The monks made rapid progress at Durlag's Tower - burning down battle horrors, shooting down ghasts and meleeing basilisks (using mirrored eye potions). A sneak attack on Kirinhale didn't quite finish her off (partly because she was surprisingly unaffected by Spirit's +2 club), but she suffered morale failure and was finished off with magic missiles.
Riggilo was stunned by a sneak attack, though it would have been safer just burning him down (to avoid the possibility of using invisibility potion backstabs).
Phantom also picked up the tome there to help further establish his credentials as the party's lore-master.
That lot got them much closer to level 7 and they soon added the Revenant (melee), a pair of mustard jellies (melee), Narcillicus (stealth attack - stuns failed, but Chimera used LMD to successfully interrupt the one spell the mage had time for). A general sneak attack on the Doomsayer was followed by a series of stealth attacks using the wall for cover and a single character for distraction - until Chimera finished it off with a LMD.
Stunning Bassilus got them within touching distance of the level
and the final few XP required came from poisoning Zordral in a sneak attack.
Level 7 comes with a big benefit for my monks. They get the lay on hands ability - luxury after playing most of the game with no healing and just one CLW after Nashkel Mine. In addition, in the EE monks gain the additional APR offered to fighters at level 7 and 13, which makes their missile attacks significantly more effective.
They had no need of their healing abilities while smacking down some sirines and golems at the Lighthouse.
Further up the coast Spook sacrificed himself to Shoal to lure Ogre Droth out to be stunned before Shoal paid for her misdeeds.
Some ogres and more sirines then provided more easy pickings. Deciding it was about time to ensure everyone had a proficient melee weapon the monks then went in search of Drizzt. They hadn't brought much spare ammunition, but kiting was easy with monk speed and Drizzt ran out of HPs well before they ran out of missiles.
Apparently just letting the first lass talk to you teleports you to the bottom floor, bypassing the entire dungeon.
That's way more convenient, so sort of wishing I knew this before. There was still plenty of time to move some distance from the non-talky bosses' to stop them from getting involved too early.
Neera died from focus firing archers, Morwen wandered into two WoF streams, as did Sirene, but I managed to micromanage her into a corner where she could sit and think about what she did.
Still have no idea why she's immune to invisibility.
Benjamin gathers her stuff and the party leaves, fighting nobody for the next four levels. This rather demonstrates why guards exist, and why your ideal strategy should probably not be "teleport party fresh into a confrontation with your most valued assets.
: Principle!
I... guess that makes this rando the final boss of the dungeon?
This mod is weird.
: What, no Mage robe of Magical Magery? You, sir, have lost yourself a sale!
I have no idea why one would spend 5000 GP to make a plain +3 dagger with the surfeit of +2 Daggers of +1 APR laying around, but okay.
: Oh noooo, I didn't have an invitation and will have to kill my way up the building in a controlled manner with the ability to freely leave and recover at my convenience.
This cabinet is protected by the best lock, the best. And I've seen a lot of locks, it's amazing. Shatter doesn't care though.
Apparently their zeal to kill the intruder was so extreme that it precluded any other activities, like "telling the rest of the building about the intruder".
: Sort of disappointed at not summoning any bunnies for this fight, but honestly I didn't feel they were tough enough to need anything but a few spells and wands to handle.
Sorry, Oversight, I came loaded for Grachus this game. Your "magic missiles" don't really cut it.
: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not playing to win.
Benjamin wins! Fatalities!
And so, leaving approximately two hundred grand's worth of loot on the floor, Benjamin leaves.
Drizzt time! And as a high level area oop north, once Benjamin kicks his entire team he will be levelling to the 375,000 DS cap.
Apparently this install has a delayed start component, so notionally I have to beat Durlag's tower first anyway. Apparently I have some deep seated self-loathing to work out.
I don't know how the mustard jelly was disarmed, but I assume it was PG13.
One.
Two. : Don't get complacent don't get complacent don't get complacent.
Invisibility and turn undead: Free arrows. I should probably actually use those rather than hording them. Quiver of Plenty giving me bad habits.
Well, defeated three of the elemental guardians and the first Phoenix Guard, which is enough.
Three wand users, no survivors. As usual, loot is abandoned. Benjamin knows every spell I can get in BG1, and is well into the sextuple digits for cash just from the odd Laeral's and Ruby Ring.
Three,
Good point to leave off, methinks. Finish this, hope that Drizzt will actually show up somewhere, then get some Saga on.
@Pantalion You said: "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."
CHARNAME would presumably have awaited good weather before departing.
You said: "Apparently just letting the first lass talk to you teleports you to the bottom floor, bypassing the entire dungeon.
That's way more convenient, so sort of wishing I knew this before. There was still plenty of time to move some distance from the non-talky bosses' to stop them from getting involved too early."
I actually find it more convenient to take out the Section on the way down. You get SO much loot. If you sell all that full plate armour to the dwarf at the south side of Beregost, you get such a large ammount of gold that you can actually afford to buy some of his stock.
What's more, you pick up considerable experience.
Of course you don't HAVE to fight them at all as there are so many potions of invisibility available, you can just pass through most of them. I would rather kill everything so that your potion case is bursting at the seams.
We use two Protection from Acid green scrolls on Frisk and deploy a team of planetars using Project Image and Simulacrum to wrestle with the first two dragons of the quadruple dragon ambush. There's a lot of HP to cut through in this fight.
But Improved Haste gives us our celestials pretty respectable damage output, obviating the need for a stat drain kill via a Simulacrum clone's Energy Blades+Called Shot+Called Shot+Ray of Enfeeblement combo.
Landing STR drain kills is cooler, but since we can only summon a clone every 20 rounds and we have multiple dragons to take down, it's faster just to rely on sheer damage. Frisk chips in from afar, fleeing whenever a dragon targets them. We summon a Simulacrum when the second dragon hits Near Death to make sure the clone will last for many rounds after the third dragon appears.
Right after the second dragon croaks, our celestials start vanishing. But the third dragon, Ithy'nassendra, has not entered our field of vision, so we can safely use Project Image to summon up some new celestials. As always, we butcher excess clones to set Frisk free.
Ithy'nassendra's poison breath weapon deals massive damage, to the extent that it could one-shot many characters on LoB mode, but with the Ring of Gaxx on hand, only our planetars are vulnerable. And the damage it does isn't too bad in LoB mode.
Now that there are only two dragons left, we can switch to STR drain-based kills. Our clone can take down Ithy'nassendra, leaving the final dragon, Carnifex, for Frisk themself. First, though, we need to throw out a bunch of Pierce Shield spells to remove Ithy'nassendra's spell protections and lower her MR.
Ithy'nassendra activates a Heal Contingency, but her HP means very little. Our clone casts Energy Blades and Called Shot at a safe distance and begins applying STR drain and save penalties.
With Ithy'nassendra's save vs. spell at about 20, her STR well below her maximum, her MR at 0, and her spell protections gone, she's perfectly vulnerable to Ray of Enfeeblement. We fire it off, drop her STR to 1, and finish her off with one last hit.
The final dragon, Carnifex, is one of the strongest in the game in terms of sheer numbers, but HP means precious little to an Archer with Called Shot. Our previous clone has just now vanished, allowing us to haul out a new one for another couple Called Shot spells. We start throwing out Pierce Shield spells while our celestials keep him busy, just like we did against Ithy'nassendra.
We break through the spell protections that Carnifex erects via sequencers. For safety's sake, Frisk casts Time Stop to give us automatic hits. But in the end, Called Shot isn't even necessary--the sheer damage kills Carnifex before the STR drain does.
Done! Four dragons down and zero damage to Frisk.
Just one more fight before we get the Scorcher Ammunition: a group of Tyrant Golems and a couple of Death Tyrants. The Tyrant Golems, as I've complained before, have demilich-grade resistances, all the normal powers of a beholder, immunities to practically all disablers, and are not coded as golems despite their name, which means the Rod of Smiting is useless against them. They're no fun to fight.
I have already decided that I will use the console to bring back Bondari in case he gets shattered during this fight, but I'd rather not let him get shattered in the first place. Therefore, we're going to use Time Stop to prevent any of the enemies from using any spells that might kill Bondari and company.
Amazingly enough, SCS beholders can snatch the Shield of Balduran from your inventory even during Time Stop. Luckily, we get it back when the beholder in question goes down.
But that's just the Death Tyrant; they're easy to kill (well, relatively speaking). It's the Tyrant Golems I need to worry about. They are... a bit harder to kill.
I decide to rely on STR drain instead, and therefore summon a clone and a couple planetars. The planetars hold the fort while our clone prepares to land a STR drain kill with Energy Blades.
A nearby Sentinel summons an Earth Elemental and one of the beholders snatches our Cloak of Mirroring even though Frisk hasn't even engaged them.
Our clone lands a fast kill with Energy Blades and Called Shot. Rather than try to repeat the deed, however, Frisk leaves the area and returns under invisibility to finish off the last enemies during Time Stop.
Bondari is still around! We use a spare Stone to Flesh scroll on him, let him do the heavy lifting for the gauth eyestalk quest thingy, kill him, let him reload, and then get the Bronze Pantalettes, which allows us to forge the Big Metal Unit and finally gain access to the Scorcher Ammunition, the one thing I've been waiting to get since I started this run in Candlekeep. We use the Teleport spell to snag the Firetooth crossbow from Garlena, which will give us extra damage bonuses when using the Scorcher Ammunition.
Frisk is still 3 levels away from the level cap (collecting XP hasn't been a real priority since we first did the basilisk XP loop back in BG1), but with the Scorcher Ammunition in hand, we are now effectively at peak power. This is what Frisk looks like at the strongest they've ever been.
If you're wondering why I have thousands of arrows and Identify scrolls, it's because it saves me literally seconds of micromanagement over the course of the run.
As I've discussed in other posts here and there, the key detail about the Scorcher Ammunition is that the projectile is area-effect and strikes twice. That means it applies the penalties of Called Shot as well as damage. Combined with its base 5 APR and Improved Haste, it effectively grants 20 attacks per round. Along with its +10 THAC0 bonus, it's devastating even at point-blank range.
We shred the Ascension drakes within moments.
You're not allowed to leave this area until Abazigal is dead, but the Teleport spell lets us hop out any time we want and go right back.
Theoretically, we could use this to take out every enemy in this fight one by one, resting in between each one so we face them all at maximum power. But we don't need to do this; I just wanted to establish that we could.
First, I want to take down the Tamah clone that appears at the start of the fight (another one spawns after Abazigal's transformation). We avoid Abazigal entirely, using PFMW to tank Tamah while we catch the enemies in the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition to shred all the enemies at once. The damage output is insane, and by carefully manipulating our movement, we can apply almost all of the damage to every enemy.
We summon some clones and celestials to trigger Abazigal's transformation.
It doesn't take too long. Once he does, Frisk heads west with their Simulacrum clone to tackle the second Tamah together.
For one horrifying moment, I see the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition stretching from our Simulacrum clone to Frisk themself, and I'm petrified that Frisk is going to get shredded. The Scorcher Ammunition is very party-unfriendly indeed.
Thankfully, we only dipped into it very briefly; Frisk takes no damage.
But it's an important reminder that if I ever use a Simulacrum clone to apply STR drain with the Scorcher Ammunition, I'll need to keep Frisk well out of the way. The sheer damage, the STR drain, and the save penalties could all be fatal if Frisk got caught in the stream.
Tamah's breath weapon is very unique. It deals crushing damage, which is no problem thanks to Stoneskin, but it also has a 50% chance of knocking you unconscious with no saving throw.
For the next 12 seconds, Frisk is utterly helpless.
Neither dragon closes in on us, however, and our planetars keep them distracted until Frisk climbs to their feet. We rush back to Tamah and finish her off.
Only Abazigal remains. He has a nasty shockwave ability that imposes spell failure and he's immune to Time Stop, so he's a great deal stronger than any of the other dragons we've faced. But we still have several celestials to surround him while Frisk and their clone uses the Pulse Ammunition (the weaker but party-friendly alternative to the Scorcher Ammunition) to tack on damage from afar. Abazigal has magic attacks to throw at us, but I always have spare spell protections memorized or packed into spell triggers.
Thanks to the Better Stat Drain mod, we can land a STR drain kill on Abazigal and still trigger his death dialogue, which we need to progress in the main questline. But as it happens, our damage output is so incredibly high that we don't even need to use Called Shot. Instead, I just let our clone shoot him down.
The only reason I created the Better Stat Drain mod was specifically so that I could get a quick kill on Abazigal without breaking the game. And it turns out that it wasn't even necessary.
The pointlessness of our cleverest strategies fills us with determination.
I actually find it more convenient to take out the Section on the way down. You get SO much loot. If you sell all that full plate armour to the dwarf at the south side of Beregost, you get such a large ammount of gold that you can actually afford to buy some of his stock.
Yeah, the whole thing is such a Monty Haul I'd probably be up to six digits of gold at this point, but unless there's something in the Drizzt Saga that needs that much, there's not much left worth buying except for the 200 charge wands in the Friendly Arm store, and I'm inclined to suspect there's enough charges left in the dozen wands of fire that I already have to handle most of SoD.
Done. No rabbits, since every aura counted and a few squirrels were already helping with the distractions.
Well that's convenient, time to dump the party, I guess.
: Well that escalated quickly.
For some reason, so many of the novelisations feature around lowly fighter types too derpy to realise that being a mage or cleric and rewriting all reality to your whims is better than being a plucky fighter type with a pointy metal stick fighting demonic beasts that rewrite all reality.
Having to babysit two eejits without decent wards against frickin' demons I can't help but wonder about their appeal. This place is actually pretty dangerous, thanks to the fireball happy demon knight/tanarri things. Benjamin survived one on 3 HP before retreating to triple chug for a few rounds, before taking out the Greater Tanarri and Demon Knight solo after Drizzt and whoever died.
: Fortunately there's always bunnies.
May have to go up to the 500k SoD cap to get Raise Dead at this rate.
Sort of regretting dumping the whole party at this point. Especially the fire immune ones.
Belhifet seems to deal omega tier melee damage with poison, he's immune to both of Benjamin's throwing weapons, he has 50% MR, and Benjamin cannot tank him, since I left the poison immunity talisman on the finger of one of my party mates like a boob.
Okay, stock take:
Benjamin has the talisman of infinite wyverns, which can't hit him, but last about one round each in melee with him. His wands of monster summoning would produce longer lasting chaff, but he can pretend the wyverns are a subspecies of bunny thanks to the horns. Benjamin can rest, the demons here don't see through invisibility, and Behlifet doesn't regenerate.
Eventually:
Melf's Minute Meteors, Evermemory, some cloudkills while blocking him in with a wall of summons, and a whole bunch of magic missiles.
Da frigg?
Thank cripes for invisibility.
: Team Drizzt owe me: 2400 GP for the rez. I'm not even charging for my own personal healing services.
: Well that escalated quickly.
Sort of guessing this is the next map to be doing. My world map is glitched with no new mod areas being added. Since there's snow and things to kill, seems promising.
So, uh, none of them have ranged weapons, but one of them was clearly throwing something at range. What is this? Throwing short swords now?
Ow. Random, instant, fireballs. Obnoxious. The halfling dies, which would be inconvenient if there was anything to steal, unlock, or disarm.
Next map. Hopefully also correct, since I'm basically going in numerical order here:
Ow. Nope.
Uh.... Maybe? Trying to get this to work with the console command always shunts the group to the top corner, but it's at least a forest with snow, and a giant.
: I knew I should have turned left at Albuquerque.
: And then there's these three weenies I'm babysitting.
: 11,400. Why am I raising you again?
Lolwut? Well that's 80-100% MR with three slots.
Well, that's the end of linearity, back to hopping numerically through maps.
I'm kind of getting the impression that Drizzt's GM was softballing him. No an issue anymore, of course.
Ehhh, Grey Clan is still worse. Why the werewolf ice spirit is immune to everything except electricity damage on the other hand, will forever remain a mystery.
Sort of goes to show that cheat stats, extra APR, masteries you shouldn't have and an AC that's artificially 6 points below 10 don't matter in the long run compared to kiting, wands, and a callous willingness to sacrifice party members for momentary advantage.
2k for the 4 APR, 20 strength murder demon with -12 AC, 130 HP, and massive resistances. 10k for the 2 APR, 22 strength giant with -2 AC, 155 HP, and nothin' but cold resistance.
Makes sense.
Well since Drizzt is deader than dead, I daresay Icewind Dale is going to experience certain doom at a later point that one to six adventures starting at level 1 will need to handle.
Benjamin turns in the baby from the last quest he encountered, then heads off to the Friendly Arm to complete Sarevok and hopefully never have to play BG1 for another few years.
: Hm... I wonder what happens if you gather three babies by ToB? : No. : But- : No.
Pantalion said: Wise_Grimwald said:I actually find it more convenient to take out the Section on the way down. You get SO much loot. If you sell all that full plate armour to the dwarf at the south side of Beregost, you get such a large ammount of gold that you can actually afford to buy some of his stock.
Yeah, the whole thing is such a Monty Haul I'd probably be up to six digits of gold at this point, but unless there's something in the Drizzt Saga that needs that much. There's not much left worth buying except for the 200 charge wands in the Friendly Arm store, and I'm inclined to suspect there's enough charges left in the dozen wands of fire that I already have to handle most of SoD.
In my current game I have just sold all that loot.: well, nearly all, and have bought wands so that both of my mages have a 200 charge wand for every type that is available, (Except for wand of polymorphing which has ONLY 100 charges) and my clerics have 200 charge wands of the heavens. I am now poor again, but that's OK as I can get more gold/loot in Durlag's.
There isn't a lot to buy in Drizzt Saga that is better than that which you already have. You should by now have all the arrows that you could ever use and every type of container.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 149 part 12345678910 11 Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Session 11 starts at the exit of the Underdark. After a few moments we decide to go sort out Firkraag. His guardians succumb to a combination of summons and turned undead while he is unable to deal with our levelled characters.
The entire purpose of visiting Firkraag was to pick up a stinking key. That led to the sewers once more - Zepp finding time to do a villainous task for her stronghold (suggesting some murder and then turning the offender in). A hideout inside the sewers held an undead Alhoon - Fiery taking delight in disrupting it with his mace.
With that done, it was time to deal with Bodhi.
Everything is ticking along nicely but Zepp underestimates some disguised attackers and has to step away. This despite a recently purchased girdle intended to reduce wiltings and other magical damage by 50%.
She gulps a potion and returns, not realising that many Melf's Acid Arrows were at work. Killed by... Fiery... and Zepp. The ignominy.
What can go wrong? One more update until retirement. This should be easy.
: That's what she said! ... What? She did.
Hopefully there's a cutscene for removing Duke Eltan from the inventory, because if we win it's going to be awkward talking to his doppelganger.
Blade of Howling Slashing Damage deals with Green Slimes accordingly.
: Does... It give a THAC0 bonus or something?
Apparently some of them really liked rabbits, and didn't approve of them being blown up.
Brief pause to buy up some loot. Needy refugees will never have my gold!
I tried to get the killing blow, but for some reason it won't even let me screenshot the corpse.
Either way, victory. thanks to the power of rabbits, stupidly high stats, and surviving some absolutely herptarded mods: Benjamin Bunny.
: I'd like to thank Jesus. Him coming back to life over and over and solid experience for killing him really gave me the head start I needed to survive. : Did you seriously name that greater basilisk? : ... Oh look! Siege of Dragonspear!
For the record, Benjamin had at the end:
One Soul Taker dagger - still with demon inside. One infant werewolf. One unconscious Arch Duke. One Dwarven Artifact (no idea what I was supposed to do with that). All of Drizzt's and Wulfgar's stuff. One parrot named Elminster with a Gibberling phobia.
The Scorcher Ammunition makes short work of the drow. Without it, these fights would all require either multiple planetars or multiple rests. I make a point of focusing on a single target for one round before running in a circle to catch many enemies in the stream, spreading the damage across the herd.
One of the many nice things about the Scorcher Ammunition is that it can shred through Stoneskins and disrupt spells regardless of weapon immunities. We don't need nonmagical arrows or Energy Blades to deal with mages anymore.
I had to put up with a lot of crap in BG1 and SoD to get Frisk to this point, and it's finally paying off. We spent a lot of time operating as an underpowered character. It's good to have an edge over the enemy for once.
I'm actually quite proud of this. Nobody ever seemed to pay the Scorcher Ammunition any mind, probably because it only dealt fire damage when paired with the Big Metal Rod. Nobody ever seemed to realize just how much potential the Scorcher Ammunition had. It's a woefully underappreciated item.
A lot of fights around here are optional. The army of orogs and duergar can mostly be skipped just by running straight to the commander, so we only have to shred a fraction of the possible enemies (this fight can actually proceed indefinitely if you don't move).
But I don't like skipping fights when a quick alternative is available, and the Scorcher Ammunition makes the minor fights pretty simple. Build up a stream, pull it across the enemy, and use some targeted strikes on tougher opponents, like hitting mages with the Staff of the Magi.
Odamaron, however, is a bit more complicated of a fight. First, he doesn't show up when we approach under Time Stop, and when he does appear, we discover that using the Scorcher Ammunition during Time Stop can only remove a single one of his Stoneskins due to an engine quirk. Normally, any weapon could remove multiple Stoneskins, but the Scorcher Ammunition apparently is an exception.
I summoned Kitthix because I needed a target for the Scorcher Ammunition; Odamaron's PFMW would have blocked Frisk's attacked if we attacked him directly.
I was counting on the Scorcher Ammunition to shred through his Stoneskins and then disrupt his spells. With Kitthix gone and our first two Time Stop spells wasted, we lost a valuable opportunity to end the fight before it began. The second hit of the Scorcher Ammunition only robs Odamaron of a single spell.
Odamaron restores his PFMW via Contingency, but Frisk can still use the planetar as a valid target if they buff with Enchanted Weapon (the Scorcher Ammunition is normally a +1 weapon; planetars are immune to +2 weapons and below). Since it might be several seconds before we can get through Odamaron's Stoneskins, we also apply a Holy Word spell.
We never buffed our planetar with Remove Fear, but even when the planetar fails a saving throw and starts running around, Frisk can still catch Odamaron within the stream using careful positioning to make sure the lich is always between Frisk and the planetar.
Holy Word proves unnecessary; the Scorcher Ammunition's 20 APR just applies too much pressure for Odamaron to function. The lich explodes in the stream.
The Scorcher Ammunition's projectile seems to cancel early when the target dies, costing us some potential damage output if we focus too hard on one target, so I try applying pressure to multiple targets at once. It gives us more wiggle room when it comes to covering all possible targets, and also looks a lot cooler.
Frisk finally hits level 31 and gets one additional spell slot for each spell level, at which point I realize that the level 2 Strength spell would have let us land much easier stat drain kills on all sorts of enemies, especially dragons.
Next up, Ogremoch. Ogremoch can create 10 Stoneskins per round, enough to stymie the efforts of any solo character due to the APR cap of 10, but with 20 effective APR, we can overwhelm even Ogremoch's defenses.
As for Diaytha, I've found it's generally best to just approach them during Time Stop. For safety's sake, I pull Frisk out of the room before Time Stop ends so I can re-cast Time Stop when we're out of the enemy's field of vision.
The pressure is enormous. Even LoB enemies in ToB can't stand up to it. Merely dragging the stream across certain enemies is enough to kill.
The Hive Mother fires off a Flesh to Stone spell, but we have Spell Turning active as well as subzero saving throws. We fall back, cast Time Stop (the Hive Mother can't follow us through the doorway anyway), and kill her with stat drain, rendering her high HP and mage defenses irrelevant.
In a stunning display of the Scorcher Ammunition's power, we kill Captain Egeissag before he can walk ten feet over to us and make a single attack roll.
Next up, mind flayers. Frisk drinks a whole bunch of Potions of Genius on the off chance the enemy gets a lot of high attack rolls and we let our PFMW drop, then casts Time Stop to apply damage before the enemy can react. A high movement rate lets us hit practically everyone on the map.
Another Time Stop cleans up the survivors.
Before we deal with Sendai, I want to complete the Pocket Plane trials on the off chance I might need any of the Ascension spells. Guess what weapon we use?
The Ravager trial isn't open yet, but since I'm already here, I decide to use Dimension Door to hop over the gap and start the fight early. Before I enter the area, I make sure to drink a Potion of Storm Giant Strength.
Why? Well, the Ravager is coded to have 28 STR, which may or may not be effectively 25, and its immunity to +3 weapons means that we'll need to summon a clone to use the Scorcher Ammunition as an area-effect to kill the Ravager, and I don't want to kill Frisk with stat drain if I accidentally send them into the stream (Energy Blades would also work, but they're not quite optimal).
Our clone heads north to distract the Ravager; Frisk sticks to the south to distract the Bone Blades. Separating the enemy like this is important because we need to use the Bone Blades as a target, and since the STR drain from Called Shot will kill the Bone Blades long before it kills the Ravager, we want to be able to switch targets and keep the Ravager in the stream without having to re-position the clone.
Three Bone Blades die to STR drain, but there are more than enough remaining for the clone to keep the Ravager in the stream until it croaks.
The warm light of the Scorcher Ammunition reminds us of the fire magic of fuzzy goat monsters. We are filled with determination.
Trio EE attempt 5, update 123456 7 Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
Session 6 sees us leave the de'Arnise Keep and refuse the company of Nalia. Killye wants to sell the loot at Watchers Keep so we empty our pockets there and Felai realises she has no familiar. Maybe she forgot to take it out of the chateau portrait - but let's see if another one can be summoned up.
With the familiar bagged, we head to Trademeet and the Druid Grove. A couple of notable deaths there, Faldorn becoming a Cernd-sized snack but Evas getting confused and killed by spore colony output. Killye couldn't help but ask why Evas had insisted on melee instead of arrows. Because backstabs...
The Druid Grove is complete, but Felai chooses to head back into town and deal with Mr Hidesman before returning to Trademeet.
Rasaad makes a nuisance of himself back at Trademeet and has to be told a second time to clear off. Felai mutters that if he says one more thing an accident will happen. Evas decides a more decisive stance is required.
Umar Hills is so good we do it twice, Grond0's session freezing and crashing as we are about to depart and my host session crashing in sympathy. We had no saves in the area so it's back to the autosave from departing Trademeet.
Evas gets in a late multiplayer-fu to backstab a golem although not to the same standard as an earlier hit for 100+ damage on some hapless target.
There's a bit of a kerfuffle inside the temple ruins but the area is cleared and we rest up under the nose of a large dragon. Hopefully that will suffice as a reminder of what lies ahead.
It should be possible to win this entire fight strictly by relying on the Staff of the Magi to avoid the drow and using PFMW to hold off any Fallen Planetars that might enter the field. But that would be an extremely long process and failing to re-equip the staff at the right times could be dangerous, so we're going to go with a high-pressure approach. I discover that it's possible to talk-block Sendai (which might mean it's possible to end the entire fight by attacking her during Time Stop), so I use the extra time to summon a planetar. Our planetar fires off a Holy Word spell early on and manages to apply 50% spell failure to the mage.
Frisk summons a clone, who throws some Energy Blades at the Sendai backstabber before switching to the Scorcher Ammunition. Frisk hides behind the Staff of the Magi so the enemy gathers in a circle, allowing our clone to catch all of them in the stream.
Like Arrows of Detonation, the Scorcher Ammunition makes one damage roll per hit for everyone within the area of effect; that's why the drow minions are dying simultaneously. The field starts to clear up.
More enemies join the fight, however, and Frisk casts PFMW so we can safely use the Scorcher Ammunition on the new drow.
A Spell Thrust forces us to re-cast Spell Shield, but otherwise we're suffering very little pressure. We drag the stream across the enemies even when it hurts our celestials; I know that our planetars have spare Heal spells on hand.
The planetars keep spamming Holy Word, Frisk keeps firing off the Scorcher Ammunition, and the enemy disintegrates.
Finally, the real Sendai appears. Frisk casts Enchanted Weapon in order to use the planetars as a target so we can catch Sendai in the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition, but when Sendai brings out a Fallen Deva, we switch gears.
Devas might not have the vorpal strike powers of a planetar, but they do still have a dispel magic effect on hit, which could also be very fatal if we drop PFMW. We tear down the Deva over the course of several rounds in spite of its Heal spells. Notice the Implosion spell that could have hit Frisk.
Sendai chain-casts PFMW, but it grants no protection from the stream, and her Dimension Door spells only give her a short reprieve from the stream.
Sendai falls! Melissan isn't far away.
To reach Balthazar, I can either have Saemon Havarian smuggle me in, or fight my way through the front door. The first option used to cause crashes in a very old install from a long time ago, so I've gotten accustomed to the latter. Our celestials' Holy Word spells fail to affect the mages at the gate since they're neutral-aligned, so I learn to just stay out of the way. The celestials are very safe; the monks can't hit them despite being high-level monks whose LoB bonuses should give them +4 fists.
But this takes a long time, so I have Frisk pitch in a little bit.
Despite our thorough murdalization of his guards, Balthazar is willing to side with us due to Frisk's good alignment, 20 Charisma, and 20 reputation. He'll fight alongside us in the final battle.
Unfortunately, since I have Wheels of Prophecy, I have to fight a weaker mage version of Melissan along with some minor goons right after speaking with Balthazar. Fortunately, I have time to summon a clone and a planetar. Having two streams from the Scorcher Ammunition are more than enough to break down Melissan's Stoneskins.
We get a really awesome ring in the process, but our ban on mod items means we can't use it.
But that's not all. Wheels of Prophecy adds one last fight before Melissan: a gang of demons in the elven grove, the first area of ToB.
I don't mind the Balors or the Mariliths or the Glabrezus, but we've also got a Fallen Solar to deal with, who has dispelling vorpal arrows of Ruby Ray of Reversal on top of immunity to +3 weapons and below and instant-casting Heal spells. Worse still, there's a Cambion fighter/mage who attacks during Time Stop.
I try to kill him with the Scorcher Ammunition during Time Stop, only to find that, once again, they only remove a single Stoneskin. As with Odamaron, it still disrupts his first spell.
I try again with another Time Stop, but this time I attack the other demons. It turns out that the Scorcher Ammunition works quite well during Time Stop as long as you attack somebody who doesn't have Stoneskin active. I flee to the west and drag the stream across the demons offscreen. Note that I am staying far, FAR away from the demons because I'm petrified of the Cambion's and Fallen Solars' offensive abilities.
We've made precious little progress on the two main threat, so I cast Time Stop one more time. This time, I don't hold back: I just burn a Protection from Magic scroll on him, neutralizing his spellcasting and also dispelling his buffs, paving the way for a pure damage kill by dual-wielding Belm and the Firetooth Dagger. But he has enough HP to survive until Time Stop runs out.
It's a minor setback, and as long as he can't cast Time Stop, he's not a big threat. Frisk finishes him off using the Scorcher Ammunition, bypassing his PFMW by targeting one of our planetars.
There's only one true threat left: the Fallen Solar. We summon a new clone and some new celestials before heading out, but discover that our clone is unable to hit anything with the Scorcher Ammunition due to not pre-buffing with Enchanted Weapon.
Still, Frisk's old Enchanted Weapon remains active, so we can apply some light pressure to the Fallen Solar. By great luck, we even manage to disrupt one of its spells--for instant-casting spells like an SCS celestial's, that can only happen on a single frame.
Progress is slow, however, and we deal considerably more damage to the lesser demons than the Fallen Solar, my highest priority. For some reason, the Fallen Solar tries to flee, so Frisk runs out to contest it.
I can't hit the Fallen Solar with the Scorcher Ammunition without a valid target, so I bring all our summons north so I can shoot the other demons. The Fallen Solar applies an insect spell on Frisk, but our Potion of Magic Shielding (and/or a quick SI: Conjuration spell) blocks it. For one terrifying moment, I see the Fallen Solar land an arrow on Frisk, only to realize that the arrow hit our clone and not Frisk themself.
We keep firing and the Fallen Solar's HP begins to drop fast; we finally have a steady stream of fire going. In the end, it can't stay afloat.
Cleaning up the remaining demons is little trouble.
That's it. The only remaining fight in this run is Ascension Melissan, a nightmarish four-phase process that involves fighting every member of the Five simultaneously while Melissan gleefully spams Greater Whirlwind Attack during her own Time Stop spells. It's an extremely long and ridiculously high-pressure environment where even a momentary mistake can result in an unstoppable death spiral.
There is exactly one clear route to victory: a STR drain kill on Melissan using Called Shot. Energy Blades will give us a decent shot at it, since she only has 19 Strength, but her Absolute Immunity spell could cut it short, and Energy Blades costs us a precious level 9 spell slot. Ideally, we want to kill her with the Scorcher Ammunition instead. But lots of little things could get in the way, and if we fail, bringing her down would be very complicated.
If our clone wastes its Called Shot spells, we can't summon another clone until 20 rounds have passed since we summoned it. If Frisk wastes their Called Shot spells, we can't cast it again until we land a Wish-rest, which would probably take even longer.
If all goes well, we could kill Melissan in 10 seconds. But if we make a mistake, it could take far longer than that, and if we drop our guard for even a single second, we could end up dead.
I'm going to do a test run first. I'll play it messy and under-optimized so I can get an idea of what might happen if I don't pay attention, but I think it will go smoothly regardless. Even so, if I do win, I'll have to do it over again in the real run, just like I did for Belhifet.
I'm uncomfortable with the prospect of a test run. A test run is going to make this even more nerve-wracking than it already is; I've been worrying about this fight for a long time and a test run will just drag it out. But I'm willing to grit my teeth and fight through it if it gives me even the slightest bit of insight into the final battle. I just need to make sure I don't get overconfident if the test run goes smoothly.
I seriously don't know what I would do if Melissan kills Frisk. I've really, really invested in the success of this run and I've poured... I don't even know how many hours into it. Seeing it all fall to pieces would be devastating. I keenly remember the sense of overwhelming despair and the feeling of physical weakness when Belhifet ended the last run.
Losing to Melissan would be crushing. It hurt to die to Belhifet in the last run, and I honestly don't know if I have it in me to restart the challenge after all this time.
Blaggerd gets out and about for an hour. Last seen on Boxing Day
It's been so long, he can't remember the plan. While he has a think, he changes back to his Commanding voice.
With Rasaad and Neera tagging along maybe he was looking for EE NPC's. Let's go find Dorn. He needs a helmet. Here's a couple we find "lying around".
That's everyone then and one party slot spare but then Baeloth drops by. Well OK let's see how he fits in, and whether he or Dorn ignore high reputation.
The half-orc horde also continue with a brief foray through Cloakwood.
Wyverns in a cave trade poison with the assassin. She survives thanks to a slow poison, they don't.
A rest inside the cave proves to be an error of judgement, another wyvern appearing and attacking our Fighter / Cleric but switching... to the assassin. Cue a long trek to a temple.
Drasus and his gang are aided in their defence by our Bounty Hunter strolling up to them instead of throwing his snare (oops, forgot they aren't thrown in BG:EE). The true nature of a horde came into play though, being able to over-run the enemy without having any buffs active. The assassin popped in to pop Drasus out of action, while the Barbarian raged against the mages until the fighter / cleric silenced them. The assassin had shadowed away again and caught Genthore unaware with a second fatal backstab of the battle.
Inside the mine, the assassin could not resist forcing her quarterstaff into Hareishan's back, only contemplating her escape once visible. She was blocked from retreating through our bounty hunter snares so had to head south as arrows pelted her. She almost made it but the prisoner near Yeslick blocked her and one last arrow was too much to endure. The rest of the horde streamed in and took their revenge before heading back to a temple.
Griban, swashbuckling party leader, is poisoned on our return. The fighter / cleric cures the poison and the horde gain control of the situation.
Davaeorn is buffed and ready to teleport into four snares and a concealed bounty hunter. He does exactly that after an assassin backstab poisons him, and the follow-up attacks finish him just as the assassin has hidden and about to move to his next teleport destination.
Once in Baldur's Gate, the assassin reads a tome of dexterity.
The test run goes well and confirms that we can take Melissan down to 1 HP using STR drain, but it causes some weird bug in which the whole fight starts over from the first phase, with Irenicus and Bodhi appearing and the two of them delivering their normal lines alongside Melissan. I don't know if the Better Stat Drain mod is responsible or it's the fault of some other mod, but it doesn't matter.
I already know from previous experience that killing Melissan with stat drain is possible. In my Undergate run, we killed her accidentally using CHA drain with a mod-introduced weapon. Melissan vanished, but the Solar appeared, and while Melissan wasn't present to deliver her last lines, we could still force-talk to the Solar to trigger the ending cutscene. So, as long as I manage to land the STR drain kill on Melissan in the real run, I'll consider the run a success, even if a bug prevents the final cutscene from starting. If it's not possible to get the epilogue to trigger properly, I'll just use the console to override the bug.
The fight with Irenicus was messy, however, and I did not actually try out my normal plan for killing Melissan, so there are still some things I need to think about when it's time to fight Melissan in the real run.
Phase 1:
The first phase of combat includes Irenicus, Bodhi, and two Fallen Solars. We have a spare Protection from Magic scroll for Irenicus and we can just run away from Bodhi, but the Fallen Solars are a problem. If I let PFMW drop for even a moment, or fail to buff with SI: Conjuration to block their insect spells, the Fallen Solars could destroy me.
More importantly, they can cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which dispels all dispellable effects and bypasses all defenses., including SI: Abjuration and Spell Shield. There is absolutely no way to block it.
The Fallen Solars have spectacular stats and instant-casting Heal spells as well as immunity to +3 weapons and below, so the Scorcher Ammunition will not be enough to take them down. The best way to handle them is to use an uninterruptable Time Stop scroll on the first round and then chain-cast Time Stop to kill each one with Improved Haste, Belm, and the Black Blade of Disaster.
Once the Fallen Solars are down, we just nail Irenicus with the scroll, cast Enchanted Weapon, and shred Jon-bon and Bodhi with the Scorcher Ammunition.
Phase 2:
We have to fight large groups of demons at each of the three pools, but none of the enemies have attacks that can breach our defenses. We can just stomp them with planetars and the Scorcher Ammunition.
Phase 3:
We have to fight the Five simultaneously and bring as many as possible to Near Death before killing any one of them, because the moment they die, Melissan enters the field and then we're in trouble. Testing showed that we can deal plenty of damage to the Five, but it's very complicated and highly dependent on micromanagement. The important thing is to hold onto the Shield of Reflection to keep Illasera's Arrows of Dispelling at bay and nail Abazigal and then Sendai with Protection from Magic scrolls as early as possible so we don't have to worry about Abazigal's Time Stop or Sendai's Heal spells.
Phase 4:
Apparently Melissan brings two Fallen Solars onto the map when she arrives. That's a problem for us. We can crush the Five with pure damage and therefore isolate Melissan, at which point we have PFMW and Focus to deal with her Time Stops. But those Fallen Solars and their vorpal arrows and Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells could kill us all but instantly.
We need Time Stop to kill those Fallen Solars before they end the run, but Melissan is immune to Time Stop. Not only can she attack us during Time Stop; she can even cast her own Time Stop during our own and then kill us, which means we need either Focus or PFMW active even during our own Time Stop spells.
Theoretically, we could have a clone cast Focus and then have both Frisk and the clone kill the Fallen Solars by casting Time Stop spells and using either Energy Blades or +5 darts to land STR drain kills. But we'd have to juggle two characters casting PFMW, Time Stop, Focus, and Called Shot, and the slightest mistake could leave the Fallen Solars alive or even allow Melissan to cast her own Time Stop spell and crush us. The Scorcher Ammunition would also let us land a STR drain kill, but that would be highly dependent on positioning and luck.
Things are looking really messy. Those Fallen Solars are huge wild cards and we don't have a means of bringing them down in any reasonable time frame due to LoB's massive HP bonuses. If things don't go as planned, I may have to improvise, and any bad moves could be fatal.
But it's time. I scribe a bunch of spare scrolls just in case and create three golems, the maximum I can possibly have: two Perfect Clay Golems and one Greater Mithral Golem. They have massive resistances and the saving throws to shrug off a Fallen Solar's vorpal strikes, but unfortunately, EET rigs familiars to not get LoB bonuses, so our clay golems are stuck at a pathetic 90 HP. They could die in seconds if I don't keep them away from certain fights.
I take a couple of Ibuprofen to make sure my eyes don't hurt during the fight. I break my diet and eat enough to sate myself to make sure the hunger pangs don't distract me. I study my notes and my math and remind myself several times to use every buffing option Frisk needs to survive. I take a moment to relax and clear my mind. I want to be at my absolute mental peak before I tackle this fight. All of our work comes down to this moment.
Gate70 said:The half-orc horde also continue with a brief foray through Cloakwood. A rest inside the cave proves to be an error of judgement, another wyvern appearing and attacking our Fighter / Cleric but switching... to the assassin. Cue a long trek to a temple.
If you are strong enough, that is a good place to farm some experience. If you are not it is indeed a long trek to the nearest temple. I have found that on average I have to survive three attacks whilst sleeping before getting a good night's rest. That can be either good or bad.
We rejoin our slightly sane scion at the beginning of the chapter in SoD where the game actually starts and you can stop doing mindless repetitive chores that are only fun or risky the first time you play through.
Just like Baldur's Gate 1, in that sense.
: Like any bad mod, single class thieves are of course super tough, desirable, and scary. Definitely not low grade 1 APR scrubs with the health and THAC0 of a Fighter half their level, no sirree.
While I'm being critical, weird design decisions so far:
Taking all gold from the player: Losing all gold works once, after which any savvy player simply converts their funds into goods in advance. Benjamin ended up with more money after visiting the Sorcerous Sundries than he had in Chapter 6, thanks to stockpiled Rot[E/G/N]As and miscellaneous jewellery.
Punishing the Player for taking characters from the previous game: If you don't touch an NPC, they come with pre-loot in SoD, if you do, you miss out. If you take an NPC and they aren't one of the chosen few that stick around, you lose potentially unique loot equipped on them. Again, punishing the player for not metagaming.
In the end, assuming you had to do either (rather than just equipping any partymate with their new gear for SoD and moving anything else to their inventory as needed, force unequipping any perma-lost characters and adding their equipment to the chest, and "allowing the player to keep their gold and hiking prices up due to war based shortages" to reward players for doing better and playing more rather than for metagaming) there's ways this could have been made to work, such as similar to BG2 removing everything from the player's party mates and gem bags, add to the player's starting chest key items defined by what they had in the party's inventory at the end of the prologue, say the rest is gone as part of the loot divided up and sold by the party/hookers an' booze, with an amount of gold in the chest that represents their share and what remains of it.
Anyways, back to steamrolling non-mod content.
Oh, hai mod content.
Aura has apparently coupled "weeaboo who thinks all Kozakuran people look alike" to "old lesbian cat lady who talks to her cat while adventuring". Yeah.
: The real reason gnomes haven't conquered the world is apparently because so many of them are gay their breeding population can't handle the manpower necessary. Half rabbit gnomes are currently being worked on.
Perhaps I spoke too soon about finishing the zero risk chores section of the game. Still gathering partymates, not a single threatening combat thus far that's actually required more than two WoF charges to resolve. Speaking of which...
: Suicidal overconfidence is so cute.
: Is this like a royal "we" situation? Is this guy royalty?
: I went to the hells, it was awful. I had to solo Behlifet while my weak partymates sat around being useless and dead. I'm sure this will never happen again.
Sort of wondering if Verr'sza is broken, I've not seen him say a word since Chapter six, and he never actually left the party.
: Can't disarm traps, can't set traps, can't dispel illusions, but I can make dead things blow up by looking at them. It's a hit at parties.
: Here's hoping for an encounter tough enough to actually summon some rabbits soon, people will think I've forgot my gimmick.
He'd also be doing better if I hadn't somehow lost the shield of Egons in the various inventories of ex-party members in the prologue.
Well this is embarrassing.
Fortunately the rest of the party holds the line. Once Benjamin gets in and turns the horde things got along much better, though the shadowed soul's troll tactic of kite and drain managed to kill Verr'sza before it got shot down with some flame strike wands.
And the party completes the quest for the evil wizard, surprise shanks him, drops his phylactery down the memory hole, and then Secret Reveals him to death. The biggest worry was Benjamin eating Power Word Stun, which was easily remedied with a ring of free action swap once the rest of the party caught up.
: That's what you get for being a gnome necromancer. No tolerance for law breakers in these parts.
Pretty sure that's the last thing on these two maps, next chapter: Some bridge or something iunno who cares.
We burn a Time Stop scroll on round one. We've got two Fallen Solars to deal with and I absolutely do not want to weather that storm.
Frisk chain-casts Time Stop and attacks using the Black Blade of Disaster. Meanwhile, Balthazar's broken scripting prevents him from making a single attack roll despite him being immune to Time Stop.
The first one goes down, but the other one went invisible shortly before we cast Time Stop, and is therefore out of reach. I make a few hits on Bodhi instead before restoring PFMW at the last minute.
A planetar reveals the second Fallen Solar using True Seeing, opening the way for another Time Stop. We take it down.
We have multiple Irenicus clones on the map. I'm pretty sure I know which is the real one, but I'm not quite sure. Then I realize I can check using CTRL-M: sure enough, the fake one is named "COPY." I burn a Protection from Magic scroll on the real one.
Frisk uses the last seconds of Time Stop to bring down Bodhi.
Success! We still have a couple clones to deal with, but they don't have any special tricks to pull. We just re-cast SI: Abjuration, wait out their PFMW spells, and crush them.
Time to tackle the first pool. We divide the enemy's attention between Frisk (always buffed with PFMW), our clone, and our celestials while keeping our golems out of harm's way. I might need those golems for Phase 4.
I fail to pay close attention to our golems, however, and nearly our kill our precious clay golems by letting them wander into the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition.
A quick change in positioning allows them to scrape by and find safety on the main platform.
Balthazar, however, is not so lucky. In the next fight, I accidentally let him wander into the exact position where the streams from Frisk and Frisk's clone form an "X." Few people can survive that much pressure, and Balthazar is not one of them.
It makes little difference, since Balthazar's broken script makes him little more than a meat shield anyway, but we have more problems. Our planetars' Remove Fear spells have been dispelled by the enemy's Remove Magic, and multiple celestials fail saving throws against Demon Fear. The enemy is fast encroaching on us.
A Resist Fear scroll bails them out, but our troubles aren't over. Our clone has been out for too long and finally vanishes, forcing Frisk to defend themself alone.
We wrestle with the demons for a few more rounds, trying to avoid the fear effects while making progress using the celestials and the Scorcher Ammunition.
Rather than tempt fate, I decide to fortify our defenses and rest the party before proceeding with the final fight. Normally, I like to take down all three pools in a row without resting so I can get three rests right before the Five, but the second pool was a messy affair and I don't want to take any chances. Frisk repairs our golems and gets a rest from the first pool.
While we're at it, I set up a new Chain Contingency before I forget and buff up for the third pool.
Unwilling to put Frisk in the thick of things, I keep both Frisk and the clone on the main platform while our celestials fight at the pool itself. This allows us to quickly clear up the main platform and isolate the enemies around the pool.
When we gain control of the platform, we press forward and concentrate fire on the remaining demons.
The last enemy goes down. All that's left is to use up our last resources, activate the second and third pools, and wait for Phase 3 to begin.
We repair the golems, re-cast all of our buffs, and cast Wish a few times just to make sure we can cast every possible buff at our disposal without losing any resources for the final fight.
Just for the hell of it, I grant Frisk immunity to every spell school, just in case there are any threats I haven't considered. SI: Necromancy will make them immune to our planetar's Heal spells, but our Spell Trap would have blocked those anyway.
This is what Frisk looks like before the final fight truly begins. They are now a level 8/31 Archer/Mage.
We activate the final pool. Just a few more moments before the Five are here. We squeeze every last ounce of power out of the remaining seconds we have.
We carefully position the golems in front of Frisk while spreading out our celestials so they engage the enemy first, ensuring that neither Gromnir nor Yaga-Shura, the only enemies who deal crushing damage, will target our clay golems.
The first order of business is to stop Abazigal from casting Time Stop. We could survive a Time Stop using PFMW, but our celestials could not. We burn a Protection from Magic scroll on him. No more spells from Big Blue.
Don't worry about that red celestial to the left; that's just Sendai's Summon Fallen Deva Chain Contingency. A planetar or a Fallen Solar would be a problem, but devas aren't remotely as dangerous.
Frisk casts PFMW, clouding their aura, but we can still disrupt Sendai's next spell by catching her in the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition until our aura is clear and we can apply our Protection from Magic scroll on her.
Melissan only appears when one of the Five shows up, so we can shoot down the Fallen Deva without worrying about triggering Phase 4 early.
One of the best ways of handling this fight is a strategy developed (though seldom used) by @Alesia_BH is to bring every one of the Five to Near Death before killing any one of them to delay Melissan's arrival as long as possible. Then, quickly take down each of the Five to repeatedly knock down Melissan until she's all alone. Once the Five are gone, you can kite Melissan to death with a sling and the Shield of Reflection.
But we're not going to do this. It all boils down to those two Fallen Solars that come with Melissan: since they're immune to +3 weapons and below and have LoB HP bonuses, the only way we can expect to kill them in a reasonable time frame is to use the Scorcher Ammunition and catch them within the stream.
However, that still gives them lots of time to fire off Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells. If they do, we lose all of our buffs.
All of them.
No. Matter. What.
SI: Abjuration and Spell Shield and Spell Trap won't block it; nothing will. It's a guaranteed dispel. No exceptions.
No PFMW means our only means of survival is kiting (Teleport Field could help) and using the Shield of Reflection to keep off the Fallen Solars' vorpal Arrows of Dispelling. But with the shield equipped, all we could do to kill the Fallen Solars is use the Sling of Everard.
We have no pips in slings. Even if we did, killing them would be a very, very long process in LoB mode. I doubt we could survive amongst all the chaos; we don't have enough PFMW spells to survive everything. We can probably hold off the enemy with celestials, but our celestials could easily collapse under the weight of the Fallen Solars' vorpal strikes, leaving us alone and helpless. Worse yet, Melissan will summon herds of other demons in my install, crowding up the area and making kiting difficult. I certainly don't want to see a repeat of Frisk's first attempt at Belhifet.
If Frisk can hold onto their buffs, I'm sure we can take down the whole crowd by using the Scorcher Ammunition. But if can't, we need the Shield of Reflection to avoid being shot down, and we can't kill any of them with a shield equipped. Losing our buffs means death--if not immediately, then eventually.
So how are we going to deal with all these critters with sky-high HP from LoB mode applying overwhelming pressure to Frisk?
We're not going to.
Melissan is the only critter we really need to take down. We can do that in a few seconds as long as we don't let the Fallen Solars get in the way. Our golems and/or celestials can keep the Fallen Solars busy while Frisk's clone scores a STR drain kill on Melissan.
So we're not going to bring any of the Five to Near Death; we're just going to kill one of them real quick and summon Melissan. We can then use the remaining Five as targets for the Scorcher Ammunition, which will give us a lot more wiggle room in how we apply STR drain to Melissan.
I choose Illasera, because she's one of the flimsiest of the Five and accidentally dropping PFMW won't be as dangerous with Illasera off the map.
Earlier than I expected, robbing us of our chance to summon a clone in advance of Melissan's arrival.
Melissan appears. But her Fallen Solars do not!
Frisk gets knocked out by a spell from Melissan, but it doesn't last long. Not all news is good, however. Our planetars are vanishing, and while our clay golems are immune to every form of damage Melissan can throw at them, the Greater Mithral Golem is much more fragile.
We bring out a new planetar; I'll need to buy time to summon a planetar to land the kill on Melissan. But then the Fallen Solars come out.
I pull Frisk away from the Fallen Solars, but we still don't have space to summon a clone. Frisk's PFMW runs out and all of their various Spell Immunity pre-buffs are about to run out as well, forcing us to dedicate another round to maintaining our defenses.
Down south, one of the Fallen Solars destroys our Greater Mithral Golem, which breaks apart into two smaller golems. I try to send the little golems away to the west to join our clay golems, who are distracting the other Fallen Solar, but the nearer Fallen Solar doesn't follow them.
The clay golems are immune to all kinds of different attacks, but Fallen Solars deal nonmagical magic damage on hit, and our golems don't have any resistance against magic damage. Nor do they have a whole lot of HP.
This is looking really nasty. Our allies are falling apart, Melissan has just gated in some new enemies, and we still haven't found room to summon a clone.
Why is the clone so important?
Well, Frisk only has two castings of Called Shot per day. If we summon a clone, the clone can use Called Shot and Frisk will still have two castings left. If the clone fails to kill Melissan, we can tank things out for 20 rounds until we can re-cast Simulacrum, or we can just switch to Frisk's own Called Shot spells.
But if Frisk uses Called Shot and fails to kill Melissan, any clones we might subsequently summon would be unable to use Called Shot. The only way we could try again is if we landed a Wish-rest, and while we have spare Wish scrolls we could use, the process could be very long and there's no guarantee it would work.
We could use Called Shot right now, and there's a good chance we could kill Melissan in 10 seconds. But if we fail, we might never be able to recover. We might never get a second chance at landing the kill. I want that clone so we can get more than one shot at winning this fight before it spirals out of control. Our summons and golems won't last much longer, and I don't know how we'd survive if those Fallen Solars target Frisk with Mordenkainen's Disjunction.
One of our Perfect Clay Golems goes down, replaced by much more fragile, littler golems. Worse, our nearest planetar gets crushed under the weight of a huge batch of enemies right next to Frisk.
The nearest Fallen Solar chases after our golems in lieu of Frisk, but all is not well.
Those golems are going to die in moments; they might not even last two rounds. And the moment they go down, those Fallen Solars are coming after us.
We need more time than that. It would take three whole rounds to summon a clone, buff it with PFMW and Improved Haste, and then start applying STR drain to Melissan. Worst of all, the Simulacrum bug means that if Frisk gets hit by a Fire Storm spell from Yaga-Shura or something, our clone will vanish early.
I consider my options. If I go with the clone, we'll probably give the Fallen Solars at least three rounds to attack Frisk, and any Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells are practically a game over for us. But if I activate Called Shot on Frisk and fail to kill Melissan, we'd need to land a lucky Wish-rest in order to try again. If we don't get the Wish-rest, we have to take down an entire army through damage alone, and those Fallen Solars will stay on their feet even when the other enemies start to drop.
I really don't like the idea of using Frisk's own Called Shot spells instead of operating via a clone; the entire fight would boil down to 10 seconds of action. If anything goes wrong, Melissan might well survive the process, which would all but guarantee death for Frisk, either a quick death from Mordenkainen's Disjunction or a slow death from an army. And the former is much more likely.
But luck has closed off our other options. Those Fallen Solars are going to come for us in about 10 seconds.
And if we do things right, killing Melissan will take 10 seconds.
I decide to activate Called Shot. We are gambling the fate of the entire run on the next 2 rounds.
I re-position Frisk and target a Nabassu with the Scorcher Ammunition, placing Melissan squarely within the stream. Before I commit to the position, I make absolutely sure that Melissan is taking the hits.
Melissan should be taking 2 points of STR drain with every hit, with a slight delay in between them. We only need to drain 19 STR; that's all she's got. But we'll probably need to switch targets; the Nabassu is already starting to crumple.
We can ignore the PFMW expiration notice; it's from a previous PFMW before we re-cast it. Spell expiration notices stack; restoring PFMW doesn't prevent the old notifications from appearing.
I keep pausing every few frames. If Melissan ever strays away from the stream, I need to adjust it, or else we won't be applying the STR drain we need to win this fight. Notice our golems to the west quickly falling apart.
The golems are almost gone. They'll only last a few seconds more.
The Fallen Solars kill another golem, leaving only one left. Meanwhile, to the east, the Nabassu is about to die and the stream disrupts one of Melissan's spells simply because we're applying so many hits in so little time.
Notice that Frisk is trying to use Called Shot. It's extremely hard to tell when Frisk's aura is clear amongst all the chaos. I cancel the order and have Frisk keep firing away with the Scorcher Ammunition.
The last clay golem dies, but to my surprise, it doesn't vanish--it splits into two smaller golems once again, buying us a few more seconds of safety from the Fallen Solars.
The Nabassu dies. Auto-pause catches it; I enabled the auto-pause specifically to make sure that I didn't let Frisk let a single frame go by without attacking. We only have two rounds to make this happen, and every fraction of a second counts.
I try activating Called Shot again. This time, Frisk's aura is clear!
Called Shot stacks with previous castings, so for the next 6 seconds or so, Frisk will deal 2 STR damage per hit, or 4 with the Scorcher Ammunition. As long as we can keep Melissan in the stream, the STR drain should kill her.
But it wasn't necessary. Less than a single second after using our second Called Shot, Melissan's STR drops to zero, and the instant death effect from the Better Stat Drain mod activates several times on the same frame just because we're applying so much stat drain so fast.
We won! We got the kill!
But as I had suspected, Melissan's death is buggy. Normally, without the Better Stat Drain mod, she'd just die without even issuing her final dialogue and the Solar would appear, but due to some weird scripting issue, the death convinces Melissan that we don't have Ascension installed. She delivers a vanilla dialogue line!
She teleports away, but since Melissan doesn't retreat to the pillar of green energy stuff in Ascension--that's vanilla behavior--she just reappears at her normal vanilla starting point at the south. We've got some weird behavior here: Yaga-Shura is taking damage from the stream, but only suffers one point of damage out of two, even though the minimum damage for the Scorcher Ammunition is like 9. We also have a Fallen Solar taking fire damage from an unknown source despite being immune to fire.
We got the kill we wanted, so the bugs don't matter to me, but out of curiosity, I CTRL-J over to Melissan to see what's going on. Despite the vanilla dialogue line and curious teleport, she's still working with her Ascension script, using her Divine Mantle thingy as if Phase 4 had just started.
Out of curiosity, I try to win the fight using pure damage alone, just in case I can see the credits without having to resort to the console, but it's not possible. Those Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells are just as devastating as I had feared. It's simply not possible to avoid them unless you have allies or summons to distract the Fallen Solars.
It's really broken. I don't know how @Alesia_BH dealt with those Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells in her solo runs. I'm not sure they existed back then; I don't remember ever hearing about them. There's seriously no way to block them using spell protections in my install; only summoned critters can keep the Fallen Solars from dispelling all your buffs.
I want the epilogue to trigger, so I try to force Melissan to fall using CTRL-Y. Once again, she delivers a vanilla dialogue line in response and gets right back into action.
Apparently Melissan in my install is bugged to only die after you kill her three times, just like in vanilla. That's why she didn't drop when we brought her to 1 HP using STR drain.
I solve the bug with another CTRL-Y. Finally, the Solar intervenes and we get the ending we wanted. Also, Balthazar is alive somehow.
The bugs made things a little anti-climactic, but the important thing is that Frisk is alive and Melissan has fallen.
I should have played without the Better Stat Drain mod. I only created it to help deal with Abazigal, but in the end we didn't need it to kill him. All it did was prevent Melissan from dying a clean death and force us to use the console to end the game. If I hadn't installed the mod, Melissan would have died instantly.
But it's over. Finally, finally it's over. Frisk chooses mortality and gives up the essence of Bhaal and the chance to become a god.
One solo no-reload Legacy of Bhaal run with SCS and Ascension, complete.
I will be blunt. This run was not fun for me. The only fun parts were finding a few quick ways to bring down key enemies, like pinning stuff down with Darts of Stunning or shredding Sendai's minions using the Scorcher Ammunition, and those moments of fun were very brief. The run as a whole was an immense trial, the setbacks were crushing, and with the exception of most of Shadows of Amn, everything was extremely stressful. I had multiple nightmares about losing the run; it consumed me.
I'd been feeling burned out for a long time, and I thought that if I could do one more run, one last really good run, I could be okay with leaving the game for a little while and taking it easy. My poverty run didn't seem good enough because it involved the Wand of Lightning trick near the end (not to mention some highly intensive XP farming at two stages of the game), so the "holy grail," a solo LoB run, was the natural alternative. I never liked LoB very much, nor did I much like solo runs, but I felt that this was the only run that would work. The only run that would be "good enough."
I take a lot of pride in my runs and I invest very heavily in them. But now that the run is over, I don't think I was playing this game for the right reasons. Pride in a single accomplishment is a very fleeting pleasure; it's not going to be enough to make you happy. In all honesty, this run was not worth the stress. I shouldn't have chased after an arbitrary trophy when the journey itself was not something I could enjoy.
Even so, I'm glad Frisk has made it to the end, and I would like to extend my thanks to everyone who made this possible.
First, I'd like to thank @Blackraven. He was the guy who got me interested in no-reload runs way back in the day. He brought me into this community and showed me the joy and the excitement of no-reload runs, and his influence is really the main reason I'm here today.
I'd also like to thank @Grond0. @Grond0 is absolutely fearless, and his incredible discipline encouraged me to drop the training wheels and get my hands dirty. @Grond0's the one who inspired me to disable the bonus XP from LoB mode, which is the main reason I found the basilisk XP loop. What's more, I have always been a hopeless novice in BG1 and @Grond0's advice got me through the game. I don't think I would have ever made it through BG1 without him.
Next, I'd like to thank @Harpagornis. @Harpagornis practically invented the solo LoB metagame and was extremely helpful to my attempts at SoD. @Enuhal also shared a number of precious insights into SoD. Without them, I don't think I would ever have made it to BG2.
I also want to thank @Arctodus for inventing the Potion of Power trick, without which I could never have safely used the Arrows of Detonation to clear the field in the fight with Belhifet. I don't think I could have made it without him, either.
Naturally, I have to thank @Alesia_BH as well. Her insights into the Ascension Melissan battle were absolutely instrumental in Frisk's success, and she's been a positive influence in the community since the no-reload thread began so many years ago.
Finally, I have to thank @Ygramul and everyone who's contributed to this thread since it began. There are so many things I've learned about the game just by reading this thread. These runs are all very much a community effort, and God knows I would have been lost without all the priceless information I've gleaned from this forum.
I don't have enough good words for you all. This community is so precious to me, and I cannot put it into words. All I can say is "Thank you."
I'm so happy that you all are here. You are the reason this forum is a good place.
One last thing: Don't do things that make you miserable just because you want the trophy at the end. Do things you enjoy doing, even if you don't always succeed. Life is too short to waste time chasing fleeting highs.
Don't indulge your pride. No matter how much you give to it, pride will never give back as much as it takes from you.
Well - here's a friendly congratulations . It may have been hard work, but in years to come I'm sure you will continue to feel the benefits of being able to look back on a solid achievement.
Well, I already congratulated you in the LoB/SCS solo-thread, but there's no reason not do do it twice, given the difficulty of the achievement!
I'm not new to taking a break from the game (often, these breaks have lasted for about a year, sometimes they were shorter) - however, after a couple of months, I always find myself wanting to return with a fresh sense of purpose and a new approach, so I hope the same thing will happen for you
We begin the next chapter with a hearty helping of lolwut.
Ignoring the stupidity of the scripting, even if Skie somehow managed to hit level 15 thief, making her literally over four times as experienced as Bence, she would still be drastically, overwhelmingly, supremely less skilled than he is as a level 9 fighter with Grand Mastery. That's 7 THAC0, 107 HP and Full Plate versus 10 THAC0 (with a bow) 79 HP (with max rolls), and leather.
Not only would it be a cold day in hell before Skie's "skills" managed to let her skinny little arms knock down a level 9 Fighter, that same fighter could probably take out a dozen boar without being in any danger, since they hit him on a 20, he hits them on a 2, and he kills one boar in three hits maximum with 2.5 APR. This boar she saved him from would have needed nine critical hits for max damage, over the course of nine rounds, while Bence would have needed to roll at least twenty critical misses in the same time period, and even then, would need to have rolled minimum damage if he made two hits, leaving the boar at 3 HP.
Moral: If you're going to try and pretend that thieves are useful in a military situation, base it around setting, or dealing with, traps or hidden ambushes, not their ability to fight.
These are the most intelligent bandits ever.
Unfortunately they also have fire arrows and scrolls of acid arrows, which a quick fireball liberates for later.
Also fun fact: Discovered why Sirene is immune to invisibility, it's her helmet of fire, which gives her a fine red complexion that overrides invisibility effects. This also means she shows up in dream sequences.
They killed the bunny scout, the bunny mage kills them. Circle of life, wheel of fire, blah blah blah.
: Unfamiliar N- No, wait, Jaheira. : Fireball her anyway? : ... I'm sure there's a downside there I don't see.
For some reason or other, Aura's scripting is a mess in my install. She interrupts every second or so, stopping her from detecting traps, dispelling illusions, or generally doing anything except periodic attacks.
It's a good thing Glint's around, I'll kick her once I find someone more useful around.
Infravision: It was renamed "Darkvision" for a reason, because you'd think it was based on viewing the infrared spectrum, in which case seeing a long doused torch in a cave or set of stairs would be a fantastically stupid idea, instead of not being able to use said vision to just see the chest and corpse in the first place, which was also fantastically stupid.
Can't complain about the loot, at least. Benjamin now has learned and prepped Enchanted Weapon, just in case he ever ends up having to solo another Behlifet (as if that would ever happen).
: Yeah, one inside and one outside is usually how I split you two up too.
Ooo, Skald. Bunnies rejoice!
Hopefully this ends the debate about Anomen truthfully reporting his exploits once and for all.
Status: Still not dead. Still nothing bunny worthy. Grey Clan has ruined me for SoD.
The game should track "damage dealt", methinks. It's very easy to see a high APR melee guy pick up all the kills, but potentially a mage behind the scenes dealing 90% of the health of every enemy in an AOE.
Also: Lol, goblin only gear. Probably won't be playing with the super speshul diversity hire this game, but it's nice to know that not only are goblins capable of creating high tier magic gear, they're capable of enchanting it to prevent anyone else from wearing it except goblins.
Rhinoceros beetle. In a spider den.
: Did... Did we interrupt some kind of hit or something?
This was a painful encounter, since I'm running pretty much blind by this point (quit out at the end of the previous map last time I played SoD due to apathy) and didn't realise I was turning the corner into a green dragon's face.
No prebuffing, a stoneskins on the fly, some quick heals.... And Glint killstole it on its last 10 HP. Little cuss.
Also, fun quirk, either from switching games or from having the Ankh on and dying so often, Verr'Sza is now permanently True Neutral. Hooray for friendly safe Holy Smite.
Update: Still ain't dead, but where the heck did that dragon come from? And how did it fit?
And then Benjamin closed the door, said all the nopes, and decided it was time to rest and buff.
: Glint you kill-stealing little b- ow. Oh, right. Catboy.
Worm thing: One. Arrow of Dispelling: Nil.
Well on the plus side, at least he's using the dart, with which he is non-proficient, rather than the twin daggers of disease, with which he is wearing a strength belt and specialised for.
The fat dead guy that just keeps on giving: Santa Algernon.
: Fun fact - Neothelids cannot burrow. They use the tunnels of other underdwellers, psionically teleporting to other tunnel networks when they exhaust the food supply in their local one. They also eat illithids, while illithids exterminate them at every opportunity, so there's no way we'll be encountering any later in this dungeon, because that would be stupid, and I definitely don't need to save my Chaotic Commands for that exact purpose.
: I have instant cast Holy Smites, stoneskins, and an infinite amount of bunnies to distract backstabbers. Please, spend rounds going invisible.
Comments
I have made another character and will start him up as soon as I figger out what class he is
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954289/#Comment_954289
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954338/#Comment_954338
The monks made rapid progress at Durlag's Tower - burning down battle horrors, shooting down ghasts and meleeing basilisks (using mirrored eye potions). A sneak attack on Kirinhale didn't quite finish her off (partly because she was surprisingly unaffected by Spirit's +2 club), but she suffered morale failure and was finished off with magic missiles.
That lot got them much closer to level 7 and they soon added the Revenant (melee), a pair of mustard jellies (melee), Narcillicus (stealth attack - stuns failed, but Chimera used LMD to successfully interrupt the one spell the mage had time for). A general sneak attack on the Doomsayer was followed by a series of stealth attacks using the wall for cover and a single character for distraction - until Chimera finished it off with a LMD.
Level 7 comes with a big benefit for my monks. They get the lay on hands ability - luxury after playing most of the game with no healing and just one CLW after Nashkel Mine. In addition, in the EE monks gain the additional APR offered to fighters at level 7 and 13, which makes their missile attacks significantly more effective.
They had no need of their healing abilities while smacking down some sirines and golems at the Lighthouse.
Wraith - L7, 60 HPs, 187 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L7, 58 HPs, 141 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L7, 55 HPs, 122 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L7, 56 HPs, 137 kills, 1 death
Spirit - L7, 61 HPs, 126 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L7, 46 HPs, 202 kills
Apparently just letting the first lass talk to you teleports you to the bottom floor, bypassing the entire dungeon.
That's way more convenient, so sort of wishing I knew this before. There was still plenty of time to move some distance from the non-talky bosses' to stop them from getting involved too early.
Neera died from focus firing archers, Morwen wandered into two WoF streams, as did Sirene, but I managed to micromanage her into a corner where she could sit and think about what she did.
Still have no idea why she's immune to invisibility.
Benjamin gathers her stuff and the party leaves, fighting nobody for the next four levels. This rather demonstrates why guards exist, and why your ideal strategy should probably not be "teleport party fresh into a confrontation with your most valued assets.
I... guess that makes this rando the final boss of the dungeon?
This mod is weird.
I have no idea why one would spend 5000 GP to make a plain +3 dagger with the surfeit of +2 Daggers of +1 APR laying around, but okay.
This cabinet is protected by the best lock, the best. And I've seen a lot of locks, it's amazing. Shatter doesn't care though.
Apparently their zeal to kill the intruder was so extreme that it precluded any other activities, like "telling the rest of the building about the intruder".
Sorry, Oversight, I came loaded for Grachus this game. Your "magic missiles" don't really cut it.
Benjamin wins! Fatalities!
And so, leaving approximately two hundred grand's worth of loot on the floor, Benjamin leaves.
Weird dwarf quest thing.Candlekeep
Werewolf Island.
Section
Overwatch
Lethal Friendly Arm quest thing.
Drizzt thing
????
Sarevok.
Drizzt time! And as a high level area oop north, once Benjamin kicks his entire team he will be levelling to the 375,000 DS cap.
Apparently this install has a delayed start component, so notionally I have to beat Durlag's tower first anyway. Apparently I have some deep seated self-loathing to work out.
I don't know how the mustard jelly was disarmed, but I assume it was PG13.
One.
Two.
Invisibility and turn undead: Free arrows. I should probably actually use those rather than hording them. Quiver of Plenty giving me bad habits.
Well, defeated three of the elemental guardians and the first Phoenix Guard, which is enough.
Three wand users, no survivors. As usual, loot is abandoned. Benjamin knows every spell I can get in BG1, and is well into the sextuple digits for cash just from the odd Laeral's and Ruby Ring.
Three,
Good point to leave off, methinks. Finish this, hope that Drizzt will actually show up somewhere, then get some Saga on.
CHARNAME would presumably have awaited good weather before departing.
You said: "Apparently just letting the first lass talk to you teleports you to the bottom floor, bypassing the entire dungeon.
That's way more convenient, so sort of wishing I knew this before. There was still plenty of time to move some distance from the non-talky bosses' to stop them from getting involved too early."
I actually find it more convenient to take out the Section on the way down. You get SO much loot. If you sell all that full plate armour to the dwarf at the south side of Beregost, you get such a large ammount of gold that you can actually afford to buy some of his stock.
What's more, you pick up considerable experience.
Of course you don't HAVE to fight them at all as there are so many potions of invisibility available, you can just pass through most of them. I would rather kill everything so that your potion case is bursting at the seams.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 25: Throne of Bhaal
We use two Protection from Acid green scrolls on Frisk and deploy a team of planetars using Project Image and Simulacrum to wrestle with the first two dragons of the quadruple dragon ambush. There's a lot of HP to cut through in this fight.But Improved Haste gives us our celestials pretty respectable damage output, obviating the need for a stat drain kill via a Simulacrum clone's Energy Blades+Called Shot+Called Shot+Ray of Enfeeblement combo.
Landing STR drain kills is cooler, but since we can only summon a clone every 20 rounds and we have multiple dragons to take down, it's faster just to rely on sheer damage. Frisk chips in from afar, fleeing whenever a dragon targets them. We summon a Simulacrum when the second dragon hits Near Death to make sure the clone will last for many rounds after the third dragon appears.
Right after the second dragon croaks, our celestials start vanishing. But the third dragon, Ithy'nassendra, has not entered our field of vision, so we can safely use Project Image to summon up some new celestials. As always, we butcher excess clones to set Frisk free.
Ithy'nassendra's poison breath weapon deals massive damage, to the extent that it could one-shot many characters on LoB mode, but with the Ring of Gaxx on hand, only our planetars are vulnerable. And the damage it does isn't too bad in LoB mode.
Now that there are only two dragons left, we can switch to STR drain-based kills. Our clone can take down Ithy'nassendra, leaving the final dragon, Carnifex, for Frisk themself. First, though, we need to throw out a bunch of Pierce Shield spells to remove Ithy'nassendra's spell protections and lower her MR.
Ithy'nassendra activates a Heal Contingency, but her HP means very little. Our clone casts Energy Blades and Called Shot at a safe distance and begins applying STR drain and save penalties.
With Ithy'nassendra's save vs. spell at about 20, her STR well below her maximum, her MR at 0, and her spell protections gone, she's perfectly vulnerable to Ray of Enfeeblement. We fire it off, drop her STR to 1, and finish her off with one last hit.
The final dragon, Carnifex, is one of the strongest in the game in terms of sheer numbers, but HP means precious little to an Archer with Called Shot. Our previous clone has just now vanished, allowing us to haul out a new one for another couple Called Shot spells. We start throwing out Pierce Shield spells while our celestials keep him busy, just like we did against Ithy'nassendra.
We break through the spell protections that Carnifex erects via sequencers. For safety's sake, Frisk casts Time Stop to give us automatic hits. But in the end, Called Shot isn't even necessary--the sheer damage kills Carnifex before the STR drain does.
Done! Four dragons down and zero damage to Frisk.
Just one more fight before we get the Scorcher Ammunition: a group of Tyrant Golems and a couple of Death Tyrants. The Tyrant Golems, as I've complained before, have demilich-grade resistances, all the normal powers of a beholder, immunities to practically all disablers, and are not coded as golems despite their name, which means the Rod of Smiting is useless against them. They're no fun to fight.
I have already decided that I will use the console to bring back Bondari in case he gets shattered during this fight, but I'd rather not let him get shattered in the first place. Therefore, we're going to use Time Stop to prevent any of the enemies from using any spells that might kill Bondari and company.
Amazingly enough, SCS beholders can snatch the Shield of Balduran from your inventory even during Time Stop. Luckily, we get it back when the beholder in question goes down.
But that's just the Death Tyrant; they're easy to kill (well, relatively speaking). It's the Tyrant Golems I need to worry about. They are... a bit harder to kill.
I decide to rely on STR drain instead, and therefore summon a clone and a couple planetars. The planetars hold the fort while our clone prepares to land a STR drain kill with Energy Blades.
A nearby Sentinel summons an Earth Elemental and one of the beholders snatches our Cloak of Mirroring even though Frisk hasn't even engaged them.
Our clone lands a fast kill with Energy Blades and Called Shot. Rather than try to repeat the deed, however, Frisk leaves the area and returns under invisibility to finish off the last enemies during Time Stop.
Bondari is still around! We use a spare Stone to Flesh scroll on him, let him do the heavy lifting for the gauth eyestalk quest thingy, kill him, let him reload, and then get the Bronze Pantalettes, which allows us to forge the Big Metal Unit and finally gain access to the Scorcher Ammunition, the one thing I've been waiting to get since I started this run in Candlekeep. We use the Teleport spell to snag the Firetooth crossbow from Garlena, which will give us extra damage bonuses when using the Scorcher Ammunition.
Frisk is still 3 levels away from the level cap (collecting XP hasn't been a real priority since we first did the basilisk XP loop back in BG1), but with the Scorcher Ammunition in hand, we are now effectively at peak power. This is what Frisk looks like at the strongest they've ever been.
If you're wondering why I have thousands of arrows and Identify scrolls, it's because it saves me literally seconds of micromanagement over the course of the run.
As I've discussed in other posts here and there, the key detail about the Scorcher Ammunition is that the projectile is area-effect and strikes twice. That means it applies the penalties of Called Shot as well as damage. Combined with its base 5 APR and Improved Haste, it effectively grants 20 attacks per round. Along with its +10 THAC0 bonus, it's devastating even at point-blank range.
We shred the Ascension drakes within moments.
You're not allowed to leave this area until Abazigal is dead, but the Teleport spell lets us hop out any time we want and go right back.
Theoretically, we could use this to take out every enemy in this fight one by one, resting in between each one so we face them all at maximum power. But we don't need to do this; I just wanted to establish that we could.
First, I want to take down the Tamah clone that appears at the start of the fight (another one spawns after Abazigal's transformation). We avoid Abazigal entirely, using PFMW to tank Tamah while we catch the enemies in the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition to shred all the enemies at once. The damage output is insane, and by carefully manipulating our movement, we can apply almost all of the damage to every enemy.
We summon some clones and celestials to trigger Abazigal's transformation.
It doesn't take too long. Once he does, Frisk heads west with their Simulacrum clone to tackle the second Tamah together.
For one horrifying moment, I see the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition stretching from our Simulacrum clone to Frisk themself, and I'm petrified that Frisk is going to get shredded. The Scorcher Ammunition is very party-unfriendly indeed.
Thankfully, we only dipped into it very briefly; Frisk takes no damage.
But it's an important reminder that if I ever use a Simulacrum clone to apply STR drain with the Scorcher Ammunition, I'll need to keep Frisk well out of the way. The sheer damage, the STR drain, and the save penalties could all be fatal if Frisk got caught in the stream.
Tamah's breath weapon is very unique. It deals crushing damage, which is no problem thanks to Stoneskin, but it also has a 50% chance of knocking you unconscious with no saving throw.
For the next 12 seconds, Frisk is utterly helpless.
Neither dragon closes in on us, however, and our planetars keep them distracted until Frisk climbs to their feet. We rush back to Tamah and finish her off.
Only Abazigal remains. He has a nasty shockwave ability that imposes spell failure and he's immune to Time Stop, so he's a great deal stronger than any of the other dragons we've faced. But we still have several celestials to surround him while Frisk and their clone uses the Pulse Ammunition (the weaker but party-friendly alternative to the Scorcher Ammunition) to tack on damage from afar. Abazigal has magic attacks to throw at us, but I always have spare spell protections memorized or packed into spell triggers.
Thanks to the Better Stat Drain mod, we can land a STR drain kill on Abazigal and still trigger his death dialogue, which we need to progress in the main questline. But as it happens, our damage output is so incredibly high that we don't even need to use Called Shot. Instead, I just let our clone shoot him down.
The only reason I created the Better Stat Drain mod was specifically so that I could get a quick kill on Abazigal without breaking the game. And it turns out that it wasn't even necessary.
The pointlessness of our cleverest strategies fills us with determination.
Done. No rabbits, since every aura counted and a few squirrels were already helping with the distractions.
Well that's convenient, time to dump the party, I guess.
For some reason, so many of the novelisations feature around lowly fighter types too derpy to realise that being a mage or cleric and rewriting all reality to your whims is better than being a plucky fighter type with a pointy metal stick fighting demonic beasts that rewrite all reality.
Having to babysit two eejits without decent wards against frickin' demons I can't help but wonder about their appeal. This place is actually pretty dangerous, thanks to the fireball happy demon knight/tanarri things. Benjamin survived one on 3 HP before retreating to triple chug for a few rounds, before taking out the Greater Tanarri and Demon Knight solo after Drizzt and whoever died.
May have to go up to the 500k SoD cap to get Raise Dead at this rate.
Sort of regretting dumping the whole party at this point. Especially the fire immune ones.
Belhifet seems to deal omega tier melee damage with poison, he's immune to both of Benjamin's throwing weapons, he has 50% MR, and Benjamin cannot tank him, since I left the poison immunity talisman on the finger of one of my party mates like a boob.
Okay, stock take:
Benjamin has the talisman of infinite wyverns, which can't hit him, but last about one round each in melee with him. His wands of monster summoning would produce longer lasting chaff, but he can pretend the wyverns are a subspecies of bunny thanks to the horns.
Benjamin can rest, the demons here don't see through invisibility, and Behlifet doesn't regenerate.
Eventually:
Melf's Minute Meteors, Evermemory, some cloudkills while blocking him in with a wall of summons, and a whole bunch of magic missiles.
Da frigg?
Thank cripes for invisibility.
Sort of guessing this is the next map to be doing. My world map is glitched with no new mod areas being added. Since there's snow and things to kill, seems promising.
So, uh, none of them have ranged weapons, but one of them was clearly throwing something at range. What is this? Throwing short swords now?
Ow. Random, instant, fireballs. Obnoxious. The halfling dies, which would be inconvenient if there was anything to steal, unlock, or disarm.
Next map. Hopefully also correct, since I'm basically going in numerical order here:
Ow. Nope.
Uh.... Maybe? Trying to get this to work with the console command always shunts the group to the top corner, but it's at least a forest with snow, and a giant.
Lolwut? Well that's 80-100% MR with three slots.
Well, that's the end of linearity, back to hopping numerically through maps.
I'm kind of getting the impression that Drizzt's GM was softballing him. No an issue anymore, of course.
Ehhh, Grey Clan is still worse. Why the werewolf ice spirit is immune to everything except electricity damage on the other hand, will forever remain a mystery.
Sort of goes to show that cheat stats, extra APR, masteries you shouldn't have and an AC that's artificially 6 points below 10 don't matter in the long run compared to kiting, wands, and a callous willingness to sacrifice party members for momentary advantage.
2k for the 4 APR, 20 strength murder demon with -12 AC, 130 HP, and massive resistances.
10k for the 2 APR, 22 strength giant with -2 AC, 155 HP, and nothin' but cold resistance.
Makes sense.
Well since Drizzt is deader than dead, I daresay Icewind Dale is going to experience certain doom at a later point that one to six adventures starting at level 1 will need to handle.
Benjamin turns in the baby from the last quest he encountered, then heads off to the Friendly Arm to complete Sarevok and hopefully never have to play BG1 for another few years.
Yeah, the whole thing is such a Monty Haul I'd probably be up to six digits of gold at this point, but unless there's something in the Drizzt Saga that needs that much. There's not much left worth buying except for the 200 charge wands in the Friendly Arm store, and I'm inclined to suspect there's enough charges left in the dozen wands of fire that I already have to handle most of SoD.
In my current game I have just sold all that loot.: well, nearly all, and have bought wands so that both of my mages have a 200 charge wand for every type that is available, (Except for wand of polymorphing which has ONLY 100 charges) and my clerics have 200 charge wands of the heavens. I am now poor again, but that's OK as I can get more gold/loot in Durlag's.
There isn't a lot to buy in Drizzt Saga that is better than that which you already have. You should by now have all the arrows that you could ever use and every type of container.
Zepp (Dwarven cleric of Talos, Gate70); Fiery (Dwarven Kensai, Grond0)
Session 11 starts at the exit of the Underdark. After a few moments we decide to go sort out Firkraag. His guardians succumb to a combination of summons and turned undead while he is unable to deal with our levelled characters.
Everything is ticking along nicely but Zepp underestimates some disguised attackers and has to step away. This despite a recently purchased girdle intended to reduce wiltings and other magical damage by 50%.
One more update until retirement.
This should be easy.
Hopefully there's a cutscene for removing Duke Eltan from the inventory, because if we win it's going to be awkward talking to his doppelganger.
Blade of Howling Slashing Damage deals with Green Slimes accordingly.
Apparently some of them really liked rabbits, and didn't approve of them being blown up.
Brief pause to buy up some loot. Needy refugees will never have my gold!
I tried to get the killing blow, but for some reason it won't even let me screenshot the corpse.
Either way, victory. thanks to the power of rabbits, stupidly high stats, and surviving some absolutely herptarded mods: Benjamin Bunny.
For the record, Benjamin had at the end:
One Soul Taker dagger - still with demon inside.
One infant werewolf.
One unconscious Arch Duke.
One Dwarven Artifact (no idea what I was supposed to do with that).
All of Drizzt's and Wulfgar's stuff.
One parrot named Elminster with a Gibberling phobia.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 26: Throne of Bhaal
Sendai's lair.The Scorcher Ammunition makes short work of the drow. Without it, these fights would all require either multiple planetars or multiple rests. I make a point of focusing on a single target for one round before running in a circle to catch many enemies in the stream, spreading the damage across the herd.
One of the many nice things about the Scorcher Ammunition is that it can shred through Stoneskins and disrupt spells regardless of weapon immunities. We don't need nonmagical arrows or Energy Blades to deal with mages anymore.
I had to put up with a lot of crap in BG1 and SoD to get Frisk to this point, and it's finally paying off. We spent a lot of time operating as an underpowered character. It's good to have an edge over the enemy for once.
I'm actually quite proud of this. Nobody ever seemed to pay the Scorcher Ammunition any mind, probably because it only dealt fire damage when paired with the Big Metal Rod. Nobody ever seemed to realize just how much potential the Scorcher Ammunition had. It's a woefully underappreciated item.
A lot of fights around here are optional. The army of orogs and duergar can mostly be skipped just by running straight to the commander, so we only have to shred a fraction of the possible enemies (this fight can actually proceed indefinitely if you don't move).
But I don't like skipping fights when a quick alternative is available, and the Scorcher Ammunition makes the minor fights pretty simple. Build up a stream, pull it across the enemy, and use some targeted strikes on tougher opponents, like hitting mages with the Staff of the Magi.
Odamaron, however, is a bit more complicated of a fight. First, he doesn't show up when we approach under Time Stop, and when he does appear, we discover that using the Scorcher Ammunition during Time Stop can only remove a single one of his Stoneskins due to an engine quirk. Normally, any weapon could remove multiple Stoneskins, but the Scorcher Ammunition apparently is an exception.
I summoned Kitthix because I needed a target for the Scorcher Ammunition; Odamaron's PFMW would have blocked Frisk's attacked if we attacked him directly.
I was counting on the Scorcher Ammunition to shred through his Stoneskins and then disrupt his spells. With Kitthix gone and our first two Time Stop spells wasted, we lost a valuable opportunity to end the fight before it began. The second hit of the Scorcher Ammunition only robs Odamaron of a single spell.
Odamaron restores his PFMW via Contingency, but Frisk can still use the planetar as a valid target if they buff with Enchanted Weapon (the Scorcher Ammunition is normally a +1 weapon; planetars are immune to +2 weapons and below). Since it might be several seconds before we can get through Odamaron's Stoneskins, we also apply a Holy Word spell.
We never buffed our planetar with Remove Fear, but even when the planetar fails a saving throw and starts running around, Frisk can still catch Odamaron within the stream using careful positioning to make sure the lich is always between Frisk and the planetar.
Holy Word proves unnecessary; the Scorcher Ammunition's 20 APR just applies too much pressure for Odamaron to function. The lich explodes in the stream.
The Scorcher Ammunition's projectile seems to cancel early when the target dies, costing us some potential damage output if we focus too hard on one target, so I try applying pressure to multiple targets at once. It gives us more wiggle room when it comes to covering all possible targets, and also looks a lot cooler.
Frisk finally hits level 31 and gets one additional spell slot for each spell level, at which point I realize that the level 2 Strength spell would have let us land much easier stat drain kills on all sorts of enemies, especially dragons.
Next up, Ogremoch. Ogremoch can create 10 Stoneskins per round, enough to stymie the efforts of any solo character due to the APR cap of 10, but with 20 effective APR, we can overwhelm even Ogremoch's defenses.
As for Diaytha, I've found it's generally best to just approach them during Time Stop. For safety's sake, I pull Frisk out of the room before Time Stop ends so I can re-cast Time Stop when we're out of the enemy's field of vision.
The pressure is enormous. Even LoB enemies in ToB can't stand up to it. Merely dragging the stream across certain enemies is enough to kill.
The Hive Mother fires off a Flesh to Stone spell, but we have Spell Turning active as well as subzero saving throws. We fall back, cast Time Stop (the Hive Mother can't follow us through the doorway anyway), and kill her with stat drain, rendering her high HP and mage defenses irrelevant.
In a stunning display of the Scorcher Ammunition's power, we kill Captain Egeissag before he can walk ten feet over to us and make a single attack roll.
Next up, mind flayers. Frisk drinks a whole bunch of Potions of Genius on the off chance the enemy gets a lot of high attack rolls and we let our PFMW drop, then casts Time Stop to apply damage before the enemy can react. A high movement rate lets us hit practically everyone on the map.
Another Time Stop cleans up the survivors.
Before we deal with Sendai, I want to complete the Pocket Plane trials on the off chance I might need any of the Ascension spells. Guess what weapon we use?
The Ravager trial isn't open yet, but since I'm already here, I decide to use Dimension Door to hop over the gap and start the fight early. Before I enter the area, I make sure to drink a Potion of Storm Giant Strength.
Why? Well, the Ravager is coded to have 28 STR, which may or may not be effectively 25, and its immunity to +3 weapons means that we'll need to summon a clone to use the Scorcher Ammunition as an area-effect to kill the Ravager, and I don't want to kill Frisk with stat drain if I accidentally send them into the stream (Energy Blades would also work, but they're not quite optimal).
Our clone heads north to distract the Ravager; Frisk sticks to the south to distract the Bone Blades. Separating the enemy like this is important because we need to use the Bone Blades as a target, and since the STR drain from Called Shot will kill the Bone Blades long before it kills the Ravager, we want to be able to switch targets and keep the Ravager in the stream without having to re-position the clone.
Three Bone Blades die to STR drain, but there are more than enough remaining for the clone to keep the Ravager in the stream until it croaks.
The warm light of the Scorcher Ammunition reminds us of the fire magic of fuzzy goat monsters. We are filled with determination.
Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good
Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good
Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
Session 6 sees us leave the de'Arnise Keep and refuse the company of Nalia. Killye wants to sell the loot at Watchers Keep so we empty our pockets there and Felai realises she has no familiar. Maybe she forgot to take it out of the chateau portrait - but let's see if another one can be summoned up.
Elf Lawful Evil Fighter-Mage-Thief LoB
P.s, the basic character image | animation is https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2453017
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 27: Throne of Bhaal
Sendai herself.It should be possible to win this entire fight strictly by relying on the Staff of the Magi to avoid the drow and using PFMW to hold off any Fallen Planetars that might enter the field. But that would be an extremely long process and failing to re-equip the staff at the right times could be dangerous, so we're going to go with a high-pressure approach. I discover that it's possible to talk-block Sendai (which might mean it's possible to end the entire fight by attacking her during Time Stop), so I use the extra time to summon a planetar. Our planetar fires off a Holy Word spell early on and manages to apply 50% spell failure to the mage.
Frisk summons a clone, who throws some Energy Blades at the Sendai backstabber before switching to the Scorcher Ammunition. Frisk hides behind the Staff of the Magi so the enemy gathers in a circle, allowing our clone to catch all of them in the stream.
Like Arrows of Detonation, the Scorcher Ammunition makes one damage roll per hit for everyone within the area of effect; that's why the drow minions are dying simultaneously. The field starts to clear up.
More enemies join the fight, however, and Frisk casts PFMW so we can safely use the Scorcher Ammunition on the new drow.
A Spell Thrust forces us to re-cast Spell Shield, but otherwise we're suffering very little pressure. We drag the stream across the enemies even when it hurts our celestials; I know that our planetars have spare Heal spells on hand.
The planetars keep spamming Holy Word, Frisk keeps firing off the Scorcher Ammunition, and the enemy disintegrates.
Finally, the real Sendai appears. Frisk casts Enchanted Weapon in order to use the planetars as a target so we can catch Sendai in the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition, but when Sendai brings out a Fallen Deva, we switch gears.
Devas might not have the vorpal strike powers of a planetar, but they do still have a dispel magic effect on hit, which could also be very fatal if we drop PFMW. We tear down the Deva over the course of several rounds in spite of its Heal spells. Notice the Implosion spell that could have hit Frisk.
Sendai chain-casts PFMW, but it grants no protection from the stream, and her Dimension Door spells only give her a short reprieve from the stream.
Sendai falls! Melissan isn't far away.
To reach Balthazar, I can either have Saemon Havarian smuggle me in, or fight my way through the front door. The first option used to cause crashes in a very old install from a long time ago, so I've gotten accustomed to the latter. Our celestials' Holy Word spells fail to affect the mages at the gate since they're neutral-aligned, so I learn to just stay out of the way. The celestials are very safe; the monks can't hit them despite being high-level monks whose LoB bonuses should give them +4 fists.
But this takes a long time, so I have Frisk pitch in a little bit.
Despite our thorough murdalization of his guards, Balthazar is willing to side with us due to Frisk's good alignment, 20 Charisma, and 20 reputation. He'll fight alongside us in the final battle.
Unfortunately, since I have Wheels of Prophecy, I have to fight a weaker mage version of Melissan along with some minor goons right after speaking with Balthazar. Fortunately, I have time to summon a clone and a planetar. Having two streams from the Scorcher Ammunition are more than enough to break down Melissan's Stoneskins.
We get a really awesome ring in the process, but our ban on mod items means we can't use it.
But that's not all. Wheels of Prophecy adds one last fight before Melissan: a gang of demons in the elven grove, the first area of ToB.
I don't mind the Balors or the Mariliths or the Glabrezus, but we've also got a Fallen Solar to deal with, who has dispelling vorpal arrows of Ruby Ray of Reversal on top of immunity to +3 weapons and below and instant-casting Heal spells. Worse still, there's a Cambion fighter/mage who attacks during Time Stop.
I try to kill him with the Scorcher Ammunition during Time Stop, only to find that, once again, they only remove a single Stoneskin. As with Odamaron, it still disrupts his first spell.
I try again with another Time Stop, but this time I attack the other demons. It turns out that the Scorcher Ammunition works quite well during Time Stop as long as you attack somebody who doesn't have Stoneskin active. I flee to the west and drag the stream across the demons offscreen. Note that I am staying far, FAR away from the demons because I'm petrified of the Cambion's and Fallen Solars' offensive abilities.
We've made precious little progress on the two main threat, so I cast Time Stop one more time. This time, I don't hold back: I just burn a Protection from Magic scroll on him, neutralizing his spellcasting and also dispelling his buffs, paving the way for a pure damage kill by dual-wielding Belm and the Firetooth Dagger. But he has enough HP to survive until Time Stop runs out.
It's a minor setback, and as long as he can't cast Time Stop, he's not a big threat. Frisk finishes him off using the Scorcher Ammunition, bypassing his PFMW by targeting one of our planetars.
There's only one true threat left: the Fallen Solar. We summon a new clone and some new celestials before heading out, but discover that our clone is unable to hit anything with the Scorcher Ammunition due to not pre-buffing with Enchanted Weapon.
Still, Frisk's old Enchanted Weapon remains active, so we can apply some light pressure to the Fallen Solar. By great luck, we even manage to disrupt one of its spells--for instant-casting spells like an SCS celestial's, that can only happen on a single frame.
Progress is slow, however, and we deal considerably more damage to the lesser demons than the Fallen Solar, my highest priority. For some reason, the Fallen Solar tries to flee, so Frisk runs out to contest it.
I can't hit the Fallen Solar with the Scorcher Ammunition without a valid target, so I bring all our summons north so I can shoot the other demons. The Fallen Solar applies an insect spell on Frisk, but our Potion of Magic Shielding (and/or a quick SI: Conjuration spell) blocks it. For one terrifying moment, I see the Fallen Solar land an arrow on Frisk, only to realize that the arrow hit our clone and not Frisk themself.
We keep firing and the Fallen Solar's HP begins to drop fast; we finally have a steady stream of fire going. In the end, it can't stay afloat.
Cleaning up the remaining demons is little trouble.
That's it. The only remaining fight in this run is Ascension Melissan, a nightmarish four-phase process that involves fighting every member of the Five simultaneously while Melissan gleefully spams Greater Whirlwind Attack during her own Time Stop spells. It's an extremely long and ridiculously high-pressure environment where even a momentary mistake can result in an unstoppable death spiral.
There is exactly one clear route to victory: a STR drain kill on Melissan using Called Shot. Energy Blades will give us a decent shot at it, since she only has 19 Strength, but her Absolute Immunity spell could cut it short, and Energy Blades costs us a precious level 9 spell slot. Ideally, we want to kill her with the Scorcher Ammunition instead. But lots of little things could get in the way, and if we fail, bringing her down would be very complicated.
If our clone wastes its Called Shot spells, we can't summon another clone until 20 rounds have passed since we summoned it. If Frisk wastes their Called Shot spells, we can't cast it again until we land a Wish-rest, which would probably take even longer.
If all goes well, we could kill Melissan in 10 seconds. But if we make a mistake, it could take far longer than that, and if we drop our guard for even a single second, we could end up dead.
I'm going to do a test run first. I'll play it messy and under-optimized so I can get an idea of what might happen if I don't pay attention, but I think it will go smoothly regardless. Even so, if I do win, I'll have to do it over again in the real run, just like I did for Belhifet.
I'm uncomfortable with the prospect of a test run. A test run is going to make this even more nerve-wracking than it already is; I've been worrying about this fight for a long time and a test run will just drag it out. But I'm willing to grit my teeth and fight through it if it gives me even the slightest bit of insight into the final battle. I just need to make sure I don't get overconfident if the test run goes smoothly.
I seriously don't know what I would do if Melissan kills Frisk. I've really, really invested in the success of this run and I've poured... I don't even know how many hours into it. Seeing it all fall to pieces would be devastating. I keenly remember the sense of overwhelming despair and the feeling of physical weakness when Belhifet ended the last run.
Losing to Melissan would be crushing. It hurt to die to Belhifet in the last run, and I honestly don't know if I have it in me to restart the challenge after all this time.
Abject fear fills us with determination.
It's been so long, he can't remember the plan.
While he has a think, he changes back to his Commanding voice.
With Rasaad and Neera tagging along maybe he was looking for EE NPC's.
Let's go find Dorn.
He needs a helmet.
Here's a couple we find "lying around".
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 28: Throne of Bhaal
The test run goes well and confirms that we can take Melissan down to 1 HP using STR drain, but it causes some weird bug in which the whole fight starts over from the first phase, with Irenicus and Bodhi appearing and the two of them delivering their normal lines alongside Melissan. I don't know if the Better Stat Drain mod is responsible or it's the fault of some other mod, but it doesn't matter.I already know from previous experience that killing Melissan with stat drain is possible. In my Undergate run, we killed her accidentally using CHA drain with a mod-introduced weapon. Melissan vanished, but the Solar appeared, and while Melissan wasn't present to deliver her last lines, we could still force-talk to the Solar to trigger the ending cutscene. So, as long as I manage to land the STR drain kill on Melissan in the real run, I'll consider the run a success, even if a bug prevents the final cutscene from starting. If it's not possible to get the epilogue to trigger properly, I'll just use the console to override the bug.
The fight with Irenicus was messy, however, and I did not actually try out my normal plan for killing Melissan, so there are still some things I need to think about when it's time to fight Melissan in the real run.
Phase 1:
The first phase of combat includes Irenicus, Bodhi, and two Fallen Solars. We have a spare Protection from Magic scroll for Irenicus and we can just run away from Bodhi, but the Fallen Solars are a problem. If I let PFMW drop for even a moment, or fail to buff with SI: Conjuration to block their insect spells, the Fallen Solars could destroy me.
More importantly, they can cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which dispels all dispellable effects and bypasses all defenses., including SI: Abjuration and Spell Shield. There is absolutely no way to block it.
The Fallen Solars have spectacular stats and instant-casting Heal spells as well as immunity to +3 weapons and below, so the Scorcher Ammunition will not be enough to take them down. The best way to handle them is to use an uninterruptable Time Stop scroll on the first round and then chain-cast Time Stop to kill each one with Improved Haste, Belm, and the Black Blade of Disaster.
Once the Fallen Solars are down, we just nail Irenicus with the scroll, cast Enchanted Weapon, and shred Jon-bon and Bodhi with the Scorcher Ammunition.
Phase 2:
We have to fight large groups of demons at each of the three pools, but none of the enemies have attacks that can breach our defenses. We can just stomp them with planetars and the Scorcher Ammunition.
Phase 3:
We have to fight the Five simultaneously and bring as many as possible to Near Death before killing any one of them, because the moment they die, Melissan enters the field and then we're in trouble. Testing showed that we can deal plenty of damage to the Five, but it's very complicated and highly dependent on micromanagement. The important thing is to hold onto the Shield of Reflection to keep Illasera's Arrows of Dispelling at bay and nail Abazigal and then Sendai with Protection from Magic scrolls as early as possible so we don't have to worry about Abazigal's Time Stop or Sendai's Heal spells.
Phase 4:
Apparently Melissan brings two Fallen Solars onto the map when she arrives. That's a problem for us. We can crush the Five with pure damage and therefore isolate Melissan, at which point we have PFMW and Focus to deal with her Time Stops. But those Fallen Solars and their vorpal arrows and Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells could kill us all but instantly.
We need Time Stop to kill those Fallen Solars before they end the run, but Melissan is immune to Time Stop. Not only can she attack us during Time Stop; she can even cast her own Time Stop during our own and then kill us, which means we need either Focus or PFMW active even during our own Time Stop spells.
Theoretically, we could have a clone cast Focus and then have both Frisk and the clone kill the Fallen Solars by casting Time Stop spells and using either Energy Blades or +5 darts to land STR drain kills. But we'd have to juggle two characters casting PFMW, Time Stop, Focus, and Called Shot, and the slightest mistake could leave the Fallen Solars alive or even allow Melissan to cast her own Time Stop spell and crush us. The Scorcher Ammunition would also let us land a STR drain kill, but that would be highly dependent on positioning and luck.
Things are looking really messy. Those Fallen Solars are huge wild cards and we don't have a means of bringing them down in any reasonable time frame due to LoB's massive HP bonuses. If things don't go as planned, I may have to improvise, and any bad moves could be fatal.
But it's time. I scribe a bunch of spare scrolls just in case and create three golems, the maximum I can possibly have: two Perfect Clay Golems and one Greater Mithral Golem. They have massive resistances and the saving throws to shrug off a Fallen Solar's vorpal strikes, but unfortunately, EET rigs familiars to not get LoB bonuses, so our clay golems are stuck at a pathetic 90 HP. They could die in seconds if I don't keep them away from certain fights.
I take a couple of Ibuprofen to make sure my eyes don't hurt during the fight. I break my diet and eat enough to sate myself to make sure the hunger pangs don't distract me. I study my notes and my math and remind myself several times to use every buffing option Frisk needs to survive. I take a moment to relax and clear my mind. I want to be at my absolute mental peak before I tackle this fight. All of our work comes down to this moment.
It seems our journey is finally over.
We are filled with DETERMINATION.
A rest inside the cave proves to be an error of judgement, another wyvern appearing and attacking our Fighter / Cleric but switching... to the assassin. Cue a long trek to a temple.
If you are strong enough, that is a good place to farm some experience. If you are not it is indeed a long trek to the nearest temple.
Just like Baldur's Gate 1, in that sense.
While I'm being critical, weird design decisions so far:
Taking all gold from the player: Losing all gold works once, after which any savvy player simply converts their funds into goods in advance. Benjamin ended up with more money after visiting the Sorcerous Sundries than he had in Chapter 6, thanks to stockpiled Rot[E/G/N]As and miscellaneous jewellery.
Punishing the Player for taking characters from the previous game: If you don't touch an NPC, they come with pre-loot in SoD, if you do, you miss out. If you take an NPC and they aren't one of the chosen few that stick around, you lose potentially unique loot equipped on them. Again, punishing the player for not metagaming.
In the end, assuming you had to do either (rather than just equipping any partymate with their new gear for SoD and moving anything else to their inventory as needed, force unequipping any perma-lost characters and adding their equipment to the chest, and "allowing the player to keep their gold and hiking prices up due to war based shortages" to reward players for doing better and playing more rather than for metagaming) there's ways this could have been made to work, such as similar to BG2 removing everything from the player's party mates and gem bags, add to the player's starting chest key items defined by what they had in the party's inventory at the end of the prologue, say the rest is gone as part of the loot divided up and sold by the party/hookers an' booze, with an amount of gold in the chest that represents their share and what remains of it.
Anyways, back to steamrolling non-mod content.
Oh, hai mod content.
Aura has apparently coupled "weeaboo who thinks all Kozakuran people look alike" to "old lesbian cat lady who talks to her cat while adventuring". Yeah.
Perhaps I spoke too soon about finishing the zero risk chores section of the game. Still gathering partymates, not a single threatening combat thus far that's actually required more than two WoF charges to resolve. Speaking of which...
Sort of wondering if Verr'sza is broken, I've not seen him say a word since Chapter six, and he never actually left the party.
He'd also be doing better if I hadn't somehow lost the shield of Egons in the various inventories of ex-party members in the prologue.
Well this is embarrassing.
Fortunately the rest of the party holds the line. Once Benjamin gets in and turns the horde things got along much better, though the shadowed soul's troll tactic of kite and drain managed to kill Verr'sza before it got shot down with some flame strike wands.
And the party completes the quest for the evil wizard, surprise shanks him, drops his phylactery down the memory hole, and then Secret Reveals him to death. The biggest worry was Benjamin eating Power Word Stun, which was easily remedied with a ring of free action swap once the rest of the party caught up.
Pretty sure that's the last thing on these two maps, next chapter: Some bridge or something iunno who cares.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 29: Throne of Bhaal
It's the end.We burn a Time Stop scroll on round one. We've got two Fallen Solars to deal with and I absolutely do not want to weather that storm.
Frisk chain-casts Time Stop and attacks using the Black Blade of Disaster. Meanwhile, Balthazar's broken scripting prevents him from making a single attack roll despite him being immune to Time Stop.
The first one goes down, but the other one went invisible shortly before we cast Time Stop, and is therefore out of reach. I make a few hits on Bodhi instead before restoring PFMW at the last minute.
A planetar reveals the second Fallen Solar using True Seeing, opening the way for another Time Stop. We take it down.
We have multiple Irenicus clones on the map. I'm pretty sure I know which is the real one, but I'm not quite sure. Then I realize I can check using CTRL-M: sure enough, the fake one is named "COPY." I burn a Protection from Magic scroll on the real one.
Frisk uses the last seconds of Time Stop to bring down Bodhi.
Success! We still have a couple clones to deal with, but they don't have any special tricks to pull. We just re-cast SI: Abjuration, wait out their PFMW spells, and crush them.
Time to tackle the first pool. We divide the enemy's attention between Frisk (always buffed with PFMW), our clone, and our celestials while keeping our golems out of harm's way. I might need those golems for Phase 4.
I fail to pay close attention to our golems, however, and nearly our kill our precious clay golems by letting them wander into the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition.
A quick change in positioning allows them to scrape by and find safety on the main platform.
Balthazar, however, is not so lucky. In the next fight, I accidentally let him wander into the exact position where the streams from Frisk and Frisk's clone form an "X." Few people can survive that much pressure, and Balthazar is not one of them.
It makes little difference, since Balthazar's broken script makes him little more than a meat shield anyway, but we have more problems. Our planetars' Remove Fear spells have been dispelled by the enemy's Remove Magic, and multiple celestials fail saving throws against Demon Fear. The enemy is fast encroaching on us.
A Resist Fear scroll bails them out, but our troubles aren't over. Our clone has been out for too long and finally vanishes, forcing Frisk to defend themself alone.
We wrestle with the demons for a few more rounds, trying to avoid the fear effects while making progress using the celestials and the Scorcher Ammunition.
Rather than tempt fate, I decide to fortify our defenses and rest the party before proceeding with the final fight. Normally, I like to take down all three pools in a row without resting so I can get three rests right before the Five, but the second pool was a messy affair and I don't want to take any chances. Frisk repairs our golems and gets a rest from the first pool.
While we're at it, I set up a new Chain Contingency before I forget and buff up for the third pool.
Unwilling to put Frisk in the thick of things, I keep both Frisk and the clone on the main platform while our celestials fight at the pool itself. This allows us to quickly clear up the main platform and isolate the enemies around the pool.
When we gain control of the platform, we press forward and concentrate fire on the remaining demons.
The last enemy goes down. All that's left is to use up our last resources, activate the second and third pools, and wait for Phase 3 to begin.
We repair the golems, re-cast all of our buffs, and cast Wish a few times just to make sure we can cast every possible buff at our disposal without losing any resources for the final fight.
Just for the hell of it, I grant Frisk immunity to every spell school, just in case there are any threats I haven't considered. SI: Necromancy will make them immune to our planetar's Heal spells, but our Spell Trap would have blocked those anyway.
This is what Frisk looks like before the final fight truly begins. They are now a level 8/31 Archer/Mage.
We activate the final pool. Just a few more moments before the Five are here. We squeeze every last ounce of power out of the remaining seconds we have.
We carefully position the golems in front of Frisk while spreading out our celestials so they engage the enemy first, ensuring that neither Gromnir nor Yaga-Shura, the only enemies who deal crushing damage, will target our clay golems.
Finally, the enemy arrives.
The circus now truly begins.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 30: Throne of Bhaal
The first order of business is to stop Abazigal from casting Time Stop. We could survive a Time Stop using PFMW, but our celestials could not. We burn a Protection from Magic scroll on him. No more spells from Big Blue.Don't worry about that red celestial to the left; that's just Sendai's Summon Fallen Deva Chain Contingency. A planetar or a Fallen Solar would be a problem, but devas aren't remotely as dangerous.
Frisk casts PFMW, clouding their aura, but we can still disrupt Sendai's next spell by catching her in the stream of the Scorcher Ammunition until our aura is clear and we can apply our Protection from Magic scroll on her.
Melissan only appears when one of the Five shows up, so we can shoot down the Fallen Deva without worrying about triggering Phase 4 early.
One of the best ways of handling this fight is a strategy developed (though seldom used) by @Alesia_BH is to bring every one of the Five to Near Death before killing any one of them to delay Melissan's arrival as long as possible. Then, quickly take down each of the Five to repeatedly knock down Melissan until she's all alone. Once the Five are gone, you can kite Melissan to death with a sling and the Shield of Reflection.
But we're not going to do this. It all boils down to those two Fallen Solars that come with Melissan: since they're immune to +3 weapons and below and have LoB HP bonuses, the only way we can expect to kill them in a reasonable time frame is to use the Scorcher Ammunition and catch them within the stream.
However, that still gives them lots of time to fire off Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells. If they do, we lose all of our buffs.
All of them.
No. Matter. What.
SI: Abjuration and Spell Shield and Spell Trap won't block it; nothing will. It's a guaranteed dispel. No exceptions.
No PFMW means our only means of survival is kiting (Teleport Field could help) and using the Shield of Reflection to keep off the Fallen Solars' vorpal Arrows of Dispelling. But with the shield equipped, all we could do to kill the Fallen Solars is use the Sling of Everard.
We have no pips in slings. Even if we did, killing them would be a very, very long process in LoB mode. I doubt we could survive amongst all the chaos; we don't have enough PFMW spells to survive everything. We can probably hold off the enemy with celestials, but our celestials could easily collapse under the weight of the Fallen Solars' vorpal strikes, leaving us alone and helpless. Worse yet, Melissan will summon herds of other demons in my install, crowding up the area and making kiting difficult. I certainly don't want to see a repeat of Frisk's first attempt at Belhifet.
If Frisk can hold onto their buffs, I'm sure we can take down the whole crowd by using the Scorcher Ammunition. But if can't, we need the Shield of Reflection to avoid being shot down, and we can't kill any of them with a shield equipped. Losing our buffs means death--if not immediately, then eventually.
So how are we going to deal with all these critters with sky-high HP from LoB mode applying overwhelming pressure to Frisk?
We're not going to.
Melissan is the only critter we really need to take down. We can do that in a few seconds as long as we don't let the Fallen Solars get in the way. Our golems and/or celestials can keep the Fallen Solars busy while Frisk's clone scores a STR drain kill on Melissan.
So we're not going to bring any of the Five to Near Death; we're just going to kill one of them real quick and summon Melissan. We can then use the remaining Five as targets for the Scorcher Ammunition, which will give us a lot more wiggle room in how we apply STR drain to Melissan.
I choose Illasera, because she's one of the flimsiest of the Five and accidentally dropping PFMW won't be as dangerous with Illasera off the map.
Earlier than I expected, robbing us of our chance to summon a clone in advance of Melissan's arrival.
Melissan appears. But her Fallen Solars do not!
Frisk gets knocked out by a spell from Melissan, but it doesn't last long. Not all news is good, however. Our planetars are vanishing, and while our clay golems are immune to every form of damage Melissan can throw at them, the Greater Mithral Golem is much more fragile.
We bring out a new planetar; I'll need to buy time to summon a planetar to land the kill on Melissan. But then the Fallen Solars come out.
I pull Frisk away from the Fallen Solars, but we still don't have space to summon a clone. Frisk's PFMW runs out and all of their various Spell Immunity pre-buffs are about to run out as well, forcing us to dedicate another round to maintaining our defenses.
Down south, one of the Fallen Solars destroys our Greater Mithral Golem, which breaks apart into two smaller golems. I try to send the little golems away to the west to join our clay golems, who are distracting the other Fallen Solar, but the nearer Fallen Solar doesn't follow them.
The clay golems are immune to all kinds of different attacks, but Fallen Solars deal nonmagical magic damage on hit, and our golems don't have any resistance against magic damage. Nor do they have a whole lot of HP.
This is looking really nasty. Our allies are falling apart, Melissan has just gated in some new enemies, and we still haven't found room to summon a clone.
Why is the clone so important?
Well, Frisk only has two castings of Called Shot per day. If we summon a clone, the clone can use Called Shot and Frisk will still have two castings left. If the clone fails to kill Melissan, we can tank things out for 20 rounds until we can re-cast Simulacrum, or we can just switch to Frisk's own Called Shot spells.
But if Frisk uses Called Shot and fails to kill Melissan, any clones we might subsequently summon would be unable to use Called Shot. The only way we could try again is if we landed a Wish-rest, and while we have spare Wish scrolls we could use, the process could be very long and there's no guarantee it would work.
We could use Called Shot right now, and there's a good chance we could kill Melissan in 10 seconds. But if we fail, we might never be able to recover. We might never get a second chance at landing the kill. I want that clone so we can get more than one shot at winning this fight before it spirals out of control. Our summons and golems won't last much longer, and I don't know how we'd survive if those Fallen Solars target Frisk with Mordenkainen's Disjunction.
One of our Perfect Clay Golems goes down, replaced by much more fragile, littler golems. Worse, our nearest planetar gets crushed under the weight of a huge batch of enemies right next to Frisk.
The nearest Fallen Solar chases after our golems in lieu of Frisk, but all is not well.
Those golems are going to die in moments; they might not even last two rounds. And the moment they go down, those Fallen Solars are coming after us.
We need more time than that. It would take three whole rounds to summon a clone, buff it with PFMW and Improved Haste, and then start applying STR drain to Melissan. Worst of all, the Simulacrum bug means that if Frisk gets hit by a Fire Storm spell from Yaga-Shura or something, our clone will vanish early.
I consider my options. If I go with the clone, we'll probably give the Fallen Solars at least three rounds to attack Frisk, and any Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells are practically a game over for us. But if I activate Called Shot on Frisk and fail to kill Melissan, we'd need to land a lucky Wish-rest in order to try again. If we don't get the Wish-rest, we have to take down an entire army through damage alone, and those Fallen Solars will stay on their feet even when the other enemies start to drop.
I really don't like the idea of using Frisk's own Called Shot spells instead of operating via a clone; the entire fight would boil down to 10 seconds of action. If anything goes wrong, Melissan might well survive the process, which would all but guarantee death for Frisk, either a quick death from Mordenkainen's Disjunction or a slow death from an army. And the former is much more likely.
But luck has closed off our other options. Those Fallen Solars are going to come for us in about 10 seconds.
And if we do things right, killing Melissan will take 10 seconds.
I decide to activate Called Shot. We are gambling the fate of the entire run on the next 2 rounds.
I re-position Frisk and target a Nabassu with the Scorcher Ammunition, placing Melissan squarely within the stream. Before I commit to the position, I make absolutely sure that Melissan is taking the hits.
Melissan should be taking 2 points of STR drain with every hit, with a slight delay in between them. We only need to drain 19 STR; that's all she's got. But we'll probably need to switch targets; the Nabassu is already starting to crumple.
We can ignore the PFMW expiration notice; it's from a previous PFMW before we re-cast it. Spell expiration notices stack; restoring PFMW doesn't prevent the old notifications from appearing.
I keep pausing every few frames. If Melissan ever strays away from the stream, I need to adjust it, or else we won't be applying the STR drain we need to win this fight. Notice our golems to the west quickly falling apart.
The golems are almost gone. They'll only last a few seconds more.
The Fallen Solars kill another golem, leaving only one left. Meanwhile, to the east, the Nabassu is about to die and the stream disrupts one of Melissan's spells simply because we're applying so many hits in so little time.
Notice that Frisk is trying to use Called Shot. It's extremely hard to tell when Frisk's aura is clear amongst all the chaos. I cancel the order and have Frisk keep firing away with the Scorcher Ammunition.
The last clay golem dies, but to my surprise, it doesn't vanish--it splits into two smaller golems once again, buying us a few more seconds of safety from the Fallen Solars.
The Nabassu dies. Auto-pause catches it; I enabled the auto-pause specifically to make sure that I didn't let Frisk let a single frame go by without attacking. We only have two rounds to make this happen, and every fraction of a second counts.
I try activating Called Shot again. This time, Frisk's aura is clear!
Called Shot stacks with previous castings, so for the next 6 seconds or so, Frisk will deal 2 STR damage per hit, or 4 with the Scorcher Ammunition. As long as we can keep Melissan in the stream, the STR drain should kill her.
But it wasn't necessary. Less than a single second after using our second Called Shot, Melissan's STR drops to zero, and the instant death effect from the Better Stat Drain mod activates several times on the same frame just because we're applying so much stat drain so fast.
We won! We got the kill!
But as I had suspected, Melissan's death is buggy. Normally, without the Better Stat Drain mod, she'd just die without even issuing her final dialogue and the Solar would appear, but due to some weird scripting issue, the death convinces Melissan that we don't have Ascension installed. She delivers a vanilla dialogue line!
She teleports away, but since Melissan doesn't retreat to the pillar of green energy stuff in Ascension--that's vanilla behavior--she just reappears at her normal vanilla starting point at the south. We've got some weird behavior here: Yaga-Shura is taking damage from the stream, but only suffers one point of damage out of two, even though the minimum damage for the Scorcher Ammunition is like 9. We also have a Fallen Solar taking fire damage from an unknown source despite being immune to fire.
We got the kill we wanted, so the bugs don't matter to me, but out of curiosity, I CTRL-J over to Melissan to see what's going on. Despite the vanilla dialogue line and curious teleport, she's still working with her Ascension script, using her Divine Mantle thingy as if Phase 4 had just started.
Out of curiosity, I try to win the fight using pure damage alone, just in case I can see the credits without having to resort to the console, but it's not possible. Those Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells are just as devastating as I had feared. It's simply not possible to avoid them unless you have allies or summons to distract the Fallen Solars.
It's really broken. I don't know how @Alesia_BH dealt with those Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells in her solo runs. I'm not sure they existed back then; I don't remember ever hearing about them. There's seriously no way to block them using spell protections in my install; only summoned critters can keep the Fallen Solars from dispelling all your buffs.
I want the epilogue to trigger, so I try to force Melissan to fall using CTRL-Y. Once again, she delivers a vanilla dialogue line in response and gets right back into action.
Apparently Melissan in my install is bugged to only die after you kill her three times, just like in vanilla. That's why she didn't drop when we brought her to 1 HP using STR drain.
I solve the bug with another CTRL-Y. Finally, the Solar intervenes and we get the ending we wanted. Also, Balthazar is alive somehow.
The bugs made things a little anti-climactic, but the important thing is that Frisk is alive and Melissan has fallen.
I should have played without the Better Stat Drain mod. I only created it to help deal with Abazigal, but in the end we didn't need it to kill him. All it did was prevent Melissan from dying a clean death and force us to use the console to end the game. If I hadn't installed the mod, Melissan would have died instantly.
But it's over. Finally, finally it's over. Frisk chooses mortality and gives up the essence of Bhaal and the chance to become a god.
One solo no-reload Legacy of Bhaal run with SCS and Ascension, complete.
Frisk: A Solo Archer/Mage in Legacy of Bhaal Mode
Part 31: Retrospective
I will be blunt. This run was not fun for me. The only fun parts were finding a few quick ways to bring down key enemies, like pinning stuff down with Darts of Stunning or shredding Sendai's minions using the Scorcher Ammunition, and those moments of fun were very brief. The run as a whole was an immense trial, the setbacks were crushing, and with the exception of most of Shadows of Amn, everything was extremely stressful. I had multiple nightmares about losing the run; it consumed me.I'd been feeling burned out for a long time, and I thought that if I could do one more run, one last really good run, I could be okay with leaving the game for a little while and taking it easy. My poverty run didn't seem good enough because it involved the Wand of Lightning trick near the end (not to mention some highly intensive XP farming at two stages of the game), so the "holy grail," a solo LoB run, was the natural alternative. I never liked LoB very much, nor did I much like solo runs, but I felt that this was the only run that would work. The only run that would be "good enough."
I take a lot of pride in my runs and I invest very heavily in them. But now that the run is over, I don't think I was playing this game for the right reasons. Pride in a single accomplishment is a very fleeting pleasure; it's not going to be enough to make you happy. In all honesty, this run was not worth the stress. I shouldn't have chased after an arbitrary trophy when the journey itself was not something I could enjoy.
Even so, I'm glad Frisk has made it to the end, and I would like to extend my thanks to everyone who made this possible.
First, I'd like to thank @Blackraven. He was the guy who got me interested in no-reload runs way back in the day. He brought me into this community and showed me the joy and the excitement of no-reload runs, and his influence is really the main reason I'm here today.
I'd also like to thank @Grond0. @Grond0 is absolutely fearless, and his incredible discipline encouraged me to drop the training wheels and get my hands dirty. @Grond0's the one who inspired me to disable the bonus XP from LoB mode, which is the main reason I found the basilisk XP loop. What's more, I have always been a hopeless novice in BG1 and @Grond0's advice got me through the game. I don't think I would have ever made it through BG1 without him.
Next, I'd like to thank @Harpagornis. @Harpagornis practically invented the solo LoB metagame and was extremely helpful to my attempts at SoD. @Enuhal also shared a number of precious insights into SoD. Without them, I don't think I would ever have made it to BG2.
I also want to thank @Arctodus for inventing the Potion of Power trick, without which I could never have safely used the Arrows of Detonation to clear the field in the fight with Belhifet. I don't think I could have made it without him, either.
Naturally, I have to thank @Alesia_BH as well. Her insights into the Ascension Melissan battle were absolutely instrumental in Frisk's success, and she's been a positive influence in the community since the no-reload thread began so many years ago.
Finally, I have to thank @Ygramul and everyone who's contributed to this thread since it began. There are so many things I've learned about the game just by reading this thread. These runs are all very much a community effort, and God knows I would have been lost without all the priceless information I've gleaned from this forum.
I don't have enough good words for you all. This community is so precious to me, and I cannot put it into words. All I can say is "Thank you."
I'm so happy that you all are here. You are the reason this forum is a good place.
Don't indulge your pride. No matter how much you give to it, pride will never give back as much as it takes from you.
Indulge your friends. They will always give back.
I'm not new to taking a break from the game (often, these breaks have lasted for about a year, sometimes they were shorter) - however, after a couple of months, I always find myself wanting to return with a fresh sense of purpose and a new approach, so I hope the same thing will happen for you
We begin the next chapter with a hearty helping of lolwut.
Ignoring the stupidity of the scripting, even if Skie somehow managed to hit level 15 thief, making her literally over four times as experienced as Bence, she would still be drastically, overwhelmingly, supremely less skilled than he is as a level 9 fighter with Grand Mastery. That's 7 THAC0, 107 HP and Full Plate versus 10 THAC0 (with a bow) 79 HP (with max rolls), and leather.
Not only would it be a cold day in hell before Skie's "skills" managed to let her skinny little arms knock down a level 9 Fighter, that same fighter could probably take out a dozen boar without being in any danger, since they hit him on a 20, he hits them on a 2, and he kills one boar in three hits maximum with 2.5 APR. This boar she saved him from would have needed nine critical hits for max damage, over the course of nine rounds, while Bence would have needed to roll at least twenty critical misses in the same time period, and even then, would need to have rolled minimum damage if he made two hits, leaving the boar at 3 HP.
Moral: If you're going to try and pretend that thieves are useful in a military situation, base it around setting, or dealing with, traps or hidden ambushes, not their ability to fight.
These are the most intelligent bandits ever.
Unfortunately they also have fire arrows and scrolls of acid arrows, which a quick fireball liberates for later.
Also fun fact: Discovered why Sirene is immune to invisibility, it's her helmet of fire, which gives her a fine red complexion that overrides invisibility effects. This also means she shows up in dream sequences.
They killed the bunny scout, the bunny mage kills them. Circle of life, wheel of fire, blah blah blah.
For some reason or other, Aura's scripting is a mess in my install. She interrupts every second or so, stopping her from detecting traps, dispelling illusions, or generally doing anything except periodic attacks.
It's a good thing Glint's around, I'll kick her once I find someone more useful around.
Infravision: It was renamed "Darkvision" for a reason, because you'd think it was based on viewing the infrared spectrum, in which case seeing a long doused torch in a cave or set of stairs would be a fantastically stupid idea, instead of not being able to use said vision to just see the chest and corpse in the first place, which was also fantastically stupid.
Can't complain about the loot, at least. Benjamin now has learned and prepped Enchanted Weapon, just in case he ever ends up having to solo another Behlifet (as if that would ever happen).
Ooo, Skald. Bunnies rejoice!
Hopefully this ends the debate about Anomen truthfully reporting his exploits once and for all.
Status: Still not dead. Still nothing bunny worthy. Grey Clan has ruined me for SoD.
The game should track "damage dealt", methinks. It's very easy to see a high APR melee guy pick up all the kills, but potentially a mage behind the scenes dealing 90% of the health of every enemy in an AOE.
Also: Lol, goblin only gear. Probably won't be playing with the super speshul diversity hire this game, but it's nice to know that not only are goblins capable of creating high tier magic gear, they're capable of enchanting it to prevent anyone else from wearing it except goblins.
Rhinoceros beetle. In a spider den.
This was a painful encounter, since I'm running pretty much blind by this point (quit out at the end of the previous map last time I played SoD due to apathy) and didn't realise I was turning the corner into a green dragon's face.
No prebuffing, a stoneskins on the fly, some quick heals.... And Glint killstole it on its last 10 HP. Little cuss.
Also, fun quirk, either from switching games or from having the Ankh on and dying so often, Verr'Sza is now permanently True Neutral. Hooray for friendly safe Holy Smite.
Update: Still ain't dead, but where the heck did that dragon come from? And how did it fit?
Say hello to her sister for us!
And then Benjamin closed the door, said all the nopes, and decided it was time to rest and buff.
Worm thing: One.
Arrow of Dispelling: Nil.
Well on the plus side, at least he's using the dart, with which he is non-proficient, rather than the twin daggers of disease, with which he is wearing a strength belt and specialised for.
The fat dead guy that just keeps on giving:
SantaAlgernon.Update: Even less dead than before. Benjamin at least gets to be a half-dragon-slayer, maybe a very small dragon slayer.