You forgot option number 2b - my favourite - vs Big B @semiticgod: Hit & Run with a +3 weapon using buffed up THAC0.
EDIT: Martyrs Morningstar with Enchanted Weapon fits in this category perfectly and should make the following even easier:
Fighter Level 8
BASE THAC0: 13 Violet Potion: -7 Potion of Power: -3 Weapon: -3 Medal of Valor: -2 Ring of Purity: -1 Legacy of the Master: -1 Baldurans Helm: -1 Cloverleaf: -1
THAC0: -6 = Chance to hit Big B out of invisibility = 75%
Even if you drop Baldurans Helm the whole process would have been "rather easy" if you get used to timing & positioning. I really like your creative use of detonation arrows that is for sure far more spectacluar but - as i stated earlier - i would have used hit & run.
Yes, potions will run out during the fight but as long as you get enough invisibility potions (130+ is no big deal if you start picking them in BG1) combined with some healing (Durlags + Reg Potions) you will (nearly) always be on the safe side. I also would not care about the number of demons as they never ever will get you as long as your mind is fresh (Erinyes will get hindered by own demons and you can use the pillars to break vision plus they should need a 20 to hit). I tested it with nearly 50 demons hunting me and it was still no big deal as long as i got the timing right. Sure there is always room for mistakes if you get careless or lose patience.
@Harpagornis: No Red Potion for Frisk due to rushing through BG1, and we only had 60 Potions of Invisibility due to rushing through SoD as well. No pips in morningstars or single-weapon style, either, because I didn't anticipate needing them in this fight. The math checks out for 130+ Potions of Invisibility (1,460 damage assuming optimal gameplay and no setbacks), but in this run, if I had used hit-and-run from the beginning, we'd have only dealt about 560 damage before running out, compared to 700-800 from kiting alone.
Hit-and-fade tactics can work for an Archer/Mage, but not with the limited resources at my disposal. If I had combined hit-and-fade with kiting and used a slightly different pattern, I could have taken down Belhifet without using Arrows of Detonation, but it would have been fairly close with only 60 Potions of Invisibility.
For the express purpose of buffing his rabbits. Obviously. Go double bard song hasted chanted bunny hordes!
Rabbitty Rabbitty Wrecked Son!
Rabbits of the Lost Arc.
You know what, this is actually entertaining enough that I'm going to roll up a Mage/Cleric. I don't think the Sorcerer, while entertaining thus far, has enough freedom in spell selection to dedicate to making an unstoppable army of bunnies.
So Valefar's so-far-so-good run will be stored until after I get this rabbit habit kicked.
Rejected names:
Buster Bugs Jazz Rekkit Peter Bun-Bun Hazel Bucky Roger
Also strongly considered LoB mode, but meh. Pokémon is less fun when its mandatory.
He started as a Heartwarder to set his spell list for Thought and Benediction, giving him access to AOE blinds, boosts, and disables to maximise his swarm. He could have ended up as a priest of Kelemvor for epic turning and free, permanent, death ward, but the undead focus seemed incongruous. The extra CLs will help his buff durations, and Holy Smite is the perfect party friendly spell.
Switching also granted him a second cantrip, so he picked Earthen Grasp, the infinite use 1 round hold effect, again for the bunnies.
Speaking off, let's look at what we're working with:
Rabbit:
3 HP. 4 natural AC. 0 with their 19 Dex. +4 for being unarmed dealing 1-2 non-lethal damage. 19 THAC0, +4 for being unarmed, 1 APR.
If I could find a suitable War cleric to cast Strength of One (maybe Branwen) that'd be another +2/+3, and eventually Benjamin will get Emotion: Hope and Courage for another +3/+5, giving these bunnies 2 APR at 10 THAC0 dealing 15 non-lethal damage each.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 149 part 123456789 10 Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
An hour or so to kill. Long enough to do the Planar Prison, Brynnlaw and the first part of Spellhold before meeting up with Imoen again. Only the one scare - what would happen if the Berserk Warrior killed Imoen in a dream. Fortunately we didn't get to find out as he became controllable and was ordered to stop attacking her.
Q= what class is this? Ranger, Bard... perhaps a mage
Crossbow, so not a mage, druid, or cleric. Bare head without full plate, so not a thief or bard, unless wearing plate armour. Must be some form of Warrior class, Paladin, Fighter or Ranger, and the armour is probably Ankheg Plate or Elven Chain because they're wearing trousers.
Anyways...
[SPOILER]
Every horde begins with a single progenitor. Frank the rabbit. I can only imagine how fun it would be trying to find the familiar in a full swarm without target circles.
: I am the one who hops.
Because BGNPC is weirdly coded, when the plot NPC sees Kivan (only Kivan), she wanders over to talk to CHARNAME, wherever CHARNAME may be.
In this case Benjamin is summoning forth a crew, preparing for a life as a pirate bunny with this new ship he found. Just like Frank told him to.
Oh, nevermind, fishmen put a hole in it.
Ogres.
Lots of ogres, actually.
: What's that Frank? Field needs more fertiliser? Can do!
: What's up, Doc?
Benjamin's most horrifying move is to encase the victim in lettuce.
The nibbling. Oh the nibbling.
I'm starting to think we'll never find a pirate ship.
: Tonight we will nibble on fields of blood!
Pleased with this. The absolute flood of bunnines in close melee at any particular point meant that the Sirene couldn't use their bows at all, making for more loot for Benjamin.
Benjamin donates 600 of his 689 GP to the happiness of a small child. True Neutral: Get's to do it both ways.
He flailed at the hopping horde until his weapon broke against them. Died, then came back for another beating as I crashed and had to do everything over from leaving the Shoal map.
One of these days I should probably upgrade my machine.
There's a random result with the cheapskate version of this quest succeeding, failing, or turning the woman into a slime as well. Since the cheap potion worked, guess that means Benjamin can sell the real antidote for 625 GP.
Silke: Serially suicidal. Garrick needs to stop standing so close to her.
Rabbits like lawn ornaments.
: Ain't I a stinker?
At this point Benjamin discovers the major downside of bunnies is that they can't carry loot, so he recruits Shar-Teel (full disclosure, she glitched, so after he brought her down to -25 HP equivalent in the duel I ctrl-Q'd her immortal heinie into party).
Most mages hate rabbits so much that they will gladly kill themselves with lightning bolts so long as they get to take some rabbits with them.
: Hey! I'm only thin because summoning infinity rabbits burns a lot of calories!
Since they are mere bandits, rather than something dangerous like ferrets or small snakes, they fall easily to the nose-twitching hordes.
: Not the alfalfa! That's below the belts!
Once Benjamin reaches the Friendly Arm storage shop Shar-Teel is booted forthwith, because third wave feminism is cancer she's actually min1hp'd thanks to the duel glitch. Fortunately it never came up during the trip since bunnies handled all the tanking.
Replacement token evil teammate get.
Probably not the last one, either. Benjamin needs to pick up Eldoth (and therefore Skie) for Bard purposes to empower his swarm, probably Dorn, for the Elven chainmail, and maybe Edwin to convert to a Shadow Adept, depending if Neera survives or not later on.
Acceptable losses to remove the horror spamming, health absorbing, ghost wizard with no spells.
Shadow Adept looks on as a swarm of bunnies eat some undead wolves alive. She's not from these parts, for all she knows this is just part of the natural circle of life.
Damnit, respect rabbit culture!
Bunny cavalry: One. Powers of darkness: Nil.
Since he's failed to scribe pretty much every single scroll except Lightning, Mirror Image, and Strength, Benjamin is rather streamlined in his solutions.[/spoiler]
Not pictured: Wand of Fire exploit to kill Ghost Wizard #1 before the bunnymancer and his jukebox head to the Friendly Arm to cadge a rez.
Trio EE attempt 5, update 12345 6 Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
The session started with Cowled Wizards issuing a reprimand. Felai decided to pay 5000gp before we were drawn into more serious discussions with them, then spent another 15000gp on obtaining the guidance of Aran Linvail.
A group of pirates were clunking around in their hideout while we rested, and nobody disturbs our sleep more than once.
The next stop was to be Watchers Keep, however we predicted Renfeld would turn up like a bad penny and so it proved. A short while later we'd dealt with the implications of rescuing him.
We then headed to to Graveyard district to return a bear to Wellyn, then down into the murk to hunt out some headgear. On our way back out we looted the tombs.
Watchers Keep, at last. There was enough fun for all inside without bothering to visit any other levels.
The rest of the session was spent in the de'Arnise hold, Tor'gal and his trolls surviving a webbing but not the subsequent retreat into snares and skeletons. We'll collect the reward next time.
I like the scout idea and changed her images a bit to match but I don't have mods so thats just a shasy... she rolled 80 which is better than most my runs
no mods, Lob run... as normal I'll make her an item if she lives to bg2
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 149 part 12345678910 11 Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Fiery takes advantage of multiplayer-fu to eliminate an unseen Ulitharid.
We've escaped the Spellhold maze so have to answer questions. That's done, and in return we get to chunk Lunk and pay Irenicus a visit. He's pleased to see "Zepp - death" at one point but it's only one of the enemy party and the real Zepp fights on. She avoids a Wilting but for some reason (might be a multiplayer issue) everybody has turned hostile so a second Wilting from Dradeel catches her off-guard. Fiery ups the tempo and clears the room before we suffer any further mis-hap.
Saemon Havarian wants to cut a deal and we agree, making our way out of Brynnlaw on an ill-fated ship. Two attacks are enough to wreck the vessel, and we are conveyed to an underwater cavern.
Zepp speaks to the sahuagin king instead of completing the regicide, so we lower ourselves into the Underdark. A beholder cave looks like fun - Fiery has his cloaky cloak reflecting their spells and Zepp has the shieldy shield that does the same. Fiery also demonstrates how to stun an Elder Orb before it can cast Imprisonment.
There's no need to venture into the illithid lair, other than because we want to. The Elder Brain crumbles after some pressure, and Simyaz escapes outside but fares no better.
A trio of spore colonies raise a stink but the dwarves press on.
The Underdark exit looks dangerous so we clear that out in advance so there is a clear run for us if required.
Then it's back to the main area of the Underdark. At one point Zepp protects Fiery from Maze via Chaotic Command, then casts Greater Command before trying to use Chaotic Command on herself but N'ashtar is too quick to the draw. Fiery has plenty of time to kill the battle off before Zepp returns from her Maze.
It's time to rescue Phaere, another Greater Command forcing a pair of Umber Hulks to sit combat out.
We return to Ust Natha, and deal with a beholder before picking up some eggs. Fiery suggests doing this sneakily but Zepp instead turns the entire city hostile so we make our escape before being swarmed.
Clambering out of the Underdark leads us to Elhan, and we call it a day.
My Dwarven Barbarian was lost due to restartis. The brave dwarf fought his way to WK4 and had picked up the deck of many things - the deck lowered my saving throws twice and gave me 300.000 xp (I was already at the cap ). Hence restartis...
So I decided to take on a different Challenge with the kit who gets the most HP in a LoB run. Insights on the Challenge has been picked up in the awesome “LoB + SCS” thread. So without further ado let me introduce BM 95
He will dual into a cleric at level 7, 9 or 13...
Everything is more in LoB. Also your own summons and familiars. Summon familiar netted 22 hp - the ToB version will give 58 hp ..
Had a few restarts - tried fighting in melee, but even the CK rats proved a great foe.. So My familiar is MVP despite the HP boost. Therefore an alternative approach was required!!
The plan is to dodge all fighting untill I have a kick arse party. After the non fighting quests in CK I dodged Imoen - for now. Instead I picked up the ring at FAI, sold it and bought Stone to flesh scrolls. Smacked down Algernon and picked up his cloak -> time for the Basilisk XP loop (and yes its needed in LoB mode imo).
The LG and NG familiar is immune to petrification, and the scrolls are plenty, so I can come and go at the basilisk area as I please.
At level 6 I called it a day: time to pick up a party, gear and some wands (WoMS most of all). Frist jo a party. Enter level 6 Imoen.. After that Branwen
Yes its just her skellies I covett..
We found some gear lying around..
Picked it up HiS. I have never ever scouted as much as I do now - and never ever stealthed as much..
Under PfU we picked up the WoMS
Then picked up Minsc. He will wear Drizzts gear and tank - but not before the gnoll fortress has been invaded. The gnolls will be a formidable for, but the skellies and WoMS will do there parts.
I suspect that even in LoB wands will rule supreme - for I surely dont...
We rejoin our slightly demented hero having just after murdering Mulahey, having disregarded plot, acquired tomes, killed assassins/shadow mages as needed killing, and summoned approximately five digits of rabbits.
: It's a little known fact that the only reason forces of the shadow plane haven't invaded and conquered Toril is because rabbits. Think about that whenever you eat a bunny that hasn't first died in noble battle against otherworldly horrors.
: Blah, blah, something something dead guy note, stupid words, kill him with bunnies.
Undercellars: For pretty much everything.
: Canon time, boys and girls! Firebead Elvenhair specifically describes CHARNAME as the "Lonely kid of Candlekeep". Given the demographics of the Keep, and its purpose, the majority of the population were aged scholars, and children were unlikely to dwell within the keep itself, and CHARNAME was unlikely to be given free roaming access around the surrounding farmlands because Gorion was a fun nazi paranoid Harper dedicated to keeping you in the safest conceivable location on the planet. CHARNAME's only friend his age was most likely Imoen.
: My... my lord?
: Uhh.... Bunnies?
Drizzt Saga question: Met Drizzt, does heading to Ulgoth's Beard where the halfling is start the whole questline, which I'd sooner wait for until towards the end, or is it only progressed by talking to him?
Possibly a pointless question, for all I know this serpent undercellar quest will involve a level 30/30/30 Fighter/Mage/Thief with seven Set Snares already set down there.
You really find out how cheaty some mages are when you confront them with infinite bunnies. Andris, the greeter of the Ice Island, has seven Melf's Magic Arrows memorised, plus five mirror images, four lightning bolts, two fireballs, two flame arrows, two hold persons...
: Ooo, extended-y.
: I would have accepted "Cool, ice crystal. I made a thing, here.", but okay.
Heading East from the Ankheg map bypasses all those Black Talon Elite spawns. Marvellous.
When you know how lightning works, it's very abusable. Benjamin cast the lightning bolt on the far guard, hitting Flame Strike spam girl, because it hit the guard, it bounced off him thanks to the bounce glitch, hitting him and Flame Strike spam girl again, and all the way through to rosy complexion palassin.
Since she spawned, doofus assassin who warns you to hold still while he assassinates you also spawns, unlocking Section HQ for later.
Next episode: Feasting upon the leaves of Cloakwood.
