bloody battle so I returned to the carnival to rest.
I headed notyhwards thinking that fighting ankhegs would be safer. How wrong can you be!!
At Aiwell's request I attempted and succeeded in restoring Thondor to humanity. I then helped an apprentice mage who had been sacked, by returning Mellicamp to his master. This was rewarded with a tome to turn me into a conjurer. I won't be able to use it until I dual class to a mage which is something that I hope to do. I then helped in returning Mellicamp to his normal shape and size.
In Beregost I killed Karlat without too much trouble.
I returned Drienne's cat to her much to her delight.
I then took on Zargos Flintblade which turned out to be a lengthy undertaking. First of all he took a potion of heroism which soon proved to be a too powerful combination for me. I ran with my tail between my legs to the carnival having been badly wounded.
As I fled, I was attacked by a horde of hobgoblins.
I rested at the carnival after which I attempted to return to Zargos only to be attacked by more hobgoblins.
My next encounter with Zargos caused him to use a healing potion and eventually I killed him.
I then fought and killed Greywolf with the help of the Amnish Guard and a rat. Greywolf had used oil of speed which made the battle with him quite hazardous. The guard however helped me by sending numerous volleys of arrows at him. How did a rat help me you may well ask. He was chasing me and had his pathway towards me blocked by a rat which enabled me to strike him three times with arrows. If I had used better quality arrows, that would certainly have disposed of him, but I didn't and once more had to fight him hand to hand in order to kill him.
Being a little stronger, I then returned to the ankheg lair, this time being a lot more successful.
I've thought about restarting the poverty run, since I don't want to continue on with 4 characters or use the Shoal resurrection trick so early in the game. But it seems like a tall order to hit level 6 before that Phase Spider area, which I think is a critical bottleneck for a poverty run in SR. Invisibility Sphere is just that important; having 3 Phase Spiders teleport on top of the party in a cramped space with more spiders and a Web trap waiting nearby is just too much.
But it takes 40,000 XP for a single sorcerer to hit level 6, or 20,000 XP to get Baeloth to level 7 and get his next level 3 spell pick. Looking at all of the various low-risk XP sources in early BG1, the total is 60,000 XP, not counting XP from various kills. That's certainly enough to get Invisibility Sphere on either Charname or Baeloth... but do I really want to starve the rest of the party of all that XP just so we can cross that single bottleneck?
I've toyed with the idea of having only a single player-created character and restricting the rest of the party to NPCs, excluding mod NPCs. Baeloth is great for BG1, and M'Khiin, Jaheira, and Corwin are great for SoD (simply because SR lets us conjure a +3 longbow and lots of +3 arrows for Corwin, enough to slay Belhifet), but things look awfully restrictive in BG2 and ToB. Late-game mages like Nalia get lots of spell picks for free, but nobody has PFMW! And while Wilson and Rasaad would be great damage dealers, I'm not sure how much punishment they could really take in ToB, even with Hardiness and celestials to cast Heal.
Ucurian and his band of rejects - Part I: The way to Baldur's Gate
I've successfully installed BWS, and right now, I'm playing with the 2.5 beta, SCS (full installation, including full prebuffs for enemy spellcasters) and item randomizer. I wanted to reproduce a mod-setup I used a couple of years ago with BGT, but it seems that Hard Times, the other mod I would generally install, isn't available for the Enhanced Editions
This run is being played on core rules, and the party consists only of classes and kits that haven't made it into the hall of heroes, which is why I call them the band of rejects.
My Bhaalspawn is Ucurian, a halfling priest of helm (true neutral, like everyone in my party except for the undead hunter). His stats are 17/19/18/12/17/3 - now, why did I pick him as my bhaalspawn when picking my illusionist would've given me access to a familiar? Well, in the couple of previous SCS runs I've done in the past, my mages have been dying quite a bit, as the AI tends to focus on them, which can be a problem with bandits and kobolds in early BG1. Divine spellcasters, however, are usually extremely safe with my playstyle.
The rest of the party: Camalan, a dwarven defender (his name is actually supposed to be Calaman, but a typo prevented that); Ismene Santal, an unkitted bard (since all bard kits have made it to the hall of heroes by now); Ayla, an undead hunter; Saldor, a gnomish illusionist; And Tarnele, a halfling bounty hunter.
So we've got mostly single-class shorty races, because I want to have good saving throws. My weapon proficiencies turned out to be not the greatest of choices due to item randomizer and SCS not giving me access to the magical weapons I was hoping for in the early game - for the future, I now know that item randomizer doesn't touch the items added by the enhanced editions (and some other items are static as well), so any following groups will propably not encounter the same problem.
As I'm now posting updates for this party, this means they have gotten past my "point of being a serious contender" - which is currently killing Davaeorn and reaching the city of Baldur's Gate. I've done very well for myself, with Shoal providing the only (unavoidable) party death; I've also never lost control of Ucurian, and he never really got low, so I've managed to stay fairly save. I don't have a lot to say about regular tactics (mostly, Camalan can tank just about everything, and the others use ranged weapons and the usual spells like blindness, sleep, command, glitterdust, defensive mage buffs and offensive cleric buffs), though compared to non-SCS play, I tend to be more aggressive against spellcasters (using more magical ammo, using true sight a lot, trying to get any save or else-spells to stick) and pay more attention to protecting Saldor. I will only document a few select interesting occurences/encounters here, starting with my early item randomizer experience:
For most of the early game, I've basically only gotten pretty useless +1 armor. Propably the most dissapointing find the mod has provided me so far was this one:
Things did get better, however: Silke provided me with the gauntlets of dexterity, and the boots of speed were found in Centeol's Lair, meaning I had them a bit earlier than usual. Currently, my armor and wand situation is quite good (two wands of fire were found relatively early on), I'm only missing certain magical weapons.
