@Enuhal, good to see you back in action! Good luck with your rejects! @Grond0, man I must agree with @semiticgod, you're extremely harsh, but I understand your position... @Mantis37, belated thanks for more lovely writing, and congrats on your success! Good luck in Amn!
I have bad news about my run with Solace the F/M/C. I can't be bothered with a complete update discussing in detail all important events. The party did well against the bandits in Tazok's tent, with the help of summons, Safana's Malison, Dynaheir's Stinking Clouds, and Viconia's innate Confusions. Malison in combination with an Invoker-cast Stinking Cloud and Skeletons is effective against mobs even on LoB difficulty. We got into huge trouble during Jaheira's BG1 NPC Project quest in Cloakwood. The quest involves having to slay five Druids who attack a wounded Druid friend (fomer lover?) of Jaheira's. The Druids chunk both Safana and Khalid with Call Lightnings. We do prevail eventually with more of our summons. And we even succeed in the final battle against a very powerful Avenger, charming his right-hand. Picked up Xan as a replacement. Drasus and co we took on one at a time. Rather uneventful. Solace pretty much soloed Davaeorn and his aides with wands. We did several quests in BG city (relying on Malison, Emotion, Stinking Cloud, Skeleton combos). But during the ranged battle against Larze in the Blushing Mermaid, I got called away from my computer. When I returned I saw that Xan was gone (chunked) and that the main character had been killed. Obviously I had failed to properly pause the game. As much as I'm aware that this had little to nothing to do with my game play, I just can't continue. In the (utterly unthinkable) event of me succeeding with this playthrough, the incident with Larze would spoil the sense of accomplishment I might feel about the run. This saddens me because I was definitely having fun. The party was definitely more enjoyable, more flexible, and more capable than my previous, Skald-led party.
@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.
Whilst it might be useful to get another dispell magic, if I did that deliberately it would still feel like cheating to me, though I would feel comfortable with kicking out a party member who was badly injured in order to save his life. That sort of thing happens in RL.
In my Ælfmar run, I sadly discovered that I had forgotten to install Vynd. I already knew that I had installed the wrong version of the mod to move starting points of NPCs. Imoen would start with far too low experience, which meant that the only thief left is Coran. However whilst he is alright, I would have preferred a pure thief.
Journal of Ælfmar
Realising that the party needed a thief for picking locks and traps I went in search of one that I had heard frequented Cloakwood. Upon finding him, I thought that to keep him I might need to indulge him by hunting the wyverns that he was so keen on killing.
To get to them we avoided all unecessary conflict and ended up killing four fully grown wyvern. We were handsomely rewarded for killing them which means that we might be able to buy some better equipment in the near future. Coran himself is using the good quality weapons and armour that I found on the corpses of the assassins in Candlekeep. I am now glad that I didn't sell it. I thought that it might come in handy one day.
EDIT
We were then given the task of investigating the missing persons in Beregost. I am pretty sure that Lady Valeria is responsible. However before being able to investigate we were attacked by her minions. We found them to be almost impregnible. However we did eventually kill two of them that were blocking my escape route. I ran for the exit and immediately went to the temple for healing not wanting to spend time sleeping during which our possessions would disappear.
Upon returning I was able to kill the remaining enemies whereupon I took my allies to the temple for resurrection.
After re-equipping ourselves we slept, healed, slept healed etc for over a day after which we felt ready and able to meet Lady Valeria. Sadly the resurrections wiped out the financial gains that we had made in Cloakwood.
Killing Lady Valeria herself turned out to be easy.
After taking the bowl to Tanya, she joined the party. We then investigated the coast, helped Sil, but killed the sirine who were hostile. My reputation now 20, and my Con 19. We did have some problems with intelligence being reduced drastically with magic, but the spells did wear off eventually. The golems were easy to deal with for once.
We then went to the gnoll stronghold and had no difficulty with the assassins there. We also plundered a cave before leaving.
It is perhaps now time to investigate the Nashkel mines.
I'm so pleased that we timed the attack on the gnoll stronghold better on this run.
We got into huge trouble during Jaheira's BG1 NPC Project quest in Cloakwood. The quest involves having to slay five Druids who attack a wounded Druid friend (fomer lover?) of Jaheira's.
I recall this fight with shudder myself - we arrived after fighting an ambush of three Giant Spiders and two Wyverns in area transition, drained of both our spell resources and hp pools, and had to fight those Druids right off the boat. This was a nightmare...
Sad to see your run ended like this...(personally I have almost all autopause options on but I can perfectly understand if one don't want this).
Aldeth Sashenstar was very difficult due to his arbitrary 100% MR, but we managed to deal enough nonmagical damage to him with our fists and gibberlings and breath weapon, along with a few spirit animals at the end. It was a bad decision to try to deal nonlethal damage to him, however; attacking unarmed gave him +4 to hit and damage against us, and a critical hit could well have proven fatal to either Baeloth or Frisk.
It took many, many rounds and many trips back and forth in the Cloakwood to deal with those Phase Spiders. Over and over again, a single Phase Spider was followed by two others; repeatedly arriving on the map and hoping for only a single spider does not seem realistic. The most successful strategy was to use Invisibility Sphere at the start and have our level 1 sorcerers summon some gibberlings to draw the spiders away from the invisible party. Then, while the spiders were distracted, Baeloth would fire off Melf's Acid Arrows and Magic Missiles from behind a wall of invisible party members. Even so, luck played a roll and we had to try multiple times before all the spiders were gone.
In the process, we triggered a lot of ettercap ambushes. Baeloth hid us using Invisibility Sphere and then bombed the ettercaps with Fireball, earning us a surprising amount of XP (ettercaps have surprisingly high HP, no poison attack but high APR, and are worth 650 XP apiece). We used Invisibility Sphere to hurry through the Cloakwood while fighting few critters, aside from farming a handful of wyverns to get Frisky to level 6 to get another Fireball spell.
I don't know how we're going to deal with Davaeorn. A single Sunfire or Cone of Cold or even a Fireball could wipe out multiple party members. Protection from Fire isn't a level 3 spell in SR; it's level 5 for priests and level 4 for mages, and there's precious little reason to pick it anytime soon for Baeloth; we won't face another source of fire damage for quite some time. The only way I can think of to avoid losing precious party members is to use some disposable NPCs like Rasaad or Xzar, or trying to paralyze Davaeorn with Tiax's ghast.
@semiticgod How about charming him and letting the Battle Horrors do the job for you? I have done that in the past and it worked. I don't know if it will work in your set-up and with your party.
@semiticgod With a priest of high enough level (around 7 or better 8), there's a real possibility of one-shotting Davaeorn with Cause Critical Wound. That's what I did with my team with Miluiel. You can see it here. SR really boost the damage done by these spells, and Davaeorn only has 45hp, so it's totally possible to do it that way. It's not a foolproof strat though.
If that goes wrong, you could also cast Invisibility Sphere, hide somewhere far from Davaeorn and wait for all his guards to gather around him. They will completely hinder his movement, because their script requires them to stay close to him at all time. You could then throw fireballs from afar to thin their number and finish Davey (whose buffs would have exhausted at that point) in a various way, such as with traps set far away, attacks from invisibility, etc... You probably still have to kill the two Battle Horrors, because they won't follow Davey around everywhere, but if Davey is stucked behind his own men, they don't pose such a threat. This strat has a higher percentage of success in my opinion, it just makes the fight last longer.
@Wise_Grimwald: I'd need another 80,000 XP per party member to get my Shaman to level 4 so we could cast Call Woodland Beings (druids get it at 35,000 XP; Shamans get it at 90,000 XP), so the only charm spells we could use would be those of our own party, which means Davaeorn would start his attack dialogue.
But testing has found that there may be a way to get around that:
1. Recruit Safana. 2. Bring Safana to the Cloakwood mines and drop her off in Davaeorn's lair, booting her from the party. 3. Recruit Xan and use him to charm Safana. 4. Approach Davaeorn while invisible and order Safana to charm him. This is a melee-range charm spell, so we'd have to take down the Battle Horrors first. 5. If Safana fails, we'd have to pull her back, let the charm wear off so she turns hostile, then charm her again so we can bring her into the party and rest her to get her own charm spell back, at which point we can try again. 6. When Safana finally succeeds, Davaeorn will be charmed for 100 seconds, enough time for us to empty his spellbook of the most important spells.