To Spellhold! We're actually pretty underleveled for a solo run, being at level 16 (a good solo character should have HLAs by this point), but I already have the basic resources needed to get all the way to Chapter 6 without any problems. We don't need to do any grinding to prepare for the challenges ahead. We can leave lots of Chapter 2 quests uncompleted.
Like I said before, BG2 is going to be a breeze.
By allying ourselves with Malficus from the Alternatives mod, we end up getting ambushed by vampires in Brynnlaw even though we slew Aran Linvail, which ostensibly would have made us friends with Bodhi. The Belt of Inertial Barrier holds off a Cloud of Bats spell, allowing Frisk to cast PFMW.
Archers are terrible at tanking, but we have plenty of summons to avoid pressure.
Basic summons are enough to deal with most trash enemies. The only dangerous enemy around here is Perth the Adept, and we're not going to deal with him. We stick to the alternative route to Spellhold.
Same strategies work for Bhaal in the dream (we sacrifice a point of INT; we don't need it despite Frisk being a mage), the kobolds, and the summons from the altar, though the mind flayer warrants a charge of the Greenstone Amulet and the beholder warrants the Shield of Balduran.
We burn a Protection from Undead scroll on Frisk, but it's not necessary. Contrary to my expectations, Dimension Door allows us to jump over a spawn trigger and avoid the lich fight.
We use Enchanted Weapon to shoot down Dace Sontan with some Acid Arrows, skip the Yuan-ti leading to the next area, and tackle the Yuan-ti upstairs. Basically we just wait out its Mantle until we can nail it with an Arrow of Dispelling.
For some reason, taking the paintings in this area forces Frisk to drop all of their equipment at once. Luckily for us, Frisk's massive HP pool from their fighter levels is more than enough to tank a simple damage spell.
But if you look carefully, you'll see that there's a Fireball spell coming as well. We drink a Potion of Fire Resistance and re-equip our items, including the Ring of Fire Resistance, to make sure we don't lose much more HP.
The Clay Golems are immune to missile damage, but STR drain can kill them. When I run out of Called Shot spells, I switch to the Martyr's Morningstar.
For Irenicus, we enter the fight with no weapons equipped so our clone will be helpless to harm us. As for Jon-bon himself, a Cone of Cold spell could disrupt his first spell, but I'm not willing to take the risk of expending our first aura. Darts +5 could get through his Improved Mantle, but with only one character, we don't have the APR to get through his Stoneskins and disrupt his opening spell.
The other inmates, however, have lots of magic attacks to throw at Irenicus, and they manage to Breach him very quickly, opening the way for Acid Arrows.
He still has a PFMW Contingency, but without Stoneskins, that doesn't do much good when we have nonmagical arrows.
Jon-bon has plenty of HP, but without his defenses, he can't get any spells off the ground.
I let summons deal with the Murderers and then the pirates by the docks. Before we leave for City Sushi, Frisk drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to ward off a potentially fatal Mind Blast before running to the north end of the ship to trigger the cutscene early.
City Sushi is important for the Cloak of Mirroring, but also the infinite gold trick at the Temple of Sekolah.
Well... actually, it's not important. Nothing depends on it; there's nothing I need to buy that I can't already afford. I just want to do it because big numbers are fun.
And also because I hate the idea of pawning off an item that might theoretically hypothetically possibly someday maybe be somewhat useful on a single occasion somewhere in the future. I'd rather use an exploit than go without 10 spare Potions of Fire Resistance... even if I can already reach 90% fire resistance just by switching items, and even if I already pre-buff with Protection from Fire by default.
Anyway, we finally hit level 18 and gain access to our first level 9 spell, filled by our first HLA pick, Summon Planetar. When we head down to the Underdark, it gets us a lucky early kill on a mod-introduced drow mage!
In previous runs, I've seen other drow show up to that fight, but they're not here this time. This means that in my previous installs, there were actually two mod-introduced drow ambushes that, by sheer coincidence, were placed on the exact same location.
Most fights in the game could be handled just by hiding behind invisibility and letting a planetar do all the work, running away and resting whenever the planetar dies. But that's slower than just blowing stuff up with Arrows of Detonation.
The fight is more complicated than this, but the details are not very enlightening.
How am I going to handle the Balor? He has absolutely crazy stats and all the normal demon immunities. However, he has no spell protections; only magic resistance. Enter the Lower Resistance spell.
Due to a bug, my Simulacrum clone vanishes the moment Frisk gets hit by the Fire Storm spell (that's only supposed to happen to Project Image clones), but we'll be able to handle this on our own, anyway. We drop the Balor's MR to zero and then use Called Shot on Energy Blades, which normally give 9 APR to single-classed mages, but having 8 Archer levels bumps that up to 10 APR.
Called Shot gets us a guaranteed failed save against Ray of Enfeeblement.
This should be an instant kill in the unmodded game, since the Balor's base STR should be 5 and it's suffering from much more than -5 STR drain, which ostensibly would put it in the negatives. But with the Better Stat Drain mod, we still need to land one last hit to actually kill the thing, because the mod is keeping the Balor's STR at 1. But once the Balor gets hit one more time, the instant kill spell triggers, reducing its HP to zero and then dealing 10 non-resistable magic damage.
This gives us the XP for the kill. The effect is negligible considering this is a solo run (even underleveled, we still don't need the extra XP), but I like the fact that it's possible. It's always bothered me that stat drain kills don't normally give XP.
I also like the sound effect of magic damage, so that's fine, too.
Planetars are strong, but you should never overestimate their defenses. 70% magic resistance still means 30% magic vulnerability.
But Enchanted Weapon lets us land Arrows of Dispelling on planetars, curing them of any status effects they may incur. And clones fire those arrows for free.
Called Shot, Darts of Stunning, and STR drain with Ray of Enfeeblement come together to take down the Kuo-toan Prince, while our planetar keeps the lesser Kuo-toa occupied.
But offensive power should never be taken as a sign of invincibility. Against another batch of Kuo-toa outside, Frisk lets their PFMW drop and I discover that I've completely neglected to maintain their Stoneskins!
I have two options here: first, I can try to drink a healing potion. That would activate instantly without fail, but it would still leave me vulnerable to further attacks. And it's entirely possible that the Kuo-toa could land several more hits and lock me down while my aura was still fogged.
Second, I could cast PFMW or Stoneskin. But I know from hard experience that if you get an auto-pause on hit and try to cast a spell, the spell will begin casting on the same frame that you took the damage, which means spell disruption is guaranteed. In order to cast that spell, I have to time its casting to come immediately after unpausing. And if I'm late by even a few frames, it's possible that another two hits could come in and finish me off in the fraction of a second before I click the button.
In the end, I opt for a charge of Durlag's Goblet. I pause immediately afterwards to gauge the situation.
I switch around our gear, making sure we have the Shield of Reflection equipped, and make a break for it. The Kuo-toa leave us alone, allowing us to cast Stoneskin before we can get in any more trouble.
Based on the rolls, we could have survived even without the potion or the spell, just by running away. But it's always a good idea to assume the worst and act accordingly.
The Ust Natha questline is boring at this point. Summons take down the mind flayers, we talk our way out of the Aboleth quest, more summons take down the beholder, we spare the svirfneblin and Solaufein, talk-block Taso Kala while invisible, and take down the Egg Guards.
How do we kill the Egg Guards before they alert the city? Simple: we use Limited Wish to cast Time Stop and then take advantage of the guaranteed hits. All the arrows we fired during Time Stop hit simultaneously.
I let Adalon deal with the drow guarding the exit, hiding behind invisibility. The Glabrezus can see right through it, but they don't last long enough to cause me any trouble.
Adalon leaves some survivors for us to fight, but they can't see us, and they're not blocking the way. We can slip right past them.
On the way back to Athkatla, we run into Drizzt. We lie to his face.
For those who aren't aware, BG1 Drizzt is bugged to be unable to attack in LoB mode, and you can just let the gnolls kill him so you can steal his scimitars.
We buy a lot more stuff, both necessary and unnecessary, and go vampire hunting. Against the odds, we nuke the most powerful vampire on the first floor, Tanova, with Sunray from the Helm of Brilliance.
One of the problems with being an Archer is that you can't put more than one pip in melee weapons. But one of the nice things about Black Blade of Disaster is that it gives you five pips in longswords, which gives us a whole extra attack per round. It works great with Belm, even if we have no pips in dual-wielding.
When that wears off, we still have a Protection from Undead scroll to chop up the survivors.
Since we got a Time Stop scroll from Ribald, we can now create our own Time Stop scrolls at 9000 gold a pop. I don't really want to abuse this too much, but juuuust in case Bodhi somehow disrupts our opening spell, I make sure that our Time Stop comes from an uninterruptible scroll. Black Blade of Disaster deals a LOT more damage during Time Stop than our missile weapons, which is saying something, considering Frisk is an Archer/Mage.
But when the best longbow in BG2 only has +3 damage, it's not surprising that Frisk's normal ranged attacks are largely obsolete.
Bodhi gives her next dialogue line and casts Heal on herself. I should be able to tank this with PFMW, the Cloak of Mirroring to block her Horrid Wilting-type spell, SI: Conjuration for Cloud of Bats, and a scroll of Protection from Undead.
But a scribed Time Stop scroll is fine, too.
It's not enough to kill Bodhi, but Frisk's existing buffs are enough to make them invincible against anything the enemy can throw at them... if they could throw anything at us, which they can't, because of our Protection from Undead scroll.
Time Stop also opens up new possibilities for STR drain kills. Normally, the STR drain effect only lasts for 10 seconds, while Called Shot lasts for 12 seconds, which means your STR drain isn't actually equal to your APR over 2 rounds. But during Time Stop, all projectiles strike together, which means all of their STR drain applies at once. Better still, Time Stop lets you chain together multiple Called Shot spells. With 10 APR, 3 rounds of automatic hits, and 2 Called Shot spells cast during Time Stop, we can inflict enough STR drain to kill anything.
We can't drain the maximum 40 theoretically possible, however, for two reasons: first, the Robe of Vecna speeds up spellcasting, so it adds about 3 seconds of Time Stop in which our aura isn't clear and we can't cast Called Shot. Second, we can only conjure 20 Energy Blades or Minute Meteors, which will run out during Time Stop. Restoring them would cost us an aura we could use for Called Shot, so our APR must drop to 7 (the best we can manage with a longbow or darts) before Time Stop runs out.
We perform the ritual to summon Rillifane, who kills all the enemies in Suldannessellar and saves us a lot of trouble. On visiting the merchant outside, we discover that she, too, can work as an infinite gold source with 20 CHA and reputation. Not that it matters; can always use the Teleport spell to revisit the Temple of Sekolah, provided we charm the priestess (who goes hostile when you betray Ixilthetocal).
But before we face Irenicus, we have one last stop. A big one.
It's time to tackle the Twisted Rune. The swirling energy of the Rogue Stone fills us with determination.
Did my first ever No Reloads campaign using a 77-point hard-difficulty Druid named Xanaver and the "canon party" of Minsc, Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen, and Dynaheir. I just died about 10 minutes ago lol. We were assaulting the bandit encampment in Pelvdale, trying to clear out the bandits so we could rest and then take on Tazok. Sadly, a hobgoblin landed a nasty crit on Xanaver and he bit the big one xD. It was a very thrilling run however I do find myself attached to my characters so I'll probably do a Minimal Reloads 75-point hard-difficulty run again. Thanks for this great post, Baldur's Gate is beyond amazing when you play it properly (Read: no save scumming!).
Since my big ol' post was lost thanks to a blue screen of death (Facebook always kills my computer, which is fair, since computers are supposed to be like brains).... We rejoin our hero in the depths of Cloakwood mine.
The BSOD actually happened just before Benjamin's Bunnies headed down the next set of stairs, so I get to kill Hareshan or whatever her name is all over again. Yay etc.
: Sadly bunnies have a rigid code of conduct preventing them from harming anyone sleeping or unconscious. Such superior moral beings.... Time to murder some people in their sleep, I guess!
Random side note: Dark Side of the Sword Coast just throws Daggers of Disease at you. Random mages carry them, ghost wizards carry them, one of these guys carried one... The dagger of venom was already one of the more badass weapons of the first game, the Dagger of Disease is exactly that, with a +1 APR bonus attached. It's only because of the insane power creep of the mod that the DoDs seem remotely reasonable.
Benjamin doesn't use one, since obviously he has no place in melee with such low stats.
He nominally could cast Wraithform (courtesy of Quayle's Scribe Scroll ability before he took to Shadow Magic for early access) to be pretty much immune to whatever, but that might stop him from summoning bunnies throughout the fight.
: Rabbit season. : Dave season. : Rabbit season. : Dave season. : Rabbit season. : Rabbit season. : Dave season!
: Bad mod design means that I'm denied the only answer that makes sense. "Who the heck are you talking about, I walked through Cloakwood without talking to a single druid." If you're going to have railroaded encounters, at least try to make the previous encounter mandatory, rather than something you actively need to go out of your way to see.
Small child rescued. You'd think some of the hundreds of slaves freed from the mines would have offered to take him to the Friendly Arms since they can't leave Cloakwood without passing the place.
Yet the small child continues to stalk the party for the rest of time. Sigh.
: ... The sounds of silence fill you with determination MORE BUNNIES.
No longer silenced, but still going with a fighting retreat as the mage summons forth Wraiths (which also cast spells on top of being wraiths), drops soul destroying black magic on tiny 3 HP bunnies, and generally killing his way through a sea of lagomorph blood to get to Benjamin thanks to his seek and destroy AI.
Also that small bloody child is still stalking Benjamin.
Ahahahahahaha. Okay, the kid can stay. We'll call him "chaff".
Chaff is totally immortal, cannot be harmed by anything, and runs slower than Benjamin.
The bunnies have gained a powerful ally this day.
Benjamin has no time for dogs. Especially not pretend dogs made up in the doggish conspiracy.
Also kobolds, which are still doglike at this point in time. Benjamin insults Ratchild and lives, possibly thanks to a -13 Missile AC.
Darn, and I thought I might bypass the whole thing if I just assassinated him without talking.
The cheesiest thing here is that the Elite Ninja had actually failed their Greater Command save and was laying on the floor helpless and unconscious when killed... Yet still managed to detonate. Lame.
No bunnies this time, just Wraithform, Stoneskin, and enough HP to tank the fireball.
This quest isn't gentle to NPCs.
: If nothing else, it seems a little redundant.
Damnit. I wanted to do Stone of Askovar for some talismans and the Robe of Free Action before I got into the final weeaboo confrontation, but without a thief that's going to be awkward.
: I prepped up the bridge in advance anyway, because I'm paranoid. But the army of ninja that spawn count as hostiles, triggering the snares early. Life is hard.
At least when you've not been saving frost and lightning wands all game for this sucker.
Three wand users, two meatshields, and a few bunnies to distract the extra three guys while the Boss and his Cleric charged the party and the encounter was won.
