When we return to the Iron Throne to deal with Cythandria, everyone who used to be at the top vanishes with a weird string displayed as they vanish. But there are no strings for the male and female Shennara thief clones, and a quick save confirms that they're still around, ready to kill Frisk with a backstab. I send out some summons and confirm that the thieves could kill Frisk in a single blow.
But the Wand of Monster Summoning is enough to take them down. The Shennara clones might have excellent damage output, but only as long as they remain invisible: they can land instant kills on a few critters, but after that, they're just normal thieves.
Charming Cythandria does not work well; her saves are excellent and her status as a half-elf gives her another 30% resistance to charms. I send in some monsters, but the situation looks really, really ugly. The Wand of Monster Summoning is not going to work well in this fight.
I wait out Cythandria's pre-buffs and then prod her with some more summons, but I have to go invisible when the golems come wandering over.
Cythandria torches my summons, but at least we're draining her spells.
Even so, I don't like this situation. Frisk's defenses are nil and I don't exactly have the resources to maintain them in a fight like this where I'm banking on our ability to wait out Cythandria's buffs; this is a low-pressure situation where short-term defenses offer little protection and need to be re-applied more times than we can in a single rest period. I keep throwing out summons, keeping a close eye out for Cythandria in case she approaches Frisk and tries a potentially game-ending enchantment spell. All the while, the golems completely outclass our summons.
Frisk keeps burning charges and runs to the corners for safety. We don't seem to be making any progress.
But eventually, I realize that Cythandria must have run out of spells by now. I approach her and start contributing to the fight instead of letting our summons do everything.
To my surprise, Cythandria has no response; the enemy just keeps fighting it out. Cythandria flees the fight and we get Sarevok's diary.
I know Cythandria is optional, but I like to get the diary anyway, because I'm not sure which documents Belt/Liia Jannath accept as an alternative and I'm afraid I'll enter the Ducal Palace without having the proof I need.
To the Undercellars! Because the Overcellars are played out. As always, Quenash takes Slythe's first backstab and gets shanked.
If it's possible to get the Cloak of Balduran by talking to Quenash or performing a quest, I don't know and don't really need to know.
I keep Frisk at a safe distance and let the summons absorb Krystin's spells, but we get a scare when Slythe aims for Frisk.
We fall back and Slythe switches targets, and the fight goes on. The Wand of Monster Summoning is expensive to use, but it's very effective. More importantly, it's basically the only tool Frisk has.
SCS mages sometimes teleport to you to get around your summons, but we've been hoarding Potions of Invisibility for just these kind of situations.
I flee to the northeast and discover that a confused summons has turned the local courtesans hostile, but no one has been killed, so our reputation remains intact. I wait until Krystin's buffs run out and then resume the fight.
Krystin appears to be enjoying the endless surge of meat shields. And for all the wrong reasons.
Five charges of the Wand of Monster Summoning prove sufficient to take Slythe down, with another brief scare when Slythe targeted Frisk.
Since I don't know where Krystin is, I have Frisk go invisible before we hunt her down. As you may have been expecting, we use the Wand of Monster Summoning against Krystin. Seriously, it's not like a level 5 mage has any other tools at their disposal.
But with Krystin so drained, it's all we really need to bring her down.
We bankrupt the party buying wands and Arrows of Dispelling and Detonation. We'll need them in SoD. Thanks to EET, we can revisit Durlag's Tower in SoD when we need Durlag's Goblet and the other WIS tome, so there is nothing left in BG1 for us. It's time to take down Sarevok.
We charm Ithtyl, a high-level sorcerer waitress, and take her on a date to the Ducal Palace. She turns Liia Jannath invisible so Frisk doesn't have to break their own invisibility and fog their aura at the same time. It means Frisk will have a clear aura about 3 seconds earlier than normal.
The fight starts out well, with the enemy mage getting disrupted. The assassin could take out half of Frisk's HP in one backstab, but it's pretty ineffectual against our summons if it doesn't get a good roll.
With Greater Malison and two castings of Chaos from Ithtyl and Frisk (Frisk uses scrolls; they can't cast level 4 or 5 spells), we disable three doppelgangers, including the shaman.
But Slow doesn't get us anything, and the mage manages to get Remove Magic off the ground. Frisk takes cover in an adjacent room and takes a Potion of Magic Shielding right after it hits, the only potion that will guarantee immunity to enchantment spells.
Our summons make more progress on the doppelgangers, but another Chaos spell has little effect, and the mage brings out some summons. The mage throws Minute Meteors at Frisk, who escapes with a Potion of Invisibility despite having lots of HP left. Belt doesn't have those options.
Frisk slips away from the mage and manages to stun one of the doppelgangers on the second try with a Wand of Paralyzation, but before they could do much damage dual-wielding a club and dagger, the mage teleported over, prompting Frisk to flee and hide once more.
But the enemy has worn thin, and soon the only remaining threat is the mage. Ithtyl helps tear down its Stoneskins using her darts and switches to her fists when her dagger breaks. Our summons recover from a Horror spell and join in, and shortly after they vanish, Ithyl knocks out the mage with a wicked haymaker. Frisk brains it with a rock, and the fight is won.
We surround Sarevok with some critters and throw rocks at him until he teleports away. A couple potions grant Frisk immunity to the traps in the maze and we sneak past the Undercity party.
Sarevok awaits us. We are filled with determination.
I got that pi reference in SoD, but I couldn't figure out how to do that button puzzle until I looked it up. Knowing the secret is 3, 1, 4 doesn't do you much good if you don't know which button is 3, which button is 1, and which button is 4.
I used the normal Indo/European order as in how we write. Obviously if you were Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic or Israeli the order might be more difficult to sort out.
@Pantalion: You seem to be less than fully impressed with the difficulty of the game!
By the way, I really like seeing your posts on mod content. It's always cool to see new sights and new things.
Yeah, generally Durlag's tower is very easy if you remember the layout (which is always my biggest challenge). You can pretty much beat the necessary encounters except the Demon Knight with the Ulcaster WoF and the 20 charge one you buy at the entrance.
Of course it's not the difficulty so much as the endurance aspect, one misstep and things go from "cakewalk" to "Would you like to reload or quit?" in seconds. Which is why I've got a permanent mind shield from Psypher (a bargain at 8 max HP) and the ring of free action glued to his finger. Once he gets to Chapter 5 I'm seriously considering abandoning Evermemory for the anti-poison/disease elven talisman.
This cheapskate offers 50 GP less per pelt than the Nashkel store.
But offers waaaay higher regular sale prices on what he accepts. When I get 20 reputation I could be making infinite gold by cycling Laeral's Tear necklaces here.
Also he sells a bow which...
Fires magic missiles! Also can be used by Cavaliers. It still needs a to hit roll for the missiles to land, making it actually one of the less overpowered weapons in the mod, and gives me a way to keep her dumb face from wandering into Scorcher beams, which is fantastic.
Oh right, probably should have talked to him first. Ah well.
Sigh.
Aura is a well written, interesting character with some interesting mechanics. There are times, however, when I feel she's just intended to be a little too "special". Maybe it's the pink hair, maybe it's the special coloured eyes, maybe it's that she's totally kawaii Japanese Kozakuran Mahou Shoujo (Ai) girl who picks up magical signatures better than mages, feels spiritual things better than clerics, and is smarter than everyone about everything.
Whatever, she gives you a unique 1/day magic frost wand for this maze so I guess she can brag a little, just don't forget who's carrying this team, missy!
Damn right. Summons.
That feeling when your scripted cheat spell teleports your paralysed ass right into the midst of the enemy party.
Well played, Aura. Panic because of the dead bear next to you, and run into the lightning trap I sent you to disarm.
Oh Peldvale, you and your Cloakwood random encounters. I also got attacked by Ettercaps travelling back to the Temple to raise Aura right after this.
The worst I've had is still Larswood <-> Mutamin's Garden though. There is nothing good about a Greater Basilisk spawning within Gaze range of your CHARNAME.
Somehow being glowing puce did not help Valentine in his attempts at stealth.
Blah blah blah end of chapter confrontation. Didn't even have to recast images, and the mage tried horror, which was pointless against his prebuffed Remove Fear from Sirene.
Blah blah assassins.
Given all the web traps it's actually safer and easier to just send Val ahead to blast everything apart with fireballs. This is also the moment I've been waiting for since he turned Shadow Adept, because that Ankh right there?
Sets alignment to True Neutral when worn, meaning he gets Ka the bard familiar, whose song drops enemy luck. He also has a ranged weapon to keep him out of the way when I'm not abusing that particular trait.
Weirdly he's resistant to lightning, rather than fire, which is different to the usual shades, but as with all Shadow Familiars he's utterly expendable, so standing next to enemies about to eat fireballs is a given.
I think I could be getting into the Section assassin HQ if I wandered around the crossroads at this point, but there's one thing I really need to pick up from Baldur's Gate first, which means Cloakwood Mines must drown in sorrow.
And water.
Hm. I should probably pick up the Ring of Fire Resistance cache too, since I keep forgetting and can't remember where the proper one is. Ho hum.
As dangerous as SCS Sarevok is, there's actually an extremely safe strategy for tackling him due to a gap in the AI. I learned it from @Grond0:
1. Lure Sarevok into the southeast corner of the map and go invisible before he reaches you. Tazok, Diarmid, and Semaj will run over to join him. 2. Without entering the field of vision of Sarevok, Tazok, Diarmid or Semaj, take down Angelo, who has not followed Sarevok and remains in the north. Kill the Skeleton Warrior when Angelo goes down. 3. Wait until Diarmid's Protection from Magic scroll wears off (two in-game hours/120 rounds/600 real-time seconds/two uses of CTRL-T). 4. Launch Fireballs at Sarevok and company from out of their field of vision. They won't go looking for you; you can spam Fireballs until they die. 5. When Sarevok is alone, engage him, using summons, backstabs, or kiting to bring him down.
It reduces a lot of the risk in the fight, but we still need to be careful around Angelo because of his mage spells.
Any means of invisibility will work for the first step, but since Frisk has no access to Stoneskin and could easily get disrupted when casting a spell, the only safe method is a potion.
Next, we need to kill Angelo. We use quick-save to determine a safe spot to hide and then wait out his defenses while hidden.
Angelo has high-level disablers and excellent damage output, so we don't want to get Frisk anywhere near him until we drain his spells. Frisk summons some critters, goes invisible, and sends the summons to Angelo one at a time.
Like Tazok, Angelo uses a nonmagical longsword, and it's not long before it breaks.
We keep sending out summons to fight Angelo one by one, and Angelo wastes his most powerful spells on cheap summons.
We then wait out his next set of buffs and send some more critters out to fight him. We stick to the northeast corner since he's gotten too close to the southwest corner.
It takes many rounds, but without his spells or his sword, Angelo is doomed. It takes more work to kill the Skeleton Warrior that replaces him, but it has no ranged options, so Frisk is safe.
Time to Fireball the survivors. I belatedly remember to cast Greater Malison via scroll (you can buy 20 Chaos and Greater Malison scrolls from Sorcerous Sundries) to boost the damage from each Fireball, but foolishly use a Chaos scroll, causing Diarmid to wander into our field of vision. Now that I've screwed up the bombing campaign, I'm forced to use the Wand of Monster Summoning so Frisk doesn't get swarmed.
Fortunately, Semaj is also confused and his defenses are down, so Frisk can use the Wand of Fire to burn him down before he can cast a spell at us.
I re-apply Chaos to keep Diarmid confused and prevent him from using his arrows on Frisk, but the Wand of Monster Summoning isn't getting much done. The enemy is really strong if you don't isolate Sarevok with Fireballs properly.
It takes 6 charges from the Wand of Monster Summoning to kill Tazok, and even then, we're still in trouble. Diarmid is no longer confused and is firing off Acid Arrows, and when our summons run thin and Frisk becomes Diarmid's newest target, our only means of survival is another Potion of Invisibility.
Frisk buffs with Protection from Acid scrolls before engaging the enemy again. We try stunning Diarmid with the Wand of Paralyzation, and while we get a failed save...
...he keeps attacking. Diarmid is immune to stun, whether because of an equipped item or a potion. Instead, we're going to have to just rely on our summons to bring him down. Frisk spams the Wand of Monster Summoning while running from two Skeleton Warriors at once.
But Frisk takes too much damage in the process, so we head south to break down the Skeleton Warriors separately from Sarevok and Diarmid.
We go back to throwing meat shields at Diarmid, but when Frisk lands a successful Horror spell on Diarmid, the archer goes running and we torch him with the Wand of Fire while he's helpless to fight back.
We destroy the last of the Skeleton Warriors, use a Potion of Invisibility to escape Sarevok's reach, and turn our attention to our final target. But CTRL-M shows us that Sarevok will take a long time to take down.
But we have far more Wand of Monster Summoning charges than we need to bring him down, and Sarevok's only response is to keep tanking them.
After spending 12 charges of the wand on Sarevok, we finally slay him.
Algernon's Cloak. The Wand of Monster Summoning. The Wand of Fire. Potions of Invisibility. That's our entire strategy for BG1 in a nutshell, and it's pretty much the only one that could possibly work for a level 5 mage.
But now Frisk is in SoD, and can finally use their built-up XP to recover their Archer levels.
Suddenly remembering how to wear a helmet for the first time in weeks due to the stupid logic of dual-classing fills us with determination.
Frisk has suddenly become far more powerful than ever before, but it's really not enough for the first dungeon of SoD. The enemy absolutely crushes our summons, and the enemy thief here, unlike Slythe, is smart enough to go straight for Frisk. And due to speeding through BG1 and ignoring many optional quests, Frisk has no Stoneskin to protect them from backstabs.
The Helm of Balduran would have blocked a critical hit, so dying in a single shot to a backstab is not possible. But losing half our HP in a single attack is a very bad sign. Frisk uses a Potion of Invisibility and heals themself while blocking the enemy from crossing the bridge.
We use a Wand of Monster Summoning charge to hold off the enemies, but an archer slips through and attacks from behind. We take a swing at him with a scimitar and scare him away, at which point one of the Flaming Fist soldiers to the south engages him.
The enemy cuts down our summons in short order, forcing us to burn multiple charges. Frisk has strong damage output with a longbow, but the enemy has lots of HP and outnumbers us, so progress isn't nearly as fast as I'd hope.
Somehow the thief slips through the gaps and lands another backstab, and Frisk goes deeper into the red than we've ever been in this run.
The thief uses Shadowstep and goes invisible once again. Another backstab would easily be fatal, but Frisk just barely escapes with another Potion of Invisibility.
This is a really bad sign. We're only into the first fight of SoD and Frisk is already struggling to survive. We hide with the Flaming Fist soldiers and heal up before opening the door and summoning some more critters. We really need the help.
Frisk goes invisible and waits out the fight. Finally, the enemy crumples.