The only problem is how to get rid of those Battle Horrors. I might do a test run to see if Davaeorn turns hostile when the Battle Horrors engage in combat, which I think I've seen happen before. But if I can lure them away from him, we should be able to use Xan to charm Safana so Safana can charm Davaeorn so we can empty his spellbook.
Or, now that I've done some further testing, I could just recruit Faldorn. Frisk has enough XP that Faldorn starts at 32,000, which is just shy of the 35,000 she needs to summon a hamadryad to charm Davaeorn, which could be done at range.
It's actually kind of a shame. The Xan+Safana option's only advantage is that it's not level-dependent. But it's a lot more complex and cool than just getting a level 6 Faldorn for free.
I think one of the best options for an SR poverty run might just be to start out solo and then recruit higher-level companions like Baeloth and Faldorn. In an EET install, you could create five custom level one characters who are designed to excel in BG2, and then just park them in a room somewhere until you escape Chateau Irenicus. Baeloth is a fabulous option in BG1 and Corwin, when paired with SR's Enchanted Weapon and the +3 weapons it can summon, is a fabulous option in SoD, and there's really no point in investing XP in a party of custom characters if you have better choices all the way through the first two games.
BG2 is another story. There are good NPCs for a poverty run in SoA, including Jaheira and Wilson, but you just don't get enough arcane spell power, what with the complete lack of PFMW spells among NPC mages.
Reading @semiticgod's updates I've been surprised that progress using Spell Revisions seemed so difficult. I wondered perhaps if that was not only the result of the mod, but trying to make progress too fast through the game. I've never used Spell Revisions though, so thought perhaps I should create a new installation for that and see how Beggar and his friends could cope with it.
I didn't change any opening spell selections as I don't know yet what would be preferred. However, with bounty hunter traps and shamanic summons to fall back on I thought it should be possible to make progress anyway.
The early stages saw the Opera move to Beregost and do a few chores around there - that included trapping Silke. Next they moved up to the FAI where a spirit bear panicked Tarnesh into running into some traps (though he left some green slimes behind - that seems like a pretty useful spell for a fairly low-level mage to have). They returned Landrin's goods there before heading further north and giving Tenya back a bowl (before killing her with traps). They also pulled the ankheg near her into traps rather than using melee as in previous runs (as command is no longer guaranteed to work against ankhegs and blind is no longer available).
After going down to Nashkel (travelling during the day as usual to avoid ambushes) they picked up a whole additional 15 XP for killing Noober after listening to him prattle on for a while. That doesn't affect reputation, but killing a farmer did to get Beggar LMD as a Bhaal power. Work in the area to the north of the carnival - including saving Arabelle and sorting out Arghain - then got everyone to within a whisker of their first level. At that point I tried casting Obscuring Fog for the first time to see if that would help against Billy and Dribben - but that immediately turned them hostile even when not actually cast at them and I quickly ran away and went to find a couple of hobgoblins instead.
Beggar, Pauper and Hardup all got poor HP rolls there though, which seemed unfortunate.
Sleep and command are both less effective than they were at early levels, but are still both pretty useful spells - creatures wake up when hit, but level 1 creatures hit by Hardup's 19 strength Shillelagh are not going to trouble anyone again anyway. I've also noted that Shillelagh seems to have a decent chance of entangling slightly stronger things (like wolves), which is a nice fringe benefit to the spell. I haven't yet made use of it, but looking through spell lists I see druids get a bat summoning spell at level 1 and Beggar will probably be trying that out shortly.
We just had time to slot in a short session today. I'd forgotten we'd agreed to immediately go after the ankhegs and headed for the Cloud Peaks instead, but that didn't delay us too long. We picked up the charisma tome there, but it disappeared in front of Sparkle's eyes as she looked through her inventory - prompting Gate70 to accuse her of having "butterfingers". Fortunately both our charisma scores are so poor that the tome was virtually useless to us anyhow.
Finally getting to the ankhegs, Gruu was quite capable of cutting them down without help - though Sparkle did make things even easier by sleeping many of them. At one point in the nest an ankheg was only visible on my screen, so I took control of Gruu for a few seconds to point him in the right direction.
After a bit of shopping at Ulgoth's Beard we picked up Meilum's bracers - the swordsman extraordinaire not quite sure where to swing his blade after being blinded.
Then we went in search of some more quick XP at Durlag's Tower. The battle horrors on the path didn't last long against Gruu's big sword and Sparkle's spells. A quick rest to memorise PfP then allowed Gruu to clear the roof of basilisks. Finally, the walls got the clearance treatment - pushing Gruu up to level 7.
I went to find Tranzig, but couldn't manage that. Gate70 gently reminded me that we hadn't yet done the Nashkel Mine, so we hastened through that. Mulahey was stuck in webs and failed to call for help.
Outside, the amazons met a similar fate,
but Gruu couldn't be bothered to wait for webs against Nimbul - just striding up to him and cutting the correct head off among the mirrored collection. With a spot of luck Tranzig will be all present and correct for us at the start of the next session.
@Grond0: Optimal spell picks will differ significantly in an SR poverty run. The staples are the same--Fireball and Skull Trap will still be important for Sarevok and Dragonspear--but there are some changes that are pretty dramatic, like the removal of Protection from Petrification and Blindness, the inclusion of Dimension Jump and Protection from Elemental Energy, the change in spell level for Protection from Fire/Cold/Electricity, and changes in duration, magnitude, and effect for Luck, Malison, and Break Enchantment.
I'd recommend looking through the spell list in Near Infinity or by giving your sorcerer or shaman some XP in the console as a test so you can view some spell descriptions.
After having defeated Bodhi, we decided to drop Gavin for a little while to do Rasaad's quest. Since I suspect SCS scripts have little effect on the new Beamdog sidequests, it was quite easy. In the Heretic's Temple, we had a fight we just couldn't lose. Outside of Alora who was on the receiving end of a few backstabs, there was no danger here. Once that fight was done, we ditched Rasaad and got Gavin back.
Why do all that, you might ask. One simple reason, a potion :
This Red Potion is the only way to raise Intelligence that I know of in an IR/SR game (outside of the Machine of Lum the Mad, which I don't intend to get to). Since Tyris "only" has 17 Int, she'll need it to learn level 9 spells. Otherwise, she would have been stucked at level 8 spell max. It might be a perk of my install, but IR restriction on Int boosting option plus limits of spell level based on said Int score makes for a harsh install for mages below 18 Int. Well, I found a way to circumvate that.
Suldanessellar. Raamilat wasn't a threat : since I have access to Pierce Shield, I could debuff him easily.
Then, I went into Demin's house, where I had to fight a few named Rakshasas. We were underbuffed for that fight, so we had to get out of the house, sleep and go back in after. On our return, they were slain fast enough.
Nizidramanii'yt. Not much to say. We buffed up and used the strategy to lower its MR with Pierce Magic and used Spell Sequencers for damage. It dealt solid damage to it, but didn't deal as much damage as I thought it would. We had to finish him in melee. He was a bit tougher than Firkraag, but nothing too bad either. Alora took quite a bit of damage, but other than that, nothing too bad.
We then gathered all the necessary things to summon Rillifane's Avatar. We had to kill another bunch of named Rakshasas just outside the Temple. I had two Pierce Shield memorized, so two of them went down fast enough, but I couldn't do much against the others, since Breach doesn't work on them in my install. We outlasted them anyway.
The Suneer Fight. With our buffs from the Rakshasas still active, I went in the Temple. Oh boy, was it hard. No, I'm kidding : I directly placed the items on the Altar and Suneer was slain by Rillifane's Avatar in no time. Booya.
Soooo, only Irenicus himself left. THAT was a much harder fight.