Our hero's prize is a throwing... katana.
: I'm not sure how this sword is supposed to be the ultra deadly slayer of men it's made out to be, but principal of the thing.
On an otherwise modless install this neat little sword would be best in slot, since it's an APR weapon in BG1 with a ranged option that incorporates strength bonus. As is, it's neat, and Benjamin will be using it anyway, but it's actually a downgrade from the Boomerang Dagger, where its 1/2 extra APR again more than offsets the -3 average weapon damage it has in melee compared to the katana.
Yay, fetch quests. I almost forgot about this questline, but dwarvish assassins randomly accosted the party on the street.
Either that or Section have run out of budget, I suppose.
Okay, weird dwarf quest thing, the lethal Friendly Arm quest thing, werewolf island, Section, Overwatch, Candlekeep, talking to the halfling for the Drizzt thing, and final push to kill Sarevok. Everything else I think is done as far as the glitched map will allow except Durlag's, and honestly there's nothing in Durlag's I care much about at this point.
First order of business is killing Layenne and getting our hands on the Staff of the Magi. Fortunately, Layenne doesn't buff with SI: Divination and doesn't spam the staff's invisibility power, which means that we can clear her invisibility with our planetar's True Seeing spell.
A Time Stop spell should be safe, but just in case, I use a scroll instead. Vaxall throws an Anti-Magic Ray at us from across the screen, but Frisk has a Spell Shield on hand. We stop time with no trouble.
Layenne has PFMW, but like so many SCS mages, she foolishly fails to pre-buff with Protection from Normal Missiles. We can land an easy STR drain kill with nonmagical darts during Time Stop.
For some reason, Layenne doesn't go down even though all of the darts hit. A few seconds later, she suddenly dies. Meanwhile, to the west, our Simulacrum clone goes undefended.
The clone goes down as well, but now we have the staff, and despite Shangalar being a lich, he can't see through invisibility. But Vaxall is still a potential threat. Another Time Stop and we shoot him down--like Layenne, he has very low STR and isn't hard to kill.
I'm not eager to confront Shangalar, so I let our planetar deal with him while I use Enchanted Weapon to shoot down Shyressa, who is immune to +2 weapons and below.
A new clone whacks Shangalar with the Staff of the Magi while his PFMW to take advantage of its Dispel Magic effect on hit, prompting a re-cast Stoneskin from the lich.
Dragon Fear sends the clone running, but a simple Resist Fear scroll sends it back to Shangalar for another Dispel Magic.
Shangalar teleports across the map, but Frisk can escape using the staff. Our clone casts Improved Haste and shoots him down.
The Staff of the Magi is ours! Virtually undispellable invisibility whenever we're not using a missile weapon, plus an extra casting of Spell Trap and some save bonuses if I need them in a pinch, on top of the Dispel Magic effect.
We got what we wanted and now it is time to tackle Irenicus. We've got some elementals to kill first, though, and we don't have the numbers to handle them normally without running low on spell slots and buff durations.
The solution is a low-pressure approach: we use a Simulacrum clone to nail the elementals with Called Shot and Darts of Stunning, allowing the real Frisk to jump in with the Firetooth dagger and Belm while the clone uses Acid Arrows.
Next up, Jon-bon. We nail him with Holy Word, but the resulting 50% spell failure still means 50% successful spellcasting. Jon-bon gets Wish off the ground and forces us into hiding during his Time Stop (with a PFMW in case Jon-bon can somehow sees through our invisibility.
Our clone takes the pressure. Jon-bon looses all of his Energy Blades and re-applies PFMW. We turn our attention to his clone, the easier target.
But Jon-bon's PFMW is not unbreakable. Our clone fires off some nonmagical arrows, switching to Acid Arrows when PFMW wears off.
The Staff of the Magi fails to dispel Jon-bon's buffs, because it acts at caster level 30 and Irenicus is well north of that. But we don't even need it, because Jon-bon proves unable to re-apply either PFMW or Stoneskin.
One last fight before the final battle: Wraith Sarevok, who has no defense against another STR drain kill from Called Shot during Time Stop.
For the Slayer, we pull back Frisk on the first round while allowing our clone to hold the enemy's attention. Notice the Balor's instant-casting Implosion spell.
Spell Turning should keep Frisk safe, but just in case, I equip the Ring of Free Action.
Irenicus casts Time Stop, but Frisk is out of his field of vision, invisible, AND covered by PFMW. Our clone dies, leaving Irenicus with nothing to do during his entire Time Stop.
I can drain Irenicus' spells by chain-casting Mordenkainen's Sword. An LoB Magical Sword can survive a Horrid Wilting spell, so they'll last a lot longer than they would in a normal run.
Jon-bon loses his PFMW when he's not even in danger, but not all is well. It turns out those Magical Swords are only immune to disablers; instant death effects still work on them just fine.
I keep casting Mordenkainen's Sword and the enemy keeps shattering them. All the while, Jon-bon's defenses run low--as does our Simulacrum spell, which will allow us to summon a new one when it runs out.
Another sword comes out, and another vorpal strike shatters the previous one. Then, to my horror, I realize I've sent Frisk right into the fray due to a mis-click!
When there's a Fallen Planetar on the map.
Frisk's aura is thankfully clear and we cast PFMW instantly. No vorpal strikes on Frisk.
SI: Abjuration is about to run out and I'm concerned about Frisk's defenses, so I activate a Spell Sequencer and cast SI: Abjuration right afterwards.
With only a few seconds left in our PFMW spell, we need to re-cast it. To avoid getting boxed in in the process, Frisk stays on the move until our aura is clear.
We manage to cast PFMW and shake the demons, but then the Magical Sword that was keeping them distracted falls to a vorpal strike. We slip away and cast Time Stop at the very instant that Jon-bon, still cluelessly waiting around in the north, loses his PFMW.
He has very high STR, so we have to re-cast Time Stop to make the absolute most out of our Called Shot spells.
The arrows all hit at once, and the collective stat drain triggers the instant death effect.
Irenicus falls! Shadows of Amn is over! Frisk progresses to Throne of Bhaal!
The difficulty will take a jump after this. I'm not as familiar with ToB as I am with SoA, and ToB has a lot of really resilient enemies. Worse, they come in groups, and the Archer/Mage is terrible at dealing with large groups of enemies. We've very much optimized for one-on-one encounters.
That said, we do get one last power boost in ToB. The Scorcher Ammunition will give us a powerful area-effect option as well as a much stronger means of dealing STR drain, because the Scorcher Ammunition strikes twice and can effectively reach 20 APR, when our normal maximum APR was 10, and could only last for 2 rounds before we ran out of Minute Meteors or Energy Blades. The Scorcher Ammunition will give us some extremely valuable wiggle room when it comes to landing the stat drain kills we need to survive ToB in Legacy of Bhaal mode.
We arrive at the elven grove. Climbing over giant stone heads fills us with determination.
Meanwhile I continue to fail to clear Baldur's Gate 1 like a boss.
Benjamin returns to the Nashkel mines in search of the dorf cult.
This isn't foreboding at all.
: Also, notice I managed to dump the kid? Ctrl-Q, kick, trigger kid's cutscene again, deny him reaccess with join party dialogue. Just say no to Min1HP, folks!
: Hold person means nothing to the power of the white and peach abomination now upon my shoulders!
: Assassins hate bunnies too. Completely unappreciative of their services in protecting the material plane.
Between the various loot differences and traps in different places, this return to Nashkel mines actually feels less like Nashkel mines than Section "can't be bothered to remove Joseph's ring" HQ.
He took a lot of damage doing it, but Benjamin turned the bulk of the horde.
Good thing he did. These particular skeleton archers have 3 APR with their bows a THAC0 with their longbow and +2 fire arrows of -1. The lot of them together could have done even more damage than they did.
Turns out the katana has a certain niche. Slashing ranged damage is pretty great against anything specced against missiles.
: The miners then proceeded to stay right where they were. Apparently not the most motivated of people.
While they are ridiculously strong for BG1 enemies they apparently only have 28 HP, so wand spam rules the day again, burning two charges per group.
Fortunately they're way tougher than the dorf Shadows deeper in, so maybe the epic final battle won't include them?
: It's a shame they're not undead. They're apparently level 1, and dorf chunks would be much easier for the bunnies to eat.
What's that? Kill them from a distance you say?
I haven't even gone into infinite gold loops and I still had enough to buy every fire wand from the Sorcerer's Sundries.
Still expecting Biglugs to be some level eleventy-nine Sorcerer or something.
: Sure is nice of them to stand passively in a nice huddled group, waiting for me to come up and say hi.
: Well la de da, look who has a chapter change scene.
Flawless victory. Backtrackality.
Also Sirene is bitchy because she's True Neutral thanks to the Ankh, which she's generally wearing for the point of stacking AC.
Actually, it gives Wisdom, and I haven't actually updated anyone's spell selection since they were recruited. Should probably get on that some day.
In terms of expected lethality, our next destination is clear.
: You know, with all this mod stuff Sarevok and the Iron Throne actually seem like pretty minor concerns. : Shut up and advance the plot. : Yes, Frank.
After a few months off I thought it was time for the monks to have another go at making their way through my SCS installation. Last time they got well into SoD, so I suppose the target to aim for would be to get at least to Belhifet .
After a bit of initial sling work, the monks used Algernon's Cloak to pull the sirines out of Beregost Temple and smacked them down to get their first level.
On the way up to get Dushai's ring they helped Tenya and then ambushed the nearby ankheg with stunning blows.
A few tasks around Beregost got everyone except Chimera the XP for level 3 and stunning Tarnesh on the way to hand goods in to Landrin completed the set.
They saw a vampiric wolf on the way down to Nashkel, but with a total of one +1 dagger between them they didn't fancy the odds and just ran away. Chimera learnt LMD while resting at the Carnival.
Meilum was shot down before the monks concentrated on reputation quests for a while.
That wasn't entirely successful, with a mis-click on Mr Colquetle losing reputation instead of gaining it and Melicamp failing to survive. That meant 20 reputation was out of reach prior to the Nashkel Mine (I didn't want to pay for it), but I wasn't intending to buy anything in the near future anyway.
A first death occurred after the monks tried ambushing Ba'ruk. He was stunned and, at near death, would have been finished off by missiles. However, in trying to move the melee monks away I used a move all command. As usual that's asking for trouble and Spectre's icon got stuck against Ba'ruk - she was then quickly shot down by kobold commandos.
After a visit to the temple the monks continued on their rounds. They got up to level 4 by using a stealth attack on Zal - they'd already used their stunning blows, but against a target with a missile weapon equipped that made no real difference.
More stealth attacks in the ankheg area provided XP and cash as well as a bit of reputation. The last reputation upgrade available prior to the Nashkel Mine is at the basilisk area, which will also offer another XP boost next.
We rejoin our hero in the Friendly Arm Inn, fairly deep into the plot, because not only have I lost an entire post detailing Benjamin's successful progress to this trainwreck of a boss fight, I've also lost several (in-game) HOURS dealing with this jerk. How many contingencies does he have?
Son of a crap weasel.
At least unless he's packing a tat of power or contingency that's "Wish: Restore all spells", pretty sure he's dropped most of his major spells and is just sticking to automatic, free, permanent, level 16 skeleton summons.
Also pretty sure he regenerates.
On top of healing/MI contingencies.
Please tell me this isn't the most ridiculous fight in the mod. I need waaaay more than a dozen skeleton warriors, instagib flame strikes and Noober level "Am I dead yet? How about now? How about now? How about now?"
Illasera has dispelling arrows that impose spell failure on hit, so the Shield of Reflection is very important. I distract the enemy with a planetar and a clone while I cast Time Stop to apply Called Shot to Illasera... only to find that her "Ethereal" spell grants her immunity to ALL weapons, regardless of their enchantment level.
But eventually it runs out, and Frisk applies STR drain with Called Shot. We cast PFMW when the Time Stop ends, but Illasera's STR drops to 0 immediately afterwards anyway.
The first Pocket Plane challenge lasts for many rounds, especially in LoB mode, so it's not a good idea to cast all of your buffs at once, lest they wear off when the final enemies arrive. Arrows of Detonation from our clone make short work of the first wave of kobolds.
Then we discover that Magical Swords do not take kindly to being blasted with those arrows despite them being completely immune to the damage. To my further surprise, a miffed Magical Sword is capable of turning my own clone hostile by attacking it.
Hostile clones use SCS scripts, which means our clone can cast a Spell Sequencer we haven't memorized.
Dispel Magic effects like those of the Staff of the Magi can instantly kill illusionary clones. Somehow, our hostile clone is completely immune.
The clone summons its own Magical Sword, and proves immune to Arrows of Dispelling, as it gets Frisk's immunity to +1 weapons and below from the Hell trials.
The good news is that the clone still has those Arrows of Detonation equipped, and targets our own Magical Sword, dealing damage to the nearby enemies. Even if the clone targeted Frisk, Frisk's basic weapon immunities would block it (Arrows of Detonation strike as +1 weapons).
The clone quickly kills itself with the blast damage and we proceed to the next phases of the fight. Sensing that the final bosses of this fight, Sarevok, Irenicus, and Bodhi, are about to arrive, Frisk uses a Protection from Undead scroll and summons a planetar to deal with the drow.
Finally, the last enemies arrive. Frisk chain-casts Time Stop and slays Sarevok by dual-wielding the Firetooth dagger with Belm.
Irenicus proves resistant to the dispel magic effect of the Staff of the Magi, but his PFMW has nonetheless worn off during Time Stop, so we fire a single Arrow of Dispelling at him and chop him up a little. When Time Stop ends, Irenicus has been debuffed and has lost his first spell.
I cast Time Stop one last time to bring him down.
I don't like relying so heavily on Time Stop, but it's easier and more reliable than trying to get him with Holy Word, nonmagical arrows or Darts +5, and/or debuffing spells.
Only Bodhi is left. Frisk's Protection from Undead spell has surprisingly worn off, but we have PFMW and Teleport Field to keep Bodhi at bay, and Enchanted Weapon lets us shoot her with Acid Arrows.
On to Saradush. Basic fights are easy to win with Time Stop, Summon Planetar, and the Staff of the Magi.
But Gromnir is much tougher than his petty goons. He comes bolstered by two epic-level spellcasters, a Wizard Slayer, a backstabber, a sirine or something with a paralysis attack, and several buffed-up golems from the Golem Construction mod. There's massive enemy pressure in this fight and very little room in which to navigate.
The thing is, none of them have the innate ability to see through invisibility. Which means we can just hide behind the Staff of the Magi while we cast Time Stop and kill Gromnir with STR drain.
I grab his gear, re-equip the staff, and flee the scene; there is no need for me to fight anyone else.
