H-He-Here I go! this will end well for sure!. I figured if Dorn can do it, why not me, Im the master of this little universe after all. Saving Throws are great but I tried to keep it real in terms of stats, a martial halfling that prefers melee (or at least he will from level 3 onward)
Will update when Im inevitably killed by a skeleton dart or some such.
Well, I made it to Nashkel, and completely cleared the way to it, left no Fog of War standing. So far so good, though I feel Ajantis is bearing most of the burden.
Advantages: He starts the game knowing every evocation spell in the game.
Disadvantages: He cannot learn ANY non-evocation spells (this means no Mirror Image, Stoneskin or Protection from Magic Weapons). He can still cast these spells from scrolls.
Note that this means he can't learn Identify. I increased his wisdom so that he'd have better lore. I also gave him a Bag of Holding right from the start of the game so that I wouldn't have to worry so much about inventory later on.
I'm playing on Insane difficulty.
So, to start off, Jaris gave Old Jed a wine and Jhonen a sword. After he spoke to Elisia again, he reached level 3. He then killed the cellar bugs.
Embarrassingly, Jaris had no way of getting open the door to Apsel's workshop, so he couldn't complete that quest.
Next, he went after the goblins who stole the fish. He put them to sleep with a Stinking Cloud and then killed some of them with Snilloc's Snowball Swarm (this is the first playthrough where I actually used that spell). However, some of the goblins either survived the snowball swarm or didn't get hit by it. Even after Jaris ran out of Magic Missile spells there were still a few goblins remaining.
In Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, there are certain areas that enemies can't go between. Jaris went in the inn and the goblins didn't follow him.
He slept for 8 hours.
After he got out of bed he went out into the cold and killed the rest of the goblins.
The ordeal of giving a kid his fish back was so impressive that Jaris got enough experience to reach level 4. He memorized another Snowball Swarm and went to bed again. That was a short day!
Jaris woke up at night. It was time to go into the wilderness!
...
Three little wolves inhaled the Stinking Cloud and passed out.
The snowballs were so cold that the wolves froze to death.
By the way, although Jaris does not have access to most of the great defensive spells, he does have one that is particularly important for this point in the game: Shield. If Shield was not an evocation spell (if it was, say, an abjuration spell), this run with these rules would be basically impossible due to the number of archers in the prologue who could kill Jaris in seconds.
Jaris went back to the inn and rested before going in the cave. He's going to be doing this a lot.
He went in the cave, aggroed both the first and second encounters, and left the cave. The orcs followed him outside, only to face a Stinking Cloud. But several orcs avoided the cloud. Jaris killed one orc but had to flee the area. He went back to Easthaven and the orcs didn't follow him.
Another 8 hours of sleep.
When Jaris returned to the pass outside the cave, the orcs were not crowded outside the area transition to Easthaven like they were before. Instead, they were next to the cave entrance. This is something he took advantage of: it gave him space to safely catch all the orcs with Stinking Cloud. The orcs died from snowballs.
Jaris proceeded to handle the next couple of encounters in the cave through similar means: he tried to incapacitate as many orcs as possible with his Stinking Cloud, then he cast damaging spells while retreating until either he ran out either of spells or of space to run away. Then he went back to Easthaven and took another 8 hours of sleep.
The ogre encounter took a bit longer. Even with Shield, Jaris couldn't risk the ogres hitting him. He was only able to kill one ogre by the time he ran out of spells. He rested, replacing his Snowball Swarm spells with Agannazar's Scorchers to kill the ogres. It still took him another 24 hours to kill them all.
But with that done, Jaris returned to Easthaven to tell the good news to Hrothgar. And with that, Jaris reached level 5! It's Fireballing time!
Jaris gave the scrolls to Pomab and Gaspar for another 4800 experience. He went back to the inn for the last time and switched back to Snowball Swarms.
Time for the expedition!
...
Yeah, so much for that.
The Kuldahar Pass would be much more risky to fight through than the cave. The reason is that there's no safe place to rest. Jaris could spend his spells on one encounter and rest, only to get interrupted by more goblins, in which case he'd be practically defenseless. So instead, he put on Shield and made a run for Kuldahar.
Many goblins shot at him but none could hit him. Thanks to Shield, the poor fleeing invoker reached Kuldahar without a scratch.
H-He-Here I go! this will end well for sure!. I figured if Dorn can do it, why not me, I'm the master of this little universe after all. Saving Throws are great but I tried to keep it real in terms of stats, a martial halfling that prefers melee (or at least he will from level 3 onward)
Will update when I'm inevitably killed by a skeleton dart or some such.
@toolarg I have a mod with an Undead Hunter component that you might find interesting:
Not sure if this has already happened, but I am happy to report a possible first NWN:EE no-reload death:
My paladin just died in the Prison to a mob.
The no-good henchman AI was of not much help (Linu, the Cleric), trying to cast healing spells in the middle of half a dozen attackers and getting AoO'ed to death.
Maybe next time I should get the damn Cleave feat, instead of hitting the bastards one at a time.
*sigh*
I'll probably start with a Wizard now.
---
Oh, and...
HOUSE RULES FOR NWN:EE:
- CORE RULES (of course)
- REST RESTRICTIONS (Otherwise, caster classes are ridiculously overpowered)
(Unclear what exactly the rest restriction should be, but basically I avoid resting mid-dungeon, using consumables etc. strategically.)
Back then there was a mod that let you manage the inventory of henchmen and worked flawlessly and according to the pitch EE should be compatible with old mods so it should work I guess.
I've decided to tackle IWD as a solo character in Heart of Fury mode, the IWD counterpart to the solo LoB challenge. After an abortive attempt with a sorcerer and then a cleric/illusionist, I've rolled up a new sorcerer with a better spell selection. Once again, Frisk is our Charname!
Because practically every successful no-reload run I've had was Undertale-themed.
Heart of Fury mode is a little different from Legacy of Bhaal mode. HoF only grants level bonuses and the triple HP plus 80 on top; it does not give enemies +5 saving throws, +5 THAC0, or +1 APR. Also, HoF summons get the same HP bonuses as enemies, instead of the double HP +20 on top that LoB summons get. The double damage is the same for both modes. Finally, bonus XP is enabled in HoF mode by default.
So the deck isn't nearly as stacked against us in this run as it was in Frisk's Archer/Mage run. However, IWD is extremely linear and contains none of the overpowered items that made a solo LoB run possible.
I considered a Totemic Druid for this fight, but I wasn't sure how it would fare against Belhifet, and I thought a sorcerer would be more fun.
HoF mode is governed by summons, but I'm starting at level 1, so Frisk has no access to summoning spells, and kiting would only allow us to kill the goblins. So how are we going to get to level 6 and get Monster Summoning I?
Charm Person!
This will be absolutely necessary to bring down the numerous orcs in the caves outside Easthaven, but for now, it just helps us speed up the goblin fights, allowing us to turn two goblins against each other and then bring them to Near Death before we start kiting. This requires multiple castings of Charm Person to maintain control of the goblins.
It's still a very long process, but after spending so much time kiting in my ill-fated earlier attempts, I'm glad for the slight boost in speed.
Over the course of numerous rests, we bring down the goblins and hit level 5. In order to hit level 6 and get our first summoning spell, we need to fight some orcs in close quarters. We couldn't do this in my first attempt because I didn't have Charm Person to turn a hostile orc into a friendly tank.
It might not seem like a big deal, but this was a huge breakthrough. Choosing Charm Person was the only way I could complete this run starting out at level 1.
Whenever the enemies make too many saving throws, we have Invisibility to make our escape.
Notice that the orcs are still fighting each other even though they're all hostile. Enemies will keep fighting even after Charm Person ends, so Charm Person lets us thin the herd even if we don't get XP for the kill.
The enemy follows us outside, but with Invisibility, resting, and some careful movement, we can lure the enemies into the positions we want them and then turn them against each other.
Normally, we couldn't take down all three wolves with a single orc, and Charm Person is useless against the wolves themselves, but a level 5 Chromatic Orb lets us stun the wolves for 3 rounds, giving the orc automatic hits and keeping the pressure off of our temporary ally.
We kill our orc and finally hit level 6. Now we can cast Monster Summoning I and summon our own tanks without having to charm anyone--a major game-changer, considering we can only charm one critter at a time under normal circumstances (if you charm a critter who's currently attacking a previously charmed critter, the latter will immediately go hostile even if you order the former to leave them alone). All we can summon are goblins and beetles, but they have over 90 HP apiece, so they stick around long enough to make a difference.
People familiar with HoF mode in IWD know that gaining access to summons is enough to basically win the game, as long as you upgrade your summons every now and then and provide them with some basic support. But there are times when summons won't cut it on their own; IWD has some pretty big hordes in it that will be able to overpower your summons if left unchecked.
But with multiple rests and our new level 7 Chromatic Orbs, which paralyze the target for 13 rounds on a failed save, we can bring down the orcs and even the ogres.
It takes a lot more work than just spamming spells, but you get the idea.
We leave Easthaven at level 9, using Invisibility to avoid the goblin horde that would otherwise overwhelm our existing summons.
The warmth of the great oak of Kuldahar fills us with determination.
Jaris talked to Arundel and went to the inn; he payed 15 gold for noble lodging.
When he woke up, he had replaced his spells again. Since he was heading to an area where pretty much all the enemies were immune to cold and Stinking Cloud, he would instead use the Web and Fireball tandem punch.
But before Jaris could go to the Vale of Shadows he had to fight the two preliminary yetis. He cast Web but one of them made the save and pursued him. He had to run while casting Magic Missiles. He refrained from casting Agannazar's Scorcher spells because they would lock him in place for several seconds, allowing the enemy to walk up and hit him. By the time he ran out of Magic Missile spells, he had killed that one yeti.
Jaris went back to the inn and rested again.
Then he killed the other yeti and headed off to the Vale of Shadows.
Fighting the enemies in the Vale of Shadows was tedious because Jaris only had so many spells. He usually only killed 1-3 enemies per day. When Jaris wanted to rest, unless he was being chased by an enemy he didn't have the spellpower to kill, he would stand right next to the map transition exit and rest there. If he was awakened by yetis, he would flee to Kulahar and rest there. After several hours of real life time and over 300 gold spent purely on resting at the inn, Jaris was finally able to get both keys from the crypts and fight his way to the entrance of the main tomb. By this point he was level 7.