Porios is next, but to my surprise, he doesn't surrender when we ask. We use a charmed enemy to distract him, and when Porios comes running out of his room, Frisk nails him with an Arrow of Dispelling. He goes running back in, but without his defenses, he doesn't last long.
The rest of the fight is a long slog based largely on the Wand of Monster Summoning and Wand of Paralyzation.
We manage to rest successfully in the same area and use a Protection from Undead scroll to skip most of the next level (invisibility isn't enough; Bonebats see through it). Unfortunately, we still have a batch of humans to deal with, and they also have massive damage output and a massive HP pool.
I wait out the mage's defenses and keep summoning monsters, but the bridge is too wide of a choke point for me to hold them off, and the enemy chases us to the south, forcing us to use yet another Potion of Invisibility out of our increasingly finite supply.
I can't summon any critters in this area without the Shadows turning on them, so I find a safe place to the northwest to keep up the fight. Against all odds, we send four of the enemies running with a single Horror spell.
But the effect is short-lived, and we end up back at the bridge, and unlike Sarevok, the enemy is smart enough to target Frisk with ranged weapons instead of blindly hacking away at cheap summons.
A Shadow has also joined the fight, so Frisk needs to use some of our few +1 arrows to take it down. Even with some Wand of Paralyzation charges to slow down the enemy, it still takes us 14 charges just to end the fight.
At this rate, we're going to go bankrupt very, very soon.
Frisk triggers the Dispel Magic trap south of Korlasz so we don't have to deal with it later. We really need to rest to memorize some higher-level spells to stay safe against Korlasz, but fail several times in the lower level before we succeed upstairs.
To make matters worse, we fail to talk our way past the last of Korlasz's goons and a group of Shadows ambushes us at the same time, forcing us to use another Protection from Undead scroll. And the enemy makes its saves against the Wand of Paralyzation over and over.
Notice the spell failure icon on Frisk's portrait; one of these guys is a Wizard Slayer.
Eventually, we're forced to drink yet another Potion of Invisibility and escape. We resort to the Wand of Monster Summoning once the Shadows are out of the way, and manage to land a charm on one of the enemies.
We've used up far more resources than I expected, but finally the way to Korlasz is clear and we have some decent buffs memorized. I drink a Potion of Invulnerability to block any poisonous arrows or darts or bolts and Darts of Stunning the enemy might have before entering the last room.
The fight is easier than I expected. A couple Arrows of Dispelling and some Acid Arrows are all that we need to convince Korlasz to surrender.
I don't bother collecting most of the loot in the area; I'm too anxious about traps and just want to get out of here. We go bankrupt buying Arrows of Detonation and some scattered potions at Sorcerous Sundries before leaving Baldur's Gate, ignoring a lot of side quests due to not needing the XP. Finally, we arrive at Coast Way Crossing.
We're free! We can go anywhere now; EET lets us revisit BG1 areas in SoD. Our first order of business is collecting some valuable loot from the available NPCs by using some charm spells. Not everyone agrees with our methods, though.
Smells like blood money. We are filled with determination.
Total near misses thus far: Three. All self inflicted with fireballs. I'm not great at placing fireballs unless my zoom level is right.
Also an interesting inversion to my usual policy. Ranger guy spontaneously spawns four greater wyverns if you preemptively torch him. Far, far less dangerous than the two ultra wyverns he spawns on conversation, but still.
I maintain that it was still easier. But since I hate inventory minigame and don't want to spend the next five minutes shuttling things to the corpse in the Wyvern cave right now, so methinks it's time for.... Restartitis! I may pick up the game at another time, but there's a class combination I've wanted to play for years at this point.
Ucurian and his band of rejects - Part XI: Final update
Well... overconfidence and a lack of knowledge of some of the "features" of SCS proved to be my downfall.
First things first - We entered the planar sphere, where skeleton warriors basically took down any oppositions. Halflings? No problem. Lavok? Didn't stand a chance. Demons? Well, with the third one, our skeleton army was getting thinned out, but we still had Camalan with his all-negative saves and arsenal of potions at the ready. Golems? Yeah, okay... these weren't dealt with via skeletons, I just made Camalan immune to crushing damage and he killed them by himself. For the mages, we also had backstabs, traps, detect illusions and the like at the ready. Basically, I made my way in and out unscathed and felt kind of invincible - as I often do shortly before my downfall. I even found one of the item randomiser wardstones from the "Kangaxx further sealed away" component, allowing me to take down the shade lich with traps.
Now, how did things go wrong from here? Well, with the new anti-undead weapons from the previous posts at the ready and Ucurian at such a high level, I thought to myself: "let's just pay a quick visit to the bridge district lich." - of course, I was warned that this one was a dangerous foe with SCS, but I was pretty sure Ucurian was high enough level to turn liches (as it turned out, this was only true for randomly spawned liches), I had multiple sunrays and unti-undead weapons at the ready, and in any case - I could always just run away if my initial assault didn't yield the desired result, right?
Well, here's where my lack of knowledge regarding SCS in BG2 comes in. Turns out there's an invisible forcefield blocking the exit, so when the lich, thanks to his protection spells, didn't get hurt by sunrays, and turn undead did nothing to him, I soon had to learn, to my shock and horror, that I couldn't run away.
A very long and epic fight ensued, with me constantly recasting buffs, re-using potions, getting rid of summoned demons and healing up my party. I survived almost anything the lich was able to throw at me, and in fact, Ucurian never went down. However, a sphere of chaos (combined with greater malison) got past some other party members saves - and all in all, both Camalan and Tarnele got chunked before I eventually managed to take down the lich. While I could've continued the run at this point, I decided not to - with two key party members gone and me having little interest to replace them with official NPCs (besides the fact that this run was going to end somewhere in ToB no matter what, since a blind no-reload of Ascension seems not like something I could pull off), I decided to reload. Of course, I am continuing this run with reloads, because it was mostly started to gather experience in BG2/ToB with SCS and Ascension, so there's no reason not to do that anyway.
Had I simply decided to go to the planar prison or enter Spellhold, I would've been perfectly fine. I'm already halfway through the Underdark at this point, and despite playing with more risks compared to no-reload play, I haven't had to reload ever since.
My next no-reload run will start after the release of the new patch. I'm very much looking forward to it, and it will hopefully be quite a bit more difficult, especially in BG1 (which felt far too easy this time - I used to have such difficulties playing with a full SCS installation in BG1, but it seems like these days are over).
The quadruple dragon ambush, Melissan's Time Stop spamming, Tamah's no-save unconsciousness breath weapon, the Fallen Solars' vorpal dispelling attacks and Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells, Illasera's dispelling spell failure arrows, Yaga-Shura's initial 99% resistance to all damage, fire giants spamming Lower Fire Resistance, dual-wielding drow Kensais fighting alongside Sendai, facing the Five all at once at the Throne of Bhaal... Ascension is not the sort of thing that people can expect to adapt to on the fly.
First order of business, using the basilisk XP loop to reach level 10. But since I find the trick kind of boring at this point, I use the console to replicate the effect. We kill some ankhegs using our new Animate Dead spells and sell a lot of loose gear in Beregost, since BG1 stores offer better prices for pawned goods than SoD or BG2 stores.
We also head to Durlag's Tower to collect the goblet and the WIS tome. I don't know which traps are where, so I just cast all of my buffs before opening any container. It's a slow process, but it's safe. The local enemies are little trouble at this point, largely because of the Stoneskin spell we got from Belegarm.
Durlag's Goblet is just one floor down. We need to take down the Warders. I was hoping that our basic, non-wand-based summons would take at least one of the enemies down, but they're not even close.
Love's Physical Mirror wears off, so I buff up Frisk and summon some more critters, figuring that an Arrow of Dispelling will make Love easy to kill. But when Love enters our field of vision, its Physical Mirror is active again!
Apparently it can cast Physical Mirror at will, every X number of rounds. I try again, this time using Spider Spawn to try to cut through its Stoneskins. But it seems that there's really no gap in which Physical Mirror is not active. Love reactives it before it expires if it happens during combat.
Ultimately, though, Love can't stand up to our summons' melee attacks, and when I rest, I can take down the others as well.
Skeleton Warriors take down Avarice as well, though it takes a long time to find him because he ran off to the far southwest halls.
Due to some sort of bug, the doors in the next area automatically open the way to Durlag's Goblet, obviating the need for fussing with the irritating door puzzle. The door shuts behind us, though, so we have to fiddle with some buttons before we can escape.
I pick up the CHA tome at the Gnoll Fortress and return to SoD, now that I have all the items I want from BG1. I side with Tsolak instead of the vampire hunters for reasons I don't fully remember (I dimly remember trying it both ways and deciding it was better to fight Ikros), slaying Ikros with an Arrow of Dispelling and Isabella with the Wand of Paralyzation. But I had to turn Tsolak invisible to keep him alive, and when I rested to wait out the effect, Tsolak turned to mist and went to his coffin instead of speaking to us to give us a reward. So... we staked him.
No need to fight the Crusaders back at Coastway Crossing. We can just hide behind the tent. M'Khiin's summons (we charmed her earlier) aren't strictly necessary.
Tackling trolls is a lengthy and unprofitable endeavor, so I sneak past them and grab some treasure from a cave. I use Dimension Door to escape them because for some reason I still don't have Teleport Field.
I don't need extra XP, since I can only get one more level in SoD and level 11 isn't that important, so I can skip most of the fights in SoD. I'm playing in v2.3 by accident instead of the v2.5 beta, so Protection from Poison scrolls don't give immunity to Morentherene's breath weapon, making Morentherene far too dangerous for the small reward we'd get from fighting her. Instead, we go straight to Ziatar, using Skeleton Warriors and a charmed cultist to disrupt her spells.
Frisk stays out of the fray, avoiding Ziatar's mage buddies and their Chaos spells and Darts of Stunning. Frisk fails to stun Ziatar with the Wand of Paralyzation and has to go invisible when the cultists approach. Staying away from Ziatar was a good idea; her breath weapon is far too dangerous to risk approaching her.
But by dealing so much damage to Ziatar early on and forcing her to cast Sanctuary and heal herself, our Skeleton Warriors were able to survive the mages' attacks thanks to their middling MR and undead immunities. By the time the other cultists started attacking them, Ziatar was already weak enough for our skeletons to slay her.
I sneak past the cultists and move on to the Neothelid. Its breath weapon is very strong, but unlike Morentherene's or Ziatar's, it has a slow-moving projectile that Frisk can dodge.
Frisk runs from the Magical Swords and resists the Neothelid's attacks using a Potion of Invulnerability. The Neothelid has three disablers, one which paralyzes on a failed save vs. death at -2, another that charms on a failed save vs. spell, and another that stuns on a failed save vs. death.
The Neothelid kept going underground whenever I tried to fire arrows at it, but I eventually managed to get in some hits with Called Shot. Unfortunately, Feeblemind completely failed to work (no save vs. spell) and I fled to rest and return. The Neothelid chased me when I got back, forcing me to drink another Potion of Invulnerability.
In the end, tanking it with Skeleton Warriors was sufficient to bring it down; no Feeblemind was necessary.
Basic summons got Akanna down to Near Death, and while we couldn't stop her from casting Sanctuary, Sunfire went right through it.
Next up, Bridgefort. There are several ways I could handle this:
1. Fight the Crusaders and spend maybe 40 charges of the Wand of Monster Summoning. 2. Surrender the fort. 3. Skip the whole thing.
The first option is expensive and the second option doesn't feel right even if it doesn't come with any real consequences, so I choose the third option. It's possible to teleport through the gate to the bridge and then teleport again past the barrels just by using a familiar. But I don't remember the exact positioning, I couldn't make it work after a few tries, and I don't remember where I saw a video of it happening.
So I just used Dimension Door.
Testing found that I could go right to the Coalition Camp with no problems. But out of curiosity, I decided to go back and poke around Bridgefort, and at some point, I ended up in the line of sight of a bunch of goblins...
...who proceeded to follow me wherever I went.
Seeing an opportunity, I charmed Vichand and Hormorn in turn (resting in between) and got both of them killed by the goblins without ever turning the Crusaders hostile. Hormorn charmed the goblin mage, who also got killed by the other goblins.
Figuring this would be an excellent way to depopulate the Crusaders so I could tackle the Bridgefort fight at low risk, I then charmed Keherrem to get him killed as well...
...only to find that the camp goes hostile when Keherrem dies.
I'm guessing he's treated differently because he got here from the temple of Bhaal, unlike the other Crusaders. Or maybe that's just Kharm. Or maybe both of them. In any case, most of the Crusaders are hostile, and while Hormorn can bomb the crap out of them...
His Protection from Normal Weapons spell only lasts so long, and soon the Crusaders eat him alive. The Crusaders don't follow me because I'm invisible, but the goblins do, and I certainly can't fight both groups at the same time. Fortunately, I have a neat little perch from which I can summon critters and shoot arrows with little fear of retribution.
It takes forever, but the goblins go down, and I can do the same thing to the Crusaders if I lure them over to the cliff. I used Dimension Door, but a summoned critter should work just as well if you don't have the spell: just enter the fort via the portal and summon a skeleton or something on the cliffside so you can lure the enemy north.
I sneak back to the Crusaders and charm a neutral guard, at which point the other hostile Crusaders come into play. I bolster our presence with Animate Dead and the Wand of Monster Summoning.
Ultimately, there's only so much I can do, and while the Wand of Monster Summoning can hold them off, the enemy gains a few feet whenever they kill our monsters. The enemy steadily pushes us north.
Eventually I get backed up to the cliffside where I shot down the goblins. I teleport back to my old station and start pinning the Crusaders down.
There are only a few scattered enemies left. Without the whole horde to support them, the pressure on Frisk is pretty minimal and we don't need to do much to win.
For the last remnants of the Crusaders, I can use charm to divine and conquer, with Animate Dead for support.
Bridgefort is won! Looks like you don't need the Flaming Fist at all to win this fight as long as you have some invisibility and summoning spells and a whole bunch of arrows--or even just invisibility and Algernon's Cloak.
Before we head to the Coalition Camp, we need to recruit some stronger allies. This means we need to revisit Coastway Crossing and meet the Dwarves of Dumathoin. But first, we'll need a Protection from Undead scroll, which we get from Drienne thanks to a high reputation and Charisma.
The Dwarves of Dumathoin are excellent allies to use against the trolls and ogres in the first wave of the Coalition Camp invasion later on. But we're not here to recruit them. In fact, we actually kind of need them to die. So I lure a bunch of undead over to them and watch them get killed.
Brother Deepvein gets chunked by level drain and his equipment vanishes, including his special amulet. But since chunking isn't supposed to be possible in my install and the amulet is supposed to be coded as a quest item, I just console it in.
We need all five of the dwarves' amulets. Why? Well, if we sneak past all the undead in the next level using a Protection from Undead scroll and present the amulets to the Coldheart Lich...
