@Flamedance just to make sure I wasn't remembering behavior from BGT I started a game in vanilla BG1. Here's Shoal's dialogue being triggered by a single arrow shot by Imoen.
I didn't do a screenshot, but I also checked that LMD worked just as well - confirming that the type of damage done has never been important (you just need to make sure someone is in melee range in order for Shoal to be able to talk to them).
You also have to ensure that you don't use weapons or spells that could interupt dialogue. (A weapon that stuns for example) (Or kills too quickly for that matter.)
We went to the spider area and succeeded beyond expectations causing Coran to go up a level.
We then returned to Beregost and defeated Silke without any problems.
In transit Zeela and others attacked us but were not strong enough to defeat us though they had an exceedingly good try.
We then went to the FAI to spend our hard earned gold which should make our quests a little easier. Tenya was badly injured with lightning but survived.
Upon returning to Cloakwood Sirene took on a dragon single-handed and won.
Having run through Baldur's Gate 1 so many times testing various mods, and just realising I missed the content of an entire quest mod through three games without ever actually seeing anything, I figure what better way to handle that in a sane, rational manner than to go through the game yet again, testing mods more or less blind on a no-reload run through modded content, reviewing the mods on the way, and maybe even avoiding using the blatantly overpowered items it will probably contain.
vTweaks - Various, most importantly reworking proficiencies - scimitar only covers scimitars, ninjato are moved to short swords, wakisashi to katana, and cleric proficiencies work like every other class, adding, not restricting, weapon choice. Also "exotic weapons", which adds a variety of different weapons to the game. Ishlilka - The half-orc wizard slayer. Verr'Sza - The grumpy catboy ranger. Sirene - The Fighter/Cleric, because her martyr kit is way too powerful. All of which I will try to keep to SoD to review them there too while actually trying to beat SoD for the first time. Everyone else is on No Revive rules.
As for our quest content, which I have not touched before, and will most likely wander blindly from map to map trying to figure out what to do with: Dark Horizons Dark Side of the Sword Coast Stone of Askavar
Anyway, meet Aleph, the Cleric/Stalker, who is restricted to studded leather or worse, has no Con HP bonus, and is not a mage, because clearly I like to make life difficult for myself. Also yes, Druid spells.
Being a Drow fanboy, Aleph uses crossbows and scimitars, and wastes no time in gearing up, for which we're... gonna need a montage or something.
Here is our first new content for, I think, Dark Horizons. A brand new terrible assassin after your life! Having studded leather and a short sword he's around fifty times more threatening than the wonder duo, but still dies in a single hit from one of Aleph's scimitars.
Tragically, Imoen did not survive an ambush after my first rest, since apparently I forgot that people walk slower than Dire Wolves, and because Imoen is lame. I should probably have spammed Hide with her beforehand.
Bonus points if you can say where I stole that particular CHARNAME dialogue line from.
Considering she used up over half her stock of arrows critically missing this game, she will not be missed, though I will miss having suitable bait for Shoal.
Aleph then showed her how it was done. Not very successfully, because she was dead.
Hitting level 3 Cleric, Aleph picks up some new funky Druid spell. I have no idea which of the mods it's from, but it's better than anything else a cleric might get at level 2:
Yeah, line of sight, 4d6 single target by level 3. Pretty good even compared to Mages overall.
There's also some level 1 spells:
"Armor Melt", a spell which gives a -4 AC penalty to a target for 1 turn, -8 if they fail a save. (Assuming it actually works, this spell is batnuggets overpowered, giving +4-8 to hit against a boss target for a level 1 spell) "Fire Bolt", 2d3 fire, save for half (basically a super cheap troll killer for SoD). "Cause Light Wounds" (with a finger cursor spell icon, no less), 1D8 magical, save for nothing. Also touch, which is the worst thing ever for a no reload. Not sure why you wouldn't just use Firebolt if you wanted to waste spell slots. "Blight", Anti-Bless, -1 to hit, damage, morale, and saves vs fear. The most interesting thing about it is that it's got a "50' cube" area of effect, since it's pretty lame compared to even Bless.
Oh, and one other level 2 spell: Ward of Protection: Base AC becomes 3 for 2 turns. I'm not sure why they did this considering this just makes Barkskin redundant until level 12, and this spell redundant after level 12, but considering I'm capped at Studded I'll probably end up using it sooner or later.
Since Aleph wasn't fatigued yet, he faced off against the last of the ogre tribe in the middle of a dramatic lightning storm.
Mother nature sure is fickle, that half ogre already took a lightning bolt once.
Thankfully one of the Tweak mod's features is to make jewellery stackable, including rings and amulets, so despite losing Imoen's backpack space, Aleph can layer more bling than Mister T with all the dead ogre loot, including one last level up from another certain ring in the area, which also contained some mod added loot, an unidentified wand and magic longsword.
Aleph gets a proficiency pip and 2 HP (another bad roll, meaning Aleph's now well below average HP).
And... since I have no idea where to put his proficiency I'm going to bed.
I re-started the run once more. My current early game formula seems very effective and consistent:
1. Drop off all party-created characters at Kagain's shop 2. Grab Tiax at Beregost and take him to Mutamin's garden 3. Summon a ghast, boot Tiax, and then use the ghast to kill the first round of basilisks for 10,000 XP. 4. Grab Baeloth (you need 10,000 XP for him to appear in Peldvale or the Larswood, whichever has the tower) and retrieve Tiax from Nashkel. 5. Have Tiax summon another ghast in Mutamin's garden to clear out the map.
This gets us a level 4 Dragon Disciple with Invisibility and a level 6 Baeloth with Fireball. We recruit Xzar and Montaron, who kill Tarnesh for us (Montaron lands a fatal backstab thanks to Poison Weapon, as one of my mods make him an Assassin), and then take Tiax to the ankheg farm. His ghast tanks all of the ankhegs while Frisk and Baeloth kill them with Magic Missiles and Melf's Acid Arrow.
We then recruit Viconia, Jaheira, and Quayle, all of whom enter the party with 16,000 XP. Fireballs take us through the Nashkel mines, with Web to hold down the Kobold Chieftain and the Kobold Shaman. Inspired by @Grond0's stacking of Fire Traps, which I did not realize was possible, I have Jaheira set a series of fire traps in Mulahey's area, instantly roasting all of his minions. Mulahey himself then dies to Tiax's ghast, obviating the need for Melf's Acid Arrow spells to disrupt his spells.
Quayle Spooks Silke and Baeloth kills her with Melf's Acid Arrow. Baeloth handles Tranzig by abusing the stairway.
Since we don't have Invisibility Sphere yet due to not rest-farming ankhegs, I boot everyone from the party and have Frisk wander around the wilderness under the effects of Invisibility until they finally trigger the Lamalha and Molkar ambushes. This is the safest way to deal the fights. Invisibility only lasts 8 hours in SR, but as long as you only travel 12 hours at a time or less, you'll never be left visible when the ambush starts.
Expeditious Retreat buys us enough time to summon some critters to hold off Tazok, allowing us to win the fight with spell damage.
The bandit camp, however, is very tricky. I boot everyone but Quayle from the party before entering the main tent, and while Quayle nabs the documents under Sanctuary and survives the trap, Frisk somehow loses invisibility while still in the tent.
We try to run away, but our previous party members run up to the tent to talk to Frisk, slowing down our escape--and when Viconia heads inside the tent, we have to duck inside to grab her before she wanders out of reach. But in the process, two party members fail a save against Sleep despite us making it out of the tent.
Our pre-cast summons keep us safe and we suffer no deaths, but the next chapter hasn't triggered. I go back inside after resting with only Quayle in the party, thinking that maybe invisibility was interfering with the trigger. But the next chapter doesn't begin, and the effort only gets Quayle killed.
There are still enemies outside, so I re-collect our party members to take them down.
Notice that Viconia is gone. I have no idea where she went; she wasn't in the tent when I last saw her and she doesn't appear to be anywhere else on the map. She just vanished.
Venkt appears outside the tent and immediately dies to some pre-set traps belonging to Tiax, but Taurgosz Khosann goes hostile, along with everyone else. We'll have to wipe out the entire camp just to re-enter the tent and try to trigger the next chapter.
Over the course of many, many rest periods, we repeatedly enter and leave the map for just a few rounds at a time to gradually pick off the enemies. To make sure that we arrive with enough time to summon some critters, instead of appearing right on top of a pack of enemies, we alternate between approaching from the west and the south. It only buys us a single round each time, but it keeps the enemy off our backs and lets us make slow progress on an enemy horde that would otherwise be far beyond our power to take down.
Things finally speed up when I think to use Baeloth's Dire Charm to charm Taurgosz Khosann and Ardenor Crush. The game crashes, but we charm both of them on the first try once again. They deal enough damage for Baeloth to finish off the enemy with a Fireball, leaving only two enemies to kill inside the tent itself.
The next chapter has finally begun. I do just enough side quests to get Baeloth to level 7 so he can learn Invisibility Sphere and then collect the rest of the party, using our player-created cleric of Lathander, Mollyboo, to replace Viconia. I no longer have any intention of killing the Phase Spiders in the Cloakwood; without Quayle, we don't have enough invisible characters to shield Baeloth. Instead, we use Expeditious Retreat to trigger the web traps and clear a way to the north. Unfortunately, I foolishly trigger two at a time and Baeloth gets trapped for several rounds.
But he breaks free eventually and hurries over to the party. In retrospect, I should have just sent Jaheira to set off the traps, then booted her from the party so she'd be safe until the Web traps wore off, using Baeloth to chain-cast Invisibility Sphere until Jaheira made it back. Finally, we rest and return to the area, where Invisibility Sphere and Expeditious Retreat let us escape to the north.
We recruit Faldorn (I temporarily removed Jaheira from the party, since she had a dialogue line that suggested Faldorn would be hostile if she saw Jaheira in the group) and kill wyverns until she's level 7, using an invisible wall for the first set of wyverns and then Invisibility Sphere and summons for the rest ambushes.
This grants us access to Call Woodland Beings, which summons a Hamadryad that has 3 castings of Entangle, Hold Person, Dire Charm, and Dimension Jump each. We successfully charm Rezdan and manage to debuff Kysus with Dispel Magic.