The first few encounters in the tomb were easy, since they involved many weak enemies rather a single yeti or shadow. They were easy targets for the Web-Fireball combo.
The traps were the big issue. Jaris had no way of disarming traps, so he had to just take the damage. I was particularly worried about the Fireball trap, so I made Jaris memorize Fireshield: Red just to reduce the damage from the trap. It didn't end up hurting that much.
By trying to reason with Mytos, Jaris reached level 8. He was starting to become powerful. He disabled all the enemies in the encounter with a Minor Sequencer double Web, then he incinerated the undead to death with three Fireballs.
After resting, he killed Myrkul's Sending and went down the zigzag hallway. He killed two Skeleton Archers before they could see him, took the damage from the trap, and opened the secret door to the mummy's crypt.
Jaris ran away from the slow mummy to make room for him to cast Fireball. He cast Fireball, but I had overestimated his distance from the area of effect, and he got hit by his own fireball, dealing 54 damage and killing him instantly!
The dear friends set out for the breach once more this morning to continue their best out of 295 contest with Melissan (Mel currently leading 147:2).
After the usual chores in Candlekeep they sorted out Shoal before flitting through Beregost and Nashkel to buy a green PfP scroll. That allowed all the basilisks to be accounted for without any need for resting and gave them several levels each.
Korax joined in to show Mutamin who was boss and then aimed to do the same to Kirian and co. That was made much easier by Baerin and Lindin being blind and Korax successfully paralyzed Lindin - which prolonged his own life by several seconds .
After heading for the Nashkel Mine with a view to getting Greywolf's sword Duoa tried resting to get blindness back, but generated half a dozen kobolds instead. He was immediately critically injured and was lucky that follow-up shots missed as he ran out of range.
Passing back through Beregost Skyler was looking forward to a good hard fight with some spiders - but Duoa spoilt his fun by sleeping them all.
After heading to the FAI to return Landrin's things, Tarnesh tried to block their path - but unfortunately couldn't see where the path was.
One of the guards pinched our kill though.
Looking to pick up some more easy treasure the duo proceeded to the ankheg nest expecting a bunch of ankhegs to fall asleep. In fact they proved more resistant than usual and the last few were left in peace rather than pushing our luck further after Duoa was out of spells.
There was more quick XP and treasure on offer at the Lighthouse. Skyler used a potion of clarity and sneaked into the middle of the first group of sirines. Duoa had gently suggested that she could use stinking cloud on them, but settled for doing that to some nearby hobgoblins.
On the way to Sil's group Skyler got too close to where a carrion crawler was lurking and that managed to tag Duoa. She still had a missile weapon equipped and thus could have been finished off quite quickly, but the crawler chose to turn and chase after Skyler instead to ensure there were no casualties.
Sil and her friends were then dealt with quickly, helped out by one of the sirines being blinded initially.
Moving on to the pirate cave Skyler was hit once by a golem that followed him outside. The second golem was hiding behind a hold person trap and Duoa decided to trigger that to ensure Skyler wasn't held. For a while the golem didn't move into sight of her, but that trap lasts quite a long time and eventually it came sniffing round the corner. That could have been bad news, but Skyler was hiding in the shadows and gave the golem a whack to distract it before running it round to finish it with arrows.
The final golem was then dealt with without further alarm.
Looking to push reputation up to 20 the duo went to help out Charleston Nib. Skyler tanked the Doomsayer in the expectation she would have to retreat and run him round while Duoa sent in magic missiles. However, the Doomsayer proved to have a poor run of attacks and Skyler was able to stay in melee until it fell.
The final action was aiming to revive Melicamp. We had a bit of a giggle there over the prospect of using DHL to deliver the chicken to High Hedge (if you're British you may get that reference. If not and you want to then this story will explain ). Melicamp duly regained his form to push reputation to 20 and Duoa did a bit of shopping.
Gate70 had disdained the use of any of that min-maxing rubbish at character creation and Duoa thus didn't have the maximum possible starting intelligence. As a specialist mage she also suffers a penalty when trying to learn most spells and as a result she failed with many of the scrolls purchased - including all three attempts at invisibility. However, that's probably for the best - she likes enemies to see what's coming at them .
Monster Summoning I is good enough to wear down skeletons, but ghasts and ghouls' paralysis attacks just crush our goblins and beetles.
It takes multiple rests and a lot of work to bring down a ghast, even with Haste and Slow.
Frisk finally hits level 10 and we choose Summon Fire Elemental as our first level 5 spell pick. I'm kind of sick of fire elementals since they've been my standard summons for HoF runs in IWD, but after reviewing the numbers, fire elementals are just plain better than the earth and water elementals.
Elementals have absolutely no special immunities in IWD, so despite having better stats than goblins, they're actually just as vulnerable to disablers. Ghasts are still a pretty big problem for us.
Protection from Fire keeps us safe from the Fireball trap near the Wight. Mytos is no trouble; our summons are strong enough to take down the enemy without any help. As for the Sleep trap, a level 6 (or maybe 5) character can make a saving throw to resist it, but if Frisk fails the save, we might die, because the sleep effect lasts a really long time and you don't wake up if you get hit. But now that we're at level 11, Spell Immunity: Alteration can let Frisk block the spell outright.
After collecting enough loot, we can afford the Bag of Holding from Orrick, provided that we first buy and use his only Friends scroll. Sorcerers can't use the Scarab of Goodwill, so that's the only source of Friends that we'll see in a very long time, but it's worth it to buy the Bag of Holding now.
Anyway, back to Kuldahar Valley! Now that we have fire elementals, we can deal with the goblin hordes within a reasonable time frame.
Naturally, a large part of this run involves watching our summons do all the work.
There aren't really a whole lot of other options for a solo HoF run, at least if you're starting from level 1.
Well, there is one option. When Frisk hits level 13, they learn Protection from Acid and Death Fog. They can now conjure acidic clouds and walk right through them without taking a point of damage. They also synergize great with Web.
Death Fog does 220 flat damage over 15 rounds as well as cutting movement rate in half. No dice rolls; no saving throws, except for a save against a one-round -2 STR and DEX. Two castings of Death Fog are enough to wipe out basically everything even in HoF mode.
For now, though, we're good with just using fire elementals.
Notice the Static Charge spell. It's extremely important that we stay very far away from anything that casts Static Charge (Acolytes, Lizard Man Shamans, and Yuan-ti Priests) until we learn Protection from Lightning, because a single casting of Static Charge on HoF mode can instantly kill any character who is not immune to electricity, even with a successful saving throw. Worse, Static Charge can go off even after the caster is dead, so it's entirely possible to get instantly killed even outside of combat.
Summon Fire Elemental, Haste, Emotion: Hopelessness, Slow. That's enough to get us through basic encounters.
By the way: never forget to talk to the bartender in Kuldahar after killing Lysan. You get a very nice cloak for it!
We mostly need it for the 40 rounds of Free Action per day, but it's also great for a tank: combine it with a level 3 Protection from Fire spell from a cleric or druid and you can bomb the wearer with Fireballs all day.
As usual, the first fight of Dragon's Eye goes terribly for me, because you can't pre-cast summoning spells. We end up needing a Potion of Invisibility to avoid getting boxed in and slaughtered.
Non-healing potions are in extremely short supply in Icewind Dale, so it's easy to overlook their importance if you're accustomed to not using them in party runs.
Frisk is level 14 and can now cast Project Image, which gives us lots of extra castings of Summon Fire Elemental and Death Fog. More importantly, it lets us cast these spells without breaking invisibility. And it's not like anyone in IWD before the final battle can see through invisibility (barely anyone uses divination spells, either).
IWD is all about hordes of melee grunts, and HoF is all about summons, so optimal gameplay usually looks something like this.
Hitting level 15 gives us access to Protection from Lightning. This is why we chose Protection from Lightning instead of Sunfire.
Optimal gameplay against spellcasters looks much the same as optimal gameplay against melee grunts.
Emotion: Hopelessness fills us with determination.
Next up, the Cold Wights. As strong as fire elementals are, there's an even safer and more reliable means of taking out certain mobs: cast PFMW, conjure a couple of Death Fog clouds, and then go invisible. The enemies will crowd around you and then simply dissolve in the cloud.
You still have to time the Invisibility spell correctly, though, or else the Death Fog damage will disrupt it.
For Presio and her apprentice, we first thin the herd a bit with some fire elementals and a Simulacrum and Project Image clone to fire off disablers.
We hit level 19 and gain access to both Time Stop and Black Blade of Disaster, which will be invaluable against magic-immune Yxunomei. We chop up Presio during a Time Stop.
We take some surprise damage from a fake Eldathyn's Ice Storm spell, but Project Image lets us summon lots of extra fire elementals to tank the enemy while a Death Fog spell dissolves the enemy offscreen.
We then march into the enemy's lair and stomp on the enemy with fire elementals and more disablers, cast via clone. We steer clear of the mages lest they debuff us (they may or may not cast Dispel Magic) and follow up with a fatal Vitriolic Sphere or Dire Charm spell.
Finally, we finish off the last batch of spellcasters with Death Fog.
We hit level 20, gaining 6 spell slots per spell level all the way up to level 9, and go nearly bankrupt buying Reliance from Conlan back at Kuldahar, granting us a +4 dagger to dual-wield alongside the Black Blade of Disaster. We can now cast Wish, which will give us some extra potions and wands. For the first time ever, we have Wands of Paralyzation in Icewind Dale, which we can fire off using a clone or Frisk themself.
It's distinctly stronger than a Chromatic Orb due to the -4 save penalty. Better still, we have strong enough THAC0 that we can actually hit pretty hard with Black Blade of Disaster even outside of Time Stop.
The Summoner's Staff also gives us an infinite supply of Invisible Stalkers, provided we summon them via a clone. Normally you only get 15 charges out of the staff. Plus, we have Power Word: Blind to neutralize archers.
How do we deal with the traps? Well, some of them can be blocked with Spell Turning, but when I forget to buff with the spell, Frisk fails a save and gets confused. Fortunately we had some fire elementals on hand to distract the enemy, which otherwise would have cut through Frisk's defenses and possibly killed us.
We steamroll the entire area, which has no counter for Frisk's offensive options and no way to pierce Frisk's defenses. But then we get in trouble.