We score another level up on the way to the Marching Mountains, where I discover that Frisk's high levels allow them to conjure multiple clones by alternating Project Image and Simulacrum between each clone. This allows me to summon multiple planetars with a single level 7 spell slot and then kill the real Frisk's Project Image clone so Frisk can move again.
I don't like relying on planetars to do the heavy lifting, but they're a quick way of getting through boring fights.
Outside the fire giants' lair, I discover that a Burning Man's Banefire is not only a guaranteed dispel, but also bypasses both Spell Shield and SI: Abjuration, even though Banefire is coded as an abjuration spell.
I just hang back and let our planetar deal with it.
Inside the fire giants' lair, I thin the herd with Time Stop and then bring out a planetar to help finish off the rest. Then I discover that I can avoid two of the fights around here by using Dimension Door:
That Bone Fiend still teleports after me, but Dimension Door does give me some extra space when fighting the Burning Men on the other side of the area. I can shoot them during Time Stop and then duck behind the wall to hide.
I speed through the rest of the area with the help of planetars and proceed up the stairs, where a red dragon is waiting.
But if there's one thing the Archer/Mage excels at, it's killing one really big enemy.
Yaga-Shura is next. We grab his heart from the fire and psyche ourselves up for the fight.
Apparently "Middle of Quest Instance" doesn't stop archmages trying to kill catboy.
Verr'Sza spontaneously died in this particular timeline for no discernible reason, but apparently disintegrating with equipment and all wasn't great for the game and it crashed. Needless to say, next time he didn't die for no reason, the mage still died, and I am still mystified what happened the first time around, but I think Benjamin became an uncle?
Anyway, back to the actual quest.
: Rabbits.
: Bad poetry? These fiends must be stopped.
: I could do it myself, but that would involve having to look at it longer than a fraction of a second and actually thinking.
Pay no attention to the random demon. It's time to Beregost!
Bodyguards flee.
Necrolass replaces them with mages. Fuuu.
If part of the reward for this quest is not the Fiery Shockwave friendly stunning no save AOE that just wrecked my party into the wall, going to feel a bit short changed.
Sirene is apparently immune to invisibility.
I have no idea why she might be immune to invisibility, but suffice to say it didn't work out great for her. These sorceresses are epic level, pack level 9 spells, and the two reasons that Benjamin is still alive right now is that they have absolutely zero subtlety in spell selection, and that Summon Rabbit does not break invisibility.
What's more inappropriate than a 19/15/20 F/M/C in BG1? Two level 25 mages and a level 22 Fighter with 4 APR.
More inappropriate than that: Actually killing said mages and fighter, primarily with bunnies to drain their spells, but those mages were pretty en par with a BG fighter in melee.
Next time that entire quest is going to drown under flights of wyverns. That. Was. RIDICULOUS.
At the basilisk area Wraith gave the southern basilisks a good beating to get everyone up to level 5.
Wraith had to run Mutamin's pets round most of the map before eventually detaching them from their master (checking that with periodic stealth). After the basilisks were dead, Mutamin was then stealth attacked and did well to survive the stunning blows, but only responded with an attempted blindness before being shot down.
Korax then helped out in a general attack on Kirian & co.
Moving on to the Nashkel Mines, the monks stealth was not yet good enough for everyone to be able to sneak through together - but it was plenty good enough to send in attackers to pick off the kobolds. They made their way down pretty untroubled until the kobold shaman was the last enemy left in that area. Stunning blows were available, but I thought he would die quickly to stealth attacks without bothering about those. However, he had more HPs than I remembered - taking over 40 damage before sending 4 of the monks running with a horror. It was potentially unfortunate that Chimera was the one who ran through all 3 nearby traps, but fortunate they did very low damage and he survived comfortably.
After resting for several days in Mulahey's cave everyone was back at full health and ready for combat. Rather than risking a full initial attack on Mulahey they showed themselves at range and ran outside when he summoned support. The minions could then be picked off at the entrance before a stealth attack on the cleric - which comprehensively stunned him anyway.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul doesn't have many HPs and is thus a sucker for stealth attacks. Tranzig survived the damage from a initial sneak attack - but was stunned.
Moving on to Peldvale the monks helped Viconia out of a sticky situation before sending her on her way. They then got a lift with Raiken to the Bandit Camp where Tazok was talked into giving them the run of the place. A few of the stronger external bandits were charmed and fed to enemies near the ruins before the monks jumped in and out of Tazok's tent a few times. They took damage from enemies following them, but the bandits outside were still neutral so they were free to rest before going back in to finish Venkt and the remainder.
The lightning trap hit Spectre twice, but she just survived thanks to Mulahey's boots.
Outside, they fought a running battle with bandits, using their speed advantage to rest as necessary to ensure no-one ever got dangerously low on HPs.
Moving on to the Cloakwood, the monks successfully stunned Seniyad in the first area before he could call down anything nasty onto them.
The ring of free action was used to protect against web traps in the second area, but there was still a need to watch out for phase spiders appearing at awkward times - here 4 more of them joined in the fight to help out a stunned individual.
That required a fair amount of micro-management, but phase spiders are not really dangerous if you keep constantly moving and none of them ever got an attack in. The giant spiders managed the odd successful web tangle, but never in a dangerous situation and I didn't try and prevent that by switching the free action ring around. With the exterior cleared the monks then jumped in and out of the nest to avoid frost blasts from Centeol and tackle the spiders a few at a time.
In the third area they cleared the map exterior without trouble - both main druids being stunned repeatedly while ironskins were beaten down. They also did the cave, but nearly had a casualty after coming out of that when minimised the game without pausing to write a quick note and came back to find that Spook had been very lucky not to die to a wandering cave bear.
After healing up, I couldn't resist taking on Amarande despite having had trouble with him plenty of times before. After stealth attacks had done some initial damage inside the house a couple of spells were successfully disrupted, but multiple hits failed to stop a call lightning hitting Wraith - with fatal results.
I was thinking that going inside would stop further hits, but that wasn't an area transition and Spectre only just survived a hit there.
Amarande made a mistake though in not following them back inside and paid the price with a stealth assault.
On the way to find a temple the monks were ambushed by Molkar & co. Despite being a man down stunning blows did a good job there early on to allow victory.
The XP for that got everyone but Wraith ready to level up and, after visiting the FAI, Wraith soon hit the target thanks to an ettercap ambush.
HPs to date are generally decent for this stage, though a couple of poor rolls in a row have left Chimera himself just below average.
In the fourth Cloakwood area the hamadryad's ironskins kept it going a while, but a critical hit finished it off just as Wraith switched sides.
In the wyvern cave none of the initial stun attempts stuck and Phantom was poisoned in a position where Chimera had to work round a couple of wyverns to get to him - finally managing to slow the poison when Phantom was on the point of death.
On the journey to the final area it was the amazons' turn to spring an ambush. The possibility of fatal backstabs meant Chimera immediately made himself scarce, but only one backstab landed (and that for low damage) and it was a fairly comfortable victory.
At the mine, Drasus & co were charmed in turn and led away for disposal. Inside, a few of Hareishan's guards were led away and Hareishan herself hit by a number of stealth shots before she went invisible. Even after resting several times she didn't reappear, so Wraith tried charming a guard without success. She immediately went back into stealth, but that apparently persuaded Hareishan to track down the others. As I was watching Wraith I didn't notice her arrival until too late - resulting in everyone except Wraith being confused. Wraith managed initially to act as an invisible blocker to prevent Hareishan coming back to cast another spell on everyone and when Spectre wandered out and was charmed Wraith attacked with a stunning blow and was successful in getting Hareishan to retreat. That was vital because Chimera was in the midst of the monks and was taken down to 2 HPs before Wraith was free to come back and make herself the target of 2 of the 3 monks that had been attacking Chimera. The final one fortunately didn't try attacking him any more until the spell ended.
After resting outside to heal up, Wraith investigated and found Hareishan had once more disappeared. To combat that she charmed several guards before eventually one of those lasted long enough to get Hareishan to show herself. A full attack then successfully stunned her.
Downstairs, Natasha resisted some initial attacks, but was stunned as she put up a new stoneskin.
The ogre mage managed to hold Spirit and survive for a worryingly long time, but eventually it was stunned as well.
It took a while travelling up and down, but eventually the guard downstairs was charmed and pulled one of the battle horrors back. A general attack failed to kill it quickly and the guard had to retreat while the monks used stealth attacks to finish the battle horror off.
After resting upstairs to let the guard recover its HPs they pulled back the other battle horror - and this time they did kill it very quickly.
The monks then shared out the trap damage before sending the guard off to kill Davaeorn by itself.
The guard then performed a final function by tanking the mustard jelly while the monks used magic weapons for the first time to kill it.
Flooding the mine got the monks to reputation 20 and, despite their wounds, they set off on a shopping spree around the Realms. With backpacks and wallets lightened and newly stocked with wands they went to Shoal's area and crushed Mad Arcand (though I realised just too late I hadn't done his quest first).
A bit of stealing in Beregost then reduced reputation to 9 before they finally rested to allow Chimera to get horror.
Now fully equipped, the monks will have the chance to acquire plenty of XP far more easily and rapidly than done to date before progressing further with the main quest.
Please tell me this isn't the most ridiculous fight in the mod. I need waaaay more than a dozen skeleton warriors, instagib flame strikes and Noober level "Am I dead yet? How about now? How about now? How about now?"
I actually found the mages in Beregost harder, but that is probably because I didn't discover the answers to dealing with them as quickly as I did for the Grachus fight. The main answer to Grachus was haste and wand of summoning.
Knowing your spellbook is the answer to the mages. Plus the knowledge you get from playing them previously.
I'll have to reinstall it next time to jog my memory as to how I fought him.
Nyalee's grove has some nasty enemies in Ascension, including an epic-level Skeleton Assassin, Skeleton Cleric, and Skeleton Mage. There is no reason to engage them directly when we can fight from a safe distance.
I duck in briefly to attack the mage during Time Stop, only to find that it went invisible right before I finished casting the spell, making it impossible for us to attack it. I linger a little afterwards to attack it once our planetar dispels the mage's invisibility, only to see it cast Absolute Immunity. Attacking it is impossible.
Instead, I shoot the cleric. We land some hits on it, but then I notice that those hits are bouncing back at us. It still has Physical Mirror active, and yet somehow took missile damage from our arrows.
I equip the Shield of Reflection and flee to the southeast once again, hoping to wait out the cleric's Physical Mirror spell.
The situation gets worse as our planetars begin to vanish, and one of them falls to a vorpal strike. On top of that, that cleric's Physical Mirror spell is still active, and I'm afraid to unequip the Shield of Reflection because I don't know how hard those arrows are going to hit if I don't keep bouncing them.
Finally, luck turns in our favor: the Skeleton Mage approaches our planetar without PFMW active, and our planetar lands a vorpal strike of its own.
I distract the Fallen Planetar with a Magical Sword and head out to attack the Skeleton Cleric, but I can't reach it with Belm, and switching to the Staff of the Magi would let the cleric's Physical Mirror nail us with the arrows still bouncing between Frisk and the skeleton. Instead, I hang back and let our planetar fight it.
The Fallen Planetar lands more vorpal strikes on our Magical Swords, until we're forced to cast PFMW to avoid a vorpal strike on Frisk. Fortunately, though, our planetar finally brings down the cleric.
But we've got another problem. It seems that the mage we killed earlier was just a clone; the real one is still kicking around. A Time Stop brings it to Near Death, at which point we tear it down.
I flee using the Pocket Plane, clear up the remaining undead, and slash up Nyalee with a pair of Time Stop spells.
Fun fact: Shambling Mounds are bugged to bring their target down to Badly Injured or Near Death with a single hit, due to a coding error in their natural weapon.
There's some quest around here that involves Nyalee's hair and leads to an underground cave filled with poison, but only poison-immune critters can enter it, which I think means it has something to do with Hexxat.
Time to finally take down Yaga-Shura. We summon a few planetars for safety's sake when we enter the siege camp, then scare off the giant with a single arrow.
We head back across the bridge and Yaga-Shura reappears in record time. I was expecting another long wait before he came back.
I chain-cast Time Stop and apply STR drain from Called Shot on Yaga-Shura, but when Time Stop finally ends, Yaga-Shura remains very much alive.
I count the hits from Called Shot and Yaga-Shura's STR should be just one hit shy of death. But at point blank range, I have some nasty penalties to hit him, and if I don't land a hit soon, I'll lose my chance to kill him early.
I switch to a single Arrow of Detonation, the one arrow I can fire which hits automatically regardless of THAC0 or AC. Yaga-Shura goes down!
The Oasis is a tough fight, but one of my mods let me talk my way out of it. Name-dropping Drizzt gets us out of trouble, even though we totally left him to die in BG1.
Next up is Draconis. His mage form has some really nice buffs, but Holy Word applies 50% spell failure, and we cast it twice via our celestials in the hope that it still stacks.
We kill his clone, spam Flame Strikes on the real Draconis, and finally chop him up when his PFMW wears off.
His transformation kills all of our summons via the Death Field spell, leaving us in a very bad position. I summon a clone and a planetar to keep him busy, but when I approach Draconis during Time Stop, he's already invisible.
I activate my clone's Called Shot, but Draconis goes invisible. I try casting Time Stop again, but he goes invisible for a third time. I can't get a safe kill on Draconis without that Time Stop; it's too easy for invisibility to ruin our shot at a STR drain kill.
I just have to let my planetars distract him until Frisk's Simulacrum wears off and we can summon a new one. We begin lowering his MR in order to land a Ray of Enfeeblement spell on him. But Draconis blasts us with his breath weapon, and once again, Frisk loses a clone to the Simulacrum bug despite being immune to the damage that triggered the bug.
Draconis fires off a Greater Malison spell, forcing us to drink a Potion of Invulnerability. Draconis and Frisk trade debuffers, but Frisk has a Spell Trigger on hand when they lose their Spell Shield.
Unable to cast Time Stop, Ray of Enfeeblement is our only hope of landing a STR drain kill. Finally, the dragon croaks.
We're just moments away from getting the Scorcher Ammunition. Then I realize we've got a problem.
The quadruple dragon ambush comes before we meet Bondari the Reloader. This means we have to kill four dragons in a row with just our existing items and spells. And one of them uses a poison breath weapon.
Since this is a v2.3 install, Protection from Poison scrolls will not help. And since we never got the Purification Stone in SoD, and the Periapt of Proof Against Poison somehow does not grant 100% poison immunity, there are only two remaining sources of poison immunity in the game: the Ring of Anti-Venom, which would involve fighting the Amkethran, which I haven't done in years, or the Ring of Gaxx.
Kangaxx is much tougher, but he's the devil I know. The Teleport spell lets us revisit BG2 areas, so we pay a visit to the Shade Lich and Elemental Lich. Using a Protection from Undead scroll on each one breaks their script and makes it impossible for them to fight back against us, with the exception of their melee attacks and, surprisingly enough, a lone Spellstrike spell from the Elemental Lich.