...he'll send us some skeletons to help defend the Coalition Camp, because he already has a grudge against Caelar Argent. Those skeletons have better stats than the Dwarves of Dumathoin and also have damage resistances, making them more resilient to the trolls' attacks if not the ogres'.
We use Dimension Door to hurry past the enemies crowding around us. The Bronze Sentry led them right to us; it sees through invisibility as well as Protection from Undead.
At the Coalition Camp, we use the Spectacles of Spectacle to reveal the genie merchant Nazramu, at which point I discover that Nazramu's prices are so good that 20 Charisma and 20 reputation actually allow us to buy items from him at lower prices than we sell to him. This means we can generate infinite gold by repeatedly selling and buying back stacks of Wands of Monster Summoning, earning 2500 net gold per wand per trade.
I use the gold to recharge all of our wands plus Durlag's Goblet and the Greenstone Amulet and buy up all the potions and scrolls we could possibly get from Belegarm. But that's not all. I can smuggle even more gold into BG2 by dropping off some extra loot in Beregost. And there's one item of which Belegarm sells an infinite supply, so we can smuggle as much loot as we want.
I count 7 different exploits in this one single post. Breaking all the rules for fun and profit fills us with determination.
Yes, that's right, desperately wanted to be a Heartwarder for basically ever.
... Yeah, no. Let's do some fine tuning*.
Heck yeah.
I don't think the usability flags are set up quite right, including no scimitars, but I'm still happy with what he can get, which includes war hammer, dagger, short sword/ninjato, and short bows, two of which were grabbed while being a Heartwarder. No backsies now, deities.
Assassins Killed - 3
One watcher blinded for being an uppity bald virgin. Also for chasing me around for stealing the second potion of healing. Greater good, and all that.
Assassins Killed - 4
Blind failed, Montaron "failed", Imoen got failed next round, and Jericho ate his final magic missile before deciding enough was enough and eating his face off with a spirit wolf, the only benefit he gets from being a Druid/Mage, since a Mage multiclass doesn't get the shapeshift options.
He also gets a +2 saving through bonus vs spell from the weirdness of his creation process as a Heartwarder, though obviously he won't be getting the innate charm spell or permanent charisma bonuses now. I could admittedly have swapped the order, but that would be lame compared to being a Druid/Mage.
Time to cycle 'lisks and take advantage of these spells.
*Fine tuning to the tune of starting with one kit, then using the "Select Deity" innate to select Heartwarder of Sune, thus getting the vanilla Druid's Nature's Beauty (from the Sunite) and Insect swarm spells (from Druid/Mage) along with an intimidatingly large spell list from Major spell access to thirteen different spheres of magic.
Object lesson: Always pay attention to spell descriptions before casting a new spell. It would have been embarrassing to cause a TPK with snowballs.
Still, at least she didn't cast lightning. #frostedsilverlining
Assassins Killed - 5
Blind and impaled by an ice lance, what a way to go.
Hi newfriend!
Since I had to gut my install and start from scratch to get faiths and powers working, EE NPCs are back in, and Ishlilka is out. But it's all good, I have plans for this one.
There, now your brain is safe from red wizards and all it cost was your immortal soul. I'm helping!
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 149 part 1234 5 Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Buffed Kensai leaves Rayic Gethras with few options. Hiding with True Sight active proves to be fatal.
A couple of minor distractions keep us on our toes.
Zepp decided it was time to pick on the Rune Assassins. This necessitated a temple visit (although Zepp looked at the cost, and used Wondrous Recall to memorise Raise Dead for Fiery).
We relieved Bridgeport by ensuring that most of the enemy were webbed before we disclosed who we are. We were all affected by freedom of action by using either items or spells. It made the battle relatively easy. The battle was virtually over before the cavalry arrived. They certainly weren't needed. It's the first time that I have used the tactic. It worked well. Now at the Coalition Camp. So far so good.
To get into the Underground River, we need to fight some Crusaders, including a massive cyclops. Landing a Wand of Paralyzation charge on the cyclops is a death sentence, but we've got other threats to worry about.
Frisk goes invisible to avoid the backstabbers before they break through our Stoneskins. Soon, friendly spiders and other animals start appearing to help us out, apparently sent by the druids we saved earlier. The animals don't last long, but they keep coming.
Unfortunately, the allies don't seem to spawn indefinitely, and eventually we get overwhelmed after having made precious little progress on the enemy. We have to rest and return to the fight, at which point the Wand of Monster Summoning proves utterly incapable of handling the enemy's pressure. We stay on the move.
We manage to thin the enemy herd when the Crusaders start splitting up in search of the invisible Bhaalspawn tromping around on their territory, allowing us to take them down one by one.
Others don't stray too far from the group, and it's very dangerous for Frisk to venture into the field of vision of an enemy mage.
By the time we finally bring the enemy down, we've spent maybe 30 charges from the Wand of Monster Summoning.
With Nazramu providing an infinite source of gold and wand recharges, it doesn't matter much, especially since I still have about 200 charges left, but it's annoying for fights to take so long. The Wand of Monster Summoning loses a lot of power when you get to SoD; the critters that dominated BG1 just aren't strong enough to compete in SoD.
We don't need to do much in the Underground River besides place the Barrel of Bwoosh and poison their supplies, but I do want to take out Strunk, since he appears at the siege of Dragonspear Castle alongside some Water Elementals, and I'm worried about winning that fight. Since I don't want Strunk turning any Crusader patrols hostile, I charm him and lead him over to the myconids to get him killed.
But I make the mistake of helping him out with the Wand of Monster Summoning, and one of the gnolls attacks him, turning him hostile and triggering his pre-buffs.
I remove his defenses with an Arrow of Dispelling, but attacking Strunk in the line of sight of the other Crusaders turns them hostile. I should have guessed.
At first, it's just the patrols, which makes the Crusaders fight amongst each other, but then the stationary Crusaders also go red.
Rather than fight a large group of enemies in an enclosed space and risk even more Crusaders coming to join the fight (I don't know how badly you can screw up the infiltration), I sneak past everyone, place the Barrel of Bwoosh, and push around the guard to the northwest using a Friends spell.
I don't plan on fighting Hephernaan for numerous reasons (he has Physical Mirror, he's a mage, there are two other mages, there are even more Crusaders after that, the Crusaders respawn, there are two golems, I have no room to maneuver, this is a no-reload run, etc.), but I still buff up Frisk for two reasons: first, there's always a chance I'll screw something up and make everyone attack us, and second, I need 100% magic resistance to avoid a Maze trap (note that Minor Spell Deflection won't block level 8 or 9 spells and is therefore useless against Maze). Hephernaan leaves his room and starts wandering around after I poison the supplies.
The Maze trap fails against our MR, but I discover that the other chest can't be forced open even with 25 Strength. Fortunately, it turns out we can rest, allowing us to cast Knock!
I talk to Hephernaan to trigger the dialogue that allows us to head down the elevator and escape. On the way out, I finally kill Strunk, having been unable to do so earlier. As always, Arrows of Dispelling followed by Acid Arrows mean death for almost any mage in SoD.
Before I return to the Coalition Camp, I visit the Killer Mimic cave and spend 11 charges from the Wand of Monster Summoning and do a lot of micromanagement to get the Bow of the Banshee, the second-best longbow in SoD behind Corinth's Bow.
SoD items are so much more interesting than the boring crap you get in BG1, but they're not so overpowered as BG2 items.
Next up, the Coalition Camp invasion. @Harpagornis has found that it's very easy to lose this fight in LoB mode because the enemy waves come almost simultaneously if you let any of the enemies reach the barrels by Andrus to the south. You can't just spam the Wand of Monster Summoning and expect things to turn out okay; you need to keep the enemy from wandering around the camp. We summon some critters, but off-screen catapults make spellcasting difficult.
For the first wave, composed of trolls and ogres, we deploy the skeletons sent by the Coldhearth lich, whose support we won earlier. We need to deal lots of damage very fast in order to overcome the enemy, so we open with Greater Malison and then shoot a whole bunch of Arrows of Detonation at 4 attacks per round. The skeletons have no resistance to fire, but they take less damage than the enemy due to their missile damage resistances (Arrows of Detonation deal 1d6 missile damage and get all standard damage bonuses.
The skeletons get crushed, but they survive long enough to hold the enemy in place until we reduce every enemy to ash.
We use Dosia to rest Frisk and get back our spells.
The second wave is the easiest. We bring in the Coalition Wizard Slayers and Inquisitors and fire a stream of Arrows of Dispelling. The enemy struggles to maintain its defenses or get its spells off the ground.
There are still enough mages for some of them to pose a threat, and one of them dispels Frisk's defenses, prompting us to drink a new Potion of Invulnerability, but we hold the advantage just by keeping up the pressure.
The enemy disintegrates.
For the first time ever, we actually get our hands on a Robe of the Goodmagi--a valuable find, and also a grim reminder, as it was before, that our enemies are not actually evil.
We rest again, but it seems the burden was too heavy for Dosia to bear.
Feels bad, man.
The third wave is a whole battalion of clerics and paladins. Greater Malison and Slow are a must, but our skeletons aren't doing too well against all of the enemy's attacks.
We have to replace them with critters from the Wand of Monster Summoning. The enemy can cast Remove Fear and Remove Paralysis, but they have no cure nor any immunities to confusion.
Making progress is difficult, though. The enemy has lots of Mass Cure spells, which heal 1d8+20 HP to the whole group thanks to LoB level bonuses.
We apply Emotion: Hopelessness, another disabler the enemy for which the enemy has neither an immunity nor a cure. But the enemy lands a Dispel Magic on us, which I did not realize was possible, and so Frisk has to drink another Potion of Invulnerability to boost their AC and avoid getting chopped up.
Then I see the problem. Rhayla, the enemy leader, can cast Remove Magic, and she removes Frisk's defenses once again. Growing desperate to end the fight before we get overwhelmed, we resort to Arrows of Detonation, which I had hoped to save.
It's not enough. I can't take down the enemies right next to me using Arrows of Detonation without hurting myself and the Coalition mages, and even the AC from a Potion of Invulnerability isn't enough to stop the enemy from landing critical hits.
For the first time ever, I equip Kiel's Helmet and drink from Durlag's Goblet before slipping away and letting the mages tank the enemy. I spam the Wand of Monster Summoning and shoot down Rhayla before she causes any more trouble, keeping Frisk just a few feet away from the enemy.
We make progress, but the enemy gradually gets closer to Frisk, forcing us to retreat further to the east.
But the herd thins, until finally the last Crusader fails a save against the Wand of Paralyzation. The third wave is over.
Now that we've pushed back all three waves, the bosses are coming in. But as @Harpagornis has pointed out, Auziel and Garrus are immortal in this fight provided that they survived the previous waves, and since we never deployed either the Coalition thieves or archers, both Auziel and Garrus are on hand to tank the enemy indefinitely.
But I don't fully trust Auziel to occupy the enemy's attention forever, so I contribute from afar, even firing some precious Arrows of Detonation on the off chance that the bosses make their move on Frisk.
We keep up the pressure with arrows, scrolls, and the Wand of Monster Summoning, and eventually the last boss falls. The invasion is over.
We march on Dragonspear Castle and watch the Barrel of Bwoosh blast the front gate to splinters. The smell of gunpowder fills us with determination.
Trio EE attempt 5, update 123 4 Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
A 21 day break for the trio. Davaeorn has been waiting, wishes he hadn't.
We celebrate with roast chicken, although a few stragglers are tenderised by warhammer before being skewered.
The Brawlers of Undermountain were also tenderised and skewered.
We then eliminated some guardians and their master.
Evas demonstrates the essence of ennui.
Then on to the Iron Throne HQ. It's somewhat one-sided as the three of us play to our strengths, and our enemies don't.
After being arrested in Candlekeep we make our escape despite poison and thugs.
No party deaths today. A reasonable distribution in our mini-game of avoidance where we each were cornered a couple of times by onlookers insistent on talking to us.
Sadly I lost a post with about four hours of playtime, including my most recent kill count for assassins (8, I think), and a bit of background into Jericho's spell list and undead turning talents that you will now never know and could not possibly deduce from context.
We rejoin our heroes as Verr'Sza dies, increasing the party's reputation to 19. Dorn, being an idiot, leaves the party as a result, increasing the party's reputation to 20.
What the heck happened to vengeance, Dorn? Now I have to troop up to the Friendly Arm to recover your derpy purple ass to come right back here to kill the necromancer you want to kill?
Whatever, I have a Friends spell and 20 reputation, I'll be getting infinite wealth in Beregost on my way to get you and waving to Sirene, who already killed you and rejoined the party once. Stupid Sirene.
One weirdness so far is that Jericho has not dreamt once, despite hitting Nashkel via the Brage express weeks ago.
Jericho might not know Remove Fear, but Dorn does. People assassinated for evil party members: 3.
Annnnd back to our regularly scheduled Paladin.
After a close call, experimentation demonstrates that Polymorph Self is apparently bugged and not giving Mustard Jelly non-magical weapon immunity.
I have no idea if this is because of one of my mods, but it is dreadfully inconvenient. Now slime form is only immune to anything dealing piercing or lightning damage, or casting spells unless Jericho expends two or maybe three more spells.
Life is so hard, etc.
On the good/bad bugs territory, I'm assuming the same change to the spell also made it possible to turn into a Boring Beetle, or more importantly, try and fail to do so while in spider form to get haste on demand.
Meh. Even after removing the override version still no weapon immunity, even though it's still right there in the description. This better not be one of those idiotic "balance" things where it's "only in BG2".
For the record I haven't seen these gnolls, and have no clue why they're fighting.
Neera's greyed out corpse portrait looks fabulous if I say so myself. It's a good thing she has 20 HP with her throwing dagger so I get to see it whenever an enemy so much as looks at her.
Dropping a snowball on the barricade appears to have triggered a civil war among goblinkind.
Assassin kills - 12, by the way, swung by Gullykin on my way here.
Red Wizard Kills - 3. Guess they didn't get the memo that little miss wild mage is now dropping -4 save or holds. Or Jericho FFVIIIing them with extreme prejudice with Icicle Lance.
Sigh. Clearly not just the non-magical weapons then. "Immune to stun, sleep, fear, poison, petrification, confusion, charm, paralysis, level drain, and non-magical weapons". Right there in the description. Sirenes should be literally incapable of doing much more than 1 point of damage to a jelly. They close fun exploits while leaving in bugs I reported almost two years ago. *Grumble grumble.*
Mages can still use the Shadowfire Wand for x3 targeting. Notionally this costs 10 HP per use, but naturally I never actually use a single charge.
Jericho's stat total: 100.
Snowball is astoundingly powerful for a level 2 spell, cleric or otherwise. I have a sneaking suspicion it's doing the full 7D6 damage it should be doing to fire based enemies rather than the 7D3 damage it says it does to everyone else.