While I was killing the bugs around the Tree of Life, Miluiel gained a level and her first HLA. An HLA in a no-reload run, my first time... She chose Enhanced Bard Song from the Rogue Rebalancing mod, which gives +4 to saves and thac0, +10 MR and immunity to Fear and Charm to allies. Miluiel actually gets (only for herself) a boost of +8 to saves while singing. There's a slight drawback though : it doesn't work in conjunction with the Bard Hat, so no lingering effect. Miluiel then will have to take a backseat during fights to sling spells instead, because I was using a lot in melee recently. However, fully buffed, look at them stats...
The fight itself now. It started strong, with Irenicus summoning a bunch of Simulacrums and two Greater Basilisks. I had Jaheira grab the Staff of the Woodlands, because in IR, it has an aura that charms all beast within 30' unless a save vs spell at -4 is made. I used it to try to charm the Basilisks, but that didn't work somehow : we had to slay them. Irenicus then quickly summoned a Fallen Planetar to his aid, which was a frightening sight. It killed Tyris with a Vorpal Strike before switching to Gavin. We revived Tyris with the Rod of Resurrection, but she had no buffs to help her. Still, Tyris managed to blind Irenicus with Sunray from Daystar.
Because I had two Pierce Shield memorized by Xan plus two other arcane users, I thought that this fight would be easy. It was not. I casted a round of True Seeing which let let me take down some of the Irenicus buffs after. Xan then casted his second Pierce Shield (the first was wasted on one of his Simulacrum because of a misclick, which was a BIG mistake). It took down a lot of his buffs, but a Contingency fired and he was safe again. The fight was dragging on and our True Seeing ran out. I was stucked without being able to dispel his invisibility. I could have had Alora dispel it with her Detect Illusions skill, but she was very busy trying to kill the Fallen Planetar with +3 arrows. She eventually did, but then Irenicus summoned another Fallen Planetar (ugh). Then, all his Images/Simulacrum went berserk on summons : 2 Nabassus entered the fight. Things were starting to be quite ectic, and Irenicus was still uninjured.
We kept on fighting. The Fallen Planetar started to attack Miluiel, which was an uncomfortable sight. I moved everyone around to alleviate the pressure from all these monsters, who managd to kill Tyris again. We fled to the upper corner of the map and, after a little while, Irenicus showed up. His buffs - like ours - were getting thin and only then Alora dispelled his invisibility. Alora and Jaheira attacked Irenicus at range, finally dealing damage to him, while the rest of our team was tanking a Glabrezu (another demon...).
We were hitting Irenicus hard for a long time. Then, after finishing a spell, he finally fell...
So, I learned a lot in this fight. First, I have to revise my strategy against greater foes. When our True Seeing expired, we were left helpless against Irenicus. I'll have to memorize more True Seeing and/or time them better instead of casting them all at the same time for everyone. Two, our team is resilient. We outlasted Irenicus, 2 Nabassus, 1 Balor, 2 Fallen Planetars, 2 Greater Basilisks and 1 Glabrezu, all that while only Tyris died (twice). We don't deal a ton of damage, but we deal enough of it while our defense is really stout. I have to improve my game on the wizard's chess, but we're defiinitively doing something good.
Now, we're in Hell. It's time to finish SoA, one way or another...
Today's session saw the Trio tread the fine line between success and failure before falling over - fortunately in the right direction .
Things started promisingly enough with finishing the basilisk area that was begun last time. Mutamin failed to make an impression on the raging Coresmash and Kirian and her gang did no better.
Moving on to the Coast, there was more quick XP thanks to Coresmash getting in among the sirines to prevent them using their bows, while his rage lasted long enough to hack them all down.
The golems did slightly more damage, but still without causing any concerns.
While in the area to pick up Melicamp, Bassilus was another easy victim.
However, the omens were less good when Melicamp failed to survive and performed a final service as a small supper for 3 hungry half-orcs.
Coresmash had his eye in on sirines by now and led the way to Shoal's area to find some more. First though he begged a kiss from Shoal - the others quickly withdrawing a bit so that when Shoal raised him Grime could heal him up without interference from Droth.
That worked nicely and the ogre mage went down hard.
A bit of a lag hit then ensured that Shoal wouldn't be running away with her vast XP award.
Droth's distant kin nearby did some damage, but the Surgeon stitched Coresmash back together in order to take out another group of sirines.
At Beregost temple Grime cashed in Bassilus' holy symbol before preparing to leave - but Coresmash's eyes had lit up at the sight of more lovely sirines. Launching an attack he managed to quickly kill the priest and between him and a couple of shamanic spirits the other sirines seemed to be under control. However, Coresmash got dragged away from the two he was meleeing and one of those switched her attentions to Grime - both charming and poisoning him (and in the process getting rid of the spirit summons). Grime started chasing Croak round the temple, with Croak trying to lead him in a pattern that avoided a sirine targeting them,- leaving Coresmash to take a lot of damage from the arrows of the remaining sirines. He kept alive by using potions, but as Grime's HPs ticked remorselessly down it looked like another run was about to come to an end - but the poison stopped ticking with a comfortable 3 HPs left.
Coresmash reduced his opponents down to 2, but looked in trouble himself when struck by feeblemind.
Fortunately Grime came to his senses at that moment and was able to shoot down one of them, while Croak hid before doing what assassins do best .
There was talk about hunting battle horrors, but first it was decided to seek equipment upgrades. Coresmash picked up a magical flail from the cave near the xvart village, while Croak looked longingly north to Ulgoth's Beard where a +3 staff was on sale. Before getting that though we wanted to reduce the cost by upgrading reputation. A trip through the Cloud Peaks pushed that to 19 before heading for the ankheg area. Coresmash was a bit uncertain about attacking them without a shield for extra protection, but eventually went for it - and did very well, with the ankhegs managing few attacks in the short time each had before dual-wielded weapons and the odd backstab struck them down.
Finally at Durlag's Tower the battle horror faced improved weapons - as well as getting a bit of a shock to see that Grime now had access to level 3 spells.
Inside the Tower, Croak wanted to test out whether he could disarm the trap leading to the roof - and found he couldn't, so the basilisks there will have to wait patiently for next time.
After travelling over to the lighthouse, a series of traps caught various sirines - quickly gaining the Opera another level each. Traps then picked off the golems in the cave.
Returning to the ankheg area, summons helped occupy the ankhegs long enough to shoot them up with magic stones and magic missiles. That took a little while, but the XP from that was sufficient to almost get them their next level. However, an attempted rest before leaving the area failed and the Opera ran into a bandit ambush when travelling - by now Aspire had Expeditious Retreat and that proved just enough to let them get away.
The last bit of XP needed for another level was gained by successfully reconstituting Melicamp. With invisibility in the bag the battle horrors at Durlag's Tower were no challenge. Working through the ghasts, however, was a different matter. There seemed no danger as I isolated one of them in preparation for shooting it up, but either a couple of movement clicks didn't take or I was clicking on an impassable point as Aspire didn't move when intended and once paralysed was too far from the others for them to interfere.
A trip to Shoal saw Washout sacrifice herself to bring back Aspire. The damaged characters were kept out of the way until Droth fell over in a Writhing Fog. Invisibility then allowed them to safely heal before successfully preventing Shoal from running away. While in the area they added a few more to their sirine collection.
Back at Durlag's Tower they cleared the remainder of the ghasts and trapped Kirinhale. I left the ghost until skeletons are available and left the basilisks as I'm not sure how their gaze works in this installation. Instead they went to work through the Cloud Peaks. That had a bad start when I clicked the wrong option with Greywolf and saw him kill Prism and disappear. However, the remainder of their work went well and everyone picked up another level there.
Finally moving on to the basilisk area the Opera quickly made their way through there. Web and invisibility still work well in SR and dealt with the basilisks. Summons and web accounted for Mutamin before thief traps killed Kirian, Peter and Baerin. Lindin survived those - but not the fire traps Hardup had placed (that's a vicious spell in SR due to the ability not only to stack them, but because they're party friendly).
A moment's lack of attention nearly caused a casualty on arrival at Larswood. I intended everyone to be invisible prior to resting, but apparently failed to cast that on Skint. Numerous bandits appeared and Skint was taken down to 1 HP before I paused - with a killing arrow in the air. I didn't expect to get away with that, but the area transition triggered immediately and Skint arrived with her skin intact.