Rezdan goes hostile and knocks out Tiax, but since Tiax was monitoring the situation while invisible, there was little danger. The Hamadryad paralyzes Genthore and we send in Tiax's ghast.
We've already wasted Rezdan's best spells, so he can't take down our ghast before it paralyzes him. With Rezdan gone, all we have to do is bump off Drasus.
Dire Charm doesn't prove too effective in the fight with Hareishan. We don't have a high-powered target like Taurgosz Khosann to charm; just weak fighters who die fast under enemy pressure.
Hareishan comes looking for us, but we escape her attention with Expeditious Retreat. The spell also lets us restrict Hareishan's Remove Magic spell to Baeloth. We then return and make some progress on Hareishan's allies crowding the hall.
Baeloth manages to land a Horror spell on Hareishan, at which point we rush into the room and start killing people. Unfortunately, Hareishan has pre-cast Shield and is immune to Magic Missile, so we can't cut through her defenses just yet.
Hareishan recovers from Horror earlier than I expected, but lands an ineffectual sequencer on Jaheira.
Hareishan's aura is clouded, so we apply some spell damage, at which point she hides with a potion.
I fall back, but we're too late. Hareishan manages to get Flame Arrow off the ground, wounding Tiax and slaying Mollyboo.
We run away and Hareishan finally wanders within range of some pre-set Fire Traps, ending the fight.
We replace Jaheira with Yeslick and use summons to clear out most of the next level. We send in a stream of minor summons to bait out Natasha's spells while Frisk stands guard, invisible. We use Expeditious Retreat to escape when she comes looking for us, but Tiax's ghast paralyzes her.
I use the Reform Party trick to refresh Tiax's traps, letting him set traps indefinitely without resting. When I realize that triggering a rest ambush gets us a lot of XP when all the guards die to Tiax's traps, I intentionally trigger several more until Tiax gets another level up, bumping his Set Traps skill to 80 for more reliability. We also get Frisk a level up so they can cast Fireball.
Baeloth charms the guard with Dire Charm, but he dies miserably to the Battle Horrors, forcing us to kill them ourselves. Notice Tiax being unable to disarm all the traps; he's invested too many skill points in setting them.
We send in the Hamadryad to charm Davaeorn... but it turns Davaeorn hostile, contrary to both other no-reloader's advice and my own testing with the console!
We now have to fight Davaeorn conventionally. Out comes the Web+Stinking Cloud Minor Sequencer, and two Fireballs take down Faldorn and bring Tiax to 8 HP.
Against the odds, Yeslick, who was stuck in the east room, makes his saves and escapes the Web and the cloud. Davaeorn, who lost many of his Stoneskins to Tiax's preset traps to the northeast, re-casts Stoneskin instead of killing Yeslick.
The guards gather around Davaeorn, allowing us to bomb them from afar once Davaeorn's buffs (including Improved Invisibility) have worn off. But Davaeorn somehow never gets webbed. He even makes a saving throw at 6 despite his save vs. breath being at 7 and having no buffs left.
I would later learn that Davaeorn is wearing a Traveler's Robe in my install, which grants +2 to saves vs. breath, movement rate, and AC vs. missiles in Item Revisions. He also has an undropppable Ring of Free Action for some reason; Web is useless against him.
We escape to the southwest, rest, sneak past Davaeorn, set traps in the southwest, and send a stream of summons out to drain Davaeorn's spells. Without our druids, though, we have precious few summoning spells, and soon we have nothing left but our ghast.
Then I try out Yeslick's Dispel Magic, even though he's only level 5. But to my amazement, it actually takes down all of Davaeorn's defenses! I can see his Stoneskin has vanished!
I would later learn that Yeslick's Dispel Magic ability is rigged to always work, irrespective of his level.
I bomb Davaeorn with Fireball, but he proves inexplicably resistant--again, despite having no buffs. Apparently Davaeorn has an innate 70% resistance to fire and electricity. I have no idea why.
Regardless, I burn away Davaeorn's allies and he comes looking for us. But without his defenses, he's completely vulnerable to spell damage.
He throws some Minute Meteors and escapes with a Potion of Invisibility, but having drained his healing potions during a previous rest period, he cannot heal himself, and lingering acid damage takes him down before he has a chance to launch one last spell.
With two characters dead, one of which is Mollyboo, whom we cannot afford to remove from the party, we have no choice but to pay a visit to Shoal. This time, I go for the crushing damage route: we let Yeslick die (Charisma seems irrelevant for the purposes of the kiss in my install) and then have Frisk punch Shoal in the back of the head under cover of Invisibility Sphere. The first attack fails, but since Frisk was position directly behind Shoal, I was able to pull Frisk away before Shoal could counterattack. The second time around, Frisk lands the hit, and Shoal's script triggers.
She resurrects everyone, Baeloth hides the party with Invisibility Sphere while sending our summons west, and we hurry to the east to rest the party and make our escape rather than fight with Droth.
I remove Mollyboo from the party. I can always drop a dead NPC in favor of another, but if Mollyboo dies again, I either have to beat BG1 with 5 characters or forever sacrifice a character I was saving for BG2.
We send in the Hamadryad to charm Davaeorn... but it turns Davaeorn hostile, contrary to both other no-reloader's advice and my own testing with the console!
The charm effect of Algernon's Cloak is special - a failed attempt from that won't turn targets hostile, but normal charm spells will. Davaeorn won't though react to physical attacks from a non-party member - so charming the guard with the hamadryad and using him to attack Davaeorn should work well (though you need to either use farsight or just very briefly move into sight range of Davaeorn to target him - my experience is his dialogue can be triggered even by an invisible party member).
Sigh. It's melee range. Rangers suuuuck. That'll teach me to never try to be friends with anything.[/spoiler]
Maybe next time stick to squirrels .
Actually, for rangers bears are a great ally. They remain friendly to rangers even at melee range, so there's not the same danger of trying to charm them as with wolves - though I don't think there are any bears on that map of course ...
Sweet, I'll bear that in mind next time I run one.
Anyway, take two (Zwei the F/M/C) died on his third map because Osmadi at the stone circle is apparently carrying a club that deals 13 damage in a single hit.
Take Three: Garfield is a bit... unusual for a Half-Orc. Rumours abound as to what the other half was.
Either Parda's a bit gullible, or this happens way too often with the Watchers in Candlekeep.
While Shank and Carbos can be lured out to the Watchers, Mendas doesn't leave the storehouse. With the rats crowding to block you in, you can't kite him either (not pictured: the three characters actually killed by Mendas). Finally Gabriel managed using both his Commands and a dagger borrowed from Shank's corpse for the 2 APR.
And then couldn't even carry his gear to sell it. Sigh. At least he'll get a free short bow outside of Candlekeep and have a bit more oomph to him.
Having had a few false starts trying to head westward, I decided to try playing it safe(r) this time around, heading straight to pick up Garfield's new party.
Yes, that's right, the old classic.
Ishlilka the half-orc Wizard Slayer.
Gabriel: Good day! Ishlilka: Good morrow, fine sir, I am a warrior, as evidenced by the *action tags* as I swing my spear around. Gabriel: Good show! You are well spoken for a half-orc, say I, the half-orc with 51 in mental stats. Ishlilka: What are you implying? Gabriel: *Shrug* Who knows? Back of the line, tuskmouth. Ishlilka: ...
Yes, it's weird that you can be casually racist towards half-orcs as a half-orc.
Anyways, Ishlilka is around twice as strong as Gabriel, and as such can carry three times as much easy, andhas a +1 returning throwing spear which poisons. She also always starts at level 1, so may as well power level her now, she tends to die a lot otherwise.
Apparently Dark Horizons adds a bunch of merchants to the Friendly Arms area, a Cromwell analogue, and asides from ridonculously powerful items, like a +3 staff with a 25% petrify chance on hit, it also includes a bag of holding for the expensive price of "652 GP", which I don't even feel bad buying because inventory management has never been fun in any video game.
Also Tarnesh gets shanked in his face.
I'd even lured him over towards the tough looking "Caravan Guards" just in case, but Ish basically OHKO'd him with poison.
After heading yon-South, via an Ogre belt fetishist, who was no match for two characters vaguely walking around throwing things at him/her, and some tatting around killing a rando Ettercap/Huge Spider spawn while going East, South, West, and then East again, which is basically the Baldur's Gate version of the Konami code. Here, Garf met his next party member:
Good dog, Korax. Things got a bit hairy with the Greater Basilisk, but Korax performed admirably before spontaneously turning red just after killing the final Lesserlisk for even more Exp. I wish all party members were bros like Korax.
Our surviving duo are at level 4, and heroicly retreat to Durlag's, where I'd hoped to kite the battle horrors. It went poorly. The javelin's range is pitiful, and Battle Horrors move quicker than most enemies, so they fled West to Gullykin, meeting newfriend #3:
Bye newfriend!
Shame, since Alora's kind of a beefcake with a bow, and I never got to use her to acquire things with her starting 100 in pick pocket, but with a Sanctuary to bypass the two Vampire wolves at the end of the dungeon, the party did at least get the loot first. Supposedly there's extra floors added by Dark Horizons, but it can wait until later because I doubt it's going to be much fun with a party of two greenskin failcakes.
With 16k apiece, our intrepid Fighter at least levels out of that misfortune up to 5. Garf should probably find a mage to kill those Battle Horrors now.
We move on to Baldur's Gate, doing the only side quests I'm particularly familiar with: the Ogre Mage, Kereph, the basilisk, and Noralee (I didn't bother with Ramazith because he seemed too dangerous). Yeslick's guaranteed Dispel Magic spell works wonders against BG1 mages; it takes down everything. It should even work on MGOI, since SR tweaks MGOI to be dispellable.
We proceed to the Iron Throne, and while we used summons and Invisibility Sphere to take down the guards on the second level, the game crashes twice in a row and we have to go upstairs without fighting anyone. I fully buff the party, but I have no intention of fighting all the hard-hitting, high-level, spellcasting enemies on the top floor. Yeslick nabs the documents with Sanctuary and we hurry out.