Assassin kills - 14
Assassin kills - 16.
Spike Growth - 1D4 slashing, 1D4 piercing per round, lasts a turn, 30' area. Arguably better than Ice Storm in most circumstances. There's also a 2D4 piercing with slowing effects I could use, but it's just over half the area size and piercing is lame.
Jericho's stat total: 103. And what a sickeningly well rounded individual he is.
I'm not quite sure why Dark Horizons randomly added a group of ogres to the map east of the gnoll stronghold. There are few enemy types I'd say are as well represented in Baldur's Gate I as ogres, and one of those begins with a "K".
A bag of holding full of Ankheg shells isn't just great for dumping into the inventory of terrified or confused party mates. Overload a character so they cannot move, and they will be able to initiate conversation with any character at range so long as they can see them. This lets you talk to Drienne straight from the waterfall base without having to walk.
I assume @semiticgod has better ways to abuse this than avoiding annoying walks of course.
If you ever doubted that no-reloads were not a priority for the developers of Baldur's Gate, look no further than the random travel encounters. Thank Eliastraee or whoever Jericho is a druid of that he took out a bunch with sleep before they could focus fire someone to death.
Here's a weird one. Ice Blade summoned in his right hand, his hammer in his left hand: Jericho has no TWF penalty at all. Ashideena is even giving him +11 to hit to ensure that. Summoned weapons are weird.
Oh, and Assassin Kills - 17.
Assassin Kills - 23.
I would say that this was snowball being brutal, but honestly these guys kind of suck against spells. Their boss only has 36 HP and is, for some weird reason, a Mage in full plate with an axe and a THAC0 of 3.
Checking his files he has thief skills and 20 Con, so it's most likely he's supposed to be Fighter/Thief, the entry right next to Mage, and someone just got sloppy.
Moral: Slapping on +4 plate armour and +3 weapons on your 20 HP assassins doesn't make them tough, it makes them loot pinatas for a fireball or two.
@Pantalion: For lack of a better phrase for the trick, I've found one major use for the "weigh down a party member until they can't move so they can talk to critters without walking up to them" trick. During the Coalition Camp invasion in SoD, the cleric Dosia can rest or heal the party, but getting close enough to speak with her also trigger Andrus' dialogue, which begins the timer for the next wave of enemies to come in. With the right positioning, you can use that trick to speak with Dosia without speaking to Andrus, which would let you, say, restore a bunch of level 2 spell slots and use them to pre-cast Web on the spot where the Crusader clerics and paladins are set to spawn.
Didn't see him til he was dead, but that didn't stop him from yelling at the party and summoning reinforcements. Silence really is the best way.
Assassin Kill Count - Twenty-Seven.
Jericho stat total - 106. Not quite a maximum roll yet, or a huge deal for the 1 APR Jericho, but eh, not like I was going to use it on an NPC.
What's that, twenty-eight now? Spattered like roadkill and not even a crit.
Helping!
Softening up her fiends before dropping skull traps from around the corner. Once they were gone, she was pasted in melee by Rasaad of all people.
Now this may well get me killed, but apparently Dark Horizons also adds extra floors to Ulcaster, with the entrance where Jericho is standing, guarded by ghost wizards, which are clearly the worst kinds of wizards.
Wizard #1. I let her talk, wish I hadn't.
Two Mages in my party, however, is easy mode, because she is not fire immune. Ghost Wizards killed: 1.
I was concerned that Jericho's frost heavy loadout would give him trouble with all the undead, but apparently Burning Dead have been hanging out down here, burning, for however many hundreds of years.
You'd have thought eventually they'd have stop dropped and rolled, but it's all fine by me, free arrows of detonation.
Death Knight: Completely magic immune, causes poison on hit, drops fireballs on things to be a jerk. Not, however, missile immune, so lead it into a pile of snares.
Thankfully most things aren't fire immune or magic immune, so not dead yet.
Even running through a dungeon blind, scouting rooms with fireball is generally your best bet. Possibly not when you're on a rescue mission though. That didn't turn out well.
Ghost Knights apparently aren't nearly as tough as Death Knights, which is probably for the best, since they die to two fireballs. Garrett the Ghost Wizard dies to the third.
Since everything is giving multiple thousands of experience, the party is actually levelling pretty quickly.
The biggest problem in this CK tomb ripoff is that the trap difficulty appears to be so high that even Aura's 105 Find Traps isn't sufficient, so she's just been tripping them at random. It was only by chugging a potion between the last salvo of traps hitting her that she didn't die.
Now, Jericho does have Find Traps, but that would involve mingling with the help, so... Off you trot, Aura!
Damn you, AI.
It also turned out to be a dead end, so the whole bit was pointless injury, and I actually sold all my regular healing potions awhile back for space, so.... Yeah.
Lolwut ring of lolwut.
People love to spell mythological figures' names backwards. They think they're being clever.
Also: Fireball scouting. Totally the best. Ghost Wizard Kill Count: 4, though I have a sneaking suspicion there was one I forgot to count.
Pretty sure Aura died because her potion of fortitude ran out after resting. Darn, I guess this means Rasaad is the next in line to disarm traps with his face.
In the same tomb as the ultra ring, this necklace only summons infinite Greater Wyverns, one per round for the rest of time. Each of the wyverns also drops a head, so yeah, infinite gold too.
And the final reward:
Also two tomes, not yet id'd, but given the usual penchant for copying layout, probably Strength and Wisdom.
Shoooock. Jericho's Stat Total: 112. I think next character is going to have to have a few strategic dump stats to ensure that the +9/+12 isn't wasted.
In the same tomb as the ultra ring, this necklace only summons infinite Greater Wyverns, one per round for the rest of time. Each of the wyverns also drops a head, so yeah, infinite gold too.
The Amulet of Wyvren [sic] Summoning! I think I used that in the Undergate run. It's even more overpowered than it sounds; it can single-handedly win BG1 and almost all of SoD. Just remember that the wyverns are not immune to disablers and a confused wyvern can easily turn the tide of battle.
Note that the Ulcaster amulet doesn't actually grant any magic resistance; just the level 4 and 5 mage spell slots.
Hi all, after he was completely disgraced Stirkus briefly did one or two sidequests in the back of beyond like the Silent Swamps, and one or two more dangerous encounters like the Guarded Compound before jumping on the boat. I imagine that the divinations the Order of Aster performed to Lathander were somewhat more carefully phrased than the Order of the Radiant Heart's. Branwen was taken along, but Imoen has not yet recovered from the loss of her soul and so is recuperating until later. Eventually she'll come in for Nalia.
We successfully made our way through Spellhold, and even survived the crazies summoning multiple hostile Glabezrus on top of us. However it has so far been spellcasters who have come closest to ending this run, Perth fried about half the party with a triple chain lightning trigger.... Irenicus was less troublesome. In my install I have Watcher's Keep blocked off, XP reduced, and HLAs delayed for all until ToB so no Planetars to deal with this time. Hopefully we'll keep on going for a good while yet before some wizard catches us out.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 149 part 12345 6 Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Another journal-less session. We'd started in the Copper Coronet so it made sense to clear the sewers and stamp out slavery.
With that done, Zepp headed to Watchers Keep in search of a potion case. Once there, she remembered we already had it. Oh well, might as well poke around inside then.
Then on to Trademeet and the Druid Grove. Limited fire attacks (flaming sword) and careless disregard for buffing the kensai failed to stop our progress even with a couple of near death moments for Fiery.
When that was over we helped Aran Linvail lose Mook and picked up a mace to upgrade at the end of the session.
Bah. Another lost post thanks to Chrome crashing my computer.
We rejoin our nominal heroes after permanently losing Neera to a teleportation malfunction and giving up on Durlag's which I was doing primarily to get her up to level 5 spells. I still got a better tower shield, which after a close call being focus fired by Black Talon Elites, now has Jericho's ranged AC somewhere around bedrock.
Assassin tally: 37.
I hate this particular encounter. It's a map transition, so buffs are gone, there's a cleric spamming Flame Strike every round, and the primary assassin hits like a freight train.
41, since I was in the area after turning in the wyvern quest.
49. Technically half of them are Black Talon commanders, but I'm taking it.
She can technically cast fireball runes now, but setting snares from around the corner is more fun. She does have one major advantage though - her magic missile runes can target invisible creatures.
I hate this encounter too. You can't help but be clustered on the stairs, and bam, arrow of detonation right up in your grill. If Neera was still alive I'd nuke the whole room from orbit twice in the first round. It's the only way to be sure.
53 assassins dead.
Killed Dave with spikes, got the chapter transition, then my computer died after being left to its own devices for the afternoon. I then pre-buffed to fight Dave, only to realise that it had autosaved at the chapter change. Yay?
If druids count as assassins, then add six to the running total. Hate druids so much.
Mustard Jelly may not be immune to non-magical weapons, but it sure is immune to uppity Durlag's rejects and their short swords.
Having genocided the entire map last time, Jericho's seer powers allow him to bypass the vast majority of each level. It took a single rest to get this deep, and that's because I didn't want to risk running out of polymorph time while I was there.
Globe of Invulnerability vs Spike Growth: Spike Growth wins in duration, giving me an indicator of when to bust out the fireballs.
Assassin Kill Count: Triple digits.
Left the blue circles on the top floor alive, and sure enough, the entire floor attacks once you get up there.
Romance opening: Not restricted to out of dungeons, any rest. Romance conclusion conversation: Restricted to out of dungeons.
This is the result.
Also, kicked Coran (likely temporarily, Assassins suck) to try my hand at the boss boss fight with Nikita.
Shadow Adept kill count: 4.
Stupid Dorn and his bugs had me walking back and forth, kicking him, recruiting him, and ultimately reloading to get his script to fire right.
Jericho Stat Total: 115.
Another pixel hunt for the entrance. In the end I actually had to check the areas included in the mod, find the first map of the area, then leave to actually find where it is, because the transition area is unintuitively on the very edge of the building's roof.
This seems like a good place to stop the post since DH stuff likes to crash my machine and make me lose everything. Into Oversight, which hopefully features Tracer and Winston.
We have battled our way towards the underground river. Dynaheir was killed in an area where there was no magic and a number of stealthy enemies. We got our revenge and all of them were killed, then as soon as she could Jaheira used Harper's Call. In the cave in Dead Man's Pass both Safana and Thorin were badly injured and had to retreat to where Jaheira and Tenya could heal them in safety.
The rest of the party crushed the enemy after which we all had a good night's rest.
This is the first time that I've been in that cave. It was a challenge but one which will be easier now I know what enemies have to be faced.
Having wandered through the three story blue circle town, our intrepid sextet find themselves in a room packed with enemies with one of those enemies trying to talk to them.
So they nip into the neighbouring room. Just because I allow the boss character to talk doesn't mean I'm an idiot.
Need more buffs, so... Time to kip out and let the rest of his party die horribly. Absolute floods of enemies, I should probably have just fought upwards instead.
Trapped inside this single room by the endless hordes. Time to YOLO, methinks.
Resist fear is not a self buff, and breaks invisibility. Whoopsy.
Wellp, this one was completely my fault. Besides breaking invisibility and being forced to spam Scorcher to break through the endless zerg rush of enemies, I neglected to cast Shield earlier when buffing since I underestimated just how many Magic Missile spamming mages there would be. Either the last mage that appeared cast Magic Missile twice in a single round, or there was a second one I couldn't see. Either way, that was his last 7 HP.
Next time through I'll be trapping every room beforehand before triggering the fight on my terms, being cornered upstairs was brutal.
DB90 had to decide if the risk in facing the unseeing eye before spellhold was worth taking.. beeing a greedy NE dwarf the answer was obviously yes yes yes
With the shield of balduran and rage the encounter was in favour of the greedy. I had fully buffed for the unseeing eye, but that match ended quickly when the eye buffed with stoneskin instead of mantle...
The sewer mob was thrashed too, whilst still buffed from the unseeing eye fight.
I decided that BD90 needed some xp and money before taking on the dragons and the spheres. The human flesh was also desired.. so off to spellhold.
In Brynlaw Perth was killed, and spellhold rushed. Raging and rushing Irenicus won the fight easily
The greedy dwarf caried the loot from spellhold of to sell... in the city of caverns. He was carrying so much he couldnt help fight the Fish people at the ship - indeed a greedy dwarf. The sale netted more than 100.000 gp, so hoarding works.
Besides picking up a nice cloak, nothing of interest happened in the caverns. A maze trap was avoided due to raging - neat..
In the underdark low risk encounters was preffered.
And some high risks as well
The hive mother was taken on with a PfM scroll on top of the shield of Balduran. So in the end no risk... The main quest in ust Natha went well - talkblocking Kalo Taso (off course).
My first dragon was killed to get the much needed dragon blood
Saves -8 against spells... nice
Back in Amn Bodhi and dragon was taken care off. Still missing Firkraag and the Planar sphere and WK, DB90 will hit the level cap soon.
But facing the level cap always make me loose interest in a character, so I left DB in Amn for a while and started a half orc beserker instead - whilst trying to rekindle my interest in DB90.... I have come to some peace with him, but we have agreed the he needs to obtain and use the deck of many things. It could be epic - and certainly stupid
With the relative success of Jericho, my latest, soon to be late, foray into the world of mortality is rather more focused, with a new portrait made, for +1 to luck.
See Jack.
See Jack level.
Level, Jack, Level!
Jack is a Druid/Mage -> Monitor of Azuth, giving him a slightly different array of spells than his previous Sunite -> Druid blend, as well as actual class features(!), getting +1 CL to both Mage and Cleric for every 5 cleric levels, theoretically keeping him broadly on par with a single class caster level until late game. and a +1 cast speed boost in keeping with him being a magical enforcer to preserve the sanctity of the weave.
Which probably means I won't be making him into a Shadow Adept. Heresy and all. Imoen on the other hand...
Anyways, still no turn undead, thanks to his druid roots (hah), and his spellcasting is a tad... limited right now with his 12 Wisdom, but his stats (a respectable 96 roll) have been carefully crafted to get him no stat lower than 20 by the end of SoA with Strength and Wisdom both hitting 25.
Bonus silliness:
The watery lass talking is talking to a Sea Elf, and calling him Drylander. See Jack forgive the plothole in exchange for a +2 Throwing Dagger that will be his primary weapon until SoA.
Jack clicked the wrong place on the ground and had to start from Candlekeep again as a result. A dreadful fate that resulted in better HP rolls and not whiffing the basilisk map by triggering Mutamin. Hate the early game.
So... uh... Apparently a bunch of my mod NPCs installed prior to BGNPC have doubled up due to me leaving EE Keeper open when installing the new Shadow Magic version. I'm sure this will not do anything to create massively epic confrontations later.