Kirian's party was the first to get a harmful spell to stick on one of my party members (hold person on Camalan) - however, by this point, most of them were a) already defeated and b) blinded by glitterdust:
Saldor got access to minor spell deflection very early on, and this actually blocked a dire charm spell by a siren - curious. I would've expected SCS creatures to simply target someone else (and they usually did in any further fights):
I did make a crucial mistake with Shoal - after she kissed Tarnele, I accidentally killed her by attacking with everyone at once. Rookie mistake, should've just used firsts for attacking her or attacked with a single person only. This means I won't have access to whatever loot Droth would've dropped
Another group of sirens got a single successful charm spell in - against Camalan, who was in defensive stance, so he posed no threat to the party due to being very slow:
The first rather messy fight was against the red wizards. I thought these would be relatively low level spellcasters, so I didn't do anything special to prepare, but when a chaos spell flew at me and two of them used MGoI (I hadn't found a spell thrust scroll at this point), I soon realized that things could turn out quite bad. With some careful movement, chaos only affected one party member, and Camalan + summoned skeletons absorbed most of the other spells. I managed to eventually blind the two unprotected mages with glitterdust, and the MGoI durations ended soon after that, allowing a rather injured party to claim victory:
After having cleared almost all wilderness areas (excluding the Ulcaster Ruins, the Firewine Dungeon and Kahrk - three things that SCS makes very scary, as far as I recall), I finally procceeded with the main quest (with a level 6 party) and entered the mines, defeating Mulahey (all his servants were killed/disabled with a single skull trap + sleep combo):
The SCS bandit camp could've been dangerous, but I had my weak characters well protected with defensive arcane buffs, and some area spells helped immensly - I used three wand of fire charges in total, and stinking cloud (+skeletons, which is a great combo), sleep and glitterdust were also quite helpful. The named opponents didn't manage to do anything special, I disabled most of them with command, blindness or hold person anyway:
Next, I made my way to Cloakwood, where I used my second potion (the first one being a hill giant strength potion at the bandit camp to increase Camalan's damage), a potion of freedom, to safely lure my opponents outside of Centeol's Lair:
When travelling to the next area, I was finally ambushed by Molkar's party. I had expected this ambush to happen way earlier and in different circumstances, and I was certainly caught off guard. A glitterdust affected two opponents, but Camalan got held, and Tarnele was suffering damage, so I Ismene used her domination harp (the only item I could buy in Ulgoth's Beard - item randomizer had removed everything else) to great effect, and Tarnele drank a concentrated healing potion - though shortly after that, Ismene was affected by hold person as well:
To get Tarnele out of trouble, Saldor cast dire charm, leaving me with only two foes and an easy victory:
Now, the SCS version of the Drasus party has previously given me trouble, so I started right away with double wand of fire + oil of fiery burning. This was way more effective than I had expected - the enemy spellcasters hadn't triggered their prebuffs yet (which usually include MGoI), and they both died right away, making this a rather trivial fight:
The first enemy in the mines to give me trouble was, as expected, Hareishan. I engaged from the west, and she used chaos, only hitting the speedy Camalan. However, my dwarven defender started attacking the party, forcing me to flee for a while and to re-engage from the south after the duration of chaos had ended. Here, Ismene cast the most effective horror spell of her life, affecting Hareishan and most of the guards and winning me this battle:
Downstairs, I actually had to retreat after a lucky critical hit Sandor for 30 damage, almost killing him. After a short rest, I returned and took my vengeance. Natasha and the ogre mage provided no worthwhile resistance, and it was time to face Davaeorn. I've only done this battle with SCS installed twice, and that was a long time ago, so I didn't remember when exactly new guards would generally spawn. After easily taking down the battle horrors, I used true sight to great effect, and had to deal with my first wave of guards while Davaeorn teleported away to rebuff. His MGoI was already gone, and I started spamming save or else-spells on him, as there was no getting through his stoneskins (and I had to manage to spawning guards with most of my physical damage dealers anyway). It took me a while, but eventually, while I had used horror and wands of fear to distract the guards, a blindness spell took hold:
Davaeorn was thus neutralized, but not dead. I had Camalan block the tunnel where the guards kept coming at me, doing what dwarven defenders do best, while the remaining party took down the mage's stoneskins, eventually getting through all of his healing potions and killing him:
On my way back to the FAI, I was ambushed by the amazons. I hadn't successfully rested after the Davaeorn battle, so I had very few spells left. A first glitterdust attempt affected no one, and neither did the wands of fear. One of my foes turned invisble, and I had Saldor drink an invisibility potion, fearing an instant kill via backstab. The backstab hit Tarnele instead, but she survived and got some distances to her foes, while both the second glitterdust and Ismene's domination harp turned the tide of battle, granting me victory:
The last thing I did before entering the Gate was recruting Dorn (instead of Tarnele) to do his personal quest - I wanted the nice and shiny items you can get by completing this one - the final battle was easy enough:
Sorry for this very long update - future updates will be much shorter, but I don't want to be ahead of the reports with my gameplay at any point during this run, so I'm getting this one out of the way.
I've thought about restarting the poverty run, since I don't want to continue on with 4 characters or use the Shoal resurrection trick so early in the game. But it seems like a tall order to hit level 6 before that Phase Spider area, which I think is a critical bottleneck for a poverty run in SR. Invisibility Sphere is just that important; having 3 Phase Spiders teleport on top of the party in a cramped space with more spiders and a Web trap waiting nearby is just too much.
I thought spell revisions still had web and blindness. Have they been changed to not affect so many enemies now? If not then you can use those to pick up lots of XP from things like ankhegs and basilisks - though you don't get the same damage potential from the PoL as PoH in BG1. As far as the entrance to the Cloakwood area goes the number of phase spiders that teleport in to greet you is random - thus it's possible to jump back and forwards until you get a result you like (with the opportunity to establish a summons or two).
It also sounds like you've spread your spells out more than you needed to. You could try having invisibility available from all your dragon disciples. I recognise that would still leave you with a problem of instant reaction against something like phase spiders, but in most situations it would enable you to make the whole party invisible even in a combat situation.
@Grond0: SR still has Web, though the save vs. spell at -2 is replaced by a save vs. breath at no penalty. Blindness is not just Obscuring Cloud, a 6-round cloud spell that decreases visual range to about two or three character circles and penalizes melee and ranged attacks by -2 and -6, with no saving throws. Druids get the spell by default. It's not enough to keep a party safe in close quarters, but it's very effective against ranged enemies.
The problem with Invisibility in this case is not that I don't have enough castings of the spell (though it's true; I only have 4). The real problem is that I can't hide my Shaman without leaving a sorcerer vulnerable, and if the spiders don't see my other characters, all of the spiders will target the Shaman. I think the best option without Invisibility Sphere would actually be to just use Expeditious Retreat to trigger the web trap, flee the area before it hits, and then return. With the web trap already triggered, we could chain-cast Expeditious Retreat to make our way across the map, fleeing from any other web traps we might trigger. But it's a bit late for this particular run.