That proved a short reprieve, however, as the Opera moved on to Peldvale. Seeing a group of bears there Hardup started running them round inside a Writhing Fog. A couple of hobgoblin elites appeared while he was doing that and targeted him - the sorcerers finished those off, but keeping out of their range had pushed Hardup a little north. I was looking behind him rather than ahead and didn't notice until far too late that he had strayed into range of a group of Blacktalons.
I'll leave this run here. My initial impression of Spell Revisions is that it doesn't actually make that much difference to the balance of game play. Some spells are weaker and some stronger and specific tactics are ruled out or opened up. Overall though my impression is that the difficulty is pretty much the same (which after all I think was the intention of the mod ).
@Grond0 I think that the game is slightly harder with SR, because they closed some overpowered/cheesy tactics associated with some spells, but it's more significant at higher levels in my opinion.
For instance, Improved Haste is an AoE effect with small bonuses instead of doubling APR outright. You won't have a fighter with 9 APR for long duration with SR.
The wizard's chess is also changed : Spell Immunity is replaced with Dispelling Screen, which gives a party-wide proctection against a single Dispel. It (finally !) gives protection to Dispel to non-mages, but it's much harder to keep up than Spell Immunity.
However, since a lot of less useful spells receive buffing (level 2 Druid spells are not as useless as they are in vanilla), I'd say it makes the game only slightly harder in general, but perhaps even slightly easier in BG1.
In contrast to the Trio yesterday this pairing had another pretty quiet session. The action started with a trip to the Bandit Camp where it was a race to see whether Sparkle could sleep the basic bandits before Gruu chopped their heads off. Taurgosz didn't last much longer and Venkt & co were all blinded inside Tazok's tent.
There was a brief stop-off in the Cloakwood to pick up an improved sword for Gruu
before moving on to the mine. Kysus and Genthore were blinded there and Rezdan was one-shotted after being stuck in a web.
At that stage the only potential danger was Drasus, so when Gruu decided to attack Genthore instead, Sparkle held Drasus.
She then took pity on Kysus having to watch his friends die and charmed him .
Moving down to Davaeorn the mage had heard what happened to people stuck in webs and was determined not to let that happen to him.
However, he had no answer to Gruu's rage anyway
- that lasted long enough to clean up the mustard jelly as well.
In the City most encounters were no problem at all. Marek did manage to confuse Sparkle, but with Gruu enraged there was no danger there.
Degrodel's guards managed to take Gruu low on HPs, but never threatened a killing.
At the Iron Throne the duo opened with a pair of detonation arrows each - killing all 4 casters to make finishing things off easy.
At Candlekeep Sparkle disarmed the traps to rob the tombs before beating up a few dopplegangers. Prat's gang were another to suffer in silence webs on the way out.
For the basilisks it didn't seem worth using a green scroll - and indeed finishing them off took less than 3 of the 10 round duration of the potion of mirrored eyes Gruu used instead.
We fought Slayer Irenicus, his two Balors and his two Glabrezus without prevailing. The Balors managed to Vorpal no less than 3 of our character while Slayer Irenicus chunked Xan, after an initial wave of 3x Dispel that was too much for our defenses. We fought until the bitter end, managing to kill all of Slayer Irenicus allies (with a Fallen Planetar joining the fun), but with only Miluiel left in our party. The Rod of Resurrection was already empty at that point, so it was one-on-one with Slayer Irenicus.
By going invisible and equiping all the right equipment for immunities, she managed to empty Irenicus spellbook. It's just that his regen was too much for Miluiel to handle. Our lack of DPS bit us on the rear in the end. I tried various thing, but in the end, I devised a last resort plan. I had a Spell Sequencer with three Lightning Bolt and hadn't use my own Slayer ability. So, I decided to gulp a bunch of potions, cast Pierce Magic on Irenicus, cast the spell sequencer, turn into the Slayer and hope for the best. It actually almost worked. I got Irenicus to Badly Injured, but he had a Spell Sequencer of his own that fired : Tenser's Transformation, Improved Haste and Prot. from Magic Weapon. Well, boohoo. The table turned and he wacked Miluiel a few times to to kill her just after that.
I probably could have ran away, but I didn't have enough resources to deal with him at full health again. So, that's the end of the run.
I'm kinda proud of that run, because it's my most successful one ever, but I think that I really could have beaten that fight if one or two things went my way. If I would have kept Kivan for instance, I'm pretty sure his Archer skills would have turned the table and killed the Glabrezus and Balors in a much easier way. We had a strong team, but when our buffs are gone, we are nowhere near as strong. I would have been much happier if I would have made it to ToB, because then I would have considered the run a success even if I would have failed along the way.
I'll be back in a while. I'll probably wait for the new patch to be released and make a fresh IR/SR install through BWS again (there's a few things I don't like about my setup right now). We'll see what I'll play with, but it's probably be a modified Dwarven Defender (DDs don't mesh well with IR, because they were created after the mod, so they're pretty much outside of its scope) or a Rogue Rebalancing Assassin. We'll see.
@Arctodus: Sad news this Monday morning... but we'll not mourn, because it was a truely spectacular run. I've enjoyed every single bit of it and I congratulate you with your personal no-reload achievement. Eagerly waiting for your next run!
Condolences, @Arcdotus. I remember how it felt when I fell in Hell... Like you get all the way there and then aren't able to cinch the deal.
My Priest of Helm run is still alive, but I lost focus and interest in it some time ago. Instead, I'll attempt a themed run. Here's Stranger Gate! Let's go kill ourselves a Demogorgon.
In season 2, Mike Wheeler helpfully tells us the 5 kid's original classes: "I'm our paladin, Will's our cleric, Dustin's our bard, Lucas is our ranger, and El is our mage." Max replies that she can be a... zoomer. Whatever a zoomer is. Kits are chosen as appropriately as possible: since we're going to be hunting Demogorgon, Cavalier's a good fit, and favored enemy for Lucas is Demonic. Lucas' nickname in season 2 is "Stalker," so it's kind of a no-brainer. The kids speculate that Will has True Sight, and he's also supposed to be a cleric, so Helm is also obvious. Eleven works better as a sorcerer than as a mage, in my opinions, and she's going to end up with a bunch of terrain-warping spells. She starts with Grease and Spook, for now. And back to Mad Max, it was either Monk or Barbarian to make her "Zoomer" statement true, and she sure isn't Lawful. Barbarian it is. No Thief in this party, so no disarming traps. Mike or Max are probably going to have to run through them with as many immunities as I can stack on them, because I simply don't know what half of them do. Probably more.
Relevant mods: UB, SCS, no pre-buffs. Extra rules: Friends don't lie (can't lie to anyone they would consider an ally) In BG1, Aec'latec must die. In BG2, Demogorgon must die.
@semiticgod Just a suggestion. Since you're a mod, maybe it's time to for you to add @Neverused Baroque and your own success with your solo Seducer to the Hall of Heroes. @Ygramul still hasn't showed up lately, so maybe we should do it now before we forget about them.
Even though @Ygramul is managing the thread, it has become a community thing by now, so I don't think he would be mad if you just added those runs to the Hall.
@Grond0: When is Shoal supposed to resurrect the party member she kills?
I lost two party members to Drasus et al and went down to get them back via Shoal, but it never happened. I let my Shaman get the kiss of death via dialogue, then Shoal turned hostile and started fighting our bats. We hit Shoal with Magic Missiles, but she didn't surrender even when she got to Near Death. We fired off one last Magic Missile, hoping to prompt her surrender dialogue and therefore the party-wide Raise Dead spell you mentioned, but she just died.
Looking at her script, it says only crushing damage from the PC will trigger the dialogue and set the variable needed to raise the party:
IF HitBy([PC],CRUSHING) !Dead("Droth") // Droth THEN RESPONSE #100 SetGlobal("ShoalHit","GLOBAL",1) Dialog([PC]) END
Have you only ever hit Shoal with crushing damage when you used her to raise party members?