Anxious to get Baeloth to level 8, we kill a few Phase Spiders in the sewers. Although Phase Spiders ended one of my runs, I'm not afraid of them now that we have level 7 Baeloth, since Invisibility Sphere gives us a perfectly safe way to kill them:
1. Have Faldorn and Jaheira set several Fire Traps on the party and summon a few critters. 2. Have Yeslick cast Spiritual Hammer and Sanctuary. 3. Send Yeslick over to the Phase Spider, make one attack roll, and then immediately cast Sanctuary (casting time 1 in SR). 4. The Phase Spider will teleport onto the party, trigger all the Fire Traps at once, and our summons will finish it off if necessary.
Invisibility Sphere won't protect us from everyone, however; not even in BG1. One of the Ogre Mages in the Candlekeep ambush uses Glitterdust, which in SR will both dispel invisibility and make the victim immune to invisibility on a failed save. The tactic I thought was completely safe ends up leaving Frisk completely vulnerable.
The Ogre Mages aren't high enough level to knock Frisk out with Sleep, and even our level 5 characters make their saves, allowing us to flee the area.
The nearest map is 4 hours away. Frisk has enough spell slots to cover four party members with Invisibility, which will last 8 hours and therefore let us arrive at Candlekeep completely invisible, except for our clerics, who can cast Sanctuary on the first round. But we still struggle, and are forced to leave once again when Frisk's lack of a melee weapon again proves devastating.
We return once more, using Invisibility Sphere again in the hopes of making our saves against Glitterdust. We manage to get Faldorn's Dread Wolf and Tiax's ghast on the map, and while a lack of invisibility almost gets Faldorn charmed, she makes her save.
We Baeloth's Horror spell has disabled one of the Ogre Mages, and a second casting sends another one running.
A third Ogre Mage responds in kind, and while both Frisk and Yeslick fail their saves against Horror, Tiax has already cast Resist Fear by the time it hits.
Disabling the first two Ogre Mages buys us lots of time, and the remainder doesn't have much to throw at us. We take them down with spell damage.
Inside Candlekeep, we send summons after Rieltar et al, only for the enemy fighters to quickly take them down. Yeslick casts Dispel Magic, but IR potions are undispellable, which might have saved Tuth when a Potion of Magic Protection blocked our ghast's paralysis attack.
Most of Tiax's traps (the Reform Party trick was necessary to set more than 2) are wasted on the first fighter to cross the threshold, but with Baeloth to cast Invisibility Sphere, we avoid pressure even as we throw out damage spells.
With druids on the team to cast Call Lightning and a spare sorcerer to cast Melf's Acid Arrow, we have lots of options to throw out while Baeloth is chain-casting Invisibility Sphere. Eventually he runs out of level 3 spells, but by the time he does, the enemy is broken.
The catacombs were very complicated and required a lot of micromanagement, but the basic explanation is simple. First, we set a whole bunch of traps, both Fire Traps and thief traps, to the south so we'd have a safe place to rest. After using summons to take down the doppelganger, we lured the ghasts into some Fireballs.
The Phase Spiders posed a problem, however. Although we had a good strategy to use against them, we couldn't actually reach them because Tiax had only 30 in Detect Traps, which I did not trust at all to keep us safe from the Lightning Bolt trap. The solution? Faldorn casts Farsight so we can send summons out to provoke the Phase Spiders into teleporting right onto the party, where a set of Fire Traps are waiting for them.
My lack of BG1 metaknowledge proves extremely dangerous, however, when I wrongly assume that one of the arches in the next area is untrapped.
With sufficiently bad luck, we could have lost Faldorn or Baeloth. The decision to make Frisk a Dragon Disciple paid off; without it, they might well have died.
I don't know if this is one of those traps that can go off multiple times, however, and while I could walk through a different arch, I'm not entirely convinced that the game wouldn't have traps on two adjacent arches. If I make the wrong move, I might trigger another Fireball, and attempting to bring a cleric close enough to cast a healing spell on Frisk could set off a trap as well. Either case could easily be fatal. Resting could theoretically work, but it might accidentally teleport a party member onto that Fireball trap.
The solution? Goodberries! Plus a Larloch's Minor Drain spell, cast on a summoned wolf, to further heal Frisk.
I walk under the same arch and find that the trap does not in fact trigger twice. In retrospect, a third solution might have been Expeditious Retreat, since sometimes you can jump over traps and triggers if your movement rate is high enough and the trigger is narrow enough.
And, in retrospect, I could have just cast Dimension Jump to teleport to safety, which is exactly why I picked that spell for Frisk in the first place.
We have a pretty good system for dealing with basic enemies. Invisibility Sphere keeps us safe from enemy pressure, Fire Traps and snares help us punish enemy approaches, and our summons and damage spells can do a remarkable amount of damage if the party acts in unison.
I try to bait the Phase Spiders into teleporting onto some traps again in the next area, but a Web trap catches me off-guard, disabling Yeslick while he's under the effects of Sanctuary.
Sanctuary only lasts 6 rounds in SR, so Yeslick won't have many chances to escape the Web before he becomes visible and the spiders devour him. Baeloth hurries in and bails out Yeslick after succeeding on his second save vs. breath.
This gives Yeslick another 10 rounds of safety, which guarantees that he can escape the web before he goes visible. We try again and manage to lure the spiders onto our traps, allowing our summons to take down the spiders while the party hides under Invisibility Sphere (Baeloth has no castings left, so it's not safe to break invisibility by applying spell damage).
We bomb the bejeezus out of Prat and company...
...but Prat emerges somehow unharmed, despite Yeslick firing off a Dispel Magic that should have robbed him of any defenses he had. Yeslick's Sanctuary spell fails to stop Prat from casting Confusion, but Yeslick manages to make his saving throw against the odds.
We flee, rest, and return, only for Yeslick to fail a save against Sleep while watching our summons under Sanctuary. Sanctuary lasts 6 rounds, while Sleep lasts 5, and in the end, Yeslick goes visible before he wakes up. I don't send in Baeloth to cast Invisibility Sphere because I'm not willing to expose Baeloth--without whom I don't think we can complete the game--to a Confusion spell just to save Yeslick.
But he rouses just a couple seconds later, allowing us to retreat once again. This time, Frisk fails a save against Sleep, and we end up in the exact same situation all over again.
But Baeloth is there to save Frisk, even if Yeslick wasn't worth the same treatment. Yeslick reminds me of his importance by dispelling all of Prat's buffs, including Improved Invisibility and its +4 to AC and saving throws, allowing Tiax's ghast to paralyze him.
Just as I appreciate how powerful Yeslick is, I see him in danger once again when he triggers another Web trap I didn't know about. His Sanctuary is already wearing thin, so Frisk casts Expeditious Retreat so Baeloth can get there in time to cast Invisibility Sphere, but Baeloth gets webbed in the process...
...and Yeslick's Sanctuary runs out.
Through miraculous luck, however, the spiders putter around for several agonizing seconds while they struggle to see Yeslick around the tight corners. They finally attack him in concert, and while Baeloth eventually manages to get Invisibility Sphere off the ground. Yeslick is taking heavy poison damage very fast.
And since Yeslick is invisible, we cannot cast a healing spell or Slow Poison on him. Nor can he do it himself, with all the Phase Spider venom to disrupt his spellcasting. The best we can do is send in Faldorn to throw him some 3-HP-healing Goodberries.
But in the end, Yeslick scrapes through with about 30 HP. With the Web trap already triggered, we can provoke the spiders safely and get the deadly Phase Spider to teleport onto our traps.
In retrospect, I should have just used Frisk's Invisibility spell to trigger the Web traps, since the 8-hour duration would never run out before Web did, leaving Baeloth with the rest of the party to cast Invisibility Sphere.
Baeloth has finally hit level 8 and chooses Enchanted Weapon as his level 4 spell pick. To my dismay, the conjured items don't last more than 24 hours even if you put them on the ground or in another map. Evidently an EE update or SR update has fixed that bug and closed the exploit.
Still, we can have several +3 weapons on hand at a time--even ammunition, with 40 arrows, bolts, or bullets per casting. Only darts are unavailable. This means Yeslick and Jaheira can use +3 bullets with +3 slings at 1.5 APR apiece, at THAC0 of 8 and 6, respectively.
This will single-handedly win us the fight against Belhifet, as it will let us given Corwin dozens of +3 arrows and a +3 longbow (though I'll probably still give Baeloth Lower Resistance just in case, since I'll be replacing him in BG2 anyway). For now, though, its power is a little more limited than I thought, and maximizing it requires some careful control of our resting.
Frisk and Baeloth have just enough Fireballs to win the fight with Sarevok assuming nothing goes wrong, and Yeslick should be able to obliterate Angelo with his Dispel Magic. However, I don't think I'm ready for the fight at the Ducal Palace... and I'm not sure what I could do to take down those doppelgangers, who apparently have saving throws of 2's and 3's, 4 APR at 1d12 damage and 7 THAC0, and HP well over 60--far beyond anything we could realistically compete with.
@Grond0, do you have any suggestions? Frisk is at level 7, Baeloth at 8, Tiax at 5/6, Yeslick at 5/5, Jaheira at 5/5, and Faldorn at 8. Neither Frisk nor Baeloth have Slow, Malison, or any disablers aside from Web. Currently my only idea is to stack a whole bunch of Fire Traps, but I've seen there are limits to spell-based traps, since weird things happen when two spells hit on the same frame, and I'm concerned that the terribly short range of Fire Trap will prevent me from reaching all of the doppelgangers.
I can always turn Liia Jannath invisible, but I'm concerned that the doppelgangers will simply overwhelm us and possibly kill a party member or two before we manage to bring them down.
Can we complete the game if Sarevok kills Belt but Liia Jannath survives under Invisibility?
Thankfully, even though the second golem showed up to help, this is some of the safest exp in the game. Thalantyr lets you squeeze past him, while the flesh golems are forced to walk all the way back around the circle to reach you each time. All you need is some magic ammo, courtesy of Feldepost's, and Garfield is level 5, getting his first Swashbuckler bonus.
He now has 24 HP, above average on rolls, which is important since he's a wuss.
Thalantyr, like many merchants, has a vastly expanded selection, including a number of new spells which are ludicrously overpowered:
Technically a cheat, but I am probably going to make a save, check through these things and load back to before buying them at some point, just to make sure that the mod didn't really make a level 4 improved alacrity that lasts an hour.