Kangaxx is only slightly more resistant to the Protection from Undead scroll, and is largely incapable of functioning after we use it on him. We still need to dispel it shortly before he hits 1 HP, however, or else he won't trigger his transformation dialogue.
I pause and un-pause over and over again to make absolutely sure I can act the very instant that his demilich form appears. When it does, we apply another Protection from Undead scroll, breaking his final form's script as well.
Kangaxx cannot cast PFMW anymore, and thanks to his low STR, we can easily kill him with Called Shot. I use Time Stop to make sure we land every hit.
We now have 100% resistance to poison. Ithy'nassendra's Green Dragon Breath attack won't be able to touch us.
We still have some business to take care of before we face the quadruple dragon ambush. After slicing through a gang of epic-level lizard men using Time Stop and Summon Planetar, we arrive at Anadramatis... who I forgot was there. Apparently, she uses Wish Breach, which she can cast instantly and happens to bypass our Spell Shield.
We drink a Potion of Magic Shielding to replace our lost defenses and summon a clone, which we'll need to bring down Anadramatis. She spam spell protections over and over, but we have lots of magic attacks that will pave the way for a Ray of Enfeeblement.
But then she re-casts Spell Trap, and suddenly I find we're out of magic attacks to remove it. We can't apply Ray of Enfeeblement if Anadramatis has Spell Trap active.
Then I realize that the electricity damage from Energy Blades strikes as a level 9 spell. We can burn right through the Spell Trap with 4 hits! The moment we see Anadramatis taking electrical damage, we know the Spell Trap is gone, and fire off a Ray of Enfeeblement before she can restore her Spell Trap. One more hit, and Anadramatis goes down.
We run past the demons on the way back and plow through the Kuo-toa and water elementals using brute force.
The quadruple dragon ambush is next. But before we can tangle with them, Frisk runs off to Amkethran to buy some rope. I wish it was possible to tie them down right away, but I'm a frayed knot.
I don't mean to twine about it, but those dragons are really bad noose.
Getting roped into twisted situations fills us with determination.
Please tell me this isn't the most ridiculous fight in the mod. I need waaaay more than a dozen skeleton warriors, instagib flame strikes and Noober level "Am I dead yet? How about now? How about now? How about now?"
I actually found the mages in Beregost harder, but that is probably because I didn't discover the answers to dealing with them as quickly as I did for the Grachus fight. The main answer to Grachus was haste and wand of summoning.
Yeah, Mages were definitely ridiculous. At least they didn't spawn an army of permanent skeletons when fighting them, I guess.
: I know I should have let the rabbits drive.
: While I appreciate your professionalism, considering we were afloat for seven days, possibly would have preferred you help us build the raft.
: How dare he! I'm as sane as they come! : You should kill him. Kill them all. : Not now, Frank.
Murdering Sirine with bunnies. We have come full circle.
: ... I'm just going to go ahead and assume it's because of all the bunny-ness.
Dread Wolves. Correctly statted out as Undead, constantly showing up in places with no reason whatsoever for an undead horror to show up.
: Hey, guess what's mine?
: Psh. That would infer they managed to deal any damage to anyone except the gnome.
: Run werebun run werebun run run run, here comes the killjoy for your fun fun fun.
Hm. I wonder why the werewolf warrens isn't a more popular choice for mods? Players would be far less familiar with the map since Werewolf Island is kind of pointless, and there's actually quite a few rooms to navigate to where you could have plot/stuff. Better than yet another Nashkel Mines at least.
: Did you just assume my level of concern?! Spoilers: It is low. Also totally fine with being a werebunny.
: Rabbits: Best sailors.
Seriously though, always amusing how CHARNAME manages to sail a boat completely on their own with zero trouble, while the "competent mercantile crew" manages to sink themselves.
Also, for the record, I loathe the werewolf questline for the constant railroading. "Lycanthropy? Okay, I'm cool with this." "Lolnah, you fight my lackeys, I forgive you for doing what you must do." "Okay, cool, see you in a bit." "Oh hi, you fought all my lackeys. That means you would never accept being a lycanthrope and must die." "... Okay, I guess?" "Hey, where's my mate?" "Suicide by bunnymancer." "Then you must die!" *Wanders off, never completing the plot. Lycanthropy never manifests.* Or, of course "I now am arbitrarily mad about the whole lycanthropy thing! DIE MENDAS!" as opposed to "Okay, guess I get more bodyhair or something? Time to start biting people, I guess? You're the boss after all."
About the most interesting thing would be the logbook of Balduran, which could/should have provided an alternative entry into Candlekeep to reduce railroading.
Also, apparently wasn't kidding about this being Benjamin's. Hopefully there will be an infernal machine he can feed it to in order to produce a half-drider abomination or something. At least he fits in the bag of holding.
Comments
EDIT: Martyrs Morningstar with Enchanted Weapon fits in this category perfectly and should make the following even easier:
BASE THAC0: 13
Violet Potion: -7
Potion of Power: -3
Weapon: -3
Medal of Valor: -2
Ring of Purity: -1
Legacy of the Master: -1
Baldurans Helm: -1
Cloverleaf: -1
THAC0: -6 = Chance to hit Big B out of invisibility = 75%
Even if you drop Baldurans Helm the whole process would have been "rather easy" if you get used to timing & positioning. I really like your creative use of detonation arrows that is for sure far more spectacluar but - as i stated earlier - i would have used hit & run.
Yes, potions will run out during the fight but as long as you get enough invisibility potions (130+ is no big deal if you start picking them in BG1) combined with some healing (Durlags + Reg Potions) you will (nearly) always be on the safe side. I also would not care about the number of demons as they never ever will get you as long as your mind is fresh (Erinyes will get hindered by own demons and you can use the pillars to break vision plus they should need a 20 to hit). I tested it with nearly 50 demons hunting me and it was still no big deal as long as i got the timing right. Sure there is always room for mistakes if you get careless or lose patience.
Hit-and-fade tactics can work for an Archer/Mage, but not with the limited resources at my disposal. If I had combined hit-and-fade with kiting and used a slightly different pattern, I could have taken down Belhifet without using Arrows of Detonation, but it would have been fairly close with only 60 Potions of Invisibility.
Dealing with Assassins.
Doodly doo.
Spam 'em all to death.
Doodly doo.
I got a spellcaster.
It's the wrong one.
Oh boy!
Doodly doo!
And then Val made some non-rabbit friends.
For the express purpose of buffing his rabbits. Obviously. Go double bard song hasted chanted bunny hordes!
Rabbitty Rabbitty Wrecked Son!
Rabbits of the Lost Arc.
You know what, this is actually entertaining enough that I'm going to roll up a Mage/Cleric. I don't think the Sorcerer, while entertaining thus far, has enough freedom in spell selection to dedicate to making an unstoppable army of bunnies.
So Valefar's so-far-so-good run will be stored until after I get this rabbit habit kicked.
Rejected names:
Buster
Bugs
Jazz
Rekkit
Peter
Bun-Bun
Hazel
Bucky
Roger
Also strongly considered LoB mode, but meh. Pokémon is less fun when its mandatory.
He started as a Heartwarder to set his spell list for Thought and Benediction, giving him access to AOE blinds, boosts, and disables to maximise his swarm. He could have ended up as a priest of Kelemvor for epic turning and free, permanent, death ward, but the undead focus seemed incongruous. The extra CLs will help his buff durations, and Holy Smite is the perfect party friendly spell.
Switching also granted him a second cantrip, so he picked Earthen Grasp, the infinite use 1 round hold effect, again for the bunnies.
Speaking off, let's look at what we're working with:
Rabbit:
4 natural AC. 0 with their 19 Dex. +4 for being unarmed dealing 1-2 non-lethal damage.
19 THAC0, +4 for being unarmed, 1 APR.
+2/+2 Skald
+1/+1 Bardsong (luck)
+1 APR (haste)
+1/+1 Chant
If I could find a suitable War cleric to cast Strength of One (maybe Branwen) that'd be another +2/+3, and eventually Benjamin will get Emotion: Hope and Courage for another +3/+5, giving these bunnies 2 APR at 10 THAC0 dealing 15 non-lethal damage each.
It's enough to turn your hare white.
Ranger, Bard... perhaps a mage
Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
An hour or so to kill. Long enough to do the Planar Prison, Brynnlaw and the first part of Spellhold before meeting up with Imoen again. Only the one scare - what would happen if the Berserk Warrior killed Imoen in a dream. Fortunately we didn't get to find out as he became controllable and was ordered to stop attacking her.
Bare head without full plate, so not a thief or bard, unless wearing plate armour.
Must be some form of Warrior class, Paladin, Fighter or Ranger, and the armour is probably Ankheg Plate or Elven Chain because they're wearing trousers.
Anyways...
[SPOILER]
Every horde begins with a single progenitor. Frank the rabbit. I can only imagine how fun it would be trying to find the familiar in a full swarm without target circles.
Because BGNPC is weirdly coded, when the plot NPC sees Kivan (only Kivan), she wanders over to talk to CHARNAME, wherever CHARNAME may be.
In this case Benjamin is summoning forth a crew, preparing for a life as a pirate bunny with this new ship he found. Just like Frank told him to.
Oh, nevermind, fishmen put a hole in it.
Ogres.
Lots of ogres, actually.
Benjamin's most horrifying move is to encase the victim in lettuce.
The nibbling. Oh the nibbling.
I'm starting to think we'll never find a pirate ship.
Pleased with this. The absolute flood of bunnines in close melee at any particular point meant that the Sirene couldn't use their bows at all, making for more loot for Benjamin.
Benjamin donates 600 of his 689 GP to the happiness of a small child.
True Neutral: Get's to do it both ways.
He flailed at the hopping horde until his weapon broke against them. Died, then came back for another beating as I crashed and had to do everything over from leaving the Shoal map.
One of these days I should probably upgrade my machine.
There's a random result with the cheapskate version of this quest succeeding, failing, or turning the woman into a slime as well. Since the cheap potion worked, guess that means Benjamin can sell the real antidote for 625 GP.
Silke: Serially suicidal. Garrick needs to stop standing so close to her.
Rabbits like lawn ornaments.
At this point Benjamin discovers the major downside of bunnies is that they can't carry loot, so he recruits Shar-Teel (full disclosure, she glitched, so after he brought her down to -25 HP equivalent in the duel I ctrl-Q'd her immortal heinie into party).
Most mages hate rabbits so much that they will gladly kill themselves with lightning bolts so long as they get to take some rabbits with them.
Since they are mere bandits, rather than something dangerous like ferrets or small snakes, they fall easily to the nose-twitching hordes.
Once Benjamin reaches the Friendly Arm storage shop Shar-Teel is booted forthwith, because
third wave feminism is cancershe's actually min1hp'd thanks to the duel glitch.Fortunately it never came up during the trip since bunnies handled all the tanking.
Replacement token evil teammate get.
Probably not the last one, either. Benjamin needs to pick up Eldoth (and therefore Skie) for Bard purposes to empower his swarm, probably Dorn, for the Elven chainmail, and maybe Edwin to convert to a Shadow Adept, depending if Neera survives or not later on.
Acceptable losses to remove the horror spamming, health absorbing, ghost wizard with no spells.
Shadow Adept looks on as a swarm of bunnies eat some undead wolves alive. She's not from these parts, for all she knows this is just part of the natural circle of life.
Damnit, respect rabbit culture!
Bunny cavalry: One.
Powers of darkness: Nil.
Since he's failed to scribe pretty much every single scroll except Lightning, Mirror Image, and Strength,
Benjamin is rather streamlined in his solutions.[/spoiler]
Not pictured: Wand of Fire exploit to kill Ghost Wizard #1 before the bunnymancer and his jukebox head to the Friendly Arm to cadge a rez.
Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good
Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good
Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
The session started with Cowled Wizards issuing a reprimand. Felai decided to pay 5000gp before we were drawn into more serious discussions with them, then spent another 15000gp on obtaining the guidance of Aran Linvail.
A group of pirates were clunking around in their hideout while we rested, and nobody disturbs our sleep more than once.
We then headed to to Graveyard district to return a bear to Wellyn, then down into the murk to hunt out some headgear. On our way back out we looted the tombs.
Been rather occupied with Real Life (TM).
Thank you for taking such good care of the thread meanwhile.
I have a Cavalier run that remains parked at Amkethran for several months now. I do hope to go back to it as Real Life circumstances permit.
P.S. NWN:EE is a thing now? Wow! You are AFK for a couple months and they come up with all kinds of things.
no mods, Lob run... as normal I'll make her an item if she lives to bg2
Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Fiery takes advantage of multiplayer-fu to eliminate an unseen Ulitharid.
Clambering out of the Underdark leads us to Elhan, and we call it a day.
BM 95 - a beast master in BG1
I have also decided to do a LoB run.My Dwarven Barbarian was lost due to restartis. The brave dwarf fought his way to WK4 and had picked up the deck of many things - the deck lowered my saving throws twice and gave me 300.000 xp (I was already at the cap
So I decided to take on a different Challenge with the kit who gets the most HP in a LoB run. Insights on the Challenge has been picked up in the awesome “LoB + SCS” thread. So without further ado let me introduce BM 95
Everything is more in LoB. Also your own summons and familiars. Summon familiar netted 22 hp - the ToB version will give 58 hp
Had a few restarts - tried fighting in melee, but even the CK rats proved a great foe.. So My familiar is MVP despite the HP boost. Therefore an alternative approach was required!!
The plan is to dodge all fighting untill I have a kick arse party. After the non fighting quests in CK I dodged Imoen - for now. Instead I picked up the ring at FAI, sold it and bought Stone to flesh scrolls. Smacked down Algernon and picked up his cloak -> time for the Basilisk XP loop (and yes its needed in LoB mode imo).
The LG and NG familiar is immune to petrification, and the scrolls are plenty, so I can come and go at the basilisk area as I please.
At level 6 I called it a day: time to pick up a party, gear and some wands (WoMS most of all). Frist jo a party. Enter level 6 Imoen..
After that Branwen
We found some gear lying around..
Under PfU we picked up the WoMS
Then picked up Minsc. He will wear Drizzts gear and tank - but not before the gnoll fortress has been invaded. The gnolls will be a formidable for, but the skellies and WoMS will do there parts.
I suspect that even in LoB wands will rule supreme - for I surely dont...
Undercellars: For pretty much everything.
fun naziparanoid Harper dedicated to keeping you in the safest conceivable location on the planet. CHARNAME's only friend his age was most likely Imoen.Drizzt Saga question: Met Drizzt, does heading to Ulgoth's Beard where the halfling is start the whole questline, which I'd sooner wait for until towards the end, or is it only progressed by talking to him?