This current run is over. I have three dead party members and the only way to carry them to BG2 is to keep them in the party until SoD, forcing me to complete BG1 with only three living characters. Doable, maybe, but much worse than starting all the way over.
Testing confirmed it. Only when the main character hits Shoal with a crushing attack will she resurrect any party members. Fists count for this purpose, so it's not class-dependent. All you have to do is land a single hit.
How curious. I'm pretty sure I've turned every character in my party to AI off, used Khalid with a long sword and bap Shoal until she agreed to resurrect a party member. As long as I am careful to be in talk range and not have a lot of party members attack her, she has always resurrected my party members, regardless of my weapons - I would say most runs I use slashing weapons. Guess this is an EE change?
@Grond0: When is Shoal supposed to resurrect the party member she kills?
@semiticgod it's not only crushing damage that triggers the dialogue (though I suppose it's possible that's an immediate trigger, it's definitely not the only one). What I do is inflict a bit of ranged damage with only 1 character attacking her to bring her to injured status and then let her approach one of the party members. Note that needs to be someone with decent charisma - if her reaction adjustment isn't high enough she won't give in (so you need someone charismatic to prompt her kiss in the first place and someone else charismatic to talk to later). If she continues trying to attack rather than talking I'll do a bit more damage with low value attacks, e.g. LMD, darts or fists - after each bit of damage letting her approach again until she gives her dialogue.
We went down the Nashkel mines and came across a party of Duerger assassins. It was quite a tussle to defeat them, but we did without losing any party members however we deemed it wise to exit the mines to rest afterwards. Upon returning we were able to defeat the kobolds and Mulahey without too much difficulty. Upon leaving the mine we plundered three caves before taking on a mage who had summoned some mustard jellies. We dropped xan off at the carnival thinking that even with his low constitution, he should be safe enough there. At Nashkel we killed two assassins before heading north where we defeated some lady-ogres.
In transit we were attacked by yet more assassins whom we killed easily.
In Beregost we were attacked by Tarash. He did not survive. We went south where we picked up some boots for Coran and killed Tristan and Isolde both of whom had useful equipment.
We then headed to the bandit camp where we impressed Tazok with our fighting ability.
We then killed a few more assassins led by Brotus Bloodthirsty before taking on the bandits all of whom were slain.
We then headed for the caravan ambush site where we killed a lot of bandits before sneaking up on Phallen Nightsbane’s party and killing them.
semiticgod December 18 @Grond0: When is Shoal supposed to resurrect the party member she kills?
I've never played EE, but in vanilla BG you need to hit her in melee or the dialogue won't trigger. Weapon type doesn't matter. Theoretically it might work if you fire arrows at het while one character is within melee range, but that never triggered the dialogue for me.
Comments
@Grond0, man I must agree with @semiticgod, you're extremely harsh, but I understand your position...
@Mantis37, belated thanks for more lovely writing, and congrats on your success! Good luck in Amn!
I have bad news about my run with Solace the F/M/C. I can't be bothered with a complete update discussing in detail all important events. The party did well against the bandits in Tazok's tent, with the help of summons, Safana's Malison, Dynaheir's Stinking Clouds, and Viconia's innate Confusions. Malison in combination with an Invoker-cast Stinking Cloud and Skeletons is effective against mobs even on LoB difficulty.
We got into huge trouble during Jaheira's BG1 NPC Project quest in Cloakwood. The quest involves having to slay five Druids who attack a wounded Druid friend (fomer lover?) of Jaheira's. The Druids chunk both Safana and Khalid with Call Lightnings. We do prevail eventually with more of our summons. And we even succeed in the final battle against a very powerful Avenger, charming his right-hand. Picked up Xan as a replacement.
Drasus and co we took on one at a time. Rather uneventful. Solace pretty much soloed Davaeorn and his aides with wands. We did several quests in BG city (relying on Malison, Emotion, Stinking Cloud, Skeleton combos).
But during the ranged battle against Larze in the Blushing Mermaid, I got called away from my computer. When I returned I saw that Xan was gone (chunked) and that the main character had been killed. Obviously I had failed to properly pause the game. As much as I'm aware that this had little to nothing to do with my game play, I just can't continue. In the (utterly unthinkable) event of me succeeding with this playthrough, the incident with Larze would spoil the sense of accomplishment I might feel about the run. This saddens me because I was definitely having fun. The party was definitely more enjoyable, more flexible, and more capable than my previous, Skald-led party.
In my Ælfmar run, I sadly discovered that I had forgotten to install Vynd. I already knew that I had installed the wrong version of the mod to move starting points of NPCs. Imoen would start with far too low experience, which meant that the only thief left is Coran. However whilst he is alright, I would have preferred a pure thief.
Journal of Ælfmar
Realising that the party needed a thief for picking locks and traps I went in search of one that I had heard frequented Cloakwood. Upon finding him, I thought that to keep him I might need to indulge him by hunting the wyverns that he was so keen on killing.To get to them we avoided all unecessary conflict and ended up killing four fully grown wyvern. We were handsomely rewarded for killing them which means that we might be able to buy some better equipment in the near future. Coran himself is using the good quality weapons and armour that I found on the corpses of the assassins in Candlekeep. I am now glad that I didn't sell it. I thought that it might come in handy one day.
EDIT
We were then given the task of investigating the missing persons in Beregost. I am pretty sure that Lady Valeria is responsible. However before being able to investigate we were attacked by her minions. We found them to be almost impregnible. However we did eventually kill two of them that were blocking my escape route. I ran for the exit and immediately went to the temple for healing not wanting to spend time sleeping during which our possessions would disappear.Upon returning I was able to kill the remaining enemies whereupon I took my allies to the temple for resurrection.
After re-equipping ourselves we slept, healed, slept healed etc for over a day after which we felt ready and able to meet Lady Valeria. Sadly the resurrections wiped out the financial gains that we had made in Cloakwood.
Killing Lady Valeria herself turned out to be easy.
After taking the bowl to Tanya, she joined the party. We then investigated the coast, helped Sil, but killed the sirine who were hostile. My reputation now 20, and my Con 19.
We then went to the gnoll stronghold and had no difficulty with the assassins there.
It is perhaps now time to investigate the Nashkel mines.
I'm so pleased that we timed the attack on the gnoll stronghold better on this run.
Sad to see your run ended like this...(personally I have almost all autopause options on but I can perfectly understand if one don't want this).
Anyway, hope to see your next run soon.
It took many, many rounds and many trips back and forth in the Cloakwood to deal with those Phase Spiders. Over and over again, a single Phase Spider was followed by two others; repeatedly arriving on the map and hoping for only a single spider does not seem realistic. The most successful strategy was to use Invisibility Sphere at the start and have our level 1 sorcerers summon some gibberlings to draw the spiders away from the invisible party. Then, while the spiders were distracted, Baeloth would fire off Melf's Acid Arrows and Magic Missiles from behind a wall of invisible party members. Even so, luck played a roll and we had to try multiple times before all the spiders were gone.
In the process, we triggered a lot of ettercap ambushes. Baeloth hid us using Invisibility Sphere and then bombed the ettercaps with Fireball, earning us a surprising amount of XP (ettercaps have surprisingly high HP, no poison attack but high APR, and are worth 650 XP apiece). We used Invisibility Sphere to hurry through the Cloakwood while fighting few critters, aside from farming a handful of wyverns to get Frisky to level 6 to get another Fireball spell.
If that goes wrong, you could also cast Invisibility Sphere, hide somewhere far from Davaeorn and wait for all his guards to gather around him. They will completely hinder his movement, because their script requires them to stay close to him at all time. You could then throw fireballs from afar to thin their number and finish Davey (whose buffs would have exhausted at that point) in a various way, such as with traps set far away, attacks from invisibility, etc... You probably still have to kill the two Battle Horrors, because they won't follow Davey around everywhere, but if Davey is stucked behind his own men, they don't pose such a threat. This strat has a higher percentage of success in my opinion, it just makes the fight last longer.