After staring in disbelief at Thalantyr's inventory and leaving without buying anything, Ishlilka decides to have an important heart to heart with the player concerning battle tactics:
Just kidding. It's a romance talk.
Ishlilka: Garfield, old bean! It must have occurred to you that I am a half-orc! I'm sure you are wondering as to how that occurred! Garfield: Indeed? As a half-orc myself, I must say, I am incredibly curious as to where half-orcs come from. Gorion would never tell me for some reason! Also I have no means of not caring without being rudely dismissive. Ishlilka: Well, when a half-orc and another half-orc love each other very much... they uh... anyways, we should be moving on, we're falling behind the others. Garfield: ... Others? Ishlilka: Hush! March! Garfield: *Grumble.* Nobody tells me nuffin. Did you at least want to know about my, actually interesting, half-orc parentage? No? *Grumble.*
Wandering West (being Chaotic Neutral, Garfield also likes to wander around the game randomly like a twit, which is convenient for me).
I was planning to try talking to Shoal here, but Garfield apparently wasn't keen on a wet and wild makeout after very nearly being on the receiving end himself while Commanding the dire wolf that random spawned behind the party as they were trying to flee.
Still 1.5k from hitting "animate dead", so the greenskins polish off some ogres down south while Ishlilka spams through about half a dozen love talks all at once.
Nuh uh! I gave her the slip this game!
Honestly if you're going to have dialogue like this in a mod, you sort of need to attach it to conditionals, like "is Imoen in the party", "has character ever even met Imoen", or "is Imoen currently dead and a corpse", because then keeping her close gets a bit "Norman Bates"y.
Still not enough experience in the end, so....
Sadly the Sirene killed Ishlilka just before the Exp, but unlike the last two, she can get raised, and Garfield now gets a skeleton army to finish off the rest of the Sirene before he goes.
Only to get jumped by a random spawn of kobolds while he's trying to take them down.
Fortunately a quick potion of burning discharge does the trick, and cunningly parrying her last poison arrows with his face, Garf makes a quick kill and runs like he managed to get another six kobolds spawning on him.
Level 5/5, with a fairly chunky 27 max HP, and at the Temple to pick up newfriend #4. My mortality rate is highest when I've just come back to a run in the morning, so hopefully a nice safe area will give me plenty of leeway to be dumb.
I found a new way to duplicate ammunition from Enchanted Weapon, plus a way to attack even if our slings and bows and crossbows vanish. Now the whole party can throw bullets and bolts at will.
@Grond0, do you have any suggestions? Frisk is at level 7, Baeloth at 8, Tiax at 5/6, Yeslick at 5/5, Jaheira at 5/5, and Faldorn at 8. Neither Frisk nor Baeloth have Slow, Malison, or any disablers aside from Web. Currently my only idea is to stack a whole bunch of Fire Traps, but I've seen there are limits to spell-based traps, since weird things happen when two spells hit on the same frame, and I'm concerned that the terribly short range of Fire Trap will prevent me from reaching all of the doppelgangers.
I can always turn Liia Jannath invisible, but I'm concerned that the doppelgangers will simply overwhelm us and possibly kill a party member or two before we manage to bring them down.
Can we complete the game if Sarevok kills Belt but Liia Jannath survives under Invisibility?
I don't think fire traps will necessarily give a complete answer as the dopplegangers transform separately rather than all together. However, careful placement of multiple stacks of those could probably wipe out most of the dopplegangers (you can use thief traps as well). By the sound of it Yeslick should give you a good chance of killing the mage quickly and summons should help manage any others remaining without too much trouble. I suspect the biggest threat to your party would be the assassin, so if he's not killed by traps I would be inclined to keep everyone invisible until he appears (1 character triggering the fight by making Liia invisible and then retreating to a side room). And yes, there's no problem with only Liia surviving (if Belt is already dead and she's invisible when the last of the dopplegangers dies you want to lure her to the back of the room or a side room before talking to avoid Sarevok killing her).
Yeslick reminds me of his importance by dispelling all of Prat's buffs, including Improved Invisibility and its +4 to AC and saving throws, allowing Tiax's ghast to paralyze him.
I believe, Improved Invisibility under SR doesn't have saving throws bonuses anymore, only +4 to AC.
@Grond0: Wouldn't it be possible to save Liia from Sarevok just with another Invisibility spell?
@semiticgod it would, yes. However, a single hit from Sarevok could kill her so you'd need to prepare carefully if you were relying on making her disappear again before he could attack - and just dragging her out of his sight would seem easier to me.
Not five minutes breathing, and already getting drunk in church. Classy, Ishlilka.
The horny lass is Sirene, one of two Sirenes hanging outside the temple, and she apparently thinks she's in Siege of Dragonspear, something which I'm sure will have zero consequences.
Ishlilka: Garfield you old chum, what do you think of me? Does my being an orc bother you? Garfield: What the everblinding fu- Why are you even asking? Why are those my options?!
Anyway, apparently the temple is no exception to the whole "overpowered loot" schtick. We've got a +2 longbow, some Acid Arrows except they deal magic damage, a ring with permanent protection from petrification, a helm of "protection from mental attacks", a suit of "Falcon Armour" +3 Plate Mail usable only by Paladins, Monks, Humans, Half-Orcs, and Lawful Good people. Presumably for all the Lawful Good paladin and monk half-orcs, and a basically +3 Bastard Sword that "casts the aid spell on the wielder" which I'm sure doesn't give infinite HP.
After forgetting to equip Ishlilka with her stuff and almost getting her killed again to three skeletons moving south into Ulcaster, the party intrepidly fled for Beregost, where they were accosted by an unfamiliar bard.
A Skald with max HP rolls, a Longbow of 3 APR, Bardic Bracers of +3 ranged THAC0, a +2 Cloak of Bard Protection, a Greenstone Amulet, and a skull. Who despite being "Lawful Neutral" loves our party's spontaneity and excitement and wants to come along.
What the frig is in Dark Horizons that this is remotely sensible?
She also identified what I thought to be a bonus +1 longsword from the shipwreck and yep, +1 Longsword of +1 Dex +1 APR, only useable by Monks and Bards. What. The. Frig.
Whatever. Time to kill some Battlehorrors and get daddy a brand new brain.
Thanks to Sirene having no ranged weapon proficiencies and being level 1/1, she managed to get Ishlilka killed twice by pushing enemies towards her (second time I should probably have healed her above 13 HP so the random Doppelganger didn't one shot her, but still).
Still, thanks to Kirinhale weirdly entering permanent panicked status (and also carried some nymph hair, for some reason?), some easy Ghast kills, and the lack of competition from Ishlilka, Sirene swiftly levelled to 3/3, and graciously volunteered to eat a Dire Charm trap for the party.
I think that's enough Durlag's until Garfield finds a proper magefriend, and can actually disarm the traps here. Also to raise Ishlemming and identify some more unique mod junk I picked up in Durlag's.
Not five minutes breathing, and already getting drunk in church. Classy, Ishlilka.
A Skald with max HP rolls, a Longbow of 3 APR, Bardic Bracers of +3 ranged THAC0, a +2 Cloak of Bard Protection, a Greenstone Amulet, and a skull. Who despite being "Lawful Neutral" loves our party's spontaneity and excitement and wants to come along.
What the frig is in Dark Horizons that this is remotely sensible?
If you've not come across them before there are several pretty nasty encounters in Dark Horizons - have fun .
Not five minutes breathing, and already getting drunk in church. Classy, Ishlilka.
A Skald with max HP rolls, a Longbow of 3 APR, Bardic Bracers of +3 ranged THAC0, a +2 Cloak of Bard Protection, a Greenstone Amulet, and a skull. Who despite being "Lawful Neutral" loves our party's spontaneity and excitement and wants to come along.
What the frig is in Dark Horizons that this is remotely sensible?
If you've not come across them before there are several pretty nasty encounters in Dark Horizons - have fun .
Considering how much god tier loot I've seen, I'm sort of expecting a Demilich at this point. Should I actually be buying some of this stuff to stand a chance? Or is it as excessive as it appears?
It's as excessive as it appears. You don't need good equipment to beat the encounters, but if you're not expecting an encounter and enemies use their own 'god tier' loot on you, it's possible to get into trouble very quickly.
When I kicked that Skald out for the crime of excessive bling she kept singing, giving me combat bonuses whilst we remained in Beregost. Rather handy given that a big part of Dark Horizons is around there...
I developed a perfect formula for the entirety of BG1. I invent three new tricks in the process, and discover a powerful new ability. We obliterate the doppelgangers with Fire Traps and missile weapons, and have a great strategy for Sarevok and SoD. And what brings an end to the run?
This. Because Yeslick and Baeloth went in the wrong direction and followed Jaheira into a repeating trap that should have only triggered once, slightly wounding Jaheira and not even touching anyone else. I planned on letting Jaheira trigger it once, then healing her, seeing if it happened again, and then bringing in Coran to disarm the traps if necessary. But Yeslick and Baeloth disobeyed orders and went in the exact opposite direction I told them to.
I lost a successful run because of fucking pathfinding.
Ah - don't you just love no-reload . Sorry for smiling to myself @semiticgod - I hope that getting a bit of mileage for future posts of the 'what went wrong' nature will provide some compensation though.
Incidentally, looking at that screenshot I suspect that the traps you're talking about are the 3 lightning traps followed by a fireball trap just prior to 2 skeleton warriors. None of those traps are repeating, but walking through all of them in a row without protection against lightning is likely to end poorly ...