If nothing else, I have a spare Sirene and Aura laying around.
Shades, which were already brutally powerful summons, now have an AI that induces them to actually use their spells, making them even more batloony ridiculous*.
Three shades dropping negative energy ray almost killed Jack outright, and that was just the first round of damage.
Victory regardless. The Shadows are indoors killing Jack's summoned beetles. Time to bring Garrick to meet his destiny.
* For reference how batloony the shade summons are:
One level 4 spell gives at least: 9 level 1 spells, 6 level 2 spells:
3 x Blind save or -2. 6 x Essence Drain - Level 4 shadows drain 4 HP and deal 4 magic damage. 3 x Dread Silence - save at -5 or silenced. 3 x Negative Energy Ray - 3D6 magical damage, no save, -1 AC, THAC0, and Damage for 1 turn, damage and debuff happen again the next round for 6D6 magical damage.
And obviously three shadows gives three spells cast per round, while being 34 HP critters with 100% resistance to Cold and Electricity, non-magical weapons, and the con drain chance of casting their spells, with 1D8 slashing backed by 18 Strength, with a duration of 2 hours.
At 9th level, an easy feat within the TotSC cap, this becomes Shadow Fiends, which only have 13 Strength, but paralyse targets on hit, have 59 HP each, and CL 5 along with complete immunity to Acid, Cold, Fire, and 30% physical resistant (giving the summon effectly 230 HP's worth of "tank" per cast).
6 x Blind 9 x Essence Drain - drains 6 HP now, each. 3 x Dread Silence 6 x Negative Energy Ray 6 x Shadow Walk (flavoured dimension door) Lvl 3 3 x Impose (3d6 crushing, stun 1 round, no saving throw, no MR). Lvl 3 3 x Lifedrinker Touch - Glorified Vampiric Touch. 2D6 magical damage drain plus 3 stat points drained too, added to the caster. Lvl 3
Take the resilience of Animate Dead, utility of Call Woodland Beings, add a dash of Summon Ghast, and the sheer number of the wand of monster summoning. It probably should summon just the one instead of three. And it goes all the way up to Devil Shades.
Comments
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 3: Baldur's Gate
When we return to the Iron Throne to deal with Cythandria, everyone who used to be at the top vanishes with a weird string displayed as they vanish. But there are no strings for the male and female Shennara thief clones, and a quick save confirms that they're still around, ready to kill Frisk with a backstab. I send out some summons and confirm that the thieves could kill Frisk in a single blow.But the Wand of Monster Summoning is enough to take them down. The Shennara clones might have excellent damage output, but only as long as they remain invisible: they can land instant kills on a few critters, but after that, they're just normal thieves.
Charming Cythandria does not work well; her saves are excellent and her status as a half-elf gives her another 30% resistance to charms. I send in some monsters, but the situation looks really, really ugly. The Wand of Monster Summoning is not going to work well in this fight.
I wait out Cythandria's pre-buffs and then prod her with some more summons, but I have to go invisible when the golems come wandering over.
Cythandria torches my summons, but at least we're draining her spells.
Even so, I don't like this situation. Frisk's defenses are nil and I don't exactly have the resources to maintain them in a fight like this where I'm banking on our ability to wait out Cythandria's buffs; this is a low-pressure situation where short-term defenses offer little protection and need to be re-applied more times than we can in a single rest period. I keep throwing out summons, keeping a close eye out for Cythandria in case she approaches Frisk and tries a potentially game-ending enchantment spell. All the while, the golems completely outclass our summons.
Frisk keeps burning charges and runs to the corners for safety. We don't seem to be making any progress.
But eventually, I realize that Cythandria must have run out of spells by now. I approach her and start contributing to the fight instead of letting our summons do everything.
To my surprise, Cythandria has no response; the enemy just keeps fighting it out. Cythandria flees the fight and we get Sarevok's diary.
I know Cythandria is optional, but I like to get the diary anyway, because I'm not sure which documents Belt/Liia Jannath accept as an alternative and I'm afraid I'll enter the Ducal Palace without having the proof I need.
To the Undercellars! Because the Overcellars are played out. As always, Quenash takes Slythe's first backstab and gets shanked.
If it's possible to get the Cloak of Balduran by talking to Quenash or performing a quest, I don't know and don't really need to know.
I keep Frisk at a safe distance and let the summons absorb Krystin's spells, but we get a scare when Slythe aims for Frisk.
We fall back and Slythe switches targets, and the fight goes on. The Wand of Monster Summoning is expensive to use, but it's very effective. More importantly, it's basically the only tool Frisk has.
SCS mages sometimes teleport to you to get around your summons, but we've been hoarding Potions of Invisibility for just these kind of situations.
I flee to the northeast and discover that a confused summons has turned the local courtesans hostile, but no one has been killed, so our reputation remains intact. I wait until Krystin's buffs run out and then resume the fight.
Krystin appears to be enjoying the endless surge of meat shields. And for all the wrong reasons.
Five charges of the Wand of Monster Summoning prove sufficient to take Slythe down, with another brief scare when Slythe targeted Frisk.
Since I don't know where Krystin is, I have Frisk go invisible before we hunt her down. As you may have been expecting, we use the Wand of Monster Summoning against Krystin. Seriously, it's not like a level 5 mage has any other tools at their disposal.
But with Krystin so drained, it's all we really need to bring her down.
We bankrupt the party buying wands and Arrows of Dispelling and Detonation. We'll need them in SoD. Thanks to EET, we can revisit Durlag's Tower in SoD when we need Durlag's Goblet and the other WIS tome, so there is nothing left in BG1 for us. It's time to take down Sarevok.
We charm Ithtyl, a high-level sorcerer waitress, and take her on a date to the Ducal Palace. She turns Liia Jannath invisible so Frisk doesn't have to break their own invisibility and fog their aura at the same time. It means Frisk will have a clear aura about 3 seconds earlier than normal.
The fight starts out well, with the enemy mage getting disrupted. The assassin could take out half of Frisk's HP in one backstab, but it's pretty ineffectual against our summons if it doesn't get a good roll.
With Greater Malison and two castings of Chaos from Ithtyl and Frisk (Frisk uses scrolls; they can't cast level 4 or 5 spells), we disable three doppelgangers, including the shaman.
But Slow doesn't get us anything, and the mage manages to get Remove Magic off the ground. Frisk takes cover in an adjacent room and takes a Potion of Magic Shielding right after it hits, the only potion that will guarantee immunity to enchantment spells.
Our summons make more progress on the doppelgangers, but another Chaos spell has little effect, and the mage brings out some summons. The mage throws Minute Meteors at Frisk, who escapes with a Potion of Invisibility despite having lots of HP left. Belt doesn't have those options.
Frisk slips away from the mage and manages to stun one of the doppelgangers on the second try with a Wand of Paralyzation, but before they could do much damage dual-wielding a club and dagger, the mage teleported over, prompting Frisk to flee and hide once more.
But the enemy has worn thin, and soon the only remaining threat is the mage. Ithtyl helps tear down its Stoneskins using her darts and switches to her fists when her dagger breaks. Our summons recover from a Horror spell and join in, and shortly after they vanish, Ithyl knocks out the mage with a wicked haymaker. Frisk brains it with a rock, and the fight is won.
We surround Sarevok with some critters and throw rocks at him until he teleports away. A couple potions grant Frisk immunity to the traps in the maze and we sneak past the Undercity party.
Sarevok awaits us. We are filled with determination.
Of course it's not the difficulty so much as the endurance aspect, one misstep and things go from "cakewalk" to "Would you like to reload or quit?" in seconds. Which is why I've got a permanent mind shield from Psypher (a bargain at 8 max HP) and the ring of free action glued to his finger. Once he gets to Chapter 5 I'm seriously considering abandoning Evermemory for the anti-poison/disease elven talisman.
This cheapskate offers 50 GP less per pelt than the Nashkel store.
But offers waaaay higher regular sale prices on what he accepts. When I get 20 reputation I could be making infinite gold by cycling Laeral's Tear necklaces here.
Also he sells a bow which...
Fires magic missiles! Also can be used by Cavaliers. It still needs a to hit roll for the missiles to land, making it actually one of the less overpowered weapons in the mod, and gives me a way to keep her dumb face from wandering into Scorcher beams, which is fantastic.
Oh right, probably should have talked to him first. Ah well.
Sigh.
Aura is a well written, interesting character with some interesting mechanics. There are times, however, when I feel she's just intended to be a little too "special". Maybe it's the pink hair, maybe it's the special coloured eyes, maybe it's that she's totally kawaii
JapaneseKozakuran Mahou Shoujo (Ai) girl who picks up magical signatures better than mages, feels spiritual things better than clerics, and is smarter than everyone about everything.Whatever, she gives you a unique 1/day magic frost wand for this maze so I guess she can brag a little, just don't forget who's carrying this team, missy!
Damn right. Summons.
That feeling when your scripted cheat spell teleports your paralysed ass right into the midst of the enemy party.
Well played, Aura. Panic because of the dead bear next to you, and run into the lightning trap I sent you to disarm.
Oh Peldvale, you and your Cloakwood random encounters. I also got attacked by Ettercaps travelling back to the Temple to raise Aura right after this.
The worst I've had is still Larswood <-> Mutamin's Garden though. There is nothing good about a Greater Basilisk spawning within Gaze range of your CHARNAME.
Somehow being glowing puce did not help Valentine in his attempts at stealth.
Blah blah blah end of chapter confrontation. Didn't even have to recast images, and the mage tried horror, which was pointless against his prebuffed Remove Fear from Sirene.
Blah blah assassins.
Given all the web traps it's actually safer and easier to just send Val ahead to blast everything apart with fireballs. This is also the moment I've been waiting for since he turned Shadow Adept, because that Ankh right there?
Sets alignment to True Neutral when worn, meaning he gets Ka the bard familiar, whose song drops enemy luck. He also has a ranged weapon to keep him out of the way when I'm not abusing that particular trait.
Weirdly he's resistant to lightning, rather than fire, which is different to the usual shades, but as with all Shadow Familiars he's utterly expendable, so standing next to enemies about to eat fireballs is a given.
I think I could be getting into the Section assassin HQ if I wandered around the crossroads at this point, but there's one thing I really need to pick up from Baldur's Gate first, which means Cloakwood Mines must drown in sorrow.
And water.
Hm. I should probably pick up the Ring of Fire Resistance cache too, since I keep forgetting and can't remember where the proper one is. Ho hum.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 4: Baldur's Gate
As dangerous as SCS Sarevok is, there's actually an extremely safe strategy for tackling him due to a gap in the AI. I learned it from @Grond0:1. Lure Sarevok into the southeast corner of the map and go invisible before he reaches you. Tazok, Diarmid, and Semaj will run over to join him.
2. Without entering the field of vision of Sarevok, Tazok, Diarmid or Semaj, take down Angelo, who has not followed Sarevok and remains in the north. Kill the Skeleton Warrior when Angelo goes down.
3. Wait until Diarmid's Protection from Magic scroll wears off (two in-game hours/120 rounds/600 real-time seconds/two uses of CTRL-T).
4. Launch Fireballs at Sarevok and company from out of their field of vision. They won't go looking for you; you can spam Fireballs until they die.
5. When Sarevok is alone, engage him, using summons, backstabs, or kiting to bring him down.
It reduces a lot of the risk in the fight, but we still need to be careful around Angelo because of his mage spells.
Any means of invisibility will work for the first step, but since Frisk has no access to Stoneskin and could easily get disrupted when casting a spell, the only safe method is a potion.
Next, we need to kill Angelo. We use quick-save to determine a safe spot to hide and then wait out his defenses while hidden.
Angelo has high-level disablers and excellent damage output, so we don't want to get Frisk anywhere near him until we drain his spells. Frisk summons some critters, goes invisible, and sends the summons to Angelo one at a time.
Like Tazok, Angelo uses a nonmagical longsword, and it's not long before it breaks.
We keep sending out summons to fight Angelo one by one, and Angelo wastes his most powerful spells on cheap summons.
We then wait out his next set of buffs and send some more critters out to fight him. We stick to the northeast corner since he's gotten too close to the southwest corner.
It takes many rounds, but without his spells or his sword, Angelo is doomed. It takes more work to kill the Skeleton Warrior that replaces him, but it has no ranged options, so Frisk is safe.
Time to Fireball the survivors. I belatedly remember to cast Greater Malison via scroll (you can buy 20 Chaos and Greater Malison scrolls from Sorcerous Sundries) to boost the damage from each Fireball, but foolishly use a Chaos scroll, causing Diarmid to wander into our field of vision. Now that I've screwed up the bombing campaign, I'm forced to use the Wand of Monster Summoning so Frisk doesn't get swarmed.
Fortunately, Semaj is also confused and his defenses are down, so Frisk can use the Wand of Fire to burn him down before he can cast a spell at us.
I re-apply Chaos to keep Diarmid confused and prevent him from using his arrows on Frisk, but the Wand of Monster Summoning isn't getting much done. The enemy is really strong if you don't isolate Sarevok with Fireballs properly.
It takes 6 charges from the Wand of Monster Summoning to kill Tazok, and even then, we're still in trouble. Diarmid is no longer confused and is firing off Acid Arrows, and when our summons run thin and Frisk becomes Diarmid's newest target, our only means of survival is another Potion of Invisibility.
Frisk buffs with Protection from Acid scrolls before engaging the enemy again. We try stunning Diarmid with the Wand of Paralyzation, and while we get a failed save...
...he keeps attacking. Diarmid is immune to stun, whether because of an equipped item or a potion. Instead, we're going to have to just rely on our summons to bring him down. Frisk spams the Wand of Monster Summoning while running from two Skeleton Warriors at once.
But Frisk takes too much damage in the process, so we head south to break down the Skeleton Warriors separately from Sarevok and Diarmid.
We go back to throwing meat shields at Diarmid, but when Frisk lands a successful Horror spell on Diarmid, the archer goes running and we torch him with the Wand of Fire while he's helpless to fight back.
We destroy the last of the Skeleton Warriors, use a Potion of Invisibility to escape Sarevok's reach, and turn our attention to our final target. But CTRL-M shows us that Sarevok will take a long time to take down.
But we have far more Wand of Monster Summoning charges than we need to bring him down, and Sarevok's only response is to keep tanking them.
After spending 12 charges of the wand on Sarevok, we finally slay him.
Algernon's Cloak. The Wand of Monster Summoning. The Wand of Fire. Potions of Invisibility. That's our entire strategy for BG1 in a nutshell, and it's pretty much the only one that could possibly work for a level 5 mage.
But now Frisk is in SoD, and can finally use their built-up XP to recover their Archer levels.