Are you sure about the random number of Phase Spider spawns? I've seen one appear at first, then the second and third appear a few seconds afterwards. If we were level 5, we could just repeatedly arrive at the scene, blast the first Phase Spider with Magic Missiles in the hopes of taking it out in one round, flee, and repeat the process until all the spiders were dead. A level 5 Sleep spell would also have a chance of just knocking the damn things out.
Command might buy us time, but it seems messy. I think Invisibility Sphere, with an Expeditious Retreat spell on another sorcerer, would be a safer long-term investment. Invisibility Sphere is already an amazing escape option in SR; making it an early spell pick would not be very costly.
Or, now that I think about it, I could just drop off the Shaman in a previous area and not bring them to that map until after the Phase Spiders are already dead. That's how I kept my Shaman from wrecking our burglary at the bandit camp. There's no reason every party member has to be present at every battle.
Regarding the phase spider spawn: When I entered the area in my current run, I immediately rested upon entering, before any phase spiders arrived. After that, only a single phase spider teleported to my position. Not sure if the rest screwed up the teleporting of additional spiders, but if it didn't, the number indeed seems to be random (as I remember having to fight more of those in previous SCS runs).
I started over once again, but this time, I dropped everyone off at Kagain's place before taking Tiax out to Mutamin's Garden (to avoid re-installation problems with BWS, I'm just using the console to add in NPCs where SCS is supposed to move them). Tiax summoned a ghast, we kicked Tiax out of the party, and once our ghast collected 10,000 XP for Frisk, our Charname, we headed north to the Larswood to recruit Baeloth.
I tried to charm Silke with Baeloth's Dire Charm spell, but it turns out that unlike Algernon's Cloak, that charm spell isn't safe if it fails. We turned her hostile and were forced to flee using Expeditious Retreat, forfeiting our chance to kill the spiders.
We then went to the Friendly Arm Inn, slew Tarnesh with a Fireball, and gathered Jaheira and Khalid. After dropping off Khalid in some peasant's home, we took Jaheira out to the ankheg farm, where we used her SR druid summoning spells to distract the bugs with bats and dogs while the party took them down at range with Magic Missiles, Melf's Acid Arrows, and Magical Stones. Once the ankhegs were gone, we sent Jaheira packing, did some minor quests, and finally took down Greywolf with damage spells and kiting. Prism finally bumped Baeloth up to level 7, granting us access to a high-end Sleep spell (we can knock out anything level 7 and below) as well as Invisibility Sphere.
We snuck back into Beregost and smuggled the party out of town without Silke noticing. Everyone but Baeloth and Frisk is at level 1, but I think we can tackle the Nashkel mines safely if we Fireball everything to death.
Does anyone have any ideas about how we can deal with Silke now that she's hostile?
... Well, in the couple of previous SCS runs I've done in the past, my mages have been dying quite a bit, as the AI tends to focus on them, which can be a problem with bandits and kobolds in early BG1. Divine spellcasters, however, are usually extremely safe with my playstyle...
In my experience (with my usual setup and party), at least in SoA, Viconia (my only pure Cleric) even wearing the best available armor is always a prime target for invisible backstabbing Thieves and having low hp pool dies regularly. So I can't say that divine spellcasters are that safe with SCS... Be warned and take care. Safe travels for your Band of Rejects!
Regarding the phase spider spawn: When I entered the area in my current run, I immediately rested upon entering, before any phase spiders arrived. After that, only a single phase spider teleported to my position. Not sure if the rest screwed up the teleporting of additional spiders, but if it didn't, the number indeed seems to be random (as I remember having to fight more of those in previous SCS runs).
The phase spiders react to triggers I think. One of those is your arrival in the area, so there's a good chance of an immediate greeting there - though it's possible no spiders at all will respond. Another is being in combat though, so I find the main danger is not an immediate group of spiders arriving (I just run away), but being sucked forward a bit by say a single spider only for several more to arrive and block your retreat. For that reason I would only send a single character forward from the edge of the map to start with.
In the dungeon totemic lions ruled supreme - even Ilyich couldn't hurt one when it was immobilized in front of him (I was surprised that the lion could be stunned in the first place though).
The circus then continued the gentle introduction to SoA.
I decided to experiment on something potentially less gentle by pulling the Cowled Wizards into existence. Doing that's no great problem, however, with a thief around - a day's quota of 6 traps killed all but a couple of the earlier groups of mages immediately. All 7 traps were laid for the final group - only Zallanora survived the initial damage there, but he perished soon after of the continuing poison damage.
By habit I made sure that Brennan Riesling couldn't get away, although there was less reason than usual for that as I had no interest in his invisibility ring.
Moving on to the Slums I caught myself paying for a night's lodging at the Copper Coronet after Beggar won a cage fight there. That's against my rules, so I think I need to end the run there. My immediate reaction (other than a word or two that I'd better not repeat here) was to continue on a slightly less than no-reload basis. However, past experience tells me that the run would quickly deteriorate if I did continue and I wouldn't be happy with it even in the incredibly unlikely event that it eventually succeeded.
I joined up with Gavin and with his help disposed of Bassilus. That was an easy battle for a change. We went for the reward, joined up with Xzar and Montaron and returned to Beregost where I dropped Xzar off in a bedroom where he can rest to his heart's content.
Montaron meanwhile picked Algernon's pocket and acquired his cloak. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard where he acquired scrolls and other items galore. I left him at the Beregost Temple where he can plead with Lathander for forgiveness.
We were then asked to deal with Mutamin. I bought the necessary equipment, joined uf with Sirene who performed the task for me singlehanded. She levelled up and now has ** in two handed swords, two handed weapons and long bows.
On a more optimistic note from me, Gate70 and I made good progress in the early stages of this run. After sorting out Shoal we bought a PfP scroll at High Hedge and then headed straight for the basilisks. Gruu had taken some damage from spider poison on the way
and was in two minds as to whether to take them on, but Sparkle convinced him that things would be fine - and Gruu's HPs got a couple of nice boosts from 2 more levels before he charged Mutamin (giving him enough to survive the acid arrows he took there).
Finally deciding not to push things any more the duo left Kirian for a bit and went down to Nashkel instead - Gruu getting a snazzy new green outfit there and benefiting from the CLW Sparkle picked up as a Bhaal power. Surprisingly after all that work, Gruu had not yet broken a sword (possibly something changed related to that in the beta?). Despite that though he sought an upgrade and Arghain provided the goods. Looking on jealously at all the new equipment going to Gruu, Sparkle led the way to the FAI to get an ogre's belt and a ring of wizardry for himself. The XP for brushing Tarnesh aside and returning Landrin's things also got her another illusionist level. The extra blind spells available as a result meant Kirian's friends were unlikely to see nasty things happening to her - but luckily for her neither could she.