At least the next time around is going to be smoother. I have a solid formula now that should take us all the way to the endgame with rather minimal work and risk:
1. Ditch all player-created characters in Beregost to save them for BG2. 2. Use Korax to collect at least 10,000 XP. 3. Grab Baeloth and wipe out the Nashkel mines with Fireball and Web, and do any other minor quests necessary to get Charname to level 4. Kill Tranzig by abusing the stairway. 4. Drop Baeloth and trigger the Lamalha and Molkar ambushes under Invisibility. Use a disposable NPC to trigger the trap in the bandit camp and snag the documents. 5. Bring back Baeloth and do minor quests until he has Invisibility Sphere. Recruit Coran in the Cloakwood and invest however many points into Find Traps are necessary to deal with the post-Ducal Palace maze traps (@Grond0, how much is that?). 6. Enter the Phase Spider area of the Cloakwood, open with Invisibility Sphere, and use Invisibility on Charname to disarm the Web traps, freeing the way to the rest of the Cloakwood. 7. Grab Faldorn and farm wyverns until she's level 7. Use her summons to deal with Drasus et al. 8. Bring Yeslick into the party. 9a. Have Coran disarm the traps in Davaeorn's lair. 9b. Use Dire Charm on the guard to lure the Battle Horrors over, and use Invisibility Sphere to keep the guard alive while the sorcerers kill the Battle Horrors with spell damage. 9c. Try to kill Davaeorn with the charmed guard. 9d. If the guard dies, bait Davaeorn with a disposable NPC or summons, then hide until the guards gather around Davaeorn and hold him in place. 9e. Wait out Davaeorn's buffs or use Yeslick's Dispel Magic to take them down, then Web the guards. 9f. Bait Davaeorn into expending his aura by sending out a cheap summons, throw some damage spells at Davaeorn while his aura is clouded, and retreat. 9g. Repeat 9f until Davaeorn is dead. 10. Use stealth to get the Iron Throne documents and coast through major fights by relying on Invisibility Sphere in-combat and Fire Trap outside of combat. 11. Use Yeslick's Dispel Magic to break down Cythandria's and Kristin's defenses, and kill Slythe with Fire Traps. 12. Turn Liia Jannath invisible, kill the Ducal Palace doppelgangers with Fire Traps, debuff survivors with Dispel Magic, and finish off the doppelgangers with summons and spell damage. 13. Turn Coran invisible and have him disarm the maze traps while summons deal with the enemies in the maze. 14. Sneak past the Undercity party. Recruit Dynaheir for extra Fireballs. 15a. Lure Sarevok and company to the southeast corner of the screen. 15b. Bait Angelo with a Dread Wolf and hit him with Yeslick's Dispel Magic. Once his defenses are down and his aura is fogged, rush in with spell damage and more summons. 15c. Bomb Sarevok and company with Fireballs. 15d. Distract and kite Sarevok with summons and hit him with Melf's Acid Arrow, Magic Missiles, and +3 arrows from Coran.
This formula minimizes XP gathering, relying on fast leveling for Charname at Mutamin's garden to make NPCs join the party at high XP (I collected over 120,000 XP in the previous run just by recruiting NPCs at high levels). Switching around NPCs for their special abilities and bonus XP will let us complete the game at unnaturally low levels.
Actually, you know what? I don't want to do all those steps over again. I've already done half of them once before, and the other half twice. I've already demonstrated the power of recruiting NPCs at strategically placed times.
I wanna see how far I can push the Reform Party trick.
Pure carelessness. I didn't notice that my hp was getting low. Got killed by hobgoblins half-way down the mines. If I had been fighting Davaeorn or one of the mages, I would have been more careful.
Comments
Journal of Ælfmar
We went to the spider area and succeeded beyond expectations causing Coran to go up a level.We then went to the FAI to spend our hard earned gold which should make our quests a little easier. Tenya was badly injured with lightning but survived.
vTweaks - Various, most importantly reworking proficiencies - scimitar only covers scimitars, ninjato are moved to short swords, wakisashi to katana, and cleric proficiencies work like every other class, adding, not restricting, weapon choice. Also "exotic weapons", which adds a variety of different weapons to the game.
Ishlilka - The half-orc wizard slayer.
Verr'Sza - The grumpy catboy ranger.
Sirene - The Fighter/Cleric, because her martyr kit is way too powerful.
All of which I will try to keep to SoD to review them there too while actually trying to beat SoD for the first time. Everyone else is on No Revive rules.
As for our quest content, which I have not touched before, and will most likely wander blindly from map to map trying to figure out what to do with:
Dark Horizons
Dark Side of the Sword Coast
Stone of Askavar
Anyway, meet Aleph, the Cleric/Stalker, who is restricted to studded leather or worse, has no Con HP bonus, and is not a mage, because clearly I like to make life difficult for myself. Also yes, Druid spells.
Being a Drow fanboy, Aleph uses crossbows and scimitars, and wastes no time in gearing up, for which we're... gonna need a montage or something.
Here is our first new content for, I think, Dark Horizons. A brand new terrible assassin after your life! Having studded leather and a short sword he's around fifty times more threatening than the wonder duo, but still dies in a single hit from one of Aleph's scimitars.
Sadly, tragedy strikes just outside Candlekeep.
Yes, I'm stuck with %#$^ing Imoen.
Bonus points if you can say where I stole that particular CHARNAME dialogue line from.
Considering she used up over half her stock of arrows critically missing this game, she will not be missed, though I will miss having suitable bait for Shoal.
Aleph then showed her how it was done. Not very successfully, because she was dead.
Hitting level 3 Cleric, Aleph picks up some new funky Druid spell. I have no idea which of the mods it's from, but it's better than anything else a cleric might get at level 2:
Yeah, line of sight, 4d6 single target by level 3. Pretty good even compared to Mages overall.
There's also some level 1 spells:
"Armor Melt", a spell which gives a -4 AC penalty to a target for 1 turn, -8 if they fail a save. (Assuming it actually works, this spell is batnuggets overpowered, giving +4-8 to hit against a boss target for a level 1 spell)
"Fire Bolt", 2d3 fire, save for half (basically a super cheap troll killer for SoD).
"Cause Light Wounds" (with a finger cursor spell icon, no less), 1D8 magical, save for nothing. Also touch, which is the worst thing ever for a no reload. Not sure why you wouldn't just use Firebolt if you wanted to waste spell slots.
"Blight", Anti-Bless, -1 to hit, damage, morale, and saves vs fear. The most interesting thing about it is that it's got a "50' cube" area of effect, since it's pretty lame compared to even Bless.
Oh, and one other level 2 spell: Ward of Protection: Base AC becomes 3 for 2 turns. I'm not sure why they did this considering this just makes Barkskin redundant until level 12, and this spell redundant after level 12, but considering I'm capped at Studded I'll probably end up using it sooner or later.
Since Aleph wasn't fatigued yet, he faced off against the last of the ogre tribe in the middle of a dramatic lightning storm.
Mother nature sure is fickle, that half ogre already took a lightning bolt once.
Thankfully one of the Tweak mod's features is to make jewellery stackable, including rings and amulets, so despite losing Imoen's backpack space, Aleph can layer more bling than Mister T with all the dead ogre loot, including one last level up from another certain ring in the area, which also contained some mod added loot, an unidentified wand and magic longsword.
Aleph gets a proficiency pip and 2 HP (another bad roll, meaning Aleph's now well below average HP).
And... since I have no idea where to put his proficiency I'm going to bed.
I re-started the run once more. My current early game formula seems very effective and consistent:
1. Drop off all party-created characters at Kagain's shop
2. Grab Tiax at Beregost and take him to Mutamin's garden
3. Summon a ghast, boot Tiax, and then use the ghast to kill the first round of basilisks for 10,000 XP.
4. Grab Baeloth (you need 10,000 XP for him to appear in Peldvale or the Larswood, whichever has the tower) and retrieve Tiax from Nashkel.
5. Have Tiax summon another ghast in Mutamin's garden to clear out the map.
This gets us a level 4 Dragon Disciple with Invisibility and a level 6 Baeloth with Fireball. We recruit Xzar and Montaron, who kill Tarnesh for us (Montaron lands a fatal backstab thanks to Poison Weapon, as one of my mods make him an Assassin), and then take Tiax to the ankheg farm. His ghast tanks all of the ankhegs while Frisk and Baeloth kill them with Magic Missiles and Melf's Acid Arrow.
We then recruit Viconia, Jaheira, and Quayle, all of whom enter the party with 16,000 XP. Fireballs take us through the Nashkel mines, with Web to hold down the Kobold Chieftain and the Kobold Shaman. Inspired by @Grond0's stacking of Fire Traps, which I did not realize was possible, I have Jaheira set a series of fire traps in Mulahey's area, instantly roasting all of his minions. Mulahey himself then dies to Tiax's ghast, obviating the need for Melf's Acid Arrow spells to disrupt his spells.
Quayle Spooks Silke and Baeloth kills her with Melf's Acid Arrow. Baeloth handles Tranzig by abusing the stairway.
Since we don't have Invisibility Sphere yet due to not rest-farming ankhegs, I boot everyone from the party and have Frisk wander around the wilderness under the effects of Invisibility until they finally trigger the Lamalha and Molkar ambushes. This is the safest way to deal the fights. Invisibility only lasts 8 hours in SR, but as long as you only travel 12 hours at a time or less, you'll never be left visible when the ambush starts.
Expeditious Retreat buys us enough time to summon some critters to hold off Tazok, allowing us to win the fight with spell damage.
The bandit camp, however, is very tricky. I boot everyone but Quayle from the party before entering the main tent, and while Quayle nabs the documents under Sanctuary and survives the trap, Frisk somehow loses invisibility while still in the tent.
We try to run away, but our previous party members run up to the tent to talk to Frisk, slowing down our escape--and when Viconia heads inside the tent, we have to duck inside to grab her before she wanders out of reach. But in the process, two party members fail a save against Sleep despite us making it out of the tent.
Our pre-cast summons keep us safe and we suffer no deaths, but the next chapter hasn't triggered. I go back inside after resting with only Quayle in the party, thinking that maybe invisibility was interfering with the trigger. But the next chapter doesn't begin, and the effort only gets Quayle killed.
There are still enemies outside, so I re-collect our party members to take them down.
Notice that Viconia is gone. I have no idea where she went; she wasn't in the tent when I last saw her and she doesn't appear to be anywhere else on the map. She just vanished.
Venkt appears outside the tent and immediately dies to some pre-set traps belonging to Tiax, but Taurgosz Khosann goes hostile, along with everyone else. We'll have to wipe out the entire camp just to re-enter the tent and try to trigger the next chapter.