But testing has found that there may be a way to get around that:
1. Recruit Safana.
2. Bring Safana to the Cloakwood mines and drop her off in Davaeorn's lair, booting her from the party.
3. Recruit Xan and use him to charm Safana.
4. Approach Davaeorn while invisible and order Safana to charm him. This is a melee-range charm spell, so we'd have to take down the Battle Horrors first.
5. If Safana fails, we'd have to pull her back, let the charm wear off so she turns hostile, then charm her again so we can bring her into the party and rest her to get her own charm spell back, at which point we can try again.
6. When Safana finally succeeds, Davaeorn will be charmed for 100 seconds, enough time for us to empty his spellbook of the most important spells.
The only problem is how to get rid of those Battle Horrors. I might do a test run to see if Davaeorn turns hostile when the Battle Horrors engage in combat, which I think I've seen happen before. But if I can lure them away from him, we should be able to use Xan to charm Safana so Safana can charm Davaeorn so we can empty his spellbook.
Or, now that I've done some further testing, I could just recruit Faldorn. Frisk has enough XP that Faldorn starts at 32,000, which is just shy of the 35,000 she needs to summon a hamadryad to charm Davaeorn, which could be done at range.
It's actually kind of a shame. The Xan+Safana option's only advantage is that it's not level-dependent. But it's a lot more complex and cool than just getting a level 6 Faldorn for free.
I think one of the best options for an SR poverty run might just be to start out solo and then recruit higher-level companions like Baeloth and Faldorn. In an EET install, you could create five custom level one characters who are designed to excel in BG2, and then just park them in a room somewhere until you escape Chateau Irenicus. Baeloth is a fabulous option in BG1 and Corwin, when paired with SR's Enchanted Weapon and the +3 weapons it can summon, is a fabulous option in SoD, and there's really no point in investing XP in a party of custom characters if you have better choices all the way through the first two games.
BG2 is another story. There are good NPCs for a poverty run in SoA, including Jaheira and Wilson, but you just don't get enough arcane spell power, what with the complete lack of PFMW spells among NPC mages.
Last run
Reading @semiticgod's updates I've been surprised that progress using Spell Revisions seemed so difficult. I wondered perhaps if that was not only the result of the mod, but trying to make progress too fast through the game. I've never used Spell Revisions though, so thought perhaps I should create a new installation for that and see how Beggar and his friends could cope with it.
I didn't change any opening spell selections as I don't know yet what would be preferred. However, with bounty hunter traps and shamanic summons to fall back on I thought it should be possible to make progress anyway.
The early stages saw the Opera move to Beregost and do a few chores around there - that included trapping Silke. Next they moved up to the FAI where a spirit bear panicked Tarnesh into running into some traps (though he left some green slimes behind - that seems like a pretty useful spell for a fairly low-level mage to have). They returned Landrin's goods there before heading further north and giving Tenya back a bowl (before killing her with traps). They also pulled the ankheg near her into traps rather than using melee as in previous runs (as command is no longer guaranteed to work against ankhegs and blind is no longer available).
After going down to Nashkel (travelling during the day as usual to avoid ambushes) they picked up a whole additional 15 XP for killing Noober after listening to him prattle on for a while. That doesn't affect reputation, but killing a farmer did to get Beggar LMD as a Bhaal power. Work in the area to the north of the carnival - including saving Arabelle and sorting out Arghain - then got everyone to within a whisker of their first level. At that point I tried casting Obscuring Fog for the first time to see if that would help against Billy and Dribben - but that immediately turned them hostile even when not actually cast at them and I quickly ran away and went to find a couple of hobgoblins instead.
Sleep and command are both less effective than they were at early levels, but are still both pretty useful spells - creatures wake up when hit, but level 1 creatures hit by Hardup's 19 strength Shillelagh are not going to trouble anyone again anyway. I've also noted that Shillelagh seems to have a decent chance of entangling slightly stronger things (like wolves), which is a nice fringe benefit to the spell. I haven't yet made use of it, but looking through spell lists I see druids get a bat summoning spell at level 1 and Beggar will probably be trying that out shortly.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L2, 14 HPs, 1 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L2, 16 HPs, 21 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L3, 14 HPs, 30 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L2, 23 HPs, 17 kills (84 in BG1), 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L2, 11 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L2, 12 HPs, 10 kills, 0 deaths
Sparkle (Gnome illusionist / thief, Grond0); Gruu (Half-orc berserker, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/931679/#Comment_931679
We just had time to slot in a short session today. I'd forgotten we'd agreed to immediately go after the ankhegs and headed for the Cloud Peaks instead, but that didn't delay us too long. We picked up the charisma tome there, but it disappeared in front of Sparkle's eyes as she looked through her inventory - prompting Gate70 to accuse her of having "butterfingers". Fortunately both our charisma scores are so poor that the tome was virtually useless to us anyhow.
Finally getting to the ankhegs, Gruu was quite capable of cutting them down without help - though Sparkle did make things even easier by sleeping many of them. At one point in the nest an ankheg was only visible on my screen, so I took control of Gruu for a few seconds to point him in the right direction.
After a bit of shopping at Ulgoth's Beard we picked up Meilum's bracers - the swordsman extraordinaire not quite sure where to swing his blade after being blinded.
I went to find Tranzig, but couldn't manage that. Gate70 gently reminded me that we hadn't yet done the Nashkel Mine, so we hastened through that. Mulahey was stuck in webs and failed to call for help.
Sparkle, mage 5 / thief 6, 33 HPs, 56 kills
Gruu, Berserker 7, 95 HPs, 183 kills, 0 deaths
I'd recommend looking through the spell list in Near Infinity or by giving your sorcerer or shaman some XP in the console as a test so you can view some spell descriptions.
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, 8, 9
Notable mods
- SCS (full prebuffs, full Tactical Challenges)
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalancing
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Refinements
After having defeated Bodhi, we decided to drop Gavin for a little while to do Rasaad's quest. Since I suspect SCS scripts have little effect on the new Beamdog sidequests, it was quite easy. In the Heretic's Temple, we had a fight we just couldn't lose. Outside of Alora who was on the receiving end of a few backstabs, there was no danger here. Once that fight was done, we ditched Rasaad and got Gavin back.
Why do all that, you might ask. One simple reason, a potion :
This Red Potion is the only way to raise Intelligence that I know of in an IR/SR game (outside of the Machine of Lum the Mad, which I don't intend to get to). Since Tyris "only" has 17 Int, she'll need it to learn level 9 spells. Otherwise, she would have been stucked at level 8 spell max. It might be a perk of my install, but IR restriction on Int boosting option plus limits of spell level based on said Int score makes for a harsh install for mages below 18 Int. Well, I found a way to circumvate that.
Suldanessellar. Raamilat wasn't a threat : since I have access to Pierce Shield, I could debuff him easily.
Then, I went into Demin's house, where I had to fight a few named Rakshasas. We were underbuffed for that fight, so we had to get out of the house, sleep and go back in after. On our return, they were slain fast enough.
Nizidramanii'yt. Not much to say. We buffed up and used the strategy to lower its MR with Pierce Magic and used Spell Sequencers for damage. It dealt solid damage to it, but didn't deal as much damage as I thought it would. We had to finish him in melee. He was a bit tougher than Firkraag, but nothing too bad either. Alora took quite a bit of damage, but other than that, nothing too bad.
We then gathered all the necessary things to summon Rillifane's Avatar. We had to kill another bunch of named Rakshasas just outside the Temple. I had two Pierce Shield memorized, so two of them went down fast enough, but I couldn't do much against the others, since Breach doesn't work on them in my install. We outlasted them anyway.
The Suneer Fight. With our buffs from the Rakshasas still active, I went in the Temple. Oh boy, was it hard. No, I'm kidding : I directly placed the items on the Altar and Suneer was slain by Rillifane's Avatar in no time. Booya.
Soooo, only Irenicus himself left. THAT was a much harder fight.