Suddenly remembering how to wear a helmet for the first time in weeks due to the stupid logic of dual-classing fills us with determination.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 5: Siege of Dragonspear
Frisk has suddenly become far more powerful than ever before, but it's really not enough for the first dungeon of SoD. The enemy absolutely crushes our summons, and the enemy thief here, unlike Slythe, is smart enough to go straight for Frisk. And due to speeding through BG1 and ignoring many optional quests, Frisk has no Stoneskin to protect them from backstabs.The Helm of Balduran would have blocked a critical hit, so dying in a single shot to a backstab is not possible. But losing half our HP in a single attack is a very bad sign. Frisk uses a Potion of Invisibility and heals themself while blocking the enemy from crossing the bridge.
We use a Wand of Monster Summoning charge to hold off the enemies, but an archer slips through and attacks from behind. We take a swing at him with a scimitar and scare him away, at which point one of the Flaming Fist soldiers to the south engages him.
The enemy cuts down our summons in short order, forcing us to burn multiple charges. Frisk has strong damage output with a longbow, but the enemy has lots of HP and outnumbers us, so progress isn't nearly as fast as I'd hope.
Somehow the thief slips through the gaps and lands another backstab, and Frisk goes deeper into the red than we've ever been in this run.
The thief uses Shadowstep and goes invisible once again. Another backstab would easily be fatal, but Frisk just barely escapes with another Potion of Invisibility.
This is a really bad sign. We're only into the first fight of SoD and Frisk is already struggling to survive. We hide with the Flaming Fist soldiers and heal up before opening the door and summoning some more critters. We really need the help.
Frisk goes invisible and waits out the fight. Finally, the enemy crumples.
Porios is next, but to my surprise, he doesn't surrender when we ask. We use a charmed enemy to distract him, and when Porios comes running out of his room, Frisk nails him with an Arrow of Dispelling. He goes running back in, but without his defenses, he doesn't last long.
The rest of the fight is a long slog based largely on the Wand of Monster Summoning and Wand of Paralyzation.
We manage to rest successfully in the same area and use a Protection from Undead scroll to skip most of the next level (invisibility isn't enough; Bonebats see through it). Unfortunately, we still have a batch of humans to deal with, and they also have massive damage output and a massive HP pool.
I wait out the mage's defenses and keep summoning monsters, but the bridge is too wide of a choke point for me to hold them off, and the enemy chases us to the south, forcing us to use yet another Potion of Invisibility out of our increasingly finite supply.
I can't summon any critters in this area without the Shadows turning on them, so I find a safe place to the northwest to keep up the fight. Against all odds, we send four of the enemies running with a single Horror spell.
But the effect is short-lived, and we end up back at the bridge, and unlike Sarevok, the enemy is smart enough to target Frisk with ranged weapons instead of blindly hacking away at cheap summons.
A Shadow has also joined the fight, so Frisk needs to use some of our few +1 arrows to take it down. Even with some Wand of Paralyzation charges to slow down the enemy, it still takes us 14 charges just to end the fight.
At this rate, we're going to go bankrupt very, very soon.
Frisk triggers the Dispel Magic trap south of Korlasz so we don't have to deal with it later. We really need to rest to memorize some higher-level spells to stay safe against Korlasz, but fail several times in the lower level before we succeed upstairs.
To make matters worse, we fail to talk our way past the last of Korlasz's goons and a group of Shadows ambushes us at the same time, forcing us to use another Protection from Undead scroll. And the enemy makes its saves against the Wand of Paralyzation over and over.
Notice the spell failure icon on Frisk's portrait; one of these guys is a Wizard Slayer.
Eventually, we're forced to drink yet another Potion of Invisibility and escape. We resort to the Wand of Monster Summoning once the Shadows are out of the way, and manage to land a charm on one of the enemies.
We've used up far more resources than I expected, but finally the way to Korlasz is clear and we have some decent buffs memorized. I drink a Potion of Invulnerability to block any poisonous arrows or darts or bolts and Darts of Stunning the enemy might have before entering the last room.
The fight is easier than I expected. A couple Arrows of Dispelling and some Acid Arrows are all that we need to convince Korlasz to surrender.
I don't bother collecting most of the loot in the area; I'm too anxious about traps and just want to get out of here. We go bankrupt buying Arrows of Detonation and some scattered potions at Sorcerous Sundries before leaving Baldur's Gate, ignoring a lot of side quests due to not needing the XP. Finally, we arrive at Coast Way Crossing.
We're free! We can go anywhere now; EET lets us revisit BG1 areas in SoD. Our first order of business is collecting some valuable loot from the available NPCs by using some charm spells. Not everyone agrees with our methods, though.
Smells like blood money. We are filled with determination.
Total near misses thus far: Three. All self inflicted with fireballs. I'm not great at placing fireballs unless my zoom level is right.
Also an interesting inversion to my usual policy. Ranger guy spontaneously spawns four greater wyverns if you preemptively torch him. Far, far less dangerous than the two ultra wyverns he spawns on conversation, but still.
I maintain that it was still easier. But since I hate inventory minigame and don't want to spend the next five minutes shuttling things to the corpse in the Wyvern cave right now, so methinks it's time for.... Restartitis! I may pick up the game at another time, but there's a class combination I've wanted to play for years at this point.
Well... overconfidence and a lack of knowledge of some of the "features" of SCS proved to be my downfall.
First things first - We entered the planar sphere, where skeleton warriors basically took down any oppositions. Halflings? No problem. Lavok? Didn't stand a chance. Demons? Well, with the third one, our skeleton army was getting thinned out, but we still had Camalan with his all-negative saves and arsenal of potions at the ready. Golems? Yeah, okay... these weren't dealt with via skeletons, I just made Camalan immune to crushing damage and he killed them by himself. For the mages, we also had backstabs, traps, detect illusions and the like at the ready. Basically, I made my way in and out unscathed and felt kind of invincible - as I often do shortly before my downfall. I even found one of the item randomiser wardstones from the "Kangaxx further sealed away" component, allowing me to take down the shade lich with traps.
Now, how did things go wrong from here? Well, with the new anti-undead weapons from the previous posts at the ready and Ucurian at such a high level, I thought to myself: "let's just pay a quick visit to the bridge district lich." - of course, I was warned that this one was a dangerous foe with SCS, but I was pretty sure Ucurian was high enough level to turn liches (as it turned out, this was only true for randomly spawned liches), I had multiple sunrays and unti-undead weapons at the ready, and in any case - I could always just run away if my initial assault didn't yield the desired result, right?
Well, here's where my lack of knowledge regarding SCS in BG2 comes in. Turns out there's an invisible forcefield blocking the exit, so when the lich, thanks to his protection spells, didn't get hurt by sunrays, and turn undead did nothing to him, I soon had to learn, to my shock and horror, that I couldn't run away.
A very long and epic fight ensued, with me constantly recasting buffs, re-using potions, getting rid of summoned demons and healing up my party. I survived almost anything the lich was able to throw at me, and in fact, Ucurian never went down. However, a sphere of chaos (combined with greater malison) got past some other party members saves - and all in all, both Camalan and Tarnele got chunked before I eventually managed to take down the lich. While I could've continued the run at this point, I decided not to - with two key party members gone and me having little interest to replace them with official NPCs (besides the fact that this run was going to end somewhere in ToB no matter what, since a blind no-reload of Ascension seems not like something I could pull off), I decided to reload. Of course, I am continuing this run with reloads, because it was mostly started to gather experience in BG2/ToB with SCS and Ascension, so there's no reason not to do that anyway.
Had I simply decided to go to the planar prison or enter Spellhold, I would've been perfectly fine. I'm already halfway through the Underdark at this point, and despite playing with more risks compared to no-reload play, I haven't had to reload ever since.
My next no-reload run will start after the release of the new patch. I'm very much looking forward to it, and it will hopefully be quite a bit more difficult, especially in BG1 (which felt far too easy this time - I used to have such difficulties playing with a full SCS installation in BG1, but it seems like these days are over).
Enuhal
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 6: Siege of Dragonspear
First order of business, using the basilisk XP loop to reach level 10. But since I find the trick kind of boring at this point, I use the console to replicate the effect. We kill some ankhegs using our new Animate Dead spells and sell a lot of loose gear in Beregost, since BG1 stores offer better prices for pawned goods than SoD or BG2 stores.We also head to Durlag's Tower to collect the goblet and the WIS tome. I don't know which traps are where, so I just cast all of my buffs before opening any container. It's a slow process, but it's safe. The local enemies are little trouble at this point, largely because of the Stoneskin spell we got from Belegarm.
Durlag's Goblet is just one floor down. We need to take down the Warders. I was hoping that our basic, non-wand-based summons would take at least one of the enemies down, but they're not even close.
Love's Physical Mirror wears off, so I buff up Frisk and summon some more critters, figuring that an Arrow of Dispelling will make Love easy to kill. But when Love enters our field of vision, its Physical Mirror is active again!
Apparently it can cast Physical Mirror at will, every X number of rounds. I try again, this time using Spider Spawn to try to cut through its Stoneskins. But it seems that there's really no gap in which Physical Mirror is not active. Love reactives it before it expires if it happens during combat.
Ultimately, though, Love can't stand up to our summons' melee attacks, and when I rest, I can take down the others as well.
Skeleton Warriors take down Avarice as well, though it takes a long time to find him because he ran off to the far southwest halls.
Due to some sort of bug, the doors in the next area automatically open the way to Durlag's Goblet, obviating the need for fussing with the irritating door puzzle. The door shuts behind us, though, so we have to fiddle with some buttons before we can escape.
I pick up the CHA tome at the Gnoll Fortress and return to SoD, now that I have all the items I want from BG1. I side with Tsolak instead of the vampire hunters for reasons I don't fully remember (I dimly remember trying it both ways and deciding it was better to fight Ikros), slaying Ikros with an Arrow of Dispelling and Isabella with the Wand of Paralyzation. But I had to turn Tsolak invisible to keep him alive, and when I rested to wait out the effect, Tsolak turned to mist and went to his coffin instead of speaking to us to give us a reward. So... we staked him.
No need to fight the Crusaders back at Coastway Crossing. We can just hide behind the tent. M'Khiin's summons (we charmed her earlier) aren't strictly necessary.
Tackling trolls is a lengthy and unprofitable endeavor, so I sneak past them and grab some treasure from a cave. I use Dimension Door to escape them because for some reason I still don't have Teleport Field.
I don't need extra XP, since I can only get one more level in SoD and level 11 isn't that important, so I can skip most of the fights in SoD. I'm playing in v2.3 by accident instead of the v2.5 beta, so Protection from Poison scrolls don't give immunity to Morentherene's breath weapon, making Morentherene far too dangerous for the small reward we'd get from fighting her. Instead, we go straight to Ziatar, using Skeleton Warriors and a charmed cultist to disrupt her spells.
Frisk stays out of the fray, avoiding Ziatar's mage buddies and their Chaos spells and Darts of Stunning. Frisk fails to stun Ziatar with the Wand of Paralyzation and has to go invisible when the cultists approach. Staying away from Ziatar was a good idea; her breath weapon is far too dangerous to risk approaching her.
But by dealing so much damage to Ziatar early on and forcing her to cast Sanctuary and heal herself, our Skeleton Warriors were able to survive the mages' attacks thanks to their middling MR and undead immunities. By the time the other cultists started attacking them, Ziatar was already weak enough for our skeletons to slay her.
I sneak past the cultists and move on to the Neothelid. Its breath weapon is very strong, but unlike Morentherene's or Ziatar's, it has a slow-moving projectile that Frisk can dodge.
Frisk runs from the Magical Swords and resists the Neothelid's attacks using a Potion of Invulnerability. The Neothelid has three disablers, one which paralyzes on a failed save vs. death at -2, another that charms on a failed save vs. spell, and another that stuns on a failed save vs. death.
The Neothelid kept going underground whenever I tried to fire arrows at it, but I eventually managed to get in some hits with Called Shot. Unfortunately, Feeblemind completely failed to work (no save vs. spell) and I fled to rest and return. The Neothelid chased me when I got back, forcing me to drink another Potion of Invulnerability.
In the end, tanking it with Skeleton Warriors was sufficient to bring it down; no Feeblemind was necessary.
Basic summons got Akanna down to Near Death, and while we couldn't stop her from casting Sanctuary, Sunfire went right through it.
Next up, Bridgefort. There are several ways I could handle this:
1. Fight the Crusaders and spend maybe 40 charges of the Wand of Monster Summoning.
2. Surrender the fort.
3. Skip the whole thing.
The first option is expensive and the second option doesn't feel right even if it doesn't come with any real consequences, so I choose the third option. It's possible to teleport through the gate to the bridge and then teleport again past the barrels just by using a familiar. But I don't remember the exact positioning, I couldn't make it work after a few tries, and I don't remember where I saw a video of it happening.
So I just used Dimension Door.
Testing found that I could go right to the Coalition Camp with no problems. But out of curiosity, I decided to go back and poke around Bridgefort, and at some point, I ended up in the line of sight of a bunch of goblins...
...who proceeded to follow me wherever I went.
Seeing an opportunity, I charmed Vichand and Hormorn in turn (resting in between) and got both of them killed by the goblins without ever turning the Crusaders hostile. Hormorn charmed the goblin mage, who also got killed by the other goblins.
Figuring this would be an excellent way to depopulate the Crusaders so I could tackle the Bridgefort fight at low risk, I then charmed Keherrem to get him killed as well...
...only to find that the camp goes hostile when Keherrem dies.
I'm guessing he's treated differently because he got here from the temple of Bhaal, unlike the other Crusaders. Or maybe that's just Kharm. Or maybe both of them. In any case, most of the Crusaders are hostile, and while Hormorn can bomb the crap out of them...
His Protection from Normal Weapons spell only lasts so long, and soon the Crusaders eat him alive. The Crusaders don't follow me because I'm invisible, but the goblins do, and I certainly can't fight both groups at the same time. Fortunately, I have a neat little perch from which I can summon critters and shoot arrows with little fear of retribution.
It takes forever, but the goblins go down, and I can do the same thing to the Crusaders if I lure them over to the cliff. I used Dimension Door, but a summoned critter should work just as well if you don't have the spell: just enter the fort via the portal and summon a skeleton or something on the cliffside so you can lure the enemy north.
I sneak back to the Crusaders and charm a neutral guard, at which point the other hostile Crusaders come into play. I bolster our presence with Animate Dead and the Wand of Monster Summoning.
Ultimately, there's only so much I can do, and while the Wand of Monster Summoning can hold them off, the enemy gains a few feet whenever they kill our monsters. The enemy steadily pushes us north.
Eventually I get backed up to the cliffside where I shot down the goblins. I teleport back to my old station and start pinning the Crusaders down.
There are only a few scattered enemies left. Without the whole horde to support them, the pressure on Frisk is pretty minimal and we don't need to do much to win.
For the last remnants of the Crusaders, I can use charm to divine and conquer, with Animate Dead for support.