Over the course of many, many rest periods, we repeatedly enter and leave the map for just a few rounds at a time to gradually pick off the enemies. To make sure that we arrive with enough time to summon some critters, instead of appearing right on top of a pack of enemies, we alternate between approaching from the west and the south. It only buys us a single round each time, but it keeps the enemy off our backs and lets us make slow progress on an enemy horde that would otherwise be far beyond our power to take down.
Things finally speed up when I think to use Baeloth's Dire Charm to charm Taurgosz Khosann and Ardenor Crush. The game crashes, but we charm both of them on the first try once again. They deal enough damage for Baeloth to finish off the enemy with a Fireball, leaving only two enemies to kill inside the tent itself.
The next chapter has finally begun. I do just enough side quests to get Baeloth to level 7 so he can learn Invisibility Sphere and then collect the rest of the party, using our player-created cleric of Lathander, Mollyboo, to replace Viconia. I no longer have any intention of killing the Phase Spiders in the Cloakwood; without Quayle, we don't have enough invisible characters to shield Baeloth. Instead, we use Expeditious Retreat to trigger the web traps and clear a way to the north. Unfortunately, I foolishly trigger two at a time and Baeloth gets trapped for several rounds.
But he breaks free eventually and hurries over to the party. In retrospect, I should have just sent Jaheira to set off the traps, then booted her from the party so she'd be safe until the Web traps wore off, using Baeloth to chain-cast Invisibility Sphere until Jaheira made it back. Finally, we rest and return to the area, where Invisibility Sphere and Expeditious Retreat let us escape to the north.
We recruit Faldorn (I temporarily removed Jaheira from the party, since she had a dialogue line that suggested Faldorn would be hostile if she saw Jaheira in the group) and kill wyverns until she's level 7, using an invisible wall for the first set of wyverns and then Invisibility Sphere and summons for the rest ambushes.
This grants us access to Call Woodland Beings, which summons a Hamadryad that has 3 castings of Entangle, Hold Person, Dire Charm, and Dimension Jump each. We successfully charm Rezdan and manage to debuff Kysus with Dispel Magic.
Rezdan goes hostile and knocks out Tiax, but since Tiax was monitoring the situation while invisible, there was little danger. The Hamadryad paralyzes Genthore and we send in Tiax's ghast.
We've already wasted Rezdan's best spells, so he can't take down our ghast before it paralyzes him. With Rezdan gone, all we have to do is bump off Drasus.
Dire Charm doesn't prove too effective in the fight with Hareishan. We don't have a high-powered target like Taurgosz Khosann to charm; just weak fighters who die fast under enemy pressure.
Hareishan comes looking for us, but we escape her attention with Expeditious Retreat. The spell also lets us restrict Hareishan's Remove Magic spell to Baeloth. We then return and make some progress on Hareishan's allies crowding the hall.
Baeloth manages to land a Horror spell on Hareishan, at which point we rush into the room and start killing people. Unfortunately, Hareishan has pre-cast Shield and is immune to Magic Missile, so we can't cut through her defenses just yet.
Hareishan recovers from Horror earlier than I expected, but lands an ineffectual sequencer on Jaheira.
Hareishan's aura is clouded, so we apply some spell damage, at which point she hides with a potion.
I fall back, but we're too late. Hareishan manages to get Flame Arrow off the ground, wounding Tiax and slaying Mollyboo.
We run away and Hareishan finally wanders within range of some pre-set Fire Traps, ending the fight.
We replace Jaheira with Yeslick and use summons to clear out most of the next level. We send in a stream of minor summons to bait out Natasha's spells while Frisk stands guard, invisible. We use Expeditious Retreat to escape when she comes looking for us, but Tiax's ghast paralyzes her.
I use the Reform Party trick to refresh Tiax's traps, letting him set traps indefinitely without resting. When I realize that triggering a rest ambush gets us a lot of XP when all the guards die to Tiax's traps, I intentionally trigger several more until Tiax gets another level up, bumping his Set Traps skill to 80 for more reliability. We also get Frisk a level up so they can cast Fireball.
Baeloth charms the guard with Dire Charm, but he dies miserably to the Battle Horrors, forcing us to kill them ourselves. Notice Tiax being unable to disarm all the traps; he's invested too many skill points in setting them.
We send in the Hamadryad to charm Davaeorn... but it turns Davaeorn hostile, contrary to both other no-reloader's advice and my own testing with the console!
We now have to fight Davaeorn conventionally. Out comes the Web+Stinking Cloud Minor Sequencer, and two Fireballs take down Faldorn and bring Tiax to 8 HP.
Against the odds, Yeslick, who was stuck in the east room, makes his saves and escapes the Web and the cloud. Davaeorn, who lost many of his Stoneskins to Tiax's preset traps to the northeast, re-casts Stoneskin instead of killing Yeslick.
The guards gather around Davaeorn, allowing us to bomb them from afar once Davaeorn's buffs (including Improved Invisibility) have worn off. But Davaeorn somehow never gets webbed. He even makes a saving throw at 6 despite his save vs. breath being at 7 and having no buffs left.
I would later learn that Davaeorn is wearing a Traveler's Robe in my install, which grants +2 to saves vs. breath, movement rate, and AC vs. missiles in Item Revisions. He also has an undropppable Ring of Free Action for some reason; Web is useless against him.
We escape to the southwest, rest, sneak past Davaeorn, set traps in the southwest, and send a stream of summons out to drain Davaeorn's spells. Without our druids, though, we have precious few summoning spells, and soon we have nothing left but our ghast.
Then I try out Yeslick's Dispel Magic, even though he's only level 5. But to my amazement, it actually takes down all of Davaeorn's defenses! I can see his Stoneskin has vanished!
I would later learn that Yeslick's Dispel Magic ability is rigged to always work, irrespective of his level.
I bomb Davaeorn with Fireball, but he proves inexplicably resistant--again, despite having no buffs. Apparently Davaeorn has an innate 70% resistance to fire and electricity. I have no idea why.
Regardless, I burn away Davaeorn's allies and he comes looking for us. But without his defenses, he's completely vulnerable to spell damage.
He throws some Minute Meteors and escapes with a Potion of Invisibility, but having drained his healing potions during a previous rest period, he cannot heal himself, and lingering acid damage takes him down before he has a chance to launch one last spell.
With two characters dead, one of which is Mollyboo, whom we cannot afford to remove from the party, we have no choice but to pay a visit to Shoal. This time, I go for the crushing damage route: we let Yeslick die (Charisma seems irrelevant for the purposes of the kiss in my install) and then have Frisk punch Shoal in the back of the head under cover of Invisibility Sphere. The first attack fails, but since Frisk was position directly behind Shoal, I was able to pull Frisk away before Shoal could counterattack. The second time around, Frisk lands the hit, and Shoal's script triggers.
She resurrects everyone, Baeloth hides the party with Invisibility Sphere while sending our summons west, and we hurry to the east to rest the party and make our escape rather than fight with Droth.
I remove Mollyboo from the party. I can always drop a dead NPC in favor of another, but if Mollyboo dies again, I either have to beat BG1 with 5 characters or forever sacrifice a character I was saving for BG2.
Sigh. It's melee range. Rangers suuuuck. That'll teach me to never try to be friends with anything.
Actually, for rangers bears are a great ally. They remain friendly to rangers even at melee range, so there's not the same danger of trying to charm them as with wolves - though I don't think there are any bears on that map of course ...
Anyway, take two (Zwei the F/M/C) died on his third map because Osmadi at the stone circle is apparently carrying a club that deals 13 damage in a single hit.
Take Three: Garfield is a bit... unusual for a Half-Orc. Rumours abound as to what the other half was.
Either Parda's a bit gullible, or this happens way too often with the Watchers in Candlekeep.
While Shank and Carbos can be lured out to the Watchers, Mendas doesn't leave the storehouse. With the rats crowding to block you in, you can't kite him either (not pictured: the three characters actually killed by Mendas). Finally Gabriel managed using both his Commands and a dagger borrowed from Shank's corpse for the 2 APR.
And then couldn't even carry his gear to sell it. Sigh. At least he'll get a free short bow outside of Candlekeep and have a bit more oomph to him.
Yes, that's right, the old classic.
Ishlilka the half-orc Wizard Slayer.
Gabriel: Good day!
Ishlilka: Good morrow, fine sir, I am a warrior, as evidenced by the *action tags* as I swing my spear around.
Gabriel: Good show! You are well spoken for a half-orc, say I, the half-orc with 51 in mental stats.
Ishlilka: What are you implying?
Gabriel: *Shrug* Who knows? Back of the line, tuskmouth.
Ishlilka: ...
Yes, it's weird that you can be casually racist towards half-orcs as a half-orc.
Anyways, Ishlilka is around twice as strong as Gabriel, and as such can carry three times as much easy, andhas a +1 returning throwing spear which poisons. She also always starts at level 1, so may as well power level her now, she tends to die a lot otherwise.
Apparently Dark Horizons adds a bunch of merchants to the Friendly Arms area, a Cromwell analogue, and asides from ridonculously powerful items, like a +3 staff with a 25% petrify chance on hit, it also includes a bag of holding for the expensive price of "652 GP", which I don't even feel bad buying because inventory management has never been fun in any video game.
Also Tarnesh gets shanked in his face.
I'd even lured him over towards the tough looking "Caravan Guards" just in case, but Ish basically OHKO'd him with poison.
After heading yon-South, via an Ogre belt fetishist, who was no match for two characters vaguely walking around throwing things at him/her, and some tatting around killing a rando Ettercap/Huge Spider spawn while going East, South, West, and then East again, which is basically the Baldur's Gate version of the Konami code. Here, Garf met his next party member:
Good dog, Korax. Things got a bit hairy with the Greater Basilisk, but Korax performed admirably before spontaneously turning red just after killing the final Lesserlisk for even more Exp. I wish all party members were bros like Korax.
Our surviving duo are at level 4, and heroicly retreat to Durlag's, where I'd hoped to kite the battle horrors.
It went poorly. The javelin's range is pitiful, and Battle Horrors move quicker than most enemies, so they fled West to Gullykin, meeting newfriend #3:
Bye newfriend!