A trip to the coast saw an assault on some sirines. The lack of any quick spell slots for Sparkle (due to being a thief multi-class) meant he was slow to cast spells in support and the sirines were able to go invisible. Despite that though Gruu was still able to kill them before his rage ran out.
Sparkle had no magic weapons, so her contribution for the golems was confined to disarming traps and ensuring that Gruu was a lucky punk.
The last few minutes of the session saw a few reputation quests completed and the duo will be hunting ankhegs on the way to some shopping at Ulgoth's Beard next time.
I do wish you wouldn't be so incredibly harsh on yourself. What really matters to me is the gameplay, and accidentally paying for a rest at an inn in Athkatla seriously does not decrease the challenge of the game at all. Resting outside is equally safe and takes only a few seconds longer.
I don't mean to be critical, or act like this run is anything but your free choice, but I do feel disappointed. If Beggar was ever to die, it would be better if it was at least the result of a fight than a meaningless gp value in a risk-free context. Even dying to a Shadow Thief's backstab or a Hobgoblin Shaman's Hold Person spell would be better than this.
Regardless, it's your run and your rules and I won't whine any further. May I suggest you switch your Charname to one of your sorcerers? It should be the safer investment if and when you make it to late SoA.
@semiticgod that depends what you mean by the challenge. To me the major difficulty of completing a run is precisely the requirement of abiding by a set of rules even during times when there's little or no challenge from the enemies - and not finding ways to short-circuit your way through those times. I realise that's rather different from your views, but it seems to help keep things fresh for me .
As for changing the Charname I seriously doubt that would make things safer for me - again because we play the game very differently. I'm not disputing that a sorcerer could be made safer, but the chances of me maintaining full buffs on a character on every occasion when he could potentially be in danger are zero. Even if I were trying hard to play safely that would be typically done more by keeping the PC out of trouble than buffing him against trouble. There's enough chaotic behavior in the game that it's pretty certain that at some point that sort of avoidance strategy would fail - in which case a totemic druid without buffs would be safer than a sorcerer without buffs.
Your focus is also on the main set piece encounters towards the end of the various games when there may be danger even against an apparently decent game play strategy. As I don't typically expect to get to those anyway my focus is more on surviving day to day - and a totemic druid is far far more survivable for me in the early game (both pre getting invisibility and post that when I forget or can't be bothered to use it).
@Grond0: I'll try to be patient. As much as I'd like to see you continue your SoA run, I do admire your discipline.
Frisk is doing well in the SR/IR poverty run. The Nashkel mines were a breeze with Baeloth in the party, since he has Sleep, Magic Missile, Melf's Acid Arrow, Web, and Fireball, all of which helped us take down the kobolds without exposing us to the Kobold Commandos' Arrows of Fire (which grant a save for the fire damage in IR because IR only modifies player-usable arrows) or the Kobold Guards' poison attacks. Even the Kobold Chieftain's poison arrows and the Kobold Shaman were no problem, as we were able to Web them from out of range and then take them down with three Fireballs.
We temporarily recruited Xan because I wanted a disposable character who could soak up all the damage from Mulahey's Unholy Blight, but in the end it proved unnecessary: Xan landed two Charm Person spells in a row and wasted all of Mulahey's spells. Finally, we had him unequip his mace and switch to his bare hands, which gave all our gibberlings +4 to hit and damage against him. He died before he even turned hostile.
Next up, Tranzig. But I don't know how to address the Silke problem when her Lightning Bolt could easily and instantly kill any of our level 1 characters. So we use Invisibility Sphere and Expeditious Retreat to hurry over to Tranzig without encountering Silke. Baeloth kills Tranzig with Melf's Acid Arrow and a Magic Missile while using the stairs to escape Tranzig's spells.
The bandit camp is too dangerous to tackle, so we're going to just grab the scrolls under Sanctuary. But I don't know if my cleric can survive the Lightning Bolt trap, and I can't find Tiax to do it instead. So I decide to temporarily re-recruit Xan for the same reason we picked him for Mulahey: I don't mind if he dies.
First, we go to the Larswood and use Invisibility Sphere to buy time from Tazok until we can summon gibberlings to distract him while we apply spell damage. We enter the main tent while invisible, send Xan over to grab the documents, and then make him drop the documents and kick him out of the party before the trap hits. This way, the enemy does not do anything when Xan breaks invisibility, because he's not in the party when he's visible. The trap never does hit, so we send him back to the Friendly Arm Inn, grab the documents via the quick loot feature, and scurry outside.
There are a surprising number of uses for the Reform Party trick. You can make otherwise vulnerable party members completely invisible to the enemy simply by kicking them out of the party. Enemies ignore neutral critters, and the ability to instantly turn any party member neutral means that you can grant anyone instantaneous immunity to party-friendly spells like Horrid Wilting or Chaos, as well as instantaneous invisibility to all enemies, even liches and demons. It can be done at any time, no matter who in the party is disabled or has a clouded aura, or even during Time Stop.
The disadvantage is that characters who die while outside the party cannot be resurrected, and missile weapons, single-target spells, and non-party-friendly spells like Fireball will still affect neutral characters, so it's not a good way to save a party member who's about to die to an enemy archer or an incoming Fireball spell.
Combine the trick with the Wand of Fire or another instant-casting damage spell, and you could repeatedly bomb the enemy from invisibility while kicking out the party member responsible to keep the enemy from retaliating. The booted party member won't rejoin the group until he or she can reach Charname, and the walk will give both Charname and the party member time to clear their aura, allowing them to turn invisible before the enemy can spot either one.
@Artemius_I: Testing found that it still works in v2.5. Party members will regain all of their kit abilities like traps and an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic if they're kicked out of the party.
This doesn't apply to other spells, however. Tiax will still not be able to summon more than one ghast per day, for example.
Comments
When I first did the Insane Solo Poverty challenge for BG2, I made an exception for a quest-related dagger so I wouldn't have to re-cast Flame Blade all the time on my Kensai/Druid. In my previous poverty tetralogy run, I made an exception for the Rift Device because defeating the Unseeing Eye would genuinely not be possible in an SCS poverty run unless I was already at epic levels or something.