Possibly a pointless question, for all I know this serpent undercellar quest will involve a level 30/30/30 Fighter/Mage/Thief with seven Set Snares already set down there.
You really find out how cheaty some mages are when you confront them with infinite bunnies. Andris, the greeter of the Ice Island, has seven Melf's Magic Arrows memorised, plus five mirror images, four lightning bolts, two fireballs, two flame arrows, two hold persons...
Heading East from the Ankheg map bypasses all those Black Talon Elite spawns. Marvellous.
When you know how lightning works, it's very abusable. Benjamin cast the lightning bolt on the far guard, hitting Flame Strike spam girl, because it hit the guard, it bounced off him thanks to the bounce glitch, hitting him and Flame Strike spam girl again, and all the way through to rosy complexion palassin.
Since she spawned, doofus assassin who warns you to hold still while he assassinates you also spawns, unlocking Section HQ for later.
Next episode: Feasting upon the leaves of Cloakwood.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 21: Shadows of Amn
To Spellhold! We're actually pretty underleveled for a solo run, being at level 16 (a good solo character should have HLAs by this point), but I already have the basic resources needed to get all the way to Chapter 6 without any problems. We don't need to do any grinding to prepare for the challenges ahead. We can leave lots of Chapter 2 quests uncompleted.Like I said before, BG2 is going to be a breeze.
By allying ourselves with Malficus from the Alternatives mod, we end up getting ambushed by vampires in Brynnlaw even though we slew Aran Linvail, which ostensibly would have made us friends with Bodhi. The Belt of Inertial Barrier holds off a Cloud of Bats spell, allowing Frisk to cast PFMW.
Archers are terrible at tanking, but we have plenty of summons to avoid pressure.
Basic summons are enough to deal with most trash enemies. The only dangerous enemy around here is Perth the Adept, and we're not going to deal with him. We stick to the alternative route to Spellhold.
Same strategies work for Bhaal in the dream (we sacrifice a point of INT; we don't need it despite Frisk being a mage), the kobolds, and the summons from the altar, though the mind flayer warrants a charge of the Greenstone Amulet and the beholder warrants the Shield of Balduran.
We burn a Protection from Undead scroll on Frisk, but it's not necessary. Contrary to my expectations, Dimension Door allows us to jump over a spawn trigger and avoid the lich fight.
We use Enchanted Weapon to shoot down Dace Sontan with some Acid Arrows, skip the Yuan-ti leading to the next area, and tackle the Yuan-ti upstairs. Basically we just wait out its Mantle until we can nail it with an Arrow of Dispelling.
For some reason, taking the paintings in this area forces Frisk to drop all of their equipment at once. Luckily for us, Frisk's massive HP pool from their fighter levels is more than enough to tank a simple damage spell.
But if you look carefully, you'll see that there's a Fireball spell coming as well. We drink a Potion of Fire Resistance and re-equip our items, including the Ring of Fire Resistance, to make sure we don't lose much more HP.
The Clay Golems are immune to missile damage, but STR drain can kill them. When I run out of Called Shot spells, I switch to the Martyr's Morningstar.
For Irenicus, we enter the fight with no weapons equipped so our clone will be helpless to harm us. As for Jon-bon himself, a Cone of Cold spell could disrupt his first spell, but I'm not willing to take the risk of expending our first aura. Darts +5 could get through his Improved Mantle, but with only one character, we don't have the APR to get through his Stoneskins and disrupt his opening spell.
The other inmates, however, have lots of magic attacks to throw at Irenicus, and they manage to Breach him very quickly, opening the way for Acid Arrows.
He still has a PFMW Contingency, but without Stoneskins, that doesn't do much good when we have nonmagical arrows.
Jon-bon has plenty of HP, but without his defenses, he can't get any spells off the ground.
I let summons deal with the Murderers and then the pirates by the docks. Before we leave for City Sushi, Frisk drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to ward off a potentially fatal Mind Blast before running to the north end of the ship to trigger the cutscene early.
City Sushi is important for the Cloak of Mirroring, but also the infinite gold trick at the Temple of Sekolah.
Well... actually, it's not important. Nothing depends on it; there's nothing I need to buy that I can't already afford. I just want to do it because big numbers are fun.
And also because I hate the idea of pawning off an item that might theoretically hypothetically possibly someday maybe be somewhat useful on a single occasion somewhere in the future. I'd rather use an exploit than go without 10 spare Potions of Fire Resistance... even if I can already reach 90% fire resistance just by switching items, and even if I already pre-buff with Protection from Fire by default.
Anyway, we finally hit level 18 and gain access to our first level 9 spell, filled by our first HLA pick, Summon Planetar. When we head down to the Underdark, it gets us a lucky early kill on a mod-introduced drow mage!
In previous runs, I've seen other drow show up to that fight, but they're not here this time. This means that in my previous installs, there were actually two mod-introduced drow ambushes that, by sheer coincidence, were placed on the exact same location.
Most fights in the game could be handled just by hiding behind invisibility and letting a planetar do all the work, running away and resting whenever the planetar dies. But that's slower than just blowing stuff up with Arrows of Detonation.
The fight is more complicated than this, but the details are not very enlightening.
How am I going to handle the Balor? He has absolutely crazy stats and all the normal demon immunities. However, he has no spell protections; only magic resistance. Enter the Lower Resistance spell.
Due to a bug, my Simulacrum clone vanishes the moment Frisk gets hit by the Fire Storm spell (that's only supposed to happen to Project Image clones), but we'll be able to handle this on our own, anyway. We drop the Balor's MR to zero and then use Called Shot on Energy Blades, which normally give 9 APR to single-classed mages, but having 8 Archer levels bumps that up to 10 APR.
Called Shot gets us a guaranteed failed save against Ray of Enfeeblement.
This should be an instant kill in the unmodded game, since the Balor's base STR should be 5 and it's suffering from much more than -5 STR drain, which ostensibly would put it in the negatives. But with the Better Stat Drain mod, we still need to land one last hit to actually kill the thing, because the mod is keeping the Balor's STR at 1. But once the Balor gets hit one more time, the instant kill spell triggers, reducing its HP to zero and then dealing 10 non-resistable magic damage.
This gives us the XP for the kill. The effect is negligible considering this is a solo run (even underleveled, we still don't need the extra XP), but I like the fact that it's possible. It's always bothered me that stat drain kills don't normally give XP.
I also like the sound effect of magic damage, so that's fine, too.
Planetars are strong, but you should never overestimate their defenses. 70% magic resistance still means 30% magic vulnerability.
But Enchanted Weapon lets us land Arrows of Dispelling on planetars, curing them of any status effects they may incur. And clones fire those arrows for free.
Called Shot, Darts of Stunning, and STR drain with Ray of Enfeeblement come together to take down the Kuo-toan Prince, while our planetar keeps the lesser Kuo-toa occupied.
But offensive power should never be taken as a sign of invincibility. Against another batch of Kuo-toa outside, Frisk lets their PFMW drop and I discover that I've completely neglected to maintain their Stoneskins!
I have two options here: first, I can try to drink a healing potion. That would activate instantly without fail, but it would still leave me vulnerable to further attacks. And it's entirely possible that the Kuo-toa could land several more hits and lock me down while my aura was still fogged.
Second, I could cast PFMW or Stoneskin. But I know from hard experience that if you get an auto-pause on hit and try to cast a spell, the spell will begin casting on the same frame that you took the damage, which means spell disruption is guaranteed. In order to cast that spell, I have to time its casting to come immediately after unpausing. And if I'm late by even a few frames, it's possible that another two hits could come in and finish me off in the fraction of a second before I click the button.
In the end, I opt for a charge of Durlag's Goblet. I pause immediately afterwards to gauge the situation.
I switch around our gear, making sure we have the Shield of Reflection equipped, and make a break for it. The Kuo-toa leave us alone, allowing us to cast Stoneskin before we can get in any more trouble.
Based on the rolls, we could have survived even without the potion or the spell, just by running away. But it's always a good idea to assume the worst and act accordingly.
The Ust Natha questline is boring at this point. Summons take down the mind flayers, we talk our way out of the Aboleth quest, more summons take down the beholder, we spare the svirfneblin and Solaufein, talk-block Taso Kala while invisible, and take down the Egg Guards.
How do we kill the Egg Guards before they alert the city? Simple: we use Limited Wish to cast Time Stop and then take advantage of the guaranteed hits. All the arrows we fired during Time Stop hit simultaneously.
I let Adalon deal with the drow guarding the exit, hiding behind invisibility. The Glabrezus can see right through it, but they don't last long enough to cause me any trouble.
Adalon leaves some survivors for us to fight, but they can't see us, and they're not blocking the way. We can slip right past them.
On the way back to Athkatla, we run into Drizzt. We lie to his face.
For those who aren't aware, BG1 Drizzt is bugged to be unable to attack in LoB mode, and you can just let the gnolls kill him so you can steal his scimitars.
We buy a lot more stuff, both necessary and unnecessary, and go vampire hunting. Against the odds, we nuke the most powerful vampire on the first floor, Tanova, with Sunray from the Helm of Brilliance.
One of the problems with being an Archer is that you can't put more than one pip in melee weapons. But one of the nice things about Black Blade of Disaster is that it gives you five pips in longswords, which gives us a whole extra attack per round. It works great with Belm, even if we have no pips in dual-wielding.
When that wears off, we still have a Protection from Undead scroll to chop up the survivors.
Since we got a Time Stop scroll from Ribald, we can now create our own Time Stop scrolls at 9000 gold a pop. I don't really want to abuse this too much, but juuuust in case Bodhi somehow disrupts our opening spell, I make sure that our Time Stop comes from an uninterruptible scroll. Black Blade of Disaster deals a LOT more damage during Time Stop than our missile weapons, which is saying something, considering Frisk is an Archer/Mage.
But when the best longbow in BG2 only has +3 damage, it's not surprising that Frisk's normal ranged attacks are largely obsolete.
Bodhi gives her next dialogue line and casts Heal on herself. I should be able to tank this with PFMW, the Cloak of Mirroring to block her Horrid Wilting-type spell, SI: Conjuration for Cloud of Bats, and a scroll of Protection from Undead.
But a scribed Time Stop scroll is fine, too.
It's not enough to kill Bodhi, but Frisk's existing buffs are enough to make them invincible against anything the enemy can throw at them... if they could throw anything at us, which they can't, because of our Protection from Undead scroll.
Time Stop also opens up new possibilities for STR drain kills. Normally, the STR drain effect only lasts for 10 seconds, while Called Shot lasts for 12 seconds, which means your STR drain isn't actually equal to your APR over 2 rounds. But during Time Stop, all projectiles strike together, which means all of their STR drain applies at once. Better still, Time Stop lets you chain together multiple Called Shot spells. With 10 APR, 3 rounds of automatic hits, and 2 Called Shot spells cast during Time Stop, we can inflict enough STR drain to kill anything.
We can't drain the maximum 40 theoretically possible, however, for two reasons: first, the Robe of Vecna speeds up spellcasting, so it adds about 3 seconds of Time Stop in which our aura isn't clear and we can't cast Called Shot. Second, we can only conjure 20 Energy Blades or Minute Meteors, which will run out during Time Stop. Restoring them would cost us an aura we could use for Called Shot, so our APR must drop to 7 (the best we can manage with a longbow or darts) before Time Stop runs out.
We perform the ritual to summon Rillifane, who kills all the enemies in Suldannessellar and saves us a lot of trouble. On visiting the merchant outside, we discover that she, too, can work as an infinite gold source with 20 CHA and reputation. Not that it matters; can always use the Teleport spell to revisit the Temple of Sekolah, provided we charm the priestess (who goes hostile when you betray Ixilthetocal).
But before we face Irenicus, we have one last stop. A big one.
It's time to tackle the Twisted Rune. The swirling energy of the Rogue Stone fills us with determination.
The BSOD actually happened just before Benjamin's Bunnies headed down the next set of stairs, so I get to kill Hareshan or whatever her name is all over again. Yay etc.
Random side note: Dark Side of the Sword Coast just throws Daggers of Disease at you. Random mages carry them, ghost wizards carry them, one of these guys carried one... The dagger of venom was already one of the more badass weapons of the first game, the Dagger of Disease is exactly that, with a +1 APR bonus attached. It's only because of the insane power creep of the mod that the DoDs seem remotely reasonable.
Benjamin doesn't use one, since obviously he has no place in melee with such low stats.
He nominally could cast Wraithform (courtesy of Quayle's Scribe Scroll ability before he took to Shadow Magic for early access) to be pretty much immune to whatever, but that might stop him from summoning bunnies throughout the fight.
Small child rescued. You'd think some of the hundreds of slaves freed from the mines would have offered to take him to the Friendly Arms since they can't leave Cloakwood without passing the place.
Yet the small child continues to stalk the party for the rest of time. Sigh.
determinationMORE BUNNIES.No longer silenced, but still going with a fighting retreat as the mage summons forth Wraiths (which also cast spells on top of being wraiths), drops soul destroying black magic on tiny 3 HP bunnies, and generally killing his way through a sea of lagomorph blood to get to Benjamin thanks to his seek and destroy AI.
Also that small bloody child is still stalking Benjamin.
Ahahahahahaha. Okay, the kid can stay. We'll call him "chaff".
Chaff is totally immortal, cannot be harmed by anything, and runs slower than Benjamin.
The bunnies have gained a powerful ally this day.
Benjamin has no time for dogs. Especially not pretend dogs made up in the doggish conspiracy.
Also kobolds, which are still doglike at this point in time. Benjamin insults Ratchild and lives, possibly thanks to a -13 Missile AC.
Darn, and I thought I might bypass the whole thing if I just assassinated him without talking.
The cheesiest thing here is that the Elite Ninja had actually failed their Greater Command save and was laying on the floor helpless and unconscious when killed... Yet still managed to detonate. Lame.
No bunnies this time, just Wraithform, Stoneskin, and enough HP to tank the fireball.
This quest isn't gentle to NPCs.
Damnit. I wanted to do Stone of Askovar for some talismans and the Robe of Free Action before I got into the final weeaboo confrontation, but without a thief that's going to be awkward.
At least when you've not been saving frost and lightning wands all game for this sucker.
Three wand users, two meatshields, and a few bunnies to distract the extra three guys while the Boss and his Cleric charged the party and the encounter was won.
Our hero's prize is a throwing... katana.
On an otherwise modless install this neat little sword would be best in slot, since it's an APR weapon in BG1 with a ranged option that incorporates strength bonus. As is, it's neat, and Benjamin will be using it anyway, but it's actually a downgrade from the Boomerang Dagger, where its 1/2 extra APR again more than offsets the -3 average weapon damage it has in melee compared to the katana.
Yay, fetch quests. I almost forgot about this questline, but dwarvish assassins randomly accosted the party on the street.
Either that or Section have run out of budget, I suppose.