Shame, since Alora's kind of a beefcake with a bow, and I never got to use her to acquire things with her starting 100 in pick pocket, but with a Sanctuary to bypass the two Vampire wolves at the end of the dungeon, the party did at least get the loot first. Supposedly there's extra floors added by Dark Horizons, but it can wait until later because I doubt it's going to be much fun with a party of two greenskin failcakes.
With 16k apiece, our intrepid Fighter at least levels out of that misfortune up to 5. Garf should probably find a mage to kill those Battle Horrors now.
We move on to Baldur's Gate, doing the only side quests I'm particularly familiar with: the Ogre Mage, Kereph, the basilisk, and Noralee (I didn't bother with Ramazith because he seemed too dangerous). Yeslick's guaranteed Dispel Magic spell works wonders against BG1 mages; it takes down everything. It should even work on MGOI, since SR tweaks MGOI to be dispellable.
We proceed to the Iron Throne, and while we used summons and Invisibility Sphere to take down the guards on the second level, the game crashes twice in a row and we have to go upstairs without fighting anyone. I fully buff the party, but I have no intention of fighting all the hard-hitting, high-level, spellcasting enemies on the top floor. Yeslick nabs the documents with Sanctuary and we hurry out.
Anxious to get Baeloth to level 8, we kill a few Phase Spiders in the sewers. Although Phase Spiders ended one of my runs, I'm not afraid of them now that we have level 7 Baeloth, since Invisibility Sphere gives us a perfectly safe way to kill them:
1. Have Faldorn and Jaheira set several Fire Traps on the party and summon a few critters.
2. Have Yeslick cast Spiritual Hammer and Sanctuary.
3. Send Yeslick over to the Phase Spider, make one attack roll, and then immediately cast Sanctuary (casting time 1 in SR).
4. The Phase Spider will teleport onto the party, trigger all the Fire Traps at once, and our summons will finish it off if necessary.
Invisibility Sphere won't protect us from everyone, however; not even in BG1. One of the Ogre Mages in the Candlekeep ambush uses Glitterdust, which in SR will both dispel invisibility and make the victim immune to invisibility on a failed save. The tactic I thought was completely safe ends up leaving Frisk completely vulnerable.
The Ogre Mages aren't high enough level to knock Frisk out with Sleep, and even our level 5 characters make their saves, allowing us to flee the area.
The nearest map is 4 hours away. Frisk has enough spell slots to cover four party members with Invisibility, which will last 8 hours and therefore let us arrive at Candlekeep completely invisible, except for our clerics, who can cast Sanctuary on the first round. But we still struggle, and are forced to leave once again when Frisk's lack of a melee weapon again proves devastating.
We return once more, using Invisibility Sphere again in the hopes of making our saves against Glitterdust. We manage to get Faldorn's Dread Wolf and Tiax's ghast on the map, and while a lack of invisibility almost gets Faldorn charmed, she makes her save.
We Baeloth's Horror spell has disabled one of the Ogre Mages, and a second casting sends another one running.
A third Ogre Mage responds in kind, and while both Frisk and Yeslick fail their saves against Horror, Tiax has already cast Resist Fear by the time it hits.
Disabling the first two Ogre Mages buys us lots of time, and the remainder doesn't have much to throw at us. We take them down with spell damage.
Inside Candlekeep, we send summons after Rieltar et al, only for the enemy fighters to quickly take them down. Yeslick casts Dispel Magic, but IR potions are undispellable, which might have saved Tuth when a Potion of Magic Protection blocked our ghast's paralysis attack.
Most of Tiax's traps (the Reform Party trick was necessary to set more than 2) are wasted on the first fighter to cross the threshold, but with Baeloth to cast Invisibility Sphere, we avoid pressure even as we throw out damage spells.
With druids on the team to cast Call Lightning and a spare sorcerer to cast Melf's Acid Arrow, we have lots of options to throw out while Baeloth is chain-casting Invisibility Sphere. Eventually he runs out of level 3 spells, but by the time he does, the enemy is broken.
The catacombs were very complicated and required a lot of micromanagement, but the basic explanation is simple. First, we set a whole bunch of traps, both Fire Traps and thief traps, to the south so we'd have a safe place to rest. After using summons to take down the doppelganger, we lured the ghasts into some Fireballs.
The Phase Spiders posed a problem, however. Although we had a good strategy to use against them, we couldn't actually reach them because Tiax had only 30 in Detect Traps, which I did not trust at all to keep us safe from the Lightning Bolt trap. The solution? Faldorn casts Farsight so we can send summons out to provoke the Phase Spiders into teleporting right onto the party, where a set of Fire Traps are waiting for them.
My lack of BG1 metaknowledge proves extremely dangerous, however, when I wrongly assume that one of the arches in the next area is untrapped.
With sufficiently bad luck, we could have lost Faldorn or Baeloth. The decision to make Frisk a Dragon Disciple paid off; without it, they might well have died.
I don't know if this is one of those traps that can go off multiple times, however, and while I could walk through a different arch, I'm not entirely convinced that the game wouldn't have traps on two adjacent arches. If I make the wrong move, I might trigger another Fireball, and attempting to bring a cleric close enough to cast a healing spell on Frisk could set off a trap as well. Either case could easily be fatal. Resting could theoretically work, but it might accidentally teleport a party member onto that Fireball trap.
The solution? Goodberries! Plus a Larloch's Minor Drain spell, cast on a summoned wolf, to further heal Frisk.
I walk under the same arch and find that the trap does not in fact trigger twice. In retrospect, a third solution might have been Expeditious Retreat, since sometimes you can jump over traps and triggers if your movement rate is high enough and the trigger is narrow enough.
And, in retrospect, I could have just cast Dimension Jump to teleport to safety, which is exactly why I picked that spell for Frisk in the first place.
We have a pretty good system for dealing with basic enemies. Invisibility Sphere keeps us safe from enemy pressure, Fire Traps and snares help us punish enemy approaches, and our summons and damage spells can do a remarkable amount of damage if the party acts in unison.
I try to bait the Phase Spiders into teleporting onto some traps again in the next area, but a Web trap catches me off-guard, disabling Yeslick while he's under the effects of Sanctuary.
Sanctuary only lasts 6 rounds in SR, so Yeslick won't have many chances to escape the Web before he becomes visible and the spiders devour him. Baeloth hurries in and bails out Yeslick after succeeding on his second save vs. breath.
This gives Yeslick another 10 rounds of safety, which guarantees that he can escape the web before he goes visible. We try again and manage to lure the spiders onto our traps, allowing our summons to take down the spiders while the party hides under Invisibility Sphere (Baeloth has no castings left, so it's not safe to break invisibility by applying spell damage).
We bomb the bejeezus out of Prat and company...
...but Prat emerges somehow unharmed, despite Yeslick firing off a Dispel Magic that should have robbed him of any defenses he had. Yeslick's Sanctuary spell fails to stop Prat from casting Confusion, but Yeslick manages to make his saving throw against the odds.
We flee, rest, and return, only for Yeslick to fail a save against Sleep while watching our summons under Sanctuary. Sanctuary lasts 6 rounds, while Sleep lasts 5, and in the end, Yeslick goes visible before he wakes up. I don't send in Baeloth to cast Invisibility Sphere because I'm not willing to expose Baeloth--without whom I don't think we can complete the game--to a Confusion spell just to save Yeslick.
But he rouses just a couple seconds later, allowing us to retreat once again. This time, Frisk fails a save against Sleep, and we end up in the exact same situation all over again.
But Baeloth is there to save Frisk, even if Yeslick wasn't worth the same treatment. Yeslick reminds me of his importance by dispelling all of Prat's buffs, including Improved Invisibility and its +4 to AC and saving throws, allowing Tiax's ghast to paralyze him.
Just as I appreciate how powerful Yeslick is, I see him in danger once again when he triggers another Web trap I didn't know about. His Sanctuary is already wearing thin, so Frisk casts Expeditious Retreat so Baeloth can get there in time to cast Invisibility Sphere, but Baeloth gets webbed in the process...
...and Yeslick's Sanctuary runs out.
Through miraculous luck, however, the spiders putter around for several agonizing seconds while they struggle to see Yeslick around the tight corners. They finally attack him in concert, and while Baeloth eventually manages to get Invisibility Sphere off the ground. Yeslick is taking heavy poison damage very fast.
And since Yeslick is invisible, we cannot cast a healing spell or Slow Poison on him. Nor can he do it himself, with all the Phase Spider venom to disrupt his spellcasting. The best we can do is send in Faldorn to throw him some 3-HP-healing Goodberries.
But in the end, Yeslick scrapes through with about 30 HP. With the Web trap already triggered, we can provoke the spiders safely and get the deadly Phase Spider to teleport onto our traps.
In retrospect, I should have just used Frisk's Invisibility spell to trigger the Web traps, since the 8-hour duration would never run out before Web did, leaving Baeloth with the rest of the party to cast Invisibility Sphere.
Baeloth has finally hit level 8 and chooses Enchanted Weapon as his level 4 spell pick. To my dismay, the conjured items don't last more than 24 hours even if you put them on the ground or in another map. Evidently an EE update or SR update has fixed that bug and closed the exploit.
Still, we can have several +3 weapons on hand at a time--even ammunition, with 40 arrows, bolts, or bullets per casting. Only darts are unavailable. This means Yeslick and Jaheira can use +3 bullets with +3 slings at 1.5 APR apiece, at THAC0 of 8 and 6, respectively.
This will single-handedly win us the fight against Belhifet, as it will let us given Corwin dozens of +3 arrows and a +3 longbow (though I'll probably still give Baeloth Lower Resistance just in case, since I'll be replacing him in BG2 anyway). For now, though, its power is a little more limited than I thought, and maximizing it requires some careful control of our resting.
Frisk and Baeloth have just enough Fireballs to win the fight with Sarevok assuming nothing goes wrong, and Yeslick should be able to obliterate Angelo with his Dispel Magic. However, I don't think I'm ready for the fight at the Ducal Palace... and I'm not sure what I could do to take down those doppelgangers, who apparently have saving throws of 2's and 3's, 4 APR at 1d12 damage and 7 THAC0, and HP well over 60--far beyond anything we could realistically compete with.