Bridgefort is won! Looks like you don't need the Flaming Fist at all to win this fight as long as you have some invisibility and summoning spells and a whole bunch of arrows--or even just invisibility and Algernon's Cloak.
Before we head to the Coalition Camp, we need to recruit some stronger allies. This means we need to revisit Coastway Crossing and meet the Dwarves of Dumathoin. But first, we'll need a Protection from Undead scroll, which we get from Drienne thanks to a high reputation and Charisma.
The Dwarves of Dumathoin are excellent allies to use against the trolls and ogres in the first wave of the Coalition Camp invasion later on. But we're not here to recruit them. In fact, we actually kind of need them to die. So I lure a bunch of undead over to them and watch them get killed.
Brother Deepvein gets chunked by level drain and his equipment vanishes, including his special amulet. But since chunking isn't supposed to be possible in my install and the amulet is supposed to be coded as a quest item, I just console it in.
We need all five of the dwarves' amulets. Why? Well, if we sneak past all the undead in the next level using a Protection from Undead scroll and present the amulets to the Coldheart Lich...
...he'll send us some skeletons to help defend the Coalition Camp, because he already has a grudge against Caelar Argent. Those skeletons have better stats than the Dwarves of Dumathoin and also have damage resistances, making them more resilient to the trolls' attacks if not the ogres'.
We use Dimension Door to hurry past the enemies crowding around us. The Bronze Sentry led them right to us; it sees through invisibility as well as Protection from Undead.
At the Coalition Camp, we use the Spectacles of Spectacle to reveal the genie merchant Nazramu, at which point I discover that Nazramu's prices are so good that 20 Charisma and 20 reputation actually allow us to buy items from him at lower prices than we sell to him. This means we can generate infinite gold by repeatedly selling and buying back stacks of Wands of Monster Summoning, earning 2500 net gold per wand per trade.
I use the gold to recharge all of our wands plus Durlag's Goblet and the Greenstone Amulet and buy up all the potions and scrolls we could possibly get from Belegarm. But that's not all. I can smuggle even more gold into BG2 by dropping off some extra loot in Beregost. And there's one item of which Belegarm sells an infinite supply, so we can smuggle as much loot as we want.
I count 7 different exploits in this one single post. Breaking all the rules for fun and profit fills us with determination.
Yes, that's right, desperately wanted to be a Heartwarder for basically ever.
... Yeah, no. Let's do some fine tuning*.
Heck yeah.
I don't think the usability flags are set up quite right, including no scimitars, but I'm still happy with what he can get, which includes war hammer, dagger, short sword/ninjato, and short bows, two of which were grabbed while being a Heartwarder. No backsies now, deities.
Assassins Killed - 3
One watcher blinded for being an uppity bald virgin. Also for chasing me around for stealing the second potion of healing. Greater good, and all that.
Assassins Killed - 4
Blind failed, Montaron "failed", Imoen got failed next round, and Jericho ate his final magic missile before deciding enough was enough and eating his face off with a spirit wolf, the only benefit he gets from being a Druid/Mage, since a Mage multiclass doesn't get the shapeshift options.
He also gets a +2 saving through bonus vs spell from the weirdness of his creation process as a Heartwarder, though obviously he won't be getting the innate charm spell or permanent charisma bonuses now. I could admittedly have swapped the order, but that would be lame compared to being a Druid/Mage.
Time to cycle 'lisks and take advantage of these spells.
*Fine tuning to the tune of starting with one kit, then using the "Select Deity" innate to select Heartwarder of Sune, thus getting the vanilla Druid's Nature's Beauty (from the Sunite) and Insect swarm spells (from Druid/Mage) along with an intimidatingly large spell list from Major spell access to thirteen different spheres of magic.
Confused mage. Dead mage.
....Thanks for the heads up?
Adepts Killed - 1
Object lesson: Always pay attention to spell descriptions before casting a new spell. It would have been embarrassing to cause a TPK with snowballs.
Still, at least she didn't cast lightning. #frostedsilverlining
Assassins Killed - 5
Blind and impaled by an ice lance, what a way to go.
Hi newfriend!
Since I had to gut my install and start from scratch to get faiths and powers working, EE NPCs are back in, and Ishlilka is out. But it's all good, I have plans for this one.
There, now your brain is safe from red wizards and all it cost was your immortal soul. I'm helping!
Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Buffed Kensai leaves Rayic Gethras with few options. Hiding with True Sight active proves to be fatal.
Journal of Storak Swiftaxe
We relieved Bridgeport by ensuring that most of the enemy were webbed before we disclosed who we are. We were all affected by freedom of action by using either items or spells.It made the battle relatively easy.
The battle was virtually over before the cavalry arrived. They certainly weren't needed.
It's the first time that I have used the tactic. It worked well.
Now at the Coalition Camp.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 7: Siege of Dragonspear
To get into the Underground River, we need to fight some Crusaders, including a massive cyclops. Landing a Wand of Paralyzation charge on the cyclops is a death sentence, but we've got other threats to worry about.Frisk goes invisible to avoid the backstabbers before they break through our Stoneskins. Soon, friendly spiders and other animals start appearing to help us out, apparently sent by the druids we saved earlier. The animals don't last long, but they keep coming.
Unfortunately, the allies don't seem to spawn indefinitely, and eventually we get overwhelmed after having made precious little progress on the enemy. We have to rest and return to the fight, at which point the Wand of Monster Summoning proves utterly incapable of handling the enemy's pressure. We stay on the move.
We manage to thin the enemy herd when the Crusaders start splitting up in search of the invisible Bhaalspawn tromping around on their territory, allowing us to take them down one by one.
Others don't stray too far from the group, and it's very dangerous for Frisk to venture into the field of vision of an enemy mage.
By the time we finally bring the enemy down, we've spent maybe 30 charges from the Wand of Monster Summoning.
With Nazramu providing an infinite source of gold and wand recharges, it doesn't matter much, especially since I still have about 200 charges left, but it's annoying for fights to take so long. The Wand of Monster Summoning loses a lot of power when you get to SoD; the critters that dominated BG1 just aren't strong enough to compete in SoD.
We don't need to do much in the Underground River besides place the Barrel of Bwoosh and poison their supplies, but I do want to take out Strunk, since he appears at the siege of Dragonspear Castle alongside some Water Elementals, and I'm worried about winning that fight. Since I don't want Strunk turning any Crusader patrols hostile, I charm him and lead him over to the myconids to get him killed.
But I make the mistake of helping him out with the Wand of Monster Summoning, and one of the gnolls attacks him, turning him hostile and triggering his pre-buffs.
I remove his defenses with an Arrow of Dispelling, but attacking Strunk in the line of sight of the other Crusaders turns them hostile. I should have guessed.
At first, it's just the patrols, which makes the Crusaders fight amongst each other, but then the stationary Crusaders also go red.
Rather than fight a large group of enemies in an enclosed space and risk even more Crusaders coming to join the fight (I don't know how badly you can screw up the infiltration), I sneak past everyone, place the Barrel of Bwoosh, and push around the guard to the northwest using a Friends spell.
I don't plan on fighting Hephernaan for numerous reasons (he has Physical Mirror, he's a mage, there are two other mages, there are even more Crusaders after that, the Crusaders respawn, there are two golems, I have no room to maneuver, this is a no-reload run, etc.), but I still buff up Frisk for two reasons: first, there's always a chance I'll screw something up and make everyone attack us, and second, I need 100% magic resistance to avoid a Maze trap (note that Minor Spell Deflection won't block level 8 or 9 spells and is therefore useless against Maze). Hephernaan leaves his room and starts wandering around after I poison the supplies.
The Maze trap fails against our MR, but I discover that the other chest can't be forced open even with 25 Strength. Fortunately, it turns out we can rest, allowing us to cast Knock!
I talk to Hephernaan to trigger the dialogue that allows us to head down the elevator and escape. On the way out, I finally kill Strunk, having been unable to do so earlier. As always, Arrows of Dispelling followed by Acid Arrows mean death for almost any mage in SoD.
Before I return to the Coalition Camp, I visit the Killer Mimic cave and spend 11 charges from the Wand of Monster Summoning and do a lot of micromanagement to get the Bow of the Banshee, the second-best longbow in SoD behind Corinth's Bow.
SoD items are so much more interesting than the boring crap you get in BG1, but they're not so overpowered as BG2 items.
Next up, the Coalition Camp invasion. @Harpagornis has found that it's very easy to lose this fight in LoB mode because the enemy waves come almost simultaneously if you let any of the enemies reach the barrels by Andrus to the south. You can't just spam the Wand of Monster Summoning and expect things to turn out okay; you need to keep the enemy from wandering around the camp. We summon some critters, but off-screen catapults make spellcasting difficult.
For the first wave, composed of trolls and ogres, we deploy the skeletons sent by the Coldhearth lich, whose support we won earlier. We need to deal lots of damage very fast in order to overcome the enemy, so we open with Greater Malison and then shoot a whole bunch of Arrows of Detonation at 4 attacks per round. The skeletons have no resistance to fire, but they take less damage than the enemy due to their missile damage resistances (Arrows of Detonation deal 1d6 missile damage and get all standard damage bonuses.
The skeletons get crushed, but they survive long enough to hold the enemy in place until we reduce every enemy to ash.
We use Dosia to rest Frisk and get back our spells.
The second wave is the easiest. We bring in the Coalition Wizard Slayers and Inquisitors and fire a stream of Arrows of Dispelling. The enemy struggles to maintain its defenses or get its spells off the ground.
There are still enough mages for some of them to pose a threat, and one of them dispels Frisk's defenses, prompting us to drink a new Potion of Invulnerability, but we hold the advantage just by keeping up the pressure.
The enemy disintegrates.
For the first time ever, we actually get our hands on a Robe of the Goodmagi--a valuable find, and also a grim reminder, as it was before, that our enemies are not actually evil.
We rest again, but it seems the burden was too heavy for Dosia to bear.
Feels bad, man.
The third wave is a whole battalion of clerics and paladins. Greater Malison and Slow are a must, but our skeletons aren't doing too well against all of the enemy's attacks.
We have to replace them with critters from the Wand of Monster Summoning. The enemy can cast Remove Fear and Remove Paralysis, but they have no cure nor any immunities to confusion.
Making progress is difficult, though. The enemy has lots of Mass Cure spells, which heal 1d8+20 HP to the whole group thanks to LoB level bonuses.
We apply Emotion: Hopelessness, another disabler the enemy for which the enemy has neither an immunity nor a cure. But the enemy lands a Dispel Magic on us, which I did not realize was possible, and so Frisk has to drink another Potion of Invulnerability to boost their AC and avoid getting chopped up.
Then I see the problem. Rhayla, the enemy leader, can cast Remove Magic, and she removes Frisk's defenses once again. Growing desperate to end the fight before we get overwhelmed, we resort to Arrows of Detonation, which I had hoped to save.
It's not enough. I can't take down the enemies right next to me using Arrows of Detonation without hurting myself and the Coalition mages, and even the AC from a Potion of Invulnerability isn't enough to stop the enemy from landing critical hits.
For the first time ever, I equip Kiel's Helmet and drink from Durlag's Goblet before slipping away and letting the mages tank the enemy. I spam the Wand of Monster Summoning and shoot down Rhayla before she causes any more trouble, keeping Frisk just a few feet away from the enemy.
We make progress, but the enemy gradually gets closer to Frisk, forcing us to retreat further to the east.
But the herd thins, until finally the last Crusader fails a save against the Wand of Paralyzation. The third wave is over.
Now that we've pushed back all three waves, the bosses are coming in. But as @Harpagornis has pointed out, Auziel and Garrus are immortal in this fight provided that they survived the previous waves, and since we never deployed either the Coalition thieves or archers, both Auziel and Garrus are on hand to tank the enemy indefinitely.
But I don't fully trust Auziel to occupy the enemy's attention forever, so I contribute from afar, even firing some precious Arrows of Detonation on the off chance that the bosses make their move on Frisk.
We keep up the pressure with arrows, scrolls, and the Wand of Monster Summoning, and eventually the last boss falls. The invasion is over.
We march on Dragonspear Castle and watch the Barrel of Bwoosh blast the front gate to splinters. The smell of gunpowder fills us with determination.
Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good
Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good
Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
A 21 day break for the trio. Davaeorn has been waiting, wishes he hadn't.
No party deaths today. A reasonable distribution in our mini-game of avoidance where we each were cornered a couple of times by onlookers insistent on talking to us.
We rejoin our heroes as Verr'Sza dies, increasing the party's reputation to 19. Dorn, being an idiot, leaves the party as a result, increasing the party's reputation to 20.
What the heck happened to vengeance, Dorn? Now I have to troop up to the Friendly Arm to recover your derpy purple ass to come right back here to kill the necromancer you want to kill?
Whatever, I have a Friends spell and 20 reputation, I'll be getting infinite wealth in Beregost on my way to get you and waving to Sirene, who already killed you and rejoined the party once. Stupid Sirene.
One weirdness so far is that Jericho has not dreamt once, despite hitting Nashkel via the Brage express weeks ago.
Jericho might not know Remove Fear, but Dorn does. People assassinated for evil party members: 3.
Annnnd back to our regularly scheduled Paladin.
After a close call, experimentation demonstrates that Polymorph Self is apparently bugged and not giving Mustard Jelly non-magical weapon immunity.
I have no idea if this is because of one of my mods, but it is dreadfully inconvenient. Now slime form is only immune to anything dealing piercing or lightning damage, or casting spells unless Jericho expends two or maybe three more spells.
Life is so hard, etc.
On the good/bad bugs territory, I'm assuming the same change to the spell also made it possible to turn into a Boring Beetle, or more importantly, try and fail to do so while in spider form to get haste on demand.
Meh. Even after removing the override version still no weapon immunity, even though it's still right there in the description. This better not be one of those idiotic "balance" things where it's "only in BG2".
For the record I haven't seen these gnolls, and have no clue why they're fighting.
Neera's greyed out corpse portrait looks fabulous if I say so myself. It's a good thing she has 20 HP with her throwing dagger so I get to see it whenever an enemy so much as looks at her.
Dropping a snowball on the barricade appears to have triggered a civil war among goblinkind.
Assassin kills - 12, by the way, swung by Gullykin on my way here.
Red Wizard Kills - 3. Guess they didn't get the memo that little miss wild mage is now dropping -4 save or holds. Or Jericho FFVIIIing them with extreme prejudice with Icicle Lance.
Sigh. Clearly not just the non-magical weapons then. "Immune to stun, sleep, fear, poison, petrification, confusion, charm, paralysis, level drain, and non-magical weapons". Right there in the description. Sirenes should be literally incapable of doing much more than 1 point of damage to a jelly. They close fun exploits while leaving in bugs I reported almost two years ago. *Grumble grumble.*
Mages can still use the Shadowfire Wand for x3 targeting. Notionally this costs 10 HP per use, but naturally I never actually use a single charge.