Somehow, summoning a Wish genie close to Yxunomei's chamber allowed her to initiate dialogue with us.
We cannot fight her at full strength like I had hoped; we have to deal with her with some of our spell slots already spent. We hold off the enemy using our elementals and once again apply disablers, though the enemy is making a lot of saving throws this time around.
We re-cast Summon Fire Elemental as our existing elementals crumple and weaken Yxunomei using Death Fog. Our Wish Magic Resistance spell dropped her MR from 70 to 40, so she's going to take a lot more damage than normal.
I planned on slaying Yxunomei during Time Stop, but it proved unnecessary. Elementals and Death Fog alone are enough to bring her down.
We can't cast Knock via scroll for some reason, at least not using a clone, but Wish can bump our stats up to 25, allowing us to open most of the chests in the area--and also get major discounts from 25 CHA, saving us a lot of money on charging a Wand of Paralyzation up to 100.
Frisk is now level 22 and can cast Protection from Cold, Protection from Magical Energy, and Seven Eyes, giving us yet another layer of defenses.
We head to the Severed Hand and see a powerful sorcerer accuse a squirrel of betraying his people. Watching a squirrel gracefully scamper away from a Fireball fills us with determination.
That seems weird to type out. Anyway, we're at the famously (and, to be honest, very impractically) hand-shaped five-tower elven citadel, the Severed Hand.
This has always been the low point of Icewind Dale. Boring fights, minimal atmosphere, LOTS of backtracking, and nothing of real interest to compensate. It's a valuable source of XP, but we don't stand to gain all that much from higher levels.
We do get a couple moments of excitement: once when a priest casts Hold Person on us while we've forgotten to buff with the Free Action effect from the Mantle of the Coming Storm, and again when PFMW proves useless against the enemy's attacks when we tried to tank them from the middle of a Death Fog spell.
A Potion of Freedom and Potion of Invisibility bail us out.
We're certainly capable of tackling everything in this area, but... there are just so many enemies and it takes so long to bring them down, even with fire elementals or Death Fog.
Notice Frisk using Dimension Door to hop over the gap and escape the reach of the many melee critters in this fight. Even Black Blade of Disaster and Improved Haste takes a long time to kill enemies; the skeletons all have 50% resistance to slashing damage.
Eventually, I decide to just skip all of the optional fights and use Invisibility to collect the astrolabe fragments without fighting anyone.
We still need to kill a whole bunch of undead elves for Kaylessa and the priest lady. But then Frisk hits level 25 and gains access to a new level 9 mage spell: Shapechange.
I didn't want to take Shapechange since mind flayer form would be useless against Belhifet (for some reason IWD:EE's Enchanted Weapon spell still works like it does in vanilla BG2, even in v2.5), but it's just so much faster than anything else, and while it won't help with Belhifet, everything else in the game is perfectly vulnerable.
Better still, almost everything in Icewind Dale has 9 in every ability score, so almost everything dies in just two hits.
We still have one more piece of the astrolabe to collect. Time Stop lets us open containers and escape the area without triggering traps, and Dimension Door let us jump over the enemies who would otherwise surround us if we just relied on Invisibility.
We advance to Dorn's Deep, but go back to Kuldahar to buy Ogi-Luc's Great Robe. It's pretty terrible since it grants high STR bonuses but can only be used by single-class mages, but it'll be very nice for Frisk to wear during Time Stop, since the STR damage will apply to the Black Blade of Disaster.
Back in Dorn's Deep, we sneak by all the myconids because I don't trust Frisk's saving throws, Spell Turning, or Seven Eyes to keep them from getting confused or feebleminded by a string of myconid spore attacks, then clear out the orc and drow using Time Stop and mind flayer form.
It even works on the undead in the next area.
Icewind Dale is a pretty hard game, but we've hit the point at which our sorcerer can simply crush everything during Time Stop. All we have to do is maintain our defenses.
Shortly after we destroy the lich's phylactery, we discover that shapeshifting replaces your previous resistances, which means we don't have any of our damage immunities when in mind flayer form.
Mind flayer form does have 90% magic resistance, but a single spell could put us in critical condition if it gets past that MR, and there are some spells in IWD that ignore magic resistance entirely. A Cone of Cold spell could easily kill us in one hit if we got hit in mind flayer form. I decide to stay out of mind flayer form except during Time Stop.
We can still do more to speed things up. INT drain kills give no XP, so as long as we're relying on it to do all the work, we may as well skip the enemy grunts and only kill the bosses who carry items we need to progress.
But Time Stop isn't perfect. Apparently turning a neutral critter hostile by attacking during Time Stop can trigger a dialogue that ends the Time Stop! Our attempt to score a fast kill on Kontik fails.
Kontik can cast Cone of Cold and does bonus cold damage, so we definitely can't afford to engage her normally. But rather than revert to normal form to regain our 100% resistance to cold damage, we just down a Potion of Invisibility so we can re-cast Time Stop.
Hyper-aggressive encephalophagy fills us with determination.
Much of this chapter is optional and can be safely skipped. Frisk has just hit level 30, the level cap, and there is no need to collect any more XP. We sneak ahead to Malavon, eat his clone's brain, and then start clearing up his goons during Time Stop.
The Iron Golems are immune to +2 weapons, making mind flayer form useless against them. Time Stop is in short supply, and since Black Blade of Disaster only deals half damage, we switch to Iron Golem form to deal crushing damage to the golems instead.
Finally, we spend our last Time Stop slaying Malavon.
We spend our last Friends scroll persuading Marketh to give up without a fight. It's the only way to finish the Ginafae questline; she won't speak to you if you kill her boyfriend.
Even with 100% immunity to all forms of magical damage and all of our defenses, I don't want to tangle with the Kraken Society Mages and their Cones of Cold and Horrid Wilting spells. When the enemy boxes us in, Frisk escapes during Time Stop using Dimension Door rather than eat our way out.
It's hard to overestimate how powerful Intelligence drain is, which is saying something considering it's already one of the most famously overpowered options in the game. Even constructs are vulnerable; we can wipe out the Idol during Time Stop and make all the undead guarding it suddenly collapse.
It's still an imperfect process. Attacking Ilmadia during Time Stop causes her to initiate dialogue and break Time Stop, but we can re-cast Time Stop safely by drinking a Potion of Invisibility. The potions might be scarce, but they have the singular advantage of activating instantly and being completely uninterruptible.
We gobble up the brains of every enemy that needed to die for the sake of the main questline. Everyone else, we slipped right past.
Next is Poquelin. We can't kill him using INT drain without breaking the script and making it impossible to return to Easthaven, so we'll have to use Black Blade of Disaster instead. But to my dismay, he has a lot more HP than I expected.
Killing him with level 9 spells alone is impossible. We fall back and start summoning elementals with the help of a clone, but we have a lot of enemy pressure to deal with, and our fire elementals are crumbling under the enemy's weight.
We have no choice but to resort to Death Fog and wait for Poquelin's minions to dissolve in the cloud.
We thin the herd a little, but Poquelin is still in good shape. We hide behind invisibility until we can summon a new clone to get extra castings out of Death Fog. Poquelin can destroy our summons, but he doesn't have the AI to dispel or escape the cloud.
Spell damage is our only real option. Getting through over 700 HP is a tall order for spell damage, especially since Poquelin has magic resistance. But Project Image gives us enough castings and Death Fog deals enough damage for us to reach the numbers we need.
Eventually, Poquelin relents and we are transported to Easthaven. There's a trick for tackling Pomab: although he and all of his clones are named "Pomab" on the game screen, if you attack one of them, the dialogue box will display the clones as "False Pomab," allowing you to isolate the real one. We use this to attack him during Time Stop.
For some reason, though, Frisk's attacks keep getting interrupted; they stop attacking after two hits. Apparently we need to kill Pomab several times before he'll switch to his final, vulnerable form, at which point we can just bump him off.
We climb the ladder, where a sparkling mirror leads the way to Belhifet. Frisk takes a moment to look in the mirror.
The session started with a trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains to get the charisma tome. On the way Caldo & Krumm provided some brief entertainment.
On the way back to civilization we bumped into a merchant, but Duoa was all out of friends spells so we failed to get some furry boots.
Moving on to Durlag's Tower a couple of battle horrors failed to work out what was hitting them.
That strategy doesn't work with SCS, but pulling the third battle horror along the wall to its doom does
- for even more fun with that situation get a 2-handed weapon and pummel it to death from outside its reach. On the roof Duoa protected Skyler so she could cut some basilisks down to size.
With reputation at 20 a bit of shopping was done in Ulgoth's Beard. Duoa bought the +3 staff there, but found shortly afterwards that had mysteriously vanished again. While not too bothered about weapons anyway that was still bad news for other owners of magic staffs.
There still seemed to be an equipment gap in the bracers department, so a trip to Firewine Bridge was next. Duoa opened up by blinding Meilum and then tried to run out of his reach ... and tried again ... and again ... and died as Meilum totally ignored the fact that he was supposed to be blind.
Skyler finished him off and took a trip to the temple to put the pieces of Duoa back together.
With all desired equipment in place, it was time to go to the Nashkel Mine. After a smooth journey down to find Mulahey there was a first scare for Skyler there. Duoa had sent in a stinking cloud and Skyler used that as cover to pump a couple of arrows into the cleric before retreating again. Unfortunately we were playing in a very laggy session and Duoa thought that Mulahey had just fallen unconscious and moved up to shoot - just as the cleric was climbing to his feet on my screen. That meant Mulahey still had quite a few HPs as he summoned some help, moved up to Skyler and started casting a spell. Skyler had obviously bought the Greenstone Amulet while at Ulgoth's Beard, but equally obviously never considered using it and would have been in deep trouble if affected by a hold person. Fortunately though she found a critical hit at the right time to prevent Mulahey finishing his spell.
Outside the mine that scare led to the amazons getting the full treatment - being blinded and affected by stinking cloud before going down to skull traps.
Back in Nashkel Rasaad has a nasty habit in our games of grabbing the XP for Nimbul, but this time Duoa made sure there would be none of that.
Tranzig, as usual talks a good fight, but is all mouth and no trousers.