Okay, weird dwarf quest thing, the lethal Friendly Arm quest thing, werewolf island, Section, Overwatch, Candlekeep, talking to the halfling for the Drizzt thing, and final push to kill Sarevok. Everything else I think is done as far as the glitched map will allow except Durlag's, and honestly there's nothing in Durlag's I care much about at this point.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 22: Shadows of Amn
First order of business is killing Layenne and getting our hands on the Staff of the Magi. Fortunately, Layenne doesn't buff with SI: Divination and doesn't spam the staff's invisibility power, which means that we can clear her invisibility with our planetar's True Seeing spell.A Time Stop spell should be safe, but just in case, I use a scroll instead. Vaxall throws an Anti-Magic Ray at us from across the screen, but Frisk has a Spell Shield on hand. We stop time with no trouble.
Layenne has PFMW, but like so many SCS mages, she foolishly fails to pre-buff with Protection from Normal Missiles. We can land an easy STR drain kill with nonmagical darts during Time Stop.
For some reason, Layenne doesn't go down even though all of the darts hit. A few seconds later, she suddenly dies. Meanwhile, to the west, our Simulacrum clone goes undefended.
The clone goes down as well, but now we have the staff, and despite Shangalar being a lich, he can't see through invisibility. But Vaxall is still a potential threat. Another Time Stop and we shoot him down--like Layenne, he has very low STR and isn't hard to kill.
I'm not eager to confront Shangalar, so I let our planetar deal with him while I use Enchanted Weapon to shoot down Shyressa, who is immune to +2 weapons and below.
A new clone whacks Shangalar with the Staff of the Magi while his PFMW to take advantage of its Dispel Magic effect on hit, prompting a re-cast Stoneskin from the lich.
Dragon Fear sends the clone running, but a simple Resist Fear scroll sends it back to Shangalar for another Dispel Magic.
Shangalar teleports across the map, but Frisk can escape using the staff. Our clone casts Improved Haste and shoots him down.
The Staff of the Magi is ours! Virtually undispellable invisibility whenever we're not using a missile weapon, plus an extra casting of Spell Trap and some save bonuses if I need them in a pinch, on top of the Dispel Magic effect.
We got what we wanted and now it is time to tackle Irenicus. We've got some elementals to kill first, though, and we don't have the numbers to handle them normally without running low on spell slots and buff durations.
The solution is a low-pressure approach: we use a Simulacrum clone to nail the elementals with Called Shot and Darts of Stunning, allowing the real Frisk to jump in with the Firetooth dagger and Belm while the clone uses Acid Arrows.
Next up, Jon-bon. We nail him with Holy Word, but the resulting 50% spell failure still means 50% successful spellcasting. Jon-bon gets Wish off the ground and forces us into hiding during his Time Stop (with a PFMW in case Jon-bon can somehow sees through our invisibility.
Our clone takes the pressure. Jon-bon looses all of his Energy Blades and re-applies PFMW. We turn our attention to his clone, the easier target.
But Jon-bon's PFMW is not unbreakable. Our clone fires off some nonmagical arrows, switching to Acid Arrows when PFMW wears off.
The Staff of the Magi fails to dispel Jon-bon's buffs, because it acts at caster level 30 and Irenicus is well north of that. But we don't even need it, because Jon-bon proves unable to re-apply either PFMW or Stoneskin.
One last fight before the final battle: Wraith Sarevok, who has no defense against another STR drain kill from Called Shot during Time Stop.
For the Slayer, we pull back Frisk on the first round while allowing our clone to hold the enemy's attention. Notice the Balor's instant-casting Implosion spell.
Spell Turning should keep Frisk safe, but just in case, I equip the Ring of Free Action.
Irenicus casts Time Stop, but Frisk is out of his field of vision, invisible, AND covered by PFMW. Our clone dies, leaving Irenicus with nothing to do during his entire Time Stop.
I can drain Irenicus' spells by chain-casting Mordenkainen's Sword. An LoB Magical Sword can survive a Horrid Wilting spell, so they'll last a lot longer than they would in a normal run.
Jon-bon loses his PFMW when he's not even in danger, but not all is well. It turns out those Magical Swords are only immune to disablers; instant death effects still work on them just fine.
I keep casting Mordenkainen's Sword and the enemy keeps shattering them. All the while, Jon-bon's defenses run low--as does our Simulacrum spell, which will allow us to summon a new one when it runs out.
Another sword comes out, and another vorpal strike shatters the previous one. Then, to my horror, I realize I've sent Frisk right into the fray due to a mis-click!
When there's a Fallen Planetar on the map.
Frisk's aura is thankfully clear and we cast PFMW instantly. No vorpal strikes on Frisk.
SI: Abjuration is about to run out and I'm concerned about Frisk's defenses, so I activate a Spell Sequencer and cast SI: Abjuration right afterwards.
With only a few seconds left in our PFMW spell, we need to re-cast it. To avoid getting boxed in in the process, Frisk stays on the move until our aura is clear.
We manage to cast PFMW and shake the demons, but then the Magical Sword that was keeping them distracted falls to a vorpal strike. We slip away and cast Time Stop at the very instant that Jon-bon, still cluelessly waiting around in the north, loses his PFMW.
He has very high STR, so we have to re-cast Time Stop to make the absolute most out of our Called Shot spells.
The arrows all hit at once, and the collective stat drain triggers the instant death effect.
Irenicus falls! Shadows of Amn is over! Frisk progresses to Throne of Bhaal!
The difficulty will take a jump after this. I'm not as familiar with ToB as I am with SoA, and ToB has a lot of really resilient enemies. Worse, they come in groups, and the Archer/Mage is terrible at dealing with large groups of enemies. We've very much optimized for one-on-one encounters.
That said, we do get one last power boost in ToB. The Scorcher Ammunition will give us a powerful area-effect option as well as a much stronger means of dealing STR drain, because the Scorcher Ammunition strikes twice and can effectively reach 20 APR, when our normal maximum APR was 10, and could only last for 2 rounds before we ran out of Minute Meteors or Energy Blades. The Scorcher Ammunition will give us some extremely valuable wiggle room when it comes to landing the stat drain kills we need to survive ToB in Legacy of Bhaal mode.
We arrive at the elven grove. Climbing over giant stone heads fills us with determination.
Meanwhile I continue to fail to clear Baldur's Gate 1 like a boss.
Benjamin returns to the Nashkel mines in search of the dorf cult.
This isn't foreboding at all.
Between the various loot differences and traps in different places, this return to Nashkel mines actually feels less like Nashkel mines than Section "can't be bothered to remove Joseph's ring" HQ.
He took a lot of damage doing it, but Benjamin turned the bulk of the horde.
Good thing he did. These particular skeleton archers have 3 APR with their bows a THAC0 with their longbow and +2 fire arrows of -1. The lot of them together could have done even more damage than they did.
Turns out the katana has a certain niche. Slashing ranged damage is pretty great against anything specced against missiles.
While they are ridiculously strong for BG1 enemies they apparently only have 28 HP, so wand spam rules the day again, burning two charges per group.
Fortunately they're way tougher than the dorf Shadows deeper in, so maybe the epic final battle won't include them?
What's that? Kill them from a distance you say?
I haven't even gone into infinite gold loops and I still had enough to buy every fire wand from the Sorcerer's Sundries.
Still expecting Biglugs to be some level eleventy-nine Sorcerer or something.
Flawless victory. Backtrackality.
Also Sirene is bitchy because she's True Neutral thanks to the Ankh, which she's generally wearing for the point of stacking AC.
Actually, it gives Wisdom, and I haven't actually updated anyone's spell selection since they were recruited. Should probably get on that some day.
In terms of expected lethality, our next destination is clear.
Weird dwarf quest thing.Candlekeep
Werewolf Island.
Section
Overwatch
Lethal Friendly Arm quest thing.
Drizzt thing
????
Sarevok.
Let's actually go to the Iron Throne.
Last run:
After a few months off I thought it was time for the monks to have another go at making their way through my SCS installation. Last time they got well into SoD, so I suppose the target to aim for would be to get at least to Belhifet
After a bit of initial sling work, the monks used Algernon's Cloak to pull the sirines out of Beregost Temple and smacked them down to get their first level.
On the way up to get Dushai's ring they helped Tenya and then ambushed the nearby ankheg with stunning blows.
A few tasks around Beregost got everyone except Chimera the XP for level 3 and stunning Tarnesh on the way to hand goods in to Landrin completed the set.
They saw a vampiric wolf on the way down to Nashkel, but with a total of one +1 dagger between them they didn't fancy the odds and just ran away. Chimera learnt LMD while resting at the Carnival.
Meilum was shot down before the monks concentrated on reputation quests for a while.
A first death occurred after the monks tried ambushing Ba'ruk. He was stunned and, at near death, would have been finished off by missiles. However, in trying to move the melee monks away I used a move all command. As usual that's asking for trouble and Spectre's icon got stuck against Ba'ruk - she was then quickly shot down by kobold commandos.
After a visit to the temple the monks continued on their rounds. They got up to level 4 by using a stealth attack on Zal - they'd already used their stunning blows, but against a target with a missile weapon equipped that made no real difference.
More stealth attacks in the ankheg area provided XP and cash as well as a bit of reputation. The last reputation upgrade available prior to the Nashkel Mine is at the basilisk area, which will also offer another XP boost next.
Wraith - L4, 36 HPs, 38 kills, 0 deaths
Spectre - L4, 39 HPs, 32 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L4, 28 HPs, 36 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L4, 34 HPs, 50 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L4, 33 HPs, 37 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L4, 32 HPs, 67 kills
Son of a crap weasel.
At least unless he's packing a tat of power or contingency that's "Wish: Restore all spells", pretty sure he's dropped most of his major spells and is just sticking to automatic, free, permanent, level 16 skeleton summons.
Also pretty sure he regenerates.
On top of healing/MI contingencies.
Please tell me this isn't the most ridiculous fight in the mod. I need waaaay more than a dozen skeleton warriors, instagib flame strikes and Noober level "Am I dead yet? How about now? How about now? How about now?"
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 23: Throne of Bhaal
Illasera has dispelling arrows that impose spell failure on hit, so the Shield of Reflection is very important. I distract the enemy with a planetar and a clone while I cast Time Stop to apply Called Shot to Illasera... only to find that her "Ethereal" spell grants her immunity to ALL weapons, regardless of their enchantment level.But eventually it runs out, and Frisk applies STR drain with Called Shot. We cast PFMW when the Time Stop ends, but Illasera's STR drops to 0 immediately afterwards anyway.
The first Pocket Plane challenge lasts for many rounds, especially in LoB mode, so it's not a good idea to cast all of your buffs at once, lest they wear off when the final enemies arrive. Arrows of Detonation from our clone make short work of the first wave of kobolds.
Then we discover that Magical Swords do not take kindly to being blasted with those arrows despite them being completely immune to the damage. To my further surprise, a miffed Magical Sword is capable of turning my own clone hostile by attacking it.
Hostile clones use SCS scripts, which means our clone can cast a Spell Sequencer we haven't memorized.
Dispel Magic effects like those of the Staff of the Magi can instantly kill illusionary clones. Somehow, our hostile clone is completely immune.
The clone summons its own Magical Sword, and proves immune to Arrows of Dispelling, as it gets Frisk's immunity to +1 weapons and below from the Hell trials.
The good news is that the clone still has those Arrows of Detonation equipped, and targets our own Magical Sword, dealing damage to the nearby enemies. Even if the clone targeted Frisk, Frisk's basic weapon immunities would block it (Arrows of Detonation strike as +1 weapons).
The clone quickly kills itself with the blast damage and we proceed to the next phases of the fight. Sensing that the final bosses of this fight, Sarevok, Irenicus, and Bodhi, are about to arrive, Frisk uses a Protection from Undead scroll and summons a planetar to deal with the drow.
Finally, the last enemies arrive. Frisk chain-casts Time Stop and slays Sarevok by dual-wielding the Firetooth dagger with Belm.
Irenicus proves resistant to the dispel magic effect of the Staff of the Magi, but his PFMW has nonetheless worn off during Time Stop, so we fire a single Arrow of Dispelling at him and chop him up a little. When Time Stop ends, Irenicus has been debuffed and has lost his first spell.
I cast Time Stop one last time to bring him down.
I don't like relying so heavily on Time Stop, but it's easier and more reliable than trying to get him with Holy Word, nonmagical arrows or Darts +5, and/or debuffing spells.
Only Bodhi is left. Frisk's Protection from Undead spell has surprisingly worn off, but we have PFMW and Teleport Field to keep Bodhi at bay, and Enchanted Weapon lets us shoot her with Acid Arrows.
On to Saradush. Basic fights are easy to win with Time Stop, Summon Planetar, and the Staff of the Magi.
But Gromnir is much tougher than his petty goons. He comes bolstered by two epic-level spellcasters, a Wizard Slayer, a backstabber, a sirine or something with a paralysis attack, and several buffed-up golems from the Golem Construction mod. There's massive enemy pressure in this fight and very little room in which to navigate.
The thing is, none of them have the innate ability to see through invisibility. Which means we can just hide behind the Staff of the Magi while we cast Time Stop and kill Gromnir with STR drain.
I grab his gear, re-equip the staff, and flee the scene; there is no need for me to fight anyone else.
We score another level up on the way to the Marching Mountains, where I discover that Frisk's high levels allow them to conjure multiple clones by alternating Project Image and Simulacrum between each clone. This allows me to summon multiple planetars with a single level 7 spell slot and then kill the real Frisk's Project Image clone so Frisk can move again.
I don't like relying on planetars to do the heavy lifting, but they're a quick way of getting through boring fights.
Outside the fire giants' lair, I discover that a Burning Man's Banefire is not only a guaranteed dispel, but also bypasses both Spell Shield and SI: Abjuration, even though Banefire is coded as an abjuration spell.
I just hang back and let our planetar deal with it.
Inside the fire giants' lair, I thin the herd with Time Stop and then bring out a planetar to help finish off the rest. Then I discover that I can avoid two of the fights around here by using Dimension Door:
That Bone Fiend still teleports after me, but Dimension Door does give me some extra space when fighting the Burning Men on the other side of the area. I can shoot them during Time Stop and then duck behind the wall to hide.
I speed through the rest of the area with the help of planetars and proceed up the stairs, where a red dragon is waiting.
But if there's one thing the Archer/Mage excels at, it's killing one really big enemy.
Yaga-Shura is next. We grab his heart from the fire and psyche ourselves up for the fight.
Don Hertzfeldt fills us with determination.
Apparently "Middle of Quest Instance" doesn't stop archmages trying to kill catboy.
Verr'Sza spontaneously died in this particular timeline for no discernible reason, but apparently disintegrating with equipment and all wasn't great for the game and it crashed. Needless to say, next time he didn't die for no reason, the mage still died, and I am still mystified what happened the first time around, but I think Benjamin became an uncle?