We nearly lose the same sorcerer to rest-spawning bandits in the Larswood, but a breath weapon wipes them out before they can land the final blow. Then Baeloth (!) appears out of nowhere and joins the party (I ditch our least important sorcerer to make room), giving our level 4 party a level 6 sorcerer with lots of bonus spell picks, including Fireball. I don't know if I can bring him into BG2, though, even if I drop him off in an SoD area and come back for him later.
Expeditious Retreat buys us enough time to escape Tazok's reach at the bandit camp, at which point Baeloth applies some Melf's Acid Arrow spells while Tazok murders our gibberlings. Once Tazok let us in, we covered four party members with Invisibility, our cleric with Sanctuary, and then kicked out our Shaman so we could enter the main tent without any visible party members. Basic buffs and Resist Elements were more than enough to keep the cleric alive despite the lightning bolt trap.
Expeditious Retreat got us out of both the Lamalha and Molkar ambushes; no invisibility was necessary. The enemy didn't even have time to cast a spell.
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I spent a while wandering round the Castle courtyard after my last reported session, but that was pretty boring so I left before actually completing nearly all the tasks. That was a few days ago in real time and a combination of not feeling great and a bulge of work to do meant I didn't fancy immediately continuing this run as it requires more concentration than my typical runs and I wanted something less taxing for my free time. However, seeing @semiticgod already well on his way on another poverty run I thought it was about time to make more progress and went for a parley at Dead Man's Pass.
Shortly afterwards the Crusade attacked in the shape of trolls and ogres. They were confronted by a bunch of dwarves and a couple of skull traps and a spirit fire to open with hurt them significantly.
Shortly afterwards some wizards arrived, to be met by wizard-slayers. An initial insect plague helped subdue them initially, but that was quickly dispelled.
The third group of crusaders were met with some war-mages and with several of them trying to fight the skeletons behind the barrier, they never posed a threat.
Dosia offered some instant rejuvenation before the final Crusader attack. With a full complement of summons attacking that didn't last long.
Moving on to Dragonspear Castle, I got confirmation that the Bwoosh had not been properly positioned as a result of me not being allowed to use the Stone Dowser.
I had no idea what level of resources would be potentially required in the siege, so tried to mainly rely on shamanic summons and invisibility. There were real threats to that strategy from invisibility detection spells and missile weapons, but the Opera managed to snag a few decent victims to keep their XP edging higher.
A number of attempts finally resulted in a successful Abyssal rest, so the Opera are all in tip-top form and as ready as they'll ever be to move forward into hell ...
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L12, 77 HPs, 54 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L10, 82 HPs, 204 kills, 3 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L11, 71 HPs, 320 kills, 1 death
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L12, 73 HPs, 82 kills, 1 death
Aspire, Sorcerer - L11, 55 HPs, 510 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L11, 55 HPs, 488 kills, 2 deaths
Don't make the mistake I did and underestimate the threat of the demons on the elevator. Seeking Sword may be necessary to get past their MR.
Journal of Ælfmar
I was shocked to be attacked by an assassin in Candlekeep and even more shocked when he got the upper hand. I therefore fled outside where I was helped by a watcher to kill him. Upon examining his possessions I understood why he was winning. His equipment was far better than mine. Sadly I can user little of it myself.Whilst in candlekeep I had a raunchy interlude with a guard in the inn. The least said the better as I wouldn't want the world to know of my kinky desires. Somebody could take advantage of that knowledge.
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In the first portion of the Abyss Illaruel's ability to see through invisible and shoot from a distance meant the party took a small amount of damage and they rested again before moving on. Pauper was commanded to die there, but got up before he could do so - another rest sorted out his damage.
Next up was Thrix. Summons thinned out most of his helpers, but Thrix himself was able to stay alive thanks to a bit of healing. He was resisting most spells, so both sorcerers gave him a lower resistance and after he chased the Opera into some traps magic missiles were able to finish him off.
After resting once more the next area proved to be a giant lift. Long-term buffs were used at the bottom of that before activating it. There are 3 lots of attacks during the journey upwards and the Opera dealt with those using just shamanic dancing and one spirit lion. Some short-term buffs and more summons were added after the last attack before they reached the destination. Unfortunately the cut-scene lasted longer than I expected and the short-term buffs had nearly all run out by the time Belhifet finished his conversation and Caelar agreed to fight together against the devil.
Pauper used the distraction Caelar provided to nip in and use magic resistance on Belhifet and there were follow-up lower resistances from the sorcerers.
After a bit more running Hardup recovered from his fright, but Aspire immediately turned to run himself. I could have sworn he was covered by the renewed remove fear (everyone else was shown as still protected), but I suppose it's possible a pillar intervened or something like that. A cornugon joined the fight here, with Belhifet down to badly wounded, but a nymph quickly held it and Belhifet was all alone again.
After suffering through the trial the Opera were still a few thousand shy of the SoD XP cap, so it seemed only reasonable to get a bit more XP from Bence Duncan while repaying him for a few insults.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L12, 77 HPs, 0 kills (55 in BG1)
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L10, 82 HPs, 0 kills (204 in BG1), 3 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L11, 71 HPs, 0 kills (320 in BG1), 1 death
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L12, 73 HPs, 0 kills (84 in BG1), 1 death
Aspire, Sorcerer - L11, 55 HPs, 0 kills (515 in BG1), 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L11, 55 HPs, 0 kills (502 in BG1), 2 deaths
Woo! @Grond0's in BG2! I have no idea what your plans are for SoA, but I can't wait to see how you approach Chapter 2. Are you on Insane difficulty with bonus damage disabled? Testing found that was the only difficulty where the enemy cast Remove Magic.
What's the deal with Bence Duncan, anyway? I've never run into him before.
For future reference, the elevator ride is indeed deceptively long (the time it takes to reach Belhifet is partly dependent on how long it takes to kill the demons on the way) and it's entirely possible for 50-round buffs like Remove Fear to expire midway through combat. As for SI: Abjuration, there is a way to keep it from expiring during the cutscene: just use the Esc key to skip the cutscene entirely.
Bence obviously had a bone to pick with me on the way out. Corwin was originally also after me, but in a conversation switched sides and tried to protect me - I let the fight between them run out of interest and Bence beat him up pretty easily before I killed him. I think I've seen him before on the way out, but I've not actually killed him - normally I just run through to finish the game as quickly as possible.
Invisibility Sphere is the only realistic option, and would be a very easy fix, in fact, but the spell wouldn't be available until level 6.