After heading up to the Bandit Camp, Skyler started working through some bandits using stealth. That wasn't a great tactic as she was not only exposed to missile shots herself, but left Duoa vulnerable as well (she'd decided against spamming sleep this time). That meant that Duoa was down to a single HP by the time Taurgosz came out to play and was lucky that proved sufficient as she blinded her attacker at point-blank range.
After finishing him off and resting up, Skyler put on her newly-acquired plate and tanked the remaining bandits. Showing her face inside Tazok's tent lured out Venkt and Britik. Skyler successfully saved against a horror while Duoa was casting malison before going for the deadly finish with emotion.
There wasn't much action in the Cloakwood on the way to the mine. On arrival, Genthore was blinded before a stinking cloud allowed Duoa to blind Drasus as well. Meanwhile Skyler had been exchanging courtesies with Kysus - resulting in the death of the mage, but leaving Skyler confused about her next target. Fortunately Duoa had enough space to keep out of range while unleashing another malison + emotion combination.
Heart of Fury mode turns itself off when you start the game, so when I notice that Belhifet only has his non-HoF HP, I have to re-start the fight. This actually gives me a nice piece of information for the fight: neither magic resistance nor SI: Evocation can block the golems' poison clouds, so before I cast Time Stop, I make sure both golems emit the cloud so I don't get disrupted.
Normally you lose all of your buffs at the start of the fight, but a sorcerer can learn Spell Immunity to block the Dispel Magic with SI: Abjuration.
Once we've put some distance between us and Belhifet, we cast Time Stop and start slashing him up with Black Blade of Disaster. But Belhifet has over 1,100 HP, and a single Time Stop deals much less damage than I'd hoped (we have 19 STR thanks to a Potion of Strength and a magic ring).
We re-cast Time Stop and take another chunk out of Belhifet's health bar, but we lose our next Time Stop spell to spell disruption. Apparently the golems will fire off a new cloud every few rounds.
I now only have two level 9 spell slots left, and I know that burning them will not take down Belhifet. I want to save them so a Project Image clone can attempt a Wish-rest later. Frisk casts Simulacrum to try to deal a bit of extra damage and Belhifet keeps slashing away at us. Unfortunately, Belhifet's weapon offers no save for the poison/disease effect, unlike SoD, so we can't avoid poison damage unless we have PFMW active. We saved a lot of Elixirs of Health for this fight.
We cast PFMW and re-engage Belhifet, but all is not well. We have to flee whenever one of the golems emits another cloud (we have very few healing potions to draw on), which cuts down on the time that PFMW buys us, and neglecting our clone's buffs leaves them very vulnerable.
Black Blade of Disaster wears off. Knowing that that's our only reliable means of dealing damage to Belhifet with our lousy THAC0, and knowing that a Project Image clone would only get a single casting of Wish off the ground before Frisk took damage and canceled the spell, we spend our second-to-last level 9 spell slot on re-casting Black Blade of Disaster. Since we have lots of PFMW spells left, we're going to just tank Belhifet face-to-face until we run low on level 6 spell slots.
When PFMW runs out, I pull Frisk out so we have time to drink an Elixir of Health and cast PFMW without fear of disruption.
Then the game crashes. We have to do it all over again.
This time, I start out tanking with PFMW, and I make a point of chopping up Belhifet's allies.
But progress is slow, and I'm not sure it's worth it since our two Potions of Absorption make it almost impossible to hit Frisk. We try Time Stop again, but this time, we don't chain-cast it (we previous lost the 3rd round of Time Stop to re-casting the spell).
We bring out a clone to apply a little extra damage and keep the enemy distracted while we run across the map to cast Time Stop without fear of disruption from a stray hit from Belhifet. According to CTRL-M, we're making considerable progress.
But to my surprise, walking over traps during Time Stop still apparently triggers them. An arrow flies at us and takes down all of our buffs at once.
We have to spend many rounds re-casting our buffs, but with only a single level 9 spell, our options for actually dealing damage to Belhifet are very limited. Digging around in our inventory does bring up some darts, and while we have a limited supply of +3 darts, we have plenty of +2 darts that can hurt the Cornugons.
Frisk is wearing thin, but I think dedicating the last of our resources to bring down Belhifet with a high-pressure approach is our best bet. Back to tanking! We cast Black Blade of Disaster, our last level 9 spell, and engage Belhifet under PFMW. But this time we equip the Symbol of Corellon Larethian for a +2 bonus to THAC0, a major boon considering our poor THAC0.
We run low on PFMW spells, but tanking Belhifet is very productive. Belhifet is almost out.
We cast our very last PFMW spell and chase after Belhifet when he teleports away.
Soon, Belhifet collapses. The battle is won! Icewind Dale is over!
One solo no-reload Heart of Fury run of Icewind Dale, complete.
Most of this run was not difficult. Sorcerers get access to lots of options that IWD enemies don't have the AI to counter. Summon Fire Elemental can steamroll almost anything, Death Fog can dissolve almost anything, and mind flayer INT drain, especially during Time Stop, can instantly kill almost anything. Invisibility essentially means invulnerability in IWD, and Dimension Door could let us escape getting boxed in, so basically all we had to do was maintain our defenses against the handful of threats in the game and then just let Frisk's overwhelming offensive capabilities crush the opposition.
The early game was the critical obstacle. Charm Person was the only way we could land enough kills in Easthaven to reach Monster Summoning I, which was the only way we could handle crowds and deal enough damage to take down the various undead with their numerous immunities in the Vale of Shadows. From there, the only thing we needed to do was upgrade to fire elementals, steer clear of Static Charges from the Acolytes, Lizard Man Shamans, and Yuan-ti Priests, then kill everything with INT drain until Poquelin, who had to be killed using Death Fog, and then Belhifet, who had to be killed with Black Blade of Disaster combined with Improved Haste, Reliance in the off hand, and Time Stop and PFMW to avoid damage.
Everything else was just optimizations. Aside from the high-pressure, high-risk early game, this run was less complicated and less challenging than a normal IWD no-reload run. Icewind Dale is not an easy game, but sorcerers do have the ability to break the game in HoF mode.
The only remaining IE game that doesn't have a solo no-reload LoB/HoF run is Icewind Dale 2. But as I've mentioned in a previous post, no-reload gameplay is wildly different in IWD2.
IWD2 is actually a very curious puzzle for solo no-reload runs. In the unmodded game, things are pretty simple, and it shouldn't require too much art (relatively speaking) to beat it with a solo character without reloading. But with the Tactics4IWD2 mod, things get complicated really fast.
See, Icewind Dale 2 has critical failures on saving throws, so saves alone will never be enough to guarantee survival. You need immunities instead. But immunities are also far harder to get in IWD2.
Without additional mods, the only way to get immunity to stun is to use Blood Rage, Anti-Magic Shell, or Seven Eyes. But Blood Rage imposes berserk, prevents healing, and imposes heavy penalties after it runs out; Anti-Magic Shell removes all buffs and prevents spellcasting (it's basically a Protection from Magic scroll as a level 6 spell); and Seven Eyes only blocks one stun effect and cannot be re-cast until the 15-round duration is over.
Immunity to Dispel Magic is also hard to come by. Aegis and (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability can block it, but MGOI vanishes after absorbing a Dispel Magic spell. Aegis will persist, but it also only lasts 10 rounds and is a level 9 spell.
Physical defenses are also a problem. High AC will protect you from normal mobs, but not late-game critters like half-dragons and mages with Mordenkainen's Sword--they'll cut right through it. Mirror Image is the opposite; it works great against the latter but isn't enough for the former. But character builds with high AC tend to have few Mirror Images, and character builds with lots of Mirror Images have low AC.
It looks like tackling Tactics4IWD2 as a solo no-reload character requires 9 big things in a character build:
1. High AC 2. High physical damage output 3. Mirror Image and other mage buffs like Stoneskin, Improved Invisibility, Blur, and Blink 4. Immunity to Dispel Magic, or the ability to operate without buffs 5. Immunity to stun 6. Immunity to confusion and hopelessness 7. Immunity to Disintegrate 8. Immunity to paralysis 9. Immunity to Finger of Death
But getting all 9 of those things is very tricky, because you can only get 30 levels in IWD2, XP is scarce, and XP penalties are easy to run into (you can mod the game to go all the way to level 40, but the XP values to reach level 40 are extremely hard to reach). To get these things, you need:
1. High Wisdom and 1 level as a monk (which requires lawful alignment), the Expertise feat (which requires 13 Intelligence), and/or the deep gnome race (which imposes hideous XP penalties) 2. At least 3 mage/sorcerer levels, but ideally 7-9 levels, and with high Intelligence or Charisma 3. Minor Globe of Invulnerability (7-8 mage/sorcerer levels) or Aegis (17 or 18 levels in mage, sorcerer, or cleric of Helm) 4. An evil alignment can block Blasphemy and MGOI can block Icelance, but true immunity is not feasible 5. At least 15-16 mage/sorcerer levels for Mind Blank or at least 5 cleric levels for Exaltation (which takes a full round to cast and only lasts 10 rounds) 6. Anti-Magic Shell or the Tactics4IWD2 component that grants immunity at level 26, if you're in Heart of Fury mode 7. At least 7 cleric levels for Freedom of Movement, or Heart of Fury mode for an early item to grant Freedom of Movement 8. Same as number 7, but with Death Ward 9. High Strength, lots of summons (which means high spellcaster levels), or at least 13-14 mage/sorcerer levels for Mordenkainen's Sword
Only a few character builds can fill in all of these blanks, and they suffer horrible XP penalties that slow down leveling. In normal mode, it's especially difficult to satisfy critera 3-8, because immunities are so scarce without HoF items. In HoF mode, it's especially difficult to satisfy criteria 4-9, because enemies are so much bigger.
Long story short:
1. Mages will die to the stuff that clerics can survive 2. Clerics will die to the stuff that mages can survive 3. Cleric/mages won't have enough levels to survive either 4. Fighters, rangers, paladins, barbarians, monks, rogues and bards will die to everything
If I play the unmodded game, use exploits, and/or use mod items and spells, a solo HoF no-reload run would be fairly simple: I could just rely on Improved Invisibility, song stacking, and/or some overpowered weapons and armor. But with Tactics4IWD2 installed and without mod items, we're looking at numerous scenarios with a minimum 5% chance of death apiece (sometimes with multiple 5% chances in a single fight), and the only way to eliminate that 5% chance is to use an extremely ineffective character build that might die simply due to weak damage output.