While I was killing the bugs around the Tree of Life, Miluiel gained a level and her first HLA. An HLA in a no-reload run, my first time... She chose Enhanced Bard Song from the Rogue Rebalancing mod, which gives +4 to saves and thac0, +10 MR and immunity to Fear and Charm to allies. Miluiel actually gets (only for herself) a boost of +8 to saves while singing. There's a slight drawback though : it doesn't work in conjunction with the Bard Hat, so no lingering effect. Miluiel then will have to take a backseat during fights to sling spells instead, because I was using a lot in melee recently. However, fully buffed, look at them stats...
The fight itself now. It started strong, with Irenicus summoning a bunch of Simulacrums and two Greater Basilisks. I had Jaheira grab the Staff of the Woodlands, because in IR, it has an aura that charms all beast within 30' unless a save vs spell at -4 is made. I used it to try to charm the Basilisks, but that didn't work somehow : we had to slay them. Irenicus then quickly summoned a Fallen Planetar to his aid, which was a frightening sight. It killed Tyris with a Vorpal Strike before switching to Gavin. We revived Tyris with the Rod of Resurrection, but she had no buffs to help her. Still, Tyris managed to blind Irenicus with Sunray from Daystar.
Because I had two Pierce Shield memorized by Xan plus two other arcane users, I thought that this fight would be easy. It was not. I casted a round of True Seeing which let let me take down some of the Irenicus buffs after. Xan then casted his second Pierce Shield (the first was wasted on one of his Simulacrum because of a misclick, which was a BIG mistake). It took down a lot of his buffs, but a Contingency fired and he was safe again. The fight was dragging on and our True Seeing ran out. I was stucked without being able to dispel his invisibility. I could have had Alora dispel it with her Detect Illusions skill, but she was very busy trying to kill the Fallen Planetar with +3 arrows. She eventually did, but then Irenicus summoned another Fallen Planetar (ugh). Then, all his Images/Simulacrum went berserk on summons : 2 Nabassus entered the fight. Things were starting to be quite ectic, and Irenicus was still uninjured.
We kept on fighting. The Fallen Planetar started to attack Miluiel, which was an uncomfortable sight. I moved everyone around to alleviate the pressure from all these monsters, who managd to kill Tyris again. We fled to the upper corner of the map and, after a little while, Irenicus showed up. His buffs - like ours - were getting thin and only then Alora dispelled his invisibility. Alora and Jaheira attacked Irenicus at range, finally dealing damage to him, while the rest of our team was tanking a Glabrezu (another demon...).
We were hitting Irenicus hard for a long time. Then, after finishing a spell, he finally fell...
So, I learned a lot in this fight. First, I have to revise my strategy against greater foes. When our True Seeing expired, we were left helpless against Irenicus. I'll have to memorize more True Seeing and/or time them better instead of casting them all at the same time for everyone. Two, our team is resilient. We outlasted Irenicus, 2 Nabassus, 1 Balor, 2 Fallen Planetars, 2 Greater Basilisks and 1 Glabrezu, all that while only Tyris died (twice). We don't deal a ton of damage, but we deal enough of it while our defense is really stout. I have to improve my game on the wizard's chess, but we're defiinitively doing something good.
Now, we're in Hell. It's time to finish SoA, one way or another...
(Corey_Russell, Grond0, Gate70)
Previous updates:
Today's session saw the Trio tread the fine line between success and failure before falling over - fortunately in the right direction
Things started promisingly enough with finishing the basilisk area that was begun last time. Mutamin failed to make an impression on the raging Coresmash and Kirian and her gang did no better.
While in the area to pick up Melicamp, Bassilus was another easy victim.
Coresmash had his eye in on sirines by now and led the way to Shoal's area to find some more. First though he begged a kiss from Shoal - the others quickly withdrawing a bit so that when Shoal raised him Grime could heal him up without interference from Droth.
At Beregost temple Grime cashed in Bassilus' holy symbol before preparing to leave - but Coresmash's eyes had lit up at the sight of more lovely sirines. Launching an attack he managed to quickly kill the priest and between him and a couple of shamanic spirits the other sirines seemed to be under control. However, Coresmash got dragged away from the two he was meleeing and one of those switched her attentions to Grime - both charming and poisoning him (and in the process getting rid of the spirit summons). Grime started chasing Croak round the temple, with Croak trying to lead him in a pattern that avoided a sirine targeting them,- leaving Coresmash to take a lot of damage from the arrows of the remaining sirines. He kept alive by using potions, but as Grime's HPs ticked remorselessly down it looked like another run was about to come to an end - but the poison stopped ticking with a comfortable 3 HPs left.
There was talk about hunting battle horrors, but first it was decided to seek equipment upgrades. Coresmash picked up a magical flail from the cave near the xvart village, while Croak looked longingly north to Ulgoth's Beard where a +3 staff was on sale. Before getting that though we wanted to reduce the cost by upgrading reputation. A trip through the Cloud Peaks pushed that to 19 before heading for the ankheg area. Coresmash was a bit uncertain about attacking them without a shield for extra protection, but eventually went for it - and did very well, with the ankhegs managing few attacks in the short time each had before dual-wielded weapons and the odd backstab struck them down.
Finally at Durlag's Tower the battle horror faced improved weapons - as well as getting a bit of a shock to see that Grime now had access to level 3 spells.
Grime, shaman level 6, 48 HPs, 66 kills
Croak, assassin level 7, 42 HPs, 54 kills, 0 deaths
Coresmash, level 6, 76 HPs, 127 kills, 2 deaths
Previous updates
After travelling over to the lighthouse, a series of traps caught various sirines - quickly gaining the Opera another level each. Traps then picked off the golems in the cave.
Returning to the ankheg area, summons helped occupy the ankhegs long enough to shoot them up with magic stones and magic missiles. That took a little while, but the XP from that was sufficient to almost get them their next level. However, an attempted rest before leaving the area failed and the Opera ran into a bandit ambush when travelling - by now Aspire had Expeditious Retreat and that proved just enough to let them get away.
The last bit of XP needed for another level was gained by successfully reconstituting Melicamp. With invisibility in the bag the battle horrors at Durlag's Tower were no challenge. Working through the ghasts, however, was a different matter. There seemed no danger as I isolated one of them in preparation for shooting it up, but either a couple of movement clicks didn't take or I was clicking on an impassable point as Aspire didn't move when intended and once paralysed was too far from the others for them to interfere.
A trip to Shoal saw Washout sacrifice herself to bring back Aspire. The damaged characters were kept out of the way until Droth fell over in a Writhing Fog. Invisibility then allowed them to safely heal before successfully preventing Shoal from running away. While in the area they added a few more to their sirine collection.
Back at Durlag's Tower they cleared the remainder of the ghasts and trapped Kirinhale. I left the ghost until skeletons are available and left the basilisks as I'm not sure how their gaze works in this installation. Instead they went to work through the Cloud Peaks. That had a bad start when I clicked the wrong option with Greywolf and saw him kill Prism and disappear. However, the remainder of their work went well and everyone picked up another level there.
Finally moving on to the basilisk area the Opera quickly made their way through there. Web and invisibility still work well in SR and dealt with the basilisks. Summons and web accounted for Mutamin before thief traps killed Kirian, Peter and Baerin. Lindin survived those - but not the fire traps Hardup had placed (that's a vicious spell in SR due to the ability not only to stack them, but because they're party friendly).
A moment's lack of attention nearly caused a casualty on arrival at Larswood. I intended everyone to be invisible prior to resting, but apparently failed to cast that on Skint. Numerous bandits appeared and Skint was taken down to 1 HP before I paused - with a killing arrow in the air. I didn't expect to get away with that, but the area transition triggered immediately and Skint arrived with her skin intact.
That proved a short reprieve, however, as the Opera moved on to Peldvale. Seeing a group of bears there Hardup started running them round inside a Writhing Fog. A couple of hobgoblin elites appeared while he was doing that and targeted him - the sorcerers finished those off, but keeping out of their range had pushed Hardup a little north. I was looking behind him rather than ahead and didn't notice until far too late that he had strayed into range of a group of Blacktalons.
I'll leave this run here. My initial impression of Spell Revisions is that it doesn't actually make that much difference to the balance of game play. Some spells are weaker and some stronger and specific tactics are ruled out or opened up. Overall though my impression is that the difficulty is pretty much the same (which after all I think was the intention of the mod
For instance, Improved Haste is an AoE effect with small bonuses instead of doubling APR outright. You won't have a fighter with 9 APR for long duration with SR.