Jericho's stat total: 100.
Snowball is astoundingly powerful for a level 2 spell, cleric or otherwise. I have a sneaking suspicion it's doing the full 7D6 damage it should be doing to fire based enemies rather than the 7D3 damage it says it does to everyone else.
Assassin kills - 14
Assassin kills - 16.
Spike Growth - 1D4 slashing, 1D4 piercing per round, lasts a turn, 30' area. Arguably better than Ice Storm in most circumstances. There's also a 2D4 piercing with slowing effects I could use, but it's just over half the area size and piercing is lame.
Jericho's stat total: 103. And what a sickeningly well rounded individual he is.
I'm not quite sure why Dark Horizons randomly added a group of ogres to the map east of the gnoll stronghold. There are few enemy types I'd say are as well represented in Baldur's Gate I as ogres, and one of those begins with a "K".
A bag of holding full of Ankheg shells isn't just great for dumping into the inventory of terrified or confused party mates. Overload a character so they cannot move, and they will be able to initiate conversation with any character at range so long as they can see them. This lets you talk to Drienne straight from the waterfall base without having to walk.
I assume @semiticgod has better ways to abuse this than avoiding annoying walks of course.
If you ever doubted that no-reloads were not a priority for the developers of Baldur's Gate, look no further than the random travel encounters. Thank Eliastraee or whoever Jericho is a druid of that he took out a bunch with sleep before they could focus fire someone to death.
Here's a weird one. Ice Blade summoned in his right hand, his hammer in his left hand: Jericho has no TWF penalty at all. Ashideena is even giving him +11 to hit to ensure that. Summoned weapons are weird.
Oh, and Assassin Kills - 17.
Assassin Kills - 23.
I would say that this was snowball being brutal, but honestly these guys kind of suck against spells. Their boss only has 36 HP and is, for some weird reason, a Mage in full plate with an axe and a THAC0 of 3.
Checking his files he has thief skills and 20 Con, so it's most likely he's supposed to be Fighter/Thief, the entry right next to Mage, and someone just got sloppy.
Moral: Slapping on +4 plate armour and +3 weapons on your 20 HP assassins doesn't make them tough, it makes them loot pinatas for a fireball or two.
Next post watch me have died to Mulahey somehow.
Didn't see him til he was dead, but that didn't stop him from yelling at the party and summoning reinforcements. Silence really is the best way.
Assassin Kill Count - Twenty-Seven.
Jericho stat total - 106. Not quite a maximum roll yet, or a huge deal for the 1 APR Jericho, but eh, not like I was going to use it on an NPC.
What's that, twenty-eight now? Spattered like roadkill and not even a crit.
Helping!
Softening up her fiends before dropping skull traps from around the corner. Once they were gone, she was pasted in melee by Rasaad of all people.
Now this may well get me killed, but apparently Dark Horizons also adds extra floors to Ulcaster, with the entrance where Jericho is standing, guarded by ghost wizards, which are clearly the worst kinds of wizards.
Wizard #1. I let her talk, wish I hadn't.
Two Mages in my party, however, is easy mode, because she is not fire immune.
Ghost Wizards killed: 1.
I was concerned that Jericho's frost heavy loadout would give him trouble with all the undead, but apparently Burning Dead have been hanging out down here, burning, for however many hundreds of years.
You'd have thought eventually they'd have stop dropped and rolled, but it's all fine by me, free arrows of detonation.
Ghost Wizards killed: 2
Terrifying Undead Abominations Located: 1
Death Knight: Completely magic immune, causes poison on hit, drops fireballs on things to be a jerk. Not, however, missile immune, so lead it into a pile of snares.
Thankfully most things aren't fire immune or magic immune, so not dead yet.
Even running through a dungeon blind, scouting rooms with fireball is generally your best bet. Possibly not when you're on a rescue mission though. That didn't turn out well.
Ghost Knights apparently aren't nearly as tough as Death Knights, which is probably for the best, since they die to two fireballs. Garrett the Ghost Wizard dies to the third.
Since everything is giving multiple thousands of experience, the party is actually levelling pretty quickly.
The biggest problem in this CK tomb ripoff is that the trap difficulty appears to be so high that even Aura's 105 Find Traps isn't sufficient, so she's just been tripping them at random. It was only by chugging a potion between the last salvo of traps hitting her that she didn't die.
Now, Jericho does have Find Traps, but that would involve mingling with the help, so... Off you trot, Aura!
Damn you, AI.
It also turned out to be a dead end, so the whole bit was pointless injury, and I actually sold all my regular healing potions awhile back for space, so.... Yeah.
Lolwut ring of lolwut.
People love to spell mythological figures' names backwards. They think they're being clever.
Also: Fireball scouting. Totally the best. Ghost Wizard Kill Count: 4, though I have a sneaking suspicion there was one I forgot to count.
Pretty sure Aura died because her potion of fortitude ran out after resting. Darn, I guess this means Rasaad is the next in line to disarm traps with his face.
In the same tomb as the ultra ring, this necklace only summons infinite Greater Wyverns, one per round for the rest of time. Each of the wyverns also drops a head, so yeah, infinite gold too.
And the final reward:
Also two tomes, not yet id'd, but given the usual penchant for copying layout, probably Strength and Wisdom.
Shoooock. Jericho's Stat Total: 112. I think next character is going to have to have a few strategic dump stats to ensure that the +9/+12 isn't wasted.
Note that the Ulcaster amulet doesn't actually grant any magic resistance; just the level 4 and 5 mage spell slots.
We successfully made our way through Spellhold, and even survived the crazies summoning multiple hostile Glabezrus on top of us. However it has so far been spellcasters who have come closest to ending this run, Perth fried about half the party with a triple chain lightning trigger.... Irenicus was less troublesome. In my install I have Watcher's Keep blocked off, XP reduced, and HLAs delayed for all until ToB so no Planetars to deal with this time. Hopefully we'll keep on going for a good while yet before some wizard catches us out.
Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Another journal-less session. We'd started in the Copper Coronet so it made sense to clear the sewers and stamp out slavery.
n.b. circled an area for investigation later.
We rejoin our nominal heroes after permanently losing Neera to a teleportation malfunction and giving up on Durlag's which I was doing primarily to get her up to level 5 spells. I still got a better tower shield, which after a close call being focus fired by Black Talon Elites, now has Jericho's ranged AC somewhere around bedrock.
Assassin tally: 37.
I hate this particular encounter. It's a map transition, so buffs are gone, there's a cleric spamming Flame Strike every round, and the primary assassin hits like a freight train.
41, since I was in the area after turning in the wyvern quest.
49. Technically half of them are Black Talon commanders, but I'm taking it.
She can technically cast fireball runes now, but setting snares from around the corner is more fun. She does have one major advantage though - her magic missile runes can target invisible creatures.
I hate this encounter too. You can't help but be clustered on the stairs, and bam, arrow of detonation right up in your grill. If Neera was still alive I'd nuke the whole room from orbit twice in the first round. It's the only way to be sure.
53 assassins dead.
Killed Dave with spikes, got the chapter transition, then my computer died after being left to its own devices for the afternoon. I then pre-buffed to fight Dave, only to realise that it had autosaved at the chapter change. Yay?
If druids count as assassins, then add six to the running total. Hate druids so much.
Mustard Jelly may not be immune to non-magical weapons, but it sure is immune to uppity Durlag's rejects and their short swords.
Having genocided the entire map last time, Jericho's seer powers allow him to bypass the vast majority of each level. It took a single rest to get this deep, and that's because I didn't want to risk running out of polymorph time while I was there.
Globe of Invulnerability vs Spike Growth: Spike Growth wins in duration, giving me an indicator of when to bust out the fireballs.
Assassin Kill Count: Triple digits.
Left the blue circles on the top floor alive, and sure enough, the entire floor attacks once you get up there.
Romance opening: Not restricted to out of dungeons, any rest.
Romance conclusion conversation: Restricted to out of dungeons.
This is the result.
Also, kicked Coran (likely temporarily, Assassins suck) to try my hand at the boss boss fight with Nikita.
Shadow Adept kill count: 4.
Stupid Dorn and his bugs had me walking back and forth, kicking him, recruiting him, and ultimately reloading to get his script to fire right.
Jericho Stat Total: 115.
Another pixel hunt for the entrance. In the end I actually had to check the areas included in the mod, find the first map of the area, then leave to actually find where it is, because the transition area is unintuitively on the very edge of the building's roof.
This seems like a good place to stop the post since DH stuff likes to crash my machine and make me lose everything. Into Oversight, which hopefully features Tracer and Winston.
Journal of Storak Swiftaxe
We have battled our way towards the underground river. Dynaheir was killed in an area where there was no magic and a number of stealthy enemies. We got our revenge and all of them were killed, then as soon as she could Jaheira used Harper's Call. In the cave in Dead Man's Pass both Safana and Thorin were badly injured and had to retreat to where Jaheira and Tenya could heal them in safety.The rest of the party crushed the enemy after which we all had a good night's rest.
This is the first time that I've been in that cave. It was a challenge but one which will be easier now I know what enemies have to be faced.
So they nip into the neighbouring room. Just because I allow the boss character to talk doesn't mean I'm an idiot.
Need more buffs, so... Time to kip out and let the rest of his party die horribly. Absolute floods of enemies, I should probably have just fought upwards instead.
Trapped inside this single room by the endless hordes. Time to YOLO, methinks.
Resist fear is not a self buff, and breaks invisibility. Whoopsy.
Wellp, this one was completely my fault. Besides breaking invisibility and being forced to spam Scorcher to break through the endless zerg rush of enemies, I neglected to cast Shield earlier when buffing since I underestimated just how many Magic Missile spamming mages there would be. Either the last mage that appeared cast Magic Missile twice in a single round, or there was a second one I couldn't see. Either way, that was his last 7 HP.
Next time through I'll be trapping every room beforehand before triggering the fight on my terms, being cornered upstairs was brutal.
DB 90 - a dwarven barbarian in Amn
Previously in AmnDB90 had to decide if the risk in facing the unseeing eye before spellhold was worth taking.. beeing a greedy NE dwarf the answer was obviously yes yes yes
With the shield of balduran and rage the encounter was in favour of the greedy. I had fully buffed for the unseeing eye, but that match ended quickly when the eye buffed with stoneskin instead of mantle...
The sewer mob was thrashed too, whilst still buffed from the unseeing eye fight.
I decided that BD90 needed some xp and money before taking on the dragons and the spheres. The human flesh was also desired.. so off to spellhold.
In Brynlaw Perth was killed, and spellhold rushed. Raging and rushing Irenicus won the fight easily
The greedy dwarf caried the loot from spellhold of to sell... in the city of caverns. He was carrying so much he couldnt help fight the Fish people at the ship - indeed a greedy dwarf. The sale netted more than 100.000 gp, so hoarding works.
Besides picking up a nice cloak, nothing of interest happened in the caverns. A maze trap was avoided due to raging - neat..
In the underdark low risk encounters was preffered.
And some high risks as well
The hive mother was taken on with a PfM scroll on top of the shield of Balduran. So in the end no risk... The main quest in ust Natha went well - talkblocking Kalo Taso (off course).
My first dragon was killed to get the much needed dragon blood
Back in Amn Bodhi and dragon was taken care off. Still missing Firkraag and the Planar sphere and WK, DB90 will hit the level cap soon.
But facing the level cap always make me loose interest in a character, so I left DB in Amn for a while and started a half orc beserker instead - whilst trying to rekindle my interest in DB90.... I have come to some peace with him, but we have agreed the he needs to obtain and use the deck of many things. It could be epic - and certainly stupid
See Jack.
See Jack level.
Level, Jack, Level!
Jack is a Druid/Mage -> Monitor of Azuth, giving him a slightly different array of spells than his previous Sunite -> Druid blend, as well as actual class features(!), getting +1 CL to both Mage and Cleric for every 5 cleric levels, theoretically keeping him broadly on par with a single class caster level until late game. and a +1 cast speed boost in keeping with him being a magical enforcer to preserve the sanctity of the weave.
Which probably means I won't be making him into a Shadow Adept. Heresy and all. Imoen on the other hand...
Anyways, still no turn undead, thanks to his druid roots (hah), and his spellcasting is a tad... limited right now with his 12 Wisdom, but his stats (a respectable 96 roll) have been carefully crafted to get him no stat lower than 20 by the end of SoA with Strength and Wisdom both hitting 25.
Bonus silliness:
The watery lass talking is talking to a Sea Elf, and calling him Drylander. See Jack forgive the plothole in exchange for a +2 Throwing Dagger that will be his primary weapon until SoA.
So... uh... Apparently a bunch of my mod NPCs installed prior to BGNPC have doubled up due to me leaving EE Keeper open when installing the new Shadow Magic version. I'm sure this will not do anything to create massively epic confrontations later.
If nothing else, I have a spare Sirene and Aura laying around.
Shades, which were already brutally powerful summons, now have an AI that induces them to actually use their spells, making them even more batloony ridiculous*.
Three shades dropping negative energy ray almost killed Jack outright, and that was just the first round of damage.
Victory regardless. The Shadows are indoors killing Jack's summoned beetles. Time to bring Garrick to meet his destiny.
* For reference how batloony the shade summons are:
3 x Blind save or -2.
6 x Essence Drain - Level 4 shadows drain 4 HP and deal 4 magic damage.
3 x Dread Silence - save at -5 or silenced.
3 x Negative Energy Ray - 3D6 magical damage, no save, -1 AC, THAC0, and Damage for 1 turn, damage and debuff happen again the next round for 6D6 magical damage.
And obviously three shadows gives three spells cast per round, while being 34 HP critters with 100% resistance to Cold and Electricity, non-magical weapons, and the con drain chance of casting their spells, with 1D8 slashing backed by 18 Strength, with a duration of 2 hours.
At 9th level, an easy feat within the TotSC cap, this becomes Shadow Fiends, which only have 13 Strength, but paralyse targets on hit, have 59 HP each, and CL 5 along with complete immunity to Acid, Cold, Fire, and 30% physical resistant (giving the summon effectly 230 HP's worth of "tank" per cast).
6 x Blind
9 x Essence Drain - drains 6 HP now, each.
3 x Dread Silence
6 x Negative Energy Ray
6 x Shadow Walk (flavoured dimension door) Lvl 3
3 x Impose (3d6 crushing, stun 1 round, no saving throw, no MR). Lvl 3
3 x Lifedrinker Touch - Glorified Vampiric Touch. 2D6 magical damage drain plus 3 stat points drained too, added to the caster. Lvl 3
Take the resilience of Animate Dead, utility of Call Woodland Beings, add a dash of Summon Ghast, and the sheer number of the wand of monster summoning. It probably should summon just the one instead of three. And it goes all the way up to Devil Shades.