I've done a no-reload run of IWD2 and a no-reload HoF run, but both of those involved parties, and a 5% chance of one character dying still gave us a lot of wiggle room when we had 3 and 6 characters, respectively.
The first floor of Watcher's Keep is cleared up to the book ritual to open the gate to the second floor. Anomen levels up, which makes this his final HLA. We put the candle on the altar which causes some statues to come to life. One of the statues stuns Nalia via Power Attack due to my rustiness and general unwillingness to go all-out after having taken a break from the game for so long.
Nalia is ok due to her Stoneskin, but I have Rasaad knock the statue away from her with Shadowless Kick. The rest of the statues go down easily.
The ritual is performed. The mage statue casts PfMW with a trigger of Spell Shield + Spell Deflection + something else. Nalia removes this with a charged Wand of Spell Striking, allowing Sarevok to gib the statue with a critical backstab.
The rest of the statues fall and Korgan and Rasaad level up. Rasaad learns Shadow Stance.
On the second level, I learn to construct Ice Golems.
A Horrid Wilting trap in the slime lab dehydrates my Perfect Clay Golem MK IV and converts it into a Perfect Stone Golem, which causes it to lose its immunity to slashing and piercing weapons. In this form, the golem is far less useful to me. The second level of Watcher's Keep is cleared without any more incident. Time to fight the Chromatic Demon.
I summon the Kitthix Swarm and Haste all of us because the Chomatic Demon has huge damage resistance, so we need to carve through it with lots and lots of smaller hits instead of big ones. It survives a Deathbringer Assault from Sarevok! After beating on it for a few rounds, it dies. This laboratory is suited to build golems, so I'll create Perfect Clay MK V before descending to level 3.
I'm feeling antsy about descending down to level 3. aTweaks makes demons and devils significantly stronger, not to mention all the dead magic zones in the maze. I must be careful. We arrive at Tahazzar's group and they spare us from attacking immediately due to my non-good alignment, which lets us make the first moves. I summon in my planetar and the Kitthix Swarm and haste everyone, then Nalia and I both use a charged Wish. The Kitthix swarm attacks Tahazzar to initiate the fight.
Improved Haste on party, Resurrection, Hardiness, Greater Deathblow, Breach on enemies, and Rest are my 6 wishes. The Greater Deathblow wish allows us to shred through the Glabrezus and Quasits, the most troublesome enemies, in one hit. Nalia's wishes are irrelevant because all the enemies are already dead. Apparently my planetar scored a vorpal hit on Tahazzar; and here I was worried that would happen to one of my party members.
The next area is a dead magic zone with demons rushing to take a bite out of our squishiest party members. Anomen and Rasaad fail a save vs. spell and lose their composure, but the rest of us pull through.
A succubus and Alu-fiends bar our path. Nalia uses a charged Spell Striking wand to eliminate their PfMW but Korgan gets charmed by the succubus. I try to throw out a Dispel Magic but Korgan kills the Perfect Stone Golem with Crom Faeyr before it hits, causing it to split into 2 normal ones.
Released from her hold, Korgan enrages to prevent that from happening again. All thots are slain soon after. Next we arrive at Ka'rashur's domain. I wasn't expecting them to attack immediately and I only have Stoneskin active with nobody else buffed. Not good.
I start with Improved Alacrity, then begin my standard buffing routine with extra defenses thrown in that I can cast instantly, with some debuffs and disablers too along with a charged Wish. By the time the genies are summoned, most things are already dead. The wishes don't help much since the fight was already won in the blink of an eye. Rasaad levels up and his movement rate severely increases.
The tiefling wild magic area is cleared easily. Sarevok executes the mage with a backstab and our tanks kill the fighters. Onto the demon wraith room, I immediately loot the area with quickloot and then "NOPE" the fuck out of there into Aesgareth's party. That is one fight that I will not be taking on because its absolutely not worth it.
Sarevok gains the white dragon armor from the Demon Wraith's room. Against Aesgareth, I have Nalia cast SI: Necromancy and play Aesgareth for the golem building tome. She draws Plague while Aesgareth draws Construct, which causes him to win the draw, though he steals no XP from Nalia due to the SI: necromancy. Anomen removes her Plague curse.
We try again. Nalia draws Guile.
Aesgareth draws The Empress and wins, but does not steal any of Nalia's XP. We say "screw it" and fight Aesgareth, and win. I learn to build Magic Golems, though I don't plan on actually making one.
Now, about the deck...
I buff myself with Spell Trap and SI: Evocation to avoid Euryale, and pack on as many save bonuses as I can to avoid imprisonment.
The elementals and the balor are easily put down. Damn, no Throne card for me. I rest and buff again, this time with SI: Alteration. I draw Rogue, but it has no effect on me because of the good ol' Staff of the Magi.
I rest and buff with SI: Necromancy to avoid Fool. I draw Talons, which is Conjuration, and it affects Anomen too, but its nothing the Planetar can't fix.
I draw from the Deck again to get rid of it. That was a flop. Time to move on to Watcher's Keep 4.
My friend @Vynn also finished a no-reload-run through IWD using HoF mode with a solo Druid years ago @semiticgod. But as he dont uses any communities his defeat of Big B was unrecorded - too bad. If i remember correctly he only reloaded against the final boss in Heart of Winter as well when trying to take down the Rakshasas in Trial of the Luremaster. Totemic Druid would be even more powerful as many opponents only use normal weapons. Thats one of the reasons why Monks can be big fun once they get their weapon immunity. Combined with Quivering Palm my solo Monk rocked IWD pretty hard - except for some parts of the Luremaster which were really painful...
Perhaps this is the masochistic in me speaking but as someone who came from p&p I've always liked the idea of critical failures for saving throws. Is it possible to mod that in or is it an engine limitation?
Comments
Will update when Im inevitably killed by a skeleton dart or some such.
Icewind Dale: Jaris the Solo Invoker
Here is Jaris:Jaris is sort of like an invoker sub-kit.
Advantages: He starts the game knowing every evocation spell in the game.
Disadvantages: He cannot learn ANY non-evocation spells (this means no Mirror Image, Stoneskin or Protection from Magic Weapons). He can still cast these spells from scrolls.
Note that this means he can't learn Identify. I increased his wisdom so that he'd have better lore. I also gave him a Bag of Holding right from the start of the game so that I wouldn't have to worry so much about inventory later on.
I'm playing on Insane difficulty.
So, to start off, Jaris gave Old Jed a wine and Jhonen a sword. After he spoke to Elisia again, he reached level 3. He then killed the cellar bugs.
Embarrassingly, Jaris had no way of getting open the door to Apsel's workshop, so he couldn't complete that quest.
Next, he went after the goblins who stole the fish. He put them to sleep with a Stinking Cloud and then killed some of them with Snilloc's Snowball Swarm (this is the first playthrough where I actually used that spell). However, some of the goblins either survived the snowball swarm or didn't get hit by it. Even after Jaris ran out of Magic Missile spells there were still a few goblins remaining.
In Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, there are certain areas that enemies can't go between. Jaris went in the inn and the goblins didn't follow him.
He slept for 8 hours.
After he got out of bed he went out into the cold and killed the rest of the goblins.
The ordeal of giving a kid his fish back was so impressive that Jaris got enough experience to reach level 4. He memorized another Snowball Swarm and went to bed again. That was a short day!
Jaris woke up at night. It was time to go into the wilderness!
...
Three little wolves inhaled the Stinking Cloud and passed out.
The snowballs were so cold that the wolves froze to death.
By the way, although Jaris does not have access to most of the great defensive spells, he does have one that is particularly important for this point in the game: Shield. If Shield was not an evocation spell (if it was, say, an abjuration spell), this run with these rules would be basically impossible due to the number of archers in the prologue who could kill Jaris in seconds.
Jaris went back to the inn and rested before going in the cave. He's going to be doing this a lot.
He went in the cave, aggroed both the first and second encounters, and left the cave. The orcs followed him outside, only to face a Stinking Cloud. But several orcs avoided the cloud. Jaris killed one orc but had to flee the area. He went back to Easthaven and the orcs didn't follow him.
Another 8 hours of sleep.
When Jaris returned to the pass outside the cave, the orcs were not crowded outside the area transition to Easthaven like they were before. Instead, they were next to the cave entrance. This is something he took advantage of: it gave him space to safely catch all the orcs with Stinking Cloud. The orcs died from snowballs.
Jaris proceeded to handle the next couple of encounters in the cave through similar means: he tried to incapacitate as many orcs as possible with his Stinking Cloud, then he cast damaging spells while retreating until either he ran out either of spells or of space to run away. Then he went back to Easthaven and took another 8 hours of sleep.
The ogre encounter took a bit longer. Even with Shield, Jaris couldn't risk the ogres hitting him. He was only able to kill one ogre by the time he ran out of spells. He rested, replacing his Snowball Swarm spells with Agannazar's Scorchers to kill the ogres. It still took him another 24 hours to kill them all.
But with that done, Jaris returned to Easthaven to tell the good news to Hrothgar. And with that, Jaris reached level 5! It's Fireballing time!
Jaris gave the scrolls to Pomab and Gaspar for another 4800 experience. He went back to the inn for the last time and switched back to Snowball Swarms.
Time for the expedition!
...
Yeah, so much for that.
The Kuldahar Pass would be much more risky to fight through than the cave. The reason is that there's no safe place to rest. Jaris could spend his spells on one encounter and rest, only to get interrupted by more goblins, in which case he'd be practically defenseless. So instead, he put on Shield and made a run for Kuldahar.
Many goblins shot at him but none could hit him. Thanks to Shield, the poor fleeing invoker reached Kuldahar without a scratch.
That is where we stop for now.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/65700/kit-pack-i-hate-undead-iwd-eet-bgee-bg2ee/p1
My paladin just died in the Prison to a mob.
The no-good henchman AI was of not much help (Linu, the Cleric), trying to cast healing spells in the middle of half a dozen attackers and getting AoO'ed to death.
Maybe next time I should get the damn Cleave feat, instead of hitting the bastards one at a time.
*sigh*
I'll probably start with a Wizard now.
---
Oh, and...
HOUSE RULES FOR NWN:EE:
- CORE RULES (of course)
- REST RESTRICTIONS (Otherwise, caster classes are ridiculously overpowered)
(Unclear what exactly the rest restriction should be, but basically I avoid resting mid-dungeon, using consumables etc. strategically.)