@Grond0, do you have any suggestions? Frisk is at level 7, Baeloth at 8, Tiax at 5/6, Yeslick at 5/5, Jaheira at 5/5, and Faldorn at 8. Neither Frisk nor Baeloth have Slow, Malison, or any disablers aside from Web. Currently my only idea is to stack a whole bunch of Fire Traps, but I've seen there are limits to spell-based traps, since weird things happen when two spells hit on the same frame, and I'm concerned that the terribly short range of Fire Trap will prevent me from reaching all of the doppelgangers.
I can always turn Liia Jannath invisible, but I'm concerned that the doppelgangers will simply overwhelm us and possibly kill a party member or two before we manage to bring them down.
Can we complete the game if Sarevok kills Belt but Liia Jannath survives under Invisibility?
Thankfully, even though the second golem showed up to help, this is some of the safest exp in the game. Thalantyr lets you squeeze past him, while the flesh golems are forced to walk all the way back around the circle to reach you each time. All you need is some magic ammo, courtesy of Feldepost's, and Garfield is level 5, getting his first Swashbuckler bonus.
He now has 24 HP, above average on rolls, which is important since he's a wuss.
Thalantyr, like many merchants, has a vastly expanded selection, including a number of new spells which are ludicrously overpowered:
Technically a cheat, but I am probably going to make a save, check through these things and load back to before buying them at some point, just to make sure that the mod didn't really make a level 4 improved alacrity that lasts an hour.
After staring in disbelief at Thalantyr's inventory and leaving without buying anything, Ishlilka decides to have an important heart to heart with the player concerning battle tactics:
Ishlilka: Garfield, old bean! It must have occurred to you that I am a half-orc! I'm sure you are wondering as to how that occurred!
Garfield: Indeed? As a half-orc myself, I must say, I am incredibly curious as to where half-orcs come from. Gorion would never tell me for some reason! Also I have no means of not caring without being rudely dismissive.
Ishlilka: Well, when a half-orc and another half-orc love each other very much... they uh... anyways, we should be moving on, we're falling behind the others.
Garfield: ... Others?
Ishlilka: Hush! March!
Garfield: *Grumble.* Nobody tells me nuffin. Did you at least want to know about my, actually interesting, half-orc parentage? No? *Grumble.*
Wandering West (being Chaotic Neutral, Garfield also likes to wander around the game randomly like a twit, which is convenient for me).
I was planning to try talking to Shoal here, but Garfield apparently wasn't keen on a wet and wild makeout after very nearly being on the receiving end himself while Commanding the dire wolf that random spawned behind the party as they were trying to flee.
Still 1.5k from hitting "animate dead", so the greenskins polish off some ogres down south while Ishlilka spams through about half a dozen love talks all at once.
Nuh uh! I gave her the slip this game!
Honestly if you're going to have dialogue like this in a mod, you sort of need to attach it to conditionals, like "is Imoen in the party", "has character ever even met Imoen", or "is Imoen currently dead and a corpse", because then keeping her close gets a bit "Norman Bates"y.
Still not enough experience in the end, so....
Sadly the Sirene killed Ishlilka just before the Exp, but unlike the last two, she can get raised, and Garfield now gets a skeleton army to finish off the rest of the Sirene before he goes.
Only to get jumped by a random spawn of kobolds while he's trying to take them down.
Fortunately a quick potion of burning discharge does the trick, and cunningly parrying her last poison arrows with his face, Garf makes a quick kill and runs like he managed to get another six kobolds spawning on him.
Level 5/5, with a fairly chunky 27 max HP, and at the Temple to pick up newfriend #4. My mortality rate is highest when I've just come back to a run in the morning, so hopefully a nice safe area will give me plenty of leeway to be dumb.
The horny lass is Sirene, one of two Sirenes hanging outside the temple, and she apparently thinks she's in Siege of Dragonspear, something which I'm sure will have zero consequences.
Ishlilka: Garfield you old chum, what do you think of me? Does my being an orc bother you?
Garfield: What the everblinding fu- Why are you even asking? Why are those my options?!
Anyway, apparently the temple is no exception to the whole "overpowered loot" schtick. We've got a +2 longbow, some Acid Arrows except they deal magic damage, a ring with permanent protection from petrification, a helm of "protection from mental attacks", a suit of "Falcon Armour" +3 Plate Mail usable only by Paladins, Monks, Humans, Half-Orcs, and Lawful Good people. Presumably for all the Lawful Good paladin and monk half-orcs, and a basically +3 Bastard Sword that "casts the aid spell on the wielder" which I'm sure doesn't give infinite HP.
After forgetting to equip Ishlilka with her stuff and almost getting her killed again to three skeletons moving south into Ulcaster, the party intrepidly fled for Beregost, where they were accosted by an unfamiliar bard.
What the frig is in Dark Horizons that this is remotely sensible?
She also identified what I thought to be a bonus +1 longsword from the shipwreck and yep, +1 Longsword of +1 Dex +1 APR, only useable by Monks and Bards. What. The. Frig.
Whatever. Time to kill some Battlehorrors and get daddy a brand new brain.
Thanks to Sirene having no ranged weapon proficiencies and being level 1/1, she managed to get Ishlilka killed twice by pushing enemies towards her (second time I should probably have healed her above 13 HP so the random Doppelganger didn't one shot her, but still).
Still, thanks to Kirinhale weirdly entering permanent panicked status (and also carried some nymph hair, for some reason?), some easy Ghast kills, and the lack of competition from Ishlilka, Sirene swiftly levelled to 3/3, and graciously volunteered to eat a Dire Charm trap for the party.
I think that's enough Durlag's until Garfield finds a proper magefriend, and can actually disarm the traps here. Also to raise Ishlemming and identify some more unique mod junk I picked up in Durlag's.
If you've not come across them before there are several pretty nasty encounters in Dark Horizons - have fun
Considering how much god tier loot I've seen, I'm sort of expecting a Demilich at this point. Should I actually be buying some of this stuff to stand a chance? Or is it as excessive as it appears?
I developed a perfect formula for the entirety of BG1. I invent three new tricks in the process, and discover a powerful new ability. We obliterate the doppelgangers with Fire Traps and missile weapons, and have a great strategy for Sarevok and SoD. And what brings an end to the run?
This.
Because Yeslick and Baeloth went in the wrong direction and followed Jaheira into a repeating trap that should have only triggered once, slightly wounding Jaheira and not even touching anyone else. I planned on letting Jaheira trigger it once, then healing her, seeing if it happened again, and then bringing in Coran to disarm the traps if necessary. But Yeslick and Baeloth disobeyed orders and went in the exact opposite direction I told them to.
I lost a successful run because of fucking pathfinding.
Incidentally, looking at that screenshot I suspect that the traps you're talking about are the 3 lightning traps followed by a fireball trap just prior to 2 skeleton warriors. None of those traps are repeating, but walking through all of them in a row without protection against lightning is likely to end poorly ...
1. Ditch all player-created characters in Beregost to save them for BG2.
2. Use Korax to collect at least 10,000 XP.
3. Grab Baeloth and wipe out the Nashkel mines with Fireball and Web, and do any other minor quests necessary to get Charname to level 4. Kill Tranzig by abusing the stairway.
4. Drop Baeloth and trigger the Lamalha and Molkar ambushes under Invisibility. Use a disposable NPC to trigger the trap in the bandit camp and snag the documents.
5. Bring back Baeloth and do minor quests until he has Invisibility Sphere. Recruit Coran in the Cloakwood and invest however many points into Find Traps are necessary to deal with the post-Ducal Palace maze traps (@Grond0, how much is that?).
6. Enter the Phase Spider area of the Cloakwood, open with Invisibility Sphere, and use Invisibility on Charname to disarm the Web traps, freeing the way to the rest of the Cloakwood.
7. Grab Faldorn and farm wyverns until she's level 7. Use her summons to deal with Drasus et al.
8. Bring Yeslick into the party.
9a. Have Coran disarm the traps in Davaeorn's lair.
9b. Use Dire Charm on the guard to lure the Battle Horrors over, and use Invisibility Sphere to keep the guard alive while the sorcerers kill the Battle Horrors with spell damage.
9c. Try to kill Davaeorn with the charmed guard.
9d. If the guard dies, bait Davaeorn with a disposable NPC or summons, then hide until the guards gather around Davaeorn and hold him in place.
9e. Wait out Davaeorn's buffs or use Yeslick's Dispel Magic to take them down, then Web the guards.
9f. Bait Davaeorn into expending his aura by sending out a cheap summons, throw some damage spells at Davaeorn while his aura is clouded, and retreat.
9g. Repeat 9f until Davaeorn is dead.
10. Use stealth to get the Iron Throne documents and coast through major fights by relying on Invisibility Sphere in-combat and Fire Trap outside of combat.
11. Use Yeslick's Dispel Magic to break down Cythandria's and Kristin's defenses, and kill Slythe with Fire Traps.
12. Turn Liia Jannath invisible, kill the Ducal Palace doppelgangers with Fire Traps, debuff survivors with Dispel Magic, and finish off the doppelgangers with summons and spell damage.
13. Turn Coran invisible and have him disarm the maze traps while summons deal with the enemies in the maze.
14. Sneak past the Undercity party. Recruit Dynaheir for extra Fireballs.
15a. Lure Sarevok and company to the southeast corner of the screen.
15b. Bait Angelo with a Dread Wolf and hit him with Yeslick's Dispel Magic. Once his defenses are down and his aura is fogged, rush in with spell damage and more summons.
15c. Bomb Sarevok and company with Fireballs.
15d. Distract and kite Sarevok with summons and hit him with Melf's Acid Arrow, Magic Missiles, and +3 arrows from Coran.
Final party:
Frisk, level 7
Baeloth, level 8
Faldorn, level 8
Coran, level 5/5
Dynaheir, level 6
Yeslick, level 5/6
This formula minimizes XP gathering, relying on fast leveling for Charname at Mutamin's garden to make NPCs join the party at high XP (I collected over 120,000 XP in the previous run just by recruiting NPCs at high levels). Switching around NPCs for their special abilities and bonus XP will let us complete the game at unnaturally low levels.
I wanna see how far I can push the Reform Party trick.
Journal of Ælfmar
Pure carelessness. I didn't notice that my hp was getting low. Got killed by hobgoblins half-way down the mines.