Anyway, back to the actual quest.
These fiends must be stopped.
Pay no attention to the random demon. It's time to Beregost!
Bodyguards flee.
Necrolass replaces them with mages. Fuuu.
If part of the reward for this quest is not the Fiery Shockwave friendly stunning no save AOE that just wrecked my party into the wall, going to feel a bit short changed.
Sirene is apparently immune to invisibility.
I have no idea why she might be immune to invisibility, but suffice to say it didn't work out great for her. These sorceresses are epic level, pack level 9 spells, and the two reasons that Benjamin is still alive right now is that they have absolutely zero subtlety in spell selection, and that Summon Rabbit does not break invisibility.
What's more inappropriate than a 19/15/20 F/M/C in BG1? Two level 25 mages and a level 22 Fighter with 4 APR.
More inappropriate than that: Actually killing said mages and fighter, primarily with bunnies to drain their spells, but those mages were pretty en par with a BG fighter in melee.
Next time that entire quest is going to drown under flights of wyverns. That. Was. RIDICULOUS.
Previous updates:
At the basilisk area Wraith gave the southern basilisks a good beating to get everyone up to level 5.
Moving on to the Nashkel Mines, the monks stealth was not yet good enough for everyone to be able to sneak through together - but it was plenty good enough to send in attackers to pick off the kobolds. They made their way down pretty untroubled until the kobold shaman was the last enemy left in that area. Stunning blows were available, but I thought he would die quickly to stealth attacks without bothering about those. However, he had more HPs than I remembered - taking over 40 damage before sending 4 of the monks running with a horror. It was potentially unfortunate that Chimera was the one who ran through all 3 nearby traps, but fortunate they did very low damage and he survived comfortably.
After resting for several days in Mulahey's cave everyone was back at full health and ready for combat. Rather than risking a full initial attack on Mulahey they showed themselves at range and ran outside when he summoned support. The minions could then be picked off at the entrance before a stealth attack on the cleric - which comprehensively stunned him anyway.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul doesn't have many HPs and is thus a sucker for stealth attacks. Tranzig survived the damage from a initial sneak attack - but was stunned.
Moving on to Peldvale the monks helped Viconia out of a sticky situation before sending her on her way. They then got a lift with Raiken to the Bandit Camp where Tazok was talked into giving them the run of the place. A few of the stronger external bandits were charmed and fed to enemies near the ruins before the monks jumped in and out of Tazok's tent a few times. They took damage from enemies following them, but the bandits outside were still neutral so they were free to rest before going back in to finish Venkt and the remainder.
Moving on to the Cloakwood, the monks successfully stunned Seniyad in the first area before he could call down anything nasty onto them.
In the third area they cleared the map exterior without trouble - both main druids being stunned repeatedly while ironskins were beaten down. They also did the cave, but nearly had a casualty after coming out of that when minimised the game without pausing to write a quick note and came back to find that Spook had been very lucky not to die to a wandering cave bear.
On the way to find a temple the monks were ambushed by Molkar & co. Despite being a man down stunning blows did a good job there early on to allow victory.
Wraith - L6, 50 HPs, 92 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L6, 50 HPs, 80 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L6, 48 HPs, 64 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L6, 49 HPs, 77 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L6, 51 HPs, 71 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L6, 41 HPs, 114 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954289/#Comment_954289
In the fourth Cloakwood area the hamadryad's ironskins kept it going a while, but a critical hit finished it off just as Wraith switched sides.
On the journey to the final area it was the amazons' turn to spring an ambush. The possibility of fatal backstabs meant Chimera immediately made himself scarce, but only one backstab landed (and that for low damage) and it was a fairly comfortable victory.
At the mine, Drasus & co were charmed in turn and led away for disposal. Inside, a few of Hareishan's guards were led away and Hareishan herself hit by a number of stealth shots before she went invisible. Even after resting several times she didn't reappear, so Wraith tried charming a guard without success. She immediately went back into stealth, but that apparently persuaded Hareishan to track down the others. As I was watching Wraith I didn't notice her arrival until too late - resulting in everyone except Wraith being confused. Wraith managed initially to act as an invisible blocker to prevent Hareishan coming back to cast another spell on everyone and when Spectre wandered out and was charmed Wraith attacked with a stunning blow and was successful in getting Hareishan to retreat. That was vital because Chimera was in the midst of the monks and was taken down to 2 HPs before Wraith was free to come back and make herself the target of 2 of the 3 monks that had been attacking Chimera. The final one fortunately didn't try attacking him any more until the spell ended.
After resting outside to heal up, Wraith investigated and found Hareishan had once more disappeared. To combat that she charmed several guards before eventually one of those lasted long enough to get Hareishan to show herself. A full attack then successfully stunned her.
It took a while travelling up and down, but eventually the guard downstairs was charmed and pulled one of the battle horrors back. A general attack failed to kill it quickly and the guard had to retreat while the monks used stealth attacks to finish the battle horror off.
Flooding the mine got the monks to reputation 20 and, despite their wounds, they set off on a shopping spree around the Realms. With backpacks and wallets lightened and newly stocked with wands they went to Shoal's area and crushed Mad Arcand (though I realised just too late I hadn't done his quest first).
Now fully equipped, the monks will have the chance to acquire plenty of XP far more easily and rapidly than done to date before progressing further with the main quest.
Wraith - L6, 50 HPs, 149 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L6, 50 HPs, 115 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L6, 48 HPs, 96 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L6, 49 HPs, 108 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L6, 51 HPs, 102 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L6, 41 HPs, 163 kills
Knowing your spellbook is the answer to the mages. Plus the knowledge you get from playing them previously.
I'll have to reinstall it next time to jog my memory as to how I fought him.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 24: Throne of Bhaal
Nyalee's grove has some nasty enemies in Ascension, including an epic-level Skeleton Assassin, Skeleton Cleric, and Skeleton Mage. There is no reason to engage them directly when we can fight from a safe distance.I duck in briefly to attack the mage during Time Stop, only to find that it went invisible right before I finished casting the spell, making it impossible for us to attack it. I linger a little afterwards to attack it once our planetar dispels the mage's invisibility, only to see it cast Absolute Immunity. Attacking it is impossible.
Instead, I shoot the cleric. We land some hits on it, but then I notice that those hits are bouncing back at us. It still has Physical Mirror active, and yet somehow took missile damage from our arrows.
I equip the Shield of Reflection and flee to the southeast once again, hoping to wait out the cleric's Physical Mirror spell.
The situation gets worse as our planetars begin to vanish, and one of them falls to a vorpal strike. On top of that, that cleric's Physical Mirror spell is still active, and I'm afraid to unequip the Shield of Reflection because I don't know how hard those arrows are going to hit if I don't keep bouncing them.
Finally, luck turns in our favor: the Skeleton Mage approaches our planetar without PFMW active, and our planetar lands a vorpal strike of its own.
I distract the Fallen Planetar with a Magical Sword and head out to attack the Skeleton Cleric, but I can't reach it with Belm, and switching to the Staff of the Magi would let the cleric's Physical Mirror nail us with the arrows still bouncing between Frisk and the skeleton. Instead, I hang back and let our planetar fight it.
The Fallen Planetar lands more vorpal strikes on our Magical Swords, until we're forced to cast PFMW to avoid a vorpal strike on Frisk. Fortunately, though, our planetar finally brings down the cleric.
But we've got another problem. It seems that the mage we killed earlier was just a clone; the real one is still kicking around. A Time Stop brings it to Near Death, at which point we tear it down.
I flee using the Pocket Plane, clear up the remaining undead, and slash up Nyalee with a pair of Time Stop spells.
Fun fact: Shambling Mounds are bugged to bring their target down to Badly Injured or Near Death with a single hit, due to a coding error in their natural weapon.
There's some quest around here that involves Nyalee's hair and leads to an underground cave filled with poison, but only poison-immune critters can enter it, which I think means it has something to do with Hexxat.
Time to finally take down Yaga-Shura. We summon a few planetars for safety's sake when we enter the siege camp, then scare off the giant with a single arrow.
We head back across the bridge and Yaga-Shura reappears in record time. I was expecting another long wait before he came back.
I chain-cast Time Stop and apply STR drain from Called Shot on Yaga-Shura, but when Time Stop finally ends, Yaga-Shura remains very much alive.
I count the hits from Called Shot and Yaga-Shura's STR should be just one hit shy of death. But at point blank range, I have some nasty penalties to hit him, and if I don't land a hit soon, I'll lose my chance to kill him early.
I switch to a single Arrow of Detonation, the one arrow I can fire which hits automatically regardless of THAC0 or AC. Yaga-Shura goes down!
The Oasis is a tough fight, but one of my mods let me talk my way out of it. Name-dropping Drizzt gets us out of trouble, even though we totally left him to die in BG1.
Next up is Draconis. His mage form has some really nice buffs, but Holy Word applies 50% spell failure, and we cast it twice via our celestials in the hope that it still stacks.
We kill his clone, spam Flame Strikes on the real Draconis, and finally chop him up when his PFMW wears off.
His transformation kills all of our summons via the Death Field spell, leaving us in a very bad position. I summon a clone and a planetar to keep him busy, but when I approach Draconis during Time Stop, he's already invisible.
I activate my clone's Called Shot, but Draconis goes invisible. I try casting Time Stop again, but he goes invisible for a third time. I can't get a safe kill on Draconis without that Time Stop; it's too easy for invisibility to ruin our shot at a STR drain kill.
I just have to let my planetars distract him until Frisk's Simulacrum wears off and we can summon a new one. We begin lowering his MR in order to land a Ray of Enfeeblement spell on him. But Draconis blasts us with his breath weapon, and once again, Frisk loses a clone to the Simulacrum bug despite being immune to the damage that triggered the bug.
Draconis fires off a Greater Malison spell, forcing us to drink a Potion of Invulnerability. Draconis and Frisk trade debuffers, but Frisk has a Spell Trigger on hand when they lose their Spell Shield.
Unable to cast Time Stop, Ray of Enfeeblement is our only hope of landing a STR drain kill. Finally, the dragon croaks.
We're just moments away from getting the Scorcher Ammunition. Then I realize we've got a problem.
The quadruple dragon ambush comes before we meet Bondari the Reloader. This means we have to kill four dragons in a row with just our existing items and spells. And one of them uses a poison breath weapon.
Since this is a v2.3 install, Protection from Poison scrolls will not help. And since we never got the Purification Stone in SoD, and the Periapt of Proof Against Poison somehow does not grant 100% poison immunity, there are only two remaining sources of poison immunity in the game: the Ring of Anti-Venom, which would involve fighting the Amkethran, which I haven't done in years, or the Ring of Gaxx.
Kangaxx is much tougher, but he's the devil I know. The Teleport spell lets us revisit BG2 areas, so we pay a visit to the Shade Lich and Elemental Lich. Using a Protection from Undead scroll on each one breaks their script and makes it impossible for them to fight back against us, with the exception of their melee attacks and, surprisingly enough, a lone Spellstrike spell from the Elemental Lich.
Kangaxx is only slightly more resistant to the Protection from Undead scroll, and is largely incapable of functioning after we use it on him. We still need to dispel it shortly before he hits 1 HP, however, or else he won't trigger his transformation dialogue.
I pause and un-pause over and over again to make absolutely sure I can act the very instant that his demilich form appears. When it does, we apply another Protection from Undead scroll, breaking his final form's script as well.
Kangaxx cannot cast PFMW anymore, and thanks to his low STR, we can easily kill him with Called Shot. I use Time Stop to make sure we land every hit.
We now have 100% resistance to poison. Ithy'nassendra's Green Dragon Breath attack won't be able to touch us.
We still have some business to take care of before we face the quadruple dragon ambush. After slicing through a gang of epic-level lizard men using Time Stop and Summon Planetar, we arrive at Anadramatis... who I forgot was there. Apparently, she uses Wish Breach, which she can cast instantly and happens to bypass our Spell Shield.
We drink a Potion of Magic Shielding to replace our lost defenses and summon a clone, which we'll need to bring down Anadramatis. She spam spell protections over and over, but we have lots of magic attacks that will pave the way for a Ray of Enfeeblement.
But then she re-casts Spell Trap, and suddenly I find we're out of magic attacks to remove it. We can't apply Ray of Enfeeblement if Anadramatis has Spell Trap active.
Then I realize that the electricity damage from Energy Blades strikes as a level 9 spell. We can burn right through the Spell Trap with 4 hits! The moment we see Anadramatis taking electrical damage, we know the Spell Trap is gone, and fire off a Ray of Enfeeblement before she can restore her Spell Trap. One more hit, and Anadramatis goes down.
We run past the demons on the way back and plow through the Kuo-toa and water elementals using brute force.
The quadruple dragon ambush is next. But before we can tangle with them, Frisk runs off to Amkethran to buy some rope. I wish it was possible to tie them down right away, but I'm a frayed knot.
I don't mean to twine about it, but those dragons are really bad noose.
Getting roped into twisted situations fills us with determination.
Murdering Sirine with bunnies. We have come full circle.
Dread Wolves. Correctly statted out as Undead, constantly showing up in places with no reason whatsoever for an undead horror to show up.
Hm. I wonder why the werewolf warrens isn't a more popular choice for mods? Players would be far less familiar with the map since Werewolf Island is kind of pointless, and there's actually quite a few rooms to navigate to where you could have plot/stuff. Better than yet another Nashkel Mines at least.
Seriously though, always amusing how CHARNAME manages to sail a boat completely on their own with zero trouble, while the "competent mercantile crew" manages to sink themselves.
Also, for the record, I loathe the werewolf questline for the constant railroading. "Lycanthropy? Okay, I'm cool with this."
"Lolnah, you fight my lackeys, I forgive you for doing what you must do."
"Okay, cool, see you in a bit."
"Oh hi, you fought all my lackeys. That means you would never accept being a lycanthrope and must die."
"... Okay, I guess?"
"Hey, where's my mate?"
"Suicide by bunnymancer."
"Then you must die!"
*Wanders off, never completing the plot. Lycanthropy never manifests.*
Or, of course "I now am arbitrarily mad about the whole lycanthropy thing! DIE MENDAS!" as opposed to "Okay, guess I get more bodyhair or something? Time to start biting people, I guess? You're the boss after all."
About the most interesting thing would be the logbook of Balduran, which could/should have provided an alternative entry into Candlekeep to reduce railroading.
Also, apparently wasn't kidding about this being Benjamin's. Hopefully there will be an infernal machine he can feed it to in order to produce a half-drider abomination or something. At least he fits in the bag of holding.
Weird dwarf quest thing.CandlekeepWerewolf Island.Section
Overwatch
Lethal Friendly Arm quest thing.Drizzt thing
????
Sarevok.
Best go clear out Section.