But hey, I haven't done the damn thing in well over a decade so it is a bit novel.
I would pay good money for:
1) a decent campaign (where resting is a liability)
2) good AI
Frisk: A Solo Sorcerer in Heart of Fury Mode
Part 1
I've decided to tackle IWD as a solo character in Heart of Fury mode, the IWD counterpart to the solo LoB challenge. After an abortive attempt with a sorcerer and then a cleric/illusionist, I've rolled up a new sorcerer with a better spell selection. Once again, Frisk is our Charname!Because practically every successful no-reload run I've had was Undertale-themed.
Heart of Fury mode is a little different from Legacy of Bhaal mode. HoF only grants level bonuses and the triple HP plus 80 on top; it does not give enemies +5 saving throws, +5 THAC0, or +1 APR. Also, HoF summons get the same HP bonuses as enemies, instead of the double HP +20 on top that LoB summons get. The double damage is the same for both modes. Finally, bonus XP is enabled in HoF mode by default.
So the deck isn't nearly as stacked against us in this run as it was in Frisk's Archer/Mage run. However, IWD is extremely linear and contains none of the overpowered items that made a solo LoB run possible.
I considered a Totemic Druid for this fight, but I wasn't sure how it would fare against Belhifet, and I thought a sorcerer would be more fun.
HoF mode is governed by summons, but I'm starting at level 1, so Frisk has no access to summoning spells, and kiting would only allow us to kill the goblins. So how are we going to get to level 6 and get Monster Summoning I?
Charm Person!
This will be absolutely necessary to bring down the numerous orcs in the caves outside Easthaven, but for now, it just helps us speed up the goblin fights, allowing us to turn two goblins against each other and then bring them to Near Death before we start kiting. This requires multiple castings of Charm Person to maintain control of the goblins.
It's still a very long process, but after spending so much time kiting in my ill-fated earlier attempts, I'm glad for the slight boost in speed.
Over the course of numerous rests, we bring down the goblins and hit level 5. In order to hit level 6 and get our first summoning spell, we need to fight some orcs in close quarters. We couldn't do this in my first attempt because I didn't have Charm Person to turn a hostile orc into a friendly tank.
It might not seem like a big deal, but this was a huge breakthrough. Choosing Charm Person was the only way I could complete this run starting out at level 1.
Whenever the enemies make too many saving throws, we have Invisibility to make our escape.
Notice that the orcs are still fighting each other even though they're all hostile. Enemies will keep fighting even after Charm Person ends, so Charm Person lets us thin the herd even if we don't get XP for the kill.
The enemy follows us outside, but with Invisibility, resting, and some careful movement, we can lure the enemies into the positions we want them and then turn them against each other.
Normally, we couldn't take down all three wolves with a single orc, and Charm Person is useless against the wolves themselves, but a level 5 Chromatic Orb lets us stun the wolves for 3 rounds, giving the orc automatic hits and keeping the pressure off of our temporary ally.
We kill our orc and finally hit level 6. Now we can cast Monster Summoning I and summon our own tanks without having to charm anyone--a major game-changer, considering we can only charm one critter at a time under normal circumstances (if you charm a critter who's currently attacking a previously charmed critter, the latter will immediately go hostile even if you order the former to leave them alone). All we can summon are goblins and beetles, but they have over 90 HP apiece, so they stick around long enough to make a difference.
People familiar with HoF mode in IWD know that gaining access to summons is enough to basically win the game, as long as you upgrade your summons every now and then and provide them with some basic support. But there are times when summons won't cut it on their own; IWD has some pretty big hordes in it that will be able to overpower your summons if left unchecked.
But with multiple rests and our new level 7 Chromatic Orbs, which paralyze the target for 13 rounds on a failed save, we can bring down the orcs and even the ogres.
It takes a lot more work than just spamming spells, but you get the idea.
We leave Easthaven at level 9, using Invisibility to avoid the goblin horde that would otherwise overwhelm our existing summons.
The warmth of the great oak of Kuldahar fills us with determination.
Icewind Dale: Jaris the Solo Invoker: Part 2
Jaris talked to Arundel and went to the inn; he payed 15 gold for noble lodging.When he woke up, he had replaced his spells again. Since he was heading to an area where pretty much all the enemies were immune to cold and Stinking Cloud, he would instead use the Web and Fireball tandem punch.
But before Jaris could go to the Vale of Shadows he had to fight the two preliminary yetis. He cast Web but one of them made the save and pursued him. He had to run while casting Magic Missiles. He refrained from casting Agannazar's Scorcher spells because they would lock him in place for several seconds, allowing the enemy to walk up and hit him. By the time he ran out of Magic Missile spells, he had killed that one yeti.
Jaris went back to the inn and rested again.
Then he killed the other yeti and headed off to the Vale of Shadows.
Fighting the enemies in the Vale of Shadows was tedious because Jaris only had so many spells. He usually only killed 1-3 enemies per day. When Jaris wanted to rest, unless he was being chased by an enemy he didn't have the spellpower to kill, he would stand right next to the map transition exit and rest there. If he was awakened by yetis, he would flee to Kulahar and rest there. After several hours of real life time and over 300 gold spent purely on resting at the inn, Jaris was finally able to get both keys from the crypts and fight his way to the entrance of the main tomb. By this point he was level 7.
The first few encounters in the tomb were easy, since they involved many weak enemies rather a single yeti or shadow. They were easy targets for the Web-Fireball combo.
The traps were the big issue. Jaris had no way of disarming traps, so he had to just take the damage. I was particularly worried about the Fireball trap, so I made Jaris memorize Fireshield: Red just to reduce the damage from the trap. It didn't end up hurting that much.
By trying to reason with Mytos, Jaris reached level 8. He was starting to become powerful. He disabled all the enemies in the encounter with a Minor Sequencer double Web, then he incinerated the undead to death with three Fireballs.
After resting, he killed Myrkul's Sending and went down the zigzag hallway. He killed two Skeleton Archers before they could see him, took the damage from the trap, and opened the secret door to the mummy's crypt.
Jaris ran away from the slow mummy to make room for him to cast Fireball. He cast Fireball, but I had overestimated his distance from the area of effect, and he got hit by his own fireball, dealing 54 damage and killing him instantly!
Oops...
Well, there goes that playthrough.
Skyler (Elf ranger, Grond0); Duoa (Human Conjurer, Gate70)
Previous run:
The dear friends set out for the breach once more this morning to continue their best out of 295 contest with Melissan (Mel currently leading 147:2).
After the usual chores in Candlekeep they sorted out Shoal before flitting through Beregost and Nashkel to buy a green PfP scroll. That allowed all the basilisks to be accounted for without any need for resting and gave them several levels each.
Korax joined in to show Mutamin who was boss and then aimed to do the same to Kirian and co. That was made much easier by Baerin and Lindin being blind and Korax successfully paralyzed Lindin - which prolonged his own life by several seconds
After heading for the Nashkel Mine with a view to getting Greywolf's sword Duoa tried resting to get blindness back, but generated half a dozen kobolds instead. He was immediately critically injured and was lucky that follow-up shots missed as he ran out of range.
Passing back through Beregost Skyler was looking forward to a good hard fight with some spiders - but Duoa spoilt his fun by sleeping them all.
After heading to the FAI to return Landrin's things, Tarnesh tried to block their path - but unfortunately couldn't see where the path was.
Looking to pick up some more easy treasure the duo proceeded to the ankheg nest expecting a bunch of ankhegs to fall asleep. In fact they proved more resistant than usual and the last few were left in peace rather than pushing our luck further after Duoa was out of spells.
There was more quick XP and treasure on offer at the Lighthouse. Skyler used a potion of clarity and sneaked into the middle of the first group of sirines. Duoa had gently suggested that she could use stinking cloud on them, but settled for doing that to some nearby hobgoblins.
Moving on to the pirate cave Skyler was hit once by a golem that followed him outside. The second golem was hiding behind a hold person trap and Duoa decided to trigger that to ensure Skyler wasn't held. For a while the golem didn't move into sight of her, but that trap lasts quite a long time and eventually it came sniffing round the corner. That could have been bad news, but Skyler was hiding in the shadows and gave the golem a whack to distract it before running it round to finish it with arrows.
Looking to push reputation up to 20 the duo went to help out Charleston Nib. Skyler tanked the Doomsayer in the expectation she would have to retreat and run him round while Duoa sent in magic missiles. However, the Doomsayer proved to have a poor run of attacks and Skyler was able to stay in melee until it fell.
The final action was aiming to revive Melicamp. We had a bit of a giggle there over the prospect of using DHL to deliver the chicken to High Hedge (if you're British you may get that reference. If not and you want to then this story will explain
Skyler, Ranger 6, 71 HPs, 85 kills
Duoa, Conjurer 6, 26 HPs, 16 kills, 0 deaths
Frisk: A Solo Sorcerer in Heart of Fury Mode
Part 2
Monster Summoning I is good enough to wear down skeletons, but ghasts and ghouls' paralysis attacks just crush our goblins and beetles.It takes multiple rests and a lot of work to bring down a ghast, even with Haste and Slow.
Frisk finally hits level 10 and we choose Summon Fire Elemental as our first level 5 spell pick. I'm kind of sick of fire elementals since they've been my standard summons for HoF runs in IWD, but after reviewing the numbers, fire elementals are just plain better than the earth and water elementals.
Elementals have absolutely no special immunities in IWD, so despite having better stats than goblins, they're actually just as vulnerable to disablers. Ghasts are still a pretty big problem for us.
Protection from Fire keeps us safe from the Fireball trap near the Wight. Mytos is no trouble; our summons are strong enough to take down the enemy without any help. As for the Sleep trap, a level 6 (or maybe 5) character can make a saving throw to resist it, but if Frisk fails the save, we might die, because the sleep effect lasts a really long time and you don't wake up if you get hit. But now that we're at level 11, Spell Immunity: Alteration can let Frisk block the spell outright.
After collecting enough loot, we can afford the Bag of Holding from Orrick, provided that we first buy and use his only Friends scroll. Sorcerers can't use the Scarab of Goodwill, so that's the only source of Friends that we'll see in a very long time, but it's worth it to buy the Bag of Holding now.