The wizard's chess is also changed : Spell Immunity is replaced with Dispelling Screen, which gives a party-wide proctection against a single Dispel. It (finally !) gives protection to Dispel to non-mages, but it's much harder to keep up than Spell Immunity.
However, since a lot of less useful spells receive buffing (level 2 Druid spells are not as useless as they are in vanilla), I'd say it makes the game only slightly harder in general, but perhaps even slightly easier in BG1.
Sparkle (Gnome illusionist / thief, Grond0); Gruu (Half-orc berserker, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/931679/#Comment_931679
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/932537/#Comment_932537
In contrast to the Trio yesterday this pairing had another pretty quiet session. The action started with a trip to the Bandit Camp where it was a race to see whether Sparkle could sleep the basic bandits before Gruu chopped their heads off. Taurgosz didn't last much longer and Venkt & co were all blinded inside Tazok's tent.
There was a brief stop-off in the Cloakwood to pick up an improved sword for Gruu
Moving down to Davaeorn the mage had heard what happened to people stuck in webs and was determined not to let that happen to him.
In the City most encounters were no problem at all. Marek did manage to confuse Sparkle, but with Gruu enraged there was no danger there.
At Candlekeep Sparkle disarmed the traps to rob the tombs before beating up a few dopplegangers. Prat's gang were another to suffer in
silencewebs on the way out.Sparkle, mage 7 / thief 7, 44 HPs, 85 kills
Gruu, Berserker 8, 113 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 325 kills, 0 deaths
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, 8, 9, 10 (FINAL UPDATE)
Notable mods
- SCS (full prebuffs, full Tactical Challenges)
- IR/SR
- Rogue Rebalancing
- plenty of NPC mods
- Tweak Anthology
- Refinements
Well, Miluiel's luck ran out.
We fought Slayer Irenicus, his two Balors and his two Glabrezus without prevailing. The Balors managed to Vorpal no less than 3 of our character while Slayer Irenicus chunked Xan, after an initial wave of 3x Dispel that was too much for our defenses. We fought until the bitter end, managing to kill all of Slayer Irenicus allies (with a Fallen Planetar joining the fun), but with only Miluiel left in our party. The Rod of Resurrection was already empty at that point, so it was one-on-one with Slayer Irenicus.
By going invisible and equiping all the right equipment for immunities, she managed to empty Irenicus spellbook. It's just that his regen was too much for Miluiel to handle. Our lack of DPS bit us on the rear in the end. I tried various thing, but in the end, I devised a last resort plan. I had a Spell Sequencer with three Lightning Bolt and hadn't use my own Slayer ability. So, I decided to gulp a bunch of potions, cast Pierce Magic on Irenicus, cast the spell sequencer, turn into the Slayer and hope for the best. It actually almost worked. I got Irenicus to Badly Injured, but he had a Spell Sequencer of his own that fired : Tenser's Transformation, Improved Haste and Prot. from Magic Weapon. Well, boohoo. The table turned and he wacked Miluiel a few times to to kill her just after that.
I probably could have ran away, but I didn't have enough resources to deal with him at full health again. So, that's the end of the run.
I'm kinda proud of that run, because it's my most successful one ever, but I think that I really could have beaten that fight if one or two things went my way. If I would have kept Kivan for instance, I'm pretty sure his Archer skills would have turned the table and killed the Glabrezus and Balors in a much easier way. We had a strong team, but when our buffs are gone, we are nowhere near as strong. I would have been much happier if I would have made it to ToB, because then I would have considered the run a success even if I would have failed along the way.
I'll be back in a while. I'll probably wait for the new patch to be released and make a fresh IR/SR install through BWS again (there's a few things I don't like about my setup right now). We'll see what I'll play with, but it's probably be a modified Dwarven Defender (DDs don't mesh well with IR, because they were created after the mod, so they're pretty much outside of its scope) or a Rogue Rebalancing Assassin. We'll see.
Bleh.
My Priest of Helm run is still alive, but I lost focus and interest in it some time ago. Instead, I'll attempt a themed run. Here's Stranger Gate! Let's go kill ourselves a Demogorgon.
Links to the wonderful artwork: Anatofinnstark (Mad Max)
Ermitanyongpalits(Will Byers)
Fayeren(Eleven,
Mike, Dustin, Lucas)
In season 2, Mike Wheeler helpfully tells us the 5 kid's original classes: "I'm our paladin, Will's our cleric, Dustin's our bard, Lucas is our ranger, and El is our mage." Max replies that she can be a... zoomer. Whatever a zoomer is. Kits are chosen as appropriately as possible: since we're going to be hunting Demogorgon, Cavalier's a good fit, and favored enemy for Lucas is Demonic. Lucas' nickname in season 2 is "Stalker," so it's kind of a no-brainer. The kids speculate that Will has True Sight, and he's also supposed to be a cleric, so Helm is also obvious. Eleven works better as a sorcerer than as a mage, in my opinions, and she's going to end up with a bunch of terrain-warping spells. She starts with Grease and Spook, for now. And back to Mad Max, it was either Monk or Barbarian to make her "Zoomer" statement true, and she sure isn't Lawful. Barbarian it is. No Thief in this party, so no disarming traps. Mike or Max are probably going to have to run through them with as many immunities as I can stack on them, because I simply don't know what half of them do. Probably more.
Relevant mods: UB, SCS, no pre-buffs.
Extra rules: Friends don't lie (can't lie to anyone they would consider an ally)
In BG1, Aec'latec must die. In BG2, Demogorgon must die.
Even though @Ygramul is managing the thread, it has become a community thing by now, so I don't think he would be mad if you just added those runs to the Hall.
@Neverused: Could you send me the text of your entry to the Hall?
I lost two party members to Drasus et al and went down to get them back via Shoal, but it never happened. I let my Shaman get the kiss of death via dialogue, then Shoal turned hostile and started fighting our bats. We hit Shoal with Magic Missiles, but she didn't surrender even when she got to Near Death. We fired off one last Magic Missile, hoping to prompt her surrender dialogue and therefore the party-wide Raise Dead spell you mentioned, but she just died.
Looking at her script, it says only crushing damage from the PC will trigger the dialogue and set the variable needed to raise the party:
IF
HitBy([PC],CRUSHING)
!Dead("Droth") // Droth
THEN
RESPONSE #100
SetGlobal("ShoalHit","GLOBAL",1)
Dialog([PC])
END
Have you only ever hit Shoal with crushing damage when you used her to raise party members?
This current run is over. I have three dead party members and the only way to carry them to BG2 is to keep them in the party until SoD, forcing me to complete BG1 with only three living characters. Doable, maybe, but much worse than starting all the way over.
Journal of Ælfmar
We went down the Nashkel mines and came across a party of Duerger assassins. It was quite a tussle to defeat them, but we did without losing any party members however we deemed it wise to exit the mines to rest afterwards.Upon returning we were able to defeat the kobolds and Mulahey without too much difficulty.
Upon leaving the mine we plundered three caves before taking on a mage who had summoned some mustard jellies.
We dropped xan off at the carnival thinking that even with his low constitution, he should be safe enough there.
At Nashkel we killed two assassins before heading north where we defeated some lady-ogres.
In transit we were attacked by yet more assassins whom we killed easily.
In Beregost we were attacked by Tarash. He did not survive. We went south where we picked up some boots for Coran and killed Tristan and Isolde both of whom had useful equipment.
We then headed to the bandit camp where we impressed Tazok with our fighting ability.
We then headed for the caravan ambush site where we killed a lot of bandits before sneaking up on Phallen Nightsbane’s party and killing them.
In Beregost we had no problem in killing Tranzig.
December 18
@Grond0: When is Shoal supposed to resurrect the party member she kills?
I've never played EE, but in vanilla BG you need to hit her in melee or the dialogue won't trigger. Weapon type doesn't matter. Theoretically it might work if you fire arrows at het while one character is within melee range, but that never triggered the dialogue for me.