Journal of Ælfmar
I battled my way southward clearing the way to Nashkel as I went. Just north of nashkel I was given a charisma-boosting ring. I rested at the Carnival until I gained the ability to heal and then headed south-west where I fought Krumm thus helpeng a dryad. It was a bloody battle so I returned to the carnival to rest.tps://us.v-cdn.net/5019558/uploads/editor/fu/o4if0axlx99x.jpg" alt="" />
But it takes 40,000 XP for a single sorcerer to hit level 6, or 20,000 XP to get Baeloth to level 7 and get his next level 3 spell pick. Looking at all of the various low-risk XP sources in early BG1, the total is 60,000 XP, not counting XP from various kills. That's certainly enough to get Invisibility Sphere on either Charname or Baeloth... but do I really want to starve the rest of the party of all that XP just so we can cross that single bottleneck?
I've toyed with the idea of having only a single player-created character and restricting the rest of the party to NPCs, excluding mod NPCs. Baeloth is great for BG1, and M'Khiin, Jaheira, and Corwin are great for SoD (simply because SR lets us conjure a +3 longbow and lots of +3 arrows for Corwin, enough to slay Belhifet), but things look awfully restrictive in BG2 and ToB. Late-game mages like Nalia get lots of spell picks for free, but nobody has PFMW! And while Wilson and Rasaad would be great damage dealers, I'm not sure how much punishment they could really take in ToB, even with Hardiness and celestials to cast Heal.
I've successfully installed BWS, and right now, I'm playing with the 2.5 beta, SCS (full installation, including full prebuffs for enemy spellcasters) and item randomizer. I wanted to reproduce a mod-setup I used a couple of years ago with BGT, but it seems that Hard Times, the other mod I would generally install, isn't available for the Enhanced Editions
This run is being played on core rules, and the party consists only of classes and kits that haven't made it into the hall of heroes, which is why I call them the band of rejects.
My Bhaalspawn is Ucurian, a halfling priest of helm (true neutral, like everyone in my party except for the undead hunter). His stats are 17/19/18/12/17/3 - now, why did I pick him as my bhaalspawn when picking my illusionist would've given me access to a familiar? Well, in the couple of previous SCS runs I've done in the past, my mages have been dying quite a bit, as the AI tends to focus on them, which can be a problem with bandits and kobolds in early BG1. Divine spellcasters, however, are usually extremely safe with my playstyle.
The rest of the party: Camalan, a dwarven defender (his name is actually supposed to be Calaman, but a typo prevented that); Ismene Santal, an unkitted bard (since all bard kits have made it to the hall of heroes by now); Ayla, an undead hunter; Saldor, a gnomish illusionist; And Tarnele, a halfling bounty hunter.
So we've got mostly single-class shorty races, because I want to have good saving throws. My weapon proficiencies turned out to be not the greatest of choices due to item randomizer and SCS not giving me access to the magical weapons I was hoping for in the early game - for the future, I now know that item randomizer doesn't touch the items added by the enhanced editions (and some other items are static as well), so any following groups will propably not encounter the same problem.
As I'm now posting updates for this party, this means they have gotten past my "point of being a serious contender" - which is currently killing Davaeorn and reaching the city of Baldur's Gate. I've done very well for myself, with Shoal providing the only (unavoidable) party death; I've also never lost control of Ucurian, and he never really got low, so I've managed to stay fairly save. I don't have a lot to say about regular tactics (mostly, Camalan can tank just about everything, and the others use ranged weapons and the usual spells like blindness, sleep, command, glitterdust, defensive mage buffs and offensive cleric buffs), though compared to non-SCS play, I tend to be more aggressive against spellcasters (using more magical ammo, using true sight a lot, trying to get any save or else-spells to stick) and pay more attention to protecting Saldor. I will only document a few select interesting occurences/encounters here, starting with my early item randomizer experience:
For most of the early game, I've basically only gotten pretty useless +1 armor. Propably the most dissapointing find the mod has provided me so far was this one:
Things did get better, however: Silke provided me with the gauntlets of dexterity, and the boots of speed were found in Centeol's Lair, meaning I had them a bit earlier than usual. Currently, my armor and wand situation is quite good (two wands of fire were found relatively early on), I'm only missing certain magical weapons.
Kirian's party was the first to get a harmful spell to stick on one of my party members (hold person on Camalan) - however, by this point, most of them were a) already defeated and b) blinded by glitterdust:
Saldor got access to minor spell deflection very early on, and this actually blocked a dire charm spell by a siren - curious. I would've expected SCS creatures to simply target someone else (and they usually did in any further fights):
I did make a crucial mistake with Shoal - after she kissed Tarnele, I accidentally killed her by attacking with everyone at once. Rookie mistake, should've just used firsts for attacking her or attacked with a single person only. This means I won't have access to whatever loot Droth would've dropped
Another group of sirens got a single successful charm spell in - against Camalan, who was in defensive stance, so he posed no threat to the party due to being very slow:
The first rather messy fight was against the red wizards. I thought these would be relatively low level spellcasters, so I didn't do anything special to prepare, but when a chaos spell flew at me and two of them used MGoI (I hadn't found a spell thrust scroll at this point), I soon realized that things could turn out quite bad. With some careful movement, chaos only affected one party member, and Camalan + summoned skeletons absorbed most of the other spells. I managed to eventually blind the two unprotected mages with glitterdust, and the MGoI durations ended soon after that, allowing a rather injured party to claim victory:
After having cleared almost all wilderness areas (excluding the Ulcaster Ruins, the Firewine Dungeon and Kahrk - three things that SCS makes very scary, as far as I recall), I finally procceeded with the main quest (with a level 6 party) and entered the mines, defeating Mulahey (all his servants were killed/disabled with a single skull trap + sleep combo):
The SCS bandit camp could've been dangerous, but I had my weak characters well protected with defensive arcane buffs, and some area spells helped immensly - I used three wand of fire charges in total, and stinking cloud (+skeletons, which is a great combo), sleep and glitterdust were also quite helpful. The named opponents didn't manage to do anything special, I disabled most of them with command, blindness or hold person anyway:
Next, I made my way to Cloakwood, where I used my second potion (the first one being a hill giant strength potion at the bandit camp to increase Camalan's damage), a potion of freedom, to safely lure my opponents outside of Centeol's Lair:
When travelling to the next area, I was finally ambushed by Molkar's party. I had expected this ambush to happen way earlier and in different circumstances, and I was certainly caught off guard. A glitterdust affected two opponents, but Camalan got held, and Tarnele was suffering damage, so I Ismene used her domination harp (the only item I could buy in Ulgoth's Beard - item randomizer had removed everything else) to great effect, and Tarnele drank a concentrated healing potion - though shortly after that, Ismene was affected by hold person as well:
To get Tarnele out of trouble, Saldor cast dire charm, leaving me with only two foes and an easy victory:
Now, the SCS version of the Drasus party has previously given me trouble, so I started right away with double wand of fire + oil of fiery burning. This was way more effective than I had expected - the enemy spellcasters hadn't triggered their prebuffs yet (which usually include MGoI), and they both died right away, making this a rather trivial fight:
The first enemy in the mines to give me trouble was, as expected, Hareishan. I engaged from the west, and she used chaos, only hitting the speedy Camalan. However, my dwarven defender started attacking the party, forcing me to flee for a while and to re-engage from the south after the duration of chaos had ended. Here, Ismene cast the most effective horror spell of her life, affecting Hareishan and most of the guards and winning me this battle:
Downstairs, I actually had to retreat after a lucky critical hit Sandor for 30 damage, almost killing him. After a short rest, I returned and took my vengeance. Natasha and the ogre mage provided no worthwhile resistance, and it was time to face Davaeorn. I've only done this battle with SCS installed twice, and that was a long time ago, so I didn't remember when exactly new guards would generally spawn. After easily taking down the battle horrors, I used true sight to great effect, and had to deal with my first wave of guards while Davaeorn teleported away to rebuff. His MGoI was already gone, and I started spamming save or else-spells on him, as there was no getting through his stoneskins (and I had to manage to spawning guards with most of my physical damage dealers anyway). It took me a while, but eventually, while I had used horror and wands of fear to distract the guards, a blindness spell took hold:
Davaeorn was thus neutralized, but not dead. I had Camalan block the tunnel where the guards kept coming at me, doing what dwarven defenders do best, while the remaining party took down the mage's stoneskins, eventually getting through all of his healing potions and killing him:
On my way back to the FAI, I was ambushed by the amazons. I hadn't successfully rested after the Davaeorn battle, so I had very few spells left. A first glitterdust attempt affected no one, and neither did the wands of fear. One of my foes turned invisble, and I had Saldor drink an invisibility potion, fearing an instant kill via backstab. The backstab hit Tarnele instead, but she survived and got some distances to her foes, while both the second glitterdust and Ismene's domination harp turned the tide of battle, granting me victory:
The last thing I did before entering the Gate was recruting Dorn (instead of Tarnele) to do his personal quest - I wanted the nice and shiny items you can get by completing this one - the final battle was easy enough:
Sorry for this very long update - future updates will be much shorter, but I don't want to be ahead of the reports with my gameplay at any point during this run, so I'm getting this one out of the way.
Enuhal
It also sounds like you've spread your spells out more than you needed to. You could try having invisibility available from all your dragon disciples. I recognise that would still leave you with a problem of instant reaction against something like phase spiders, but in most situations it would enable you to make the whole party invisible even in a combat situation.
The problem with Invisibility in this case is not that I don't have enough castings of the spell (though it's true; I only have 4). The real problem is that I can't hide my Shaman without leaving a sorcerer vulnerable, and if the spiders don't see my other characters, all of the spiders will target the Shaman. I think the best option without Invisibility Sphere would actually be to just use Expeditious Retreat to trigger the web trap, flee the area before it hits, and then return. With the web trap already triggered, we could chain-cast Expeditious Retreat to make our way across the map, fleeing from any other web traps we might trigger. But it's a bit late for this particular run.
Are you sure about the random number of Phase Spider spawns? I've seen one appear at first, then the second and third appear a few seconds afterwards. If we were level 5, we could just repeatedly arrive at the scene, blast the first Phase Spider with Magic Missiles in the hopes of taking it out in one round, flee, and repeat the process until all the spiders were dead. A level 5 Sleep spell would also have a chance of just knocking the damn things out.
Command might buy us time, but it seems messy. I think Invisibility Sphere, with an Expeditious Retreat spell on another sorcerer, would be a safer long-term investment. Invisibility Sphere is already an amazing escape option in SR; making it an early spell pick would not be very costly.
Or, now that I think about it, I could just drop off the Shaman in a previous area and not bring them to that map until after the Phase Spiders are already dead. That's how I kept my Shaman from wrecking our burglary at the bandit camp. There's no reason every party member has to be present at every battle.
I tried to charm Silke with Baeloth's Dire Charm spell, but it turns out that unlike Algernon's Cloak, that charm spell isn't safe if it fails. We turned her hostile and were forced to flee using Expeditious Retreat, forfeiting our chance to kill the spiders.
We then went to the Friendly Arm Inn, slew Tarnesh with a Fireball, and gathered Jaheira and Khalid. After dropping off Khalid in some peasant's home, we took Jaheira out to the ankheg farm, where we used her SR druid summoning spells to distract the bugs with bats and dogs while the party took them down at range with Magic Missiles, Melf's Acid Arrows, and Magical Stones. Once the ankhegs were gone, we sent Jaheira packing, did some minor quests, and finally took down Greywolf with damage spells and kiting. Prism finally bumped Baeloth up to level 7, granting us access to a high-end Sleep spell (we can knock out anything level 7 and below) as well as Invisibility Sphere.
We snuck back into Beregost and smuggled the party out of town without Silke noticing. Everyone but Baeloth and Frisk is at level 1, but I think we can tackle the Nashkel mines safely if we Fireball everything to death.
Does anyone have any ideas about how we can deal with Silke now that she's hostile?
Be warned and take care. Safe travels for your Band of Rejects!
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/928207/#Comment_928207
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/931000/#Comment_931000
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/931140/#Comment_931140
In the dungeon totemic lions ruled supreme - even Ilyich couldn't hurt one when it was immobilized in front of him (I was surprised that the lion could be stunned in the first place though).
By habit I made sure that Brennan Riesling couldn't get away, although there was less reason than usual for that as I had no interest in his invisibility ring.
Moving on to the Slums I caught myself paying for a night's lodging at the Copper Coronet after Beggar won a cage fight there. That's against my rules, so I think I need to end the run there. My immediate reaction (other than a word or two that I'd better not repeat here) was to continue on a slightly less than no-reload basis. However, past experience tells me that the run would quickly deteriorate if I did continue and I wouldn't be happy with it even in the incredibly unlikely event that it eventually succeeded.
Journal of Ælfmar
I joined up with Gavin and with his help disposed of Bassilus. That was an easy battle for a change.We went for the reward, joined up with Xzar and Montaron and returned to Beregost where I dropped Xzar off in a bedroom where he can rest to his heart's content.
Montaron meanwhile picked Algernon's pocket and acquired his cloak. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard where he acquired scrolls and other items galore. I left him at the Beregost Temple where he can plead with Lathander for forgiveness.
We were then asked to deal with Mutamin. I bought the necessary equipment, joined uf with Sirene who performed the task for me singlehanded. She levelled up and now has ** in two handed swords, two handed weapons and long bows.
Edit : typo.
Sparkle (Gnome illusionist / thief, Grond0); Gruu (Half-orc berserker, Gate70)
On a more optimistic note from me, Gate70 and I made good progress in the early stages of this run. After sorting out Shoal we bought a PfP scroll at High Hedge and then headed straight for the basilisks. Gruu had taken some damage from spider poison on the way
Finally deciding not to push things any more the duo left Kirian for a bit and went down to Nashkel instead - Gruu getting a snazzy new green outfit there and benefiting from the CLW Sparkle picked up as a Bhaal power. Surprisingly after all that work, Gruu had not yet broken a sword (possibly something changed related to that in the beta?). Despite that though he sought an upgrade and Arghain provided the goods. Looking on jealously at all the new equipment going to Gruu, Sparkle led the way to the FAI to get an ogre's belt and a ring of wizardry for himself. The XP for brushing Tarnesh aside and returning Landrin's things also got her another illusionist level. The extra blind spells available as a result meant Kirian's friends were unlikely to see nasty things happening to her - but luckily for her neither could she.
A trip to the coast saw an assault on some sirines. The lack of any quick spell slots for Sparkle (due to being a thief multi-class) meant he was slow to cast spells in support and the sirines were able to go invisible. Despite that though Gruu was still able to kill them before his rage ran out.
The last few minutes of the session saw a few reputation quests completed and the duo will be hunting ankhegs on the way to some shopping at Ulgoth's Beard next time.
Sparkle, mage 4 / thief 5, 28 HPs, 18 kills
Gruu, Berserker 6, 85 HPs, 91 kills, 0 deaths
I do wish you wouldn't be so incredibly harsh on yourself. What really matters to me is the gameplay, and accidentally paying for a rest at an inn in Athkatla seriously does not decrease the challenge of the game at all. Resting outside is equally safe and takes only a few seconds longer.
I don't mean to be critical, or act like this run is anything but your free choice, but I do feel disappointed. If Beggar was ever to die, it would be better if it was at least the result of a fight than a meaningless gp value in a risk-free context. Even dying to a Shadow Thief's backstab or a Hobgoblin Shaman's Hold Person spell would be better than this.
Regardless, it's your run and your rules and I won't whine any further. May I suggest you switch your Charname to one of your sorcerers? It should be the safer investment if and when you make it to late SoA.
As for changing the Charname I seriously doubt that would make things safer for me - again because we play the game very differently. I'm not disputing that a sorcerer could be made safer, but the chances of me maintaining full buffs on a character on every occasion when he could potentially be in danger are zero. Even if I were trying hard to play safely that would be typically done more by keeping the PC out of trouble than buffing him against trouble. There's enough chaotic behavior in the game that it's pretty certain that at some point that sort of avoidance strategy would fail - in which case a totemic druid without buffs would be safer than a sorcerer without buffs.
Your focus is also on the main set piece encounters towards the end of the various games when there may be danger even against an apparently decent game play strategy. As I don't typically expect to get to those anyway my focus is more on surviving day to day - and a totemic druid is far far more survivable for me in the early game (both pre getting invisibility and post that when I forget or can't be bothered to use it).
Frisk is doing well in the SR/IR poverty run. The Nashkel mines were a breeze with Baeloth in the party, since he has Sleep, Magic Missile, Melf's Acid Arrow, Web, and Fireball, all of which helped us take down the kobolds without exposing us to the Kobold Commandos' Arrows of Fire (which grant a save for the fire damage in IR because IR only modifies player-usable arrows) or the Kobold Guards' poison attacks. Even the Kobold Chieftain's poison arrows and the Kobold Shaman were no problem, as we were able to Web them from out of range and then take them down with three Fireballs.
We temporarily recruited Xan because I wanted a disposable character who could soak up all the damage from Mulahey's Unholy Blight, but in the end it proved unnecessary: Xan landed two Charm Person spells in a row and wasted all of Mulahey's spells. Finally, we had him unequip his mace and switch to his bare hands, which gave all our gibberlings +4 to hit and damage against him. He died before he even turned hostile.
Next up, Tranzig. But I don't know how to address the Silke problem when her Lightning Bolt could easily and instantly kill any of our level 1 characters. So we use Invisibility Sphere and Expeditious Retreat to hurry over to Tranzig without encountering Silke. Baeloth kills Tranzig with Melf's Acid Arrow and a Magic Missile while using the stairs to escape Tranzig's spells.
The bandit camp is too dangerous to tackle, so we're going to just grab the scrolls under Sanctuary. But I don't know if my cleric can survive the Lightning Bolt trap, and I can't find Tiax to do it instead. So I decide to temporarily re-recruit Xan for the same reason we picked him for Mulahey: I don't mind if he dies.
First, we go to the Larswood and use Invisibility Sphere to buy time from Tazok until we can summon gibberlings to distract him while we apply spell damage. We enter the main tent while invisible, send Xan over to grab the documents, and then make him drop the documents and kick him out of the party before the trap hits. This way, the enemy does not do anything when Xan breaks invisibility, because he's not in the party when he's visible. The trap never does hit, so we send him back to the Friendly Arm Inn, grab the documents via the quick loot feature, and scurry outside.
The disadvantage is that characters who die while outside the party cannot be resurrected, and missile weapons, single-target spells, and non-party-friendly spells like Fireball will still affect neutral characters, so it's not a good way to save a party member who's about to die to an enemy archer or an incoming Fireball spell.
Combine the trick with the Wand of Fire or another instant-casting damage spell, and you could repeatedly bomb the enemy from invisibility while kicking out the party member responsible to keep the enemy from retaliating. The booted party member won't rejoin the group until he or she can reach Charname, and the walk will give both Charname and the party member time to clear their aura, allowing them to turn invisible before the enemy can spot either one.
I'm pretty sure party members still refresh their special abilities when kicked out too?
This doesn't apply to other spells, however. Tiax will still not be able to summon more than one ghast per day, for example.