Anyway, back to Kuldahar Valley! Now that we have fire elementals, we can deal with the goblin hordes within a reasonable time frame.
Naturally, a large part of this run involves watching our summons do all the work.
There aren't really a whole lot of other options for a solo HoF run, at least if you're starting from level 1.
Well, there is one option. When Frisk hits level 13, they learn Protection from Acid and Death Fog. They can now conjure acidic clouds and walk right through them without taking a point of damage. They also synergize great with Web.
Death Fog does 220 flat damage over 15 rounds as well as cutting movement rate in half. No dice rolls; no saving throws, except for a save against a one-round -2 STR and DEX. Two castings of Death Fog are enough to wipe out basically everything even in HoF mode.
For now, though, we're good with just using fire elementals.
Notice the Static Charge spell. It's extremely important that we stay very far away from anything that casts Static Charge (Acolytes, Lizard Man Shamans, and Yuan-ti Priests) until we learn Protection from Lightning, because a single casting of Static Charge on HoF mode can instantly kill any character who is not immune to electricity, even with a successful saving throw. Worse, Static Charge can go off even after the caster is dead, so it's entirely possible to get instantly killed even outside of combat.
Summon Fire Elemental, Haste, Emotion: Hopelessness, Slow. That's enough to get us through basic encounters.
By the way: never forget to talk to the bartender in Kuldahar after killing Lysan. You get a very nice cloak for it!
We mostly need it for the 40 rounds of Free Action per day, but it's also great for a tank: combine it with a level 3 Protection from Fire spell from a cleric or druid and you can bomb the wearer with Fireballs all day.
As usual, the first fight of Dragon's Eye goes terribly for me, because you can't pre-cast summoning spells. We end up needing a Potion of Invisibility to avoid getting boxed in and slaughtered.
Non-healing potions are in extremely short supply in Icewind Dale, so it's easy to overlook their importance if you're accustomed to not using them in party runs.
Frisk is level 14 and can now cast Project Image, which gives us lots of extra castings of Summon Fire Elemental and Death Fog. More importantly, it lets us cast these spells without breaking invisibility. And it's not like anyone in IWD before the final battle can see through invisibility (barely anyone uses divination spells, either).
IWD is all about hordes of melee grunts, and HoF is all about summons, so optimal gameplay usually looks something like this.
Hitting level 15 gives us access to Protection from Lightning. This is why we chose Protection from Lightning instead of Sunfire.
Optimal gameplay against spellcasters looks much the same as optimal gameplay against melee grunts.
Emotion: Hopelessness fills us with determination.
Frisk: A Solo Sorcerer in Heart of Fury Mode
Part 3
Next up, the Cold Wights. As strong as fire elementals are, there's an even safer and more reliable means of taking out certain mobs: cast PFMW, conjure a couple of Death Fog clouds, and then go invisible. The enemies will crowd around you and then simply dissolve in the cloud.You still have to time the Invisibility spell correctly, though, or else the Death Fog damage will disrupt it.
For Presio and her apprentice, we first thin the herd a bit with some fire elementals and a Simulacrum and Project Image clone to fire off disablers.
We hit level 19 and gain access to both Time Stop and Black Blade of Disaster, which will be invaluable against magic-immune Yxunomei. We chop up Presio during a Time Stop.
We take some surprise damage from a fake Eldathyn's Ice Storm spell, but Project Image lets us summon lots of extra fire elementals to tank the enemy while a Death Fog spell dissolves the enemy offscreen.
We then march into the enemy's lair and stomp on the enemy with fire elementals and more disablers, cast via clone. We steer clear of the mages lest they debuff us (they may or may not cast Dispel Magic) and follow up with a fatal Vitriolic Sphere or Dire Charm spell.
Finally, we finish off the last batch of spellcasters with Death Fog.
We hit level 20, gaining 6 spell slots per spell level all the way up to level 9, and go nearly bankrupt buying Reliance from Conlan back at Kuldahar, granting us a +4 dagger to dual-wield alongside the Black Blade of Disaster. We can now cast Wish, which will give us some extra potions and wands. For the first time ever, we have Wands of Paralyzation in Icewind Dale, which we can fire off using a clone or Frisk themself.
It's distinctly stronger than a Chromatic Orb due to the -4 save penalty. Better still, we have strong enough THAC0 that we can actually hit pretty hard with Black Blade of Disaster even outside of Time Stop.
The Summoner's Staff also gives us an infinite supply of Invisible Stalkers, provided we summon them via a clone. Normally you only get 15 charges out of the staff. Plus, we have Power Word: Blind to neutralize archers.
How do we deal with the traps? Well, some of them can be blocked with Spell Turning, but when I forget to buff with the spell, Frisk fails a save and gets confused. Fortunately we had some fire elementals on hand to distract the enemy, which otherwise would have cut through Frisk's defenses and possibly killed us.
We steamroll the entire area, which has no counter for Frisk's offensive options and no way to pierce Frisk's defenses. But then we get in trouble.
Somehow, summoning a Wish genie close to Yxunomei's chamber allowed her to initiate dialogue with us.
We cannot fight her at full strength like I had hoped; we have to deal with her with some of our spell slots already spent. We hold off the enemy using our elementals and once again apply disablers, though the enemy is making a lot of saving throws this time around.
We re-cast Summon Fire Elemental as our existing elementals crumple and weaken Yxunomei using Death Fog. Our Wish Magic Resistance spell dropped her MR from 70 to 40, so she's going to take a lot more damage than normal.
I planned on slaying Yxunomei during Time Stop, but it proved unnecessary. Elementals and Death Fog alone are enough to bring her down.
We can't cast Knock via scroll for some reason, at least not using a clone, but Wish can bump our stats up to 25, allowing us to open most of the chests in the area--and also get major discounts from 25 CHA, saving us a lot of money on charging a Wand of Paralyzation up to 100.
Frisk is now level 22 and can cast Protection from Cold, Protection from Magical Energy, and Seven Eyes, giving us yet another layer of defenses.
We head to the Severed Hand and see a powerful sorcerer accuse a squirrel of betraying his people. Watching a squirrel gracefully scamper away from a Fireball fills us with determination.
Frisk: A Solo Sorcerer in Heart of Fury Mode
Part 4
The Severed Hand!That seems weird to type out. Anyway, we're at the famously (and, to be honest, very impractically) hand-shaped five-tower elven citadel, the Severed Hand.
This has always been the low point of Icewind Dale. Boring fights, minimal atmosphere, LOTS of backtracking, and nothing of real interest to compensate. It's a valuable source of XP, but we don't stand to gain all that much from higher levels.
We do get a couple moments of excitement: once when a priest casts Hold Person on us while we've forgotten to buff with the Free Action effect from the Mantle of the Coming Storm, and again when PFMW proves useless against the enemy's attacks when we tried to tank them from the middle of a Death Fog spell.
A Potion of Freedom and Potion of Invisibility bail us out.
We're certainly capable of tackling everything in this area, but... there are just so many enemies and it takes so long to bring them down, even with fire elementals or Death Fog.
Notice Frisk using Dimension Door to hop over the gap and escape the reach of the many melee critters in this fight. Even Black Blade of Disaster and Improved Haste takes a long time to kill enemies; the skeletons all have 50% resistance to slashing damage.
Eventually, I decide to just skip all of the optional fights and use Invisibility to collect the astrolabe fragments without fighting anyone.
We still need to kill a whole bunch of undead elves for Kaylessa and the priest lady. But then Frisk hits level 25 and gains access to a new level 9 mage spell: Shapechange.
I didn't want to take Shapechange since mind flayer form would be useless against Belhifet (for some reason IWD:EE's Enchanted Weapon spell still works like it does in vanilla BG2, even in v2.5), but it's just so much faster than anything else, and while it won't help with Belhifet, everything else in the game is perfectly vulnerable.
Better still, almost everything in Icewind Dale has 9 in every ability score, so almost everything dies in just two hits.
We still have one more piece of the astrolabe to collect. Time Stop lets us open containers and escape the area without triggering traps, and Dimension Door let us jump over the enemies who would otherwise surround us if we just relied on Invisibility.
We advance to Dorn's Deep, but go back to Kuldahar to buy Ogi-Luc's Great Robe. It's pretty terrible since it grants high STR bonuses but can only be used by single-class mages, but it'll be very nice for Frisk to wear during Time Stop, since the STR damage will apply to the Black Blade of Disaster.
Back in Dorn's Deep, we sneak by all the myconids because I don't trust Frisk's saving throws, Spell Turning, or Seven Eyes to keep them from getting confused or feebleminded by a string of myconid spore attacks, then clear out the orc and drow using Time Stop and mind flayer form.
It even works on the undead in the next area.
Icewind Dale is a pretty hard game, but we've hit the point at which our sorcerer can simply crush everything during Time Stop. All we have to do is maintain our defenses.
Shortly after we destroy the lich's phylactery, we discover that shapeshifting replaces your previous resistances, which means we don't have any of our damage immunities when in mind flayer form.
Mind flayer form does have 90% magic resistance, but a single spell could put us in critical condition if it gets past that MR, and there are some spells in IWD that ignore magic resistance entirely. A Cone of Cold spell could easily kill us in one hit if we got hit in mind flayer form. I decide to stay out of mind flayer form except during Time Stop.
We can still do more to speed things up. INT drain kills give no XP, so as long as we're relying on it to do all the work, we may as well skip the enemy grunts and only kill the bosses who carry items we need to progress.
But Time Stop isn't perfect. Apparently turning a neutral critter hostile by attacking during Time Stop can trigger a dialogue that ends the Time Stop! Our attempt to score a fast kill on Kontik fails.
Kontik can cast Cone of Cold and does bonus cold damage, so we definitely can't afford to engage her normally. But rather than revert to normal form to regain our 100% resistance to cold damage, we just down a Potion of Invisibility so we can re-cast Time Stop.
Hyper-aggressive encephalophagy fills us with determination.
Frisk: A Solo Sorcerer in Heart of Fury Mode
Part 5
Lower Dorn's Deep.Much of this chapter is optional and can be safely skipped. Frisk has just hit level 30, the level cap, and there is no need to collect any more XP. We sneak ahead to Malavon, eat his clone's brain, and then start clearing up his goons during Time Stop.
The Iron Golems are immune to +2 weapons, making mind flayer form useless against them. Time Stop is in short supply, and since Black Blade of Disaster only deals half damage, we switch to Iron Golem form to deal crushing damage to the golems instead.
Finally, we spend our last Time Stop slaying Malavon.
We spend our last Friends scroll persuading Marketh to give up without a fight. It's the only way to finish the Ginafae questline; she won't speak to you if you kill her boyfriend.
Even with 100% immunity to all forms of magical damage and all of our defenses, I don't want to tangle with the Kraken Society Mages and their Cones of Cold and Horrid Wilting spells. When the enemy boxes us in, Frisk escapes during Time Stop using Dimension Door rather than eat our way out.
It's hard to overestimate how powerful Intelligence drain is, which is saying something considering it's already one of the most famously overpowered options in the game. Even constructs are vulnerable; we can wipe out the Idol during Time Stop and make all the undead guarding it suddenly collapse.
It's still an imperfect process. Attacking Ilmadia during Time Stop causes her to initiate dialogue and break Time Stop, but we can re-cast Time Stop safely by drinking a Potion of Invisibility. The potions might be scarce, but they have the singular advantage of activating instantly and being completely uninterruptible.
We gobble up the brains of every enemy that needed to die for the sake of the main questline. Everyone else, we slipped right past.
Next is Poquelin. We can't kill him using INT drain without breaking the script and making it impossible to return to Easthaven, so we'll have to use Black Blade of Disaster instead. But to my dismay, he has a lot more HP than I expected.
Killing him with level 9 spells alone is impossible. We fall back and start summoning elementals with the help of a clone, but we have a lot of enemy pressure to deal with, and our fire elementals are crumbling under the enemy's weight.
We have no choice but to resort to Death Fog and wait for Poquelin's minions to dissolve in the cloud.
We thin the herd a little, but Poquelin is still in good shape. We hide behind invisibility until we can summon a new clone to get extra castings out of Death Fog. Poquelin can destroy our summons, but he doesn't have the AI to dispel or escape the cloud.
Spell damage is our only real option. Getting through over 700 HP is a tall order for spell damage, especially since Poquelin has magic resistance. But Project Image gives us enough castings and Death Fog deals enough damage for us to reach the numbers we need.
Eventually, Poquelin relents and we are transported to Easthaven. There's a trick for tackling Pomab: although he and all of his clones are named "Pomab" on the game screen, if you attack one of them, the dialogue box will display the clones as "False Pomab," allowing you to isolate the real one. We use this to attack him during Time Stop.
For some reason, though, Frisk's attacks keep getting interrupted; they stop attacking after two hits. Apparently we need to kill Pomab several times before he'll switch to his final, vulnerable form, at which point we can just bump him off.
We climb the ladder, where a sparkling mirror leads the way to Belhifet. Frisk takes a moment to look in the mirror.
*my human father that is
Sarevok managed to catch Shar-teel but Viconia has more practice at running away from men.
Skyler (Elf ranger, Grond0); Duoa (Human Conjurer, Gate70)
Previous updates:
The session started with a trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains to get the charisma tome. On the way Caldo & Krumm provided some brief entertainment.
Moving on to Durlag's Tower a couple of battle horrors failed to work out what was hitting them.
With reputation at 20 a bit of shopping was done in Ulgoth's Beard. Duoa bought the +3 staff there, but found shortly afterwards that had mysteriously vanished again. While not too bothered about weapons anyway that was still bad news for other owners of magic staffs.
There still seemed to be an equipment gap in the bracers department, so a trip to Firewine Bridge was next. Duoa opened up by blinding Meilum and then tried to run out of his reach ... and tried again ... and again ... and died as Meilum totally ignored the fact that he was supposed to be blind.
With all desired equipment in place, it was time to go to the Nashkel Mine. After a smooth journey down to find Mulahey there was a first scare for Skyler there. Duoa had sent in a stinking cloud and Skyler used that as cover to pump a couple of arrows into the cleric before retreating again. Unfortunately we were playing in a very laggy session and Duoa thought that Mulahey had just fallen unconscious and moved up to shoot - just as the cleric was climbing to his feet on my screen. That meant Mulahey still had quite a few HPs as he summoned some help, moved up to Skyler and started casting a spell. Skyler had obviously bought the Greenstone Amulet while at Ulgoth's Beard, but equally obviously never considered using it and would have been in deep trouble if affected by a hold person. Fortunately though she found a critical hit at the right time to prevent Mulahey finishing his spell.
Outside the mine that scare led to the amazons getting the full treatment - being blinded and affected by stinking cloud before going down to skull traps.
Back in Nashkel Rasaad has a nasty habit in our games of grabbing the XP for Nimbul, but this time Duoa made sure there would be none of that.
Tranzig, as usual talks a good fight, but is all mouth and no trousers.
After heading up to the Bandit Camp, Skyler started working through some bandits using stealth. That wasn't a great tactic as she was not only exposed to missile shots herself, but left Duoa vulnerable as well (she'd decided against spamming sleep this time). That meant that Duoa was down to a single HP by the time Taurgosz came out to play and was lucky that proved sufficient as she blinded her attacker at point-blank range.
There wasn't much action in the Cloakwood on the way to the mine. On arrival, Genthore was blinded before a stinking cloud allowed Duoa to blind Drasus as well. Meanwhile Skyler had been exchanging courtesies with Kysus - resulting in the death of the mage, but leaving Skyler confused about her next target. Fortunately Duoa had enough space to keep out of range while unleashing another malison + emotion combination.
Skyler, Ranger 7, 84 HPs, 219 kills
Duoa, Conjurer 7, 28 HPs, 56 kills, 1 death
Frisk: A Solo Sorcerer in Heart of Fury Mode
Part 6
Belhifet.Heart of Fury mode turns itself off when you start the game, so when I notice that Belhifet only has his non-HoF HP, I have to re-start the fight. This actually gives me a nice piece of information for the fight: neither magic resistance nor SI: Evocation can block the golems' poison clouds, so before I cast Time Stop, I make sure both golems emit the cloud so I don't get disrupted.
Normally you lose all of your buffs at the start of the fight, but a sorcerer can learn Spell Immunity to block the Dispel Magic with SI: Abjuration.
Once we've put some distance between us and Belhifet, we cast Time Stop and start slashing him up with Black Blade of Disaster. But Belhifet has over 1,100 HP, and a single Time Stop deals much less damage than I'd hoped (we have 19 STR thanks to a Potion of Strength and a magic ring).
We re-cast Time Stop and take another chunk out of Belhifet's health bar, but we lose our next Time Stop spell to spell disruption. Apparently the golems will fire off a new cloud every few rounds.
I now only have two level 9 spell slots left, and I know that burning them will not take down Belhifet. I want to save them so a Project Image clone can attempt a Wish-rest later. Frisk casts Simulacrum to try to deal a bit of extra damage and Belhifet keeps slashing away at us. Unfortunately, Belhifet's weapon offers no save for the poison/disease effect, unlike SoD, so we can't avoid poison damage unless we have PFMW active. We saved a lot of Elixirs of Health for this fight.
We cast PFMW and re-engage Belhifet, but all is not well. We have to flee whenever one of the golems emits another cloud (we have very few healing potions to draw on), which cuts down on the time that PFMW buys us, and neglecting our clone's buffs leaves them very vulnerable.
Black Blade of Disaster wears off. Knowing that that's our only reliable means of dealing damage to Belhifet with our lousy THAC0, and knowing that a Project Image clone would only get a single casting of Wish off the ground before Frisk took damage and canceled the spell, we spend our second-to-last level 9 spell slot on re-casting Black Blade of Disaster. Since we have lots of PFMW spells left, we're going to just tank Belhifet face-to-face until we run low on level 6 spell slots.
When PFMW runs out, I pull Frisk out so we have time to drink an Elixir of Health and cast PFMW without fear of disruption.
Then the game crashes. We have to do it all over again.
This time, I start out tanking with PFMW, and I make a point of chopping up Belhifet's allies.
But progress is slow, and I'm not sure it's worth it since our two Potions of Absorption make it almost impossible to hit Frisk. We try Time Stop again, but this time, we don't chain-cast it (we previous lost the 3rd round of Time Stop to re-casting the spell).
We bring out a clone to apply a little extra damage and keep the enemy distracted while we run across the map to cast Time Stop without fear of disruption from a stray hit from Belhifet. According to CTRL-M, we're making considerable progress.
But to my surprise, walking over traps during Time Stop still apparently triggers them. An arrow flies at us and takes down all of our buffs at once.
We have to spend many rounds re-casting our buffs, but with only a single level 9 spell, our options for actually dealing damage to Belhifet are very limited. Digging around in our inventory does bring up some darts, and while we have a limited supply of +3 darts, we have plenty of +2 darts that can hurt the Cornugons.
Frisk is wearing thin, but I think dedicating the last of our resources to bring down Belhifet with a high-pressure approach is our best bet. Back to tanking! We cast Black Blade of Disaster, our last level 9 spell, and engage Belhifet under PFMW. But this time we equip the Symbol of Corellon Larethian for a +2 bonus to THAC0, a major boon considering our poor THAC0.
We run low on PFMW spells, but tanking Belhifet is very productive. Belhifet is almost out.
We cast our very last PFMW spell and chase after Belhifet when he teleports away.
Soon, Belhifet collapses. The battle is won! Icewind Dale is over!
One solo no-reload Heart of Fury run of Icewind Dale, complete.
The early game was the critical obstacle. Charm Person was the only way we could land enough kills in Easthaven to reach Monster Summoning I, which was the only way we could handle crowds and deal enough damage to take down the various undead with their numerous immunities in the Vale of Shadows. From there, the only thing we needed to do was upgrade to fire elementals, steer clear of Static Charges from the Acolytes, Lizard Man Shamans, and Yuan-ti Priests, then kill everything with INT drain until Poquelin, who had to be killed using Death Fog, and then Belhifet, who had to be killed with Black Blade of Disaster combined with Improved Haste, Reliance in the off hand, and Time Stop and PFMW to avoid damage.
Everything else was just optimizations. Aside from the high-pressure, high-risk early game, this run was less complicated and less challenging than a normal IWD no-reload run. Icewind Dale is not an easy game, but sorcerers do have the ability to break the game in HoF mode.
I've done a no-reload run of IWD2 and a no-reload HoF run, but both of those involved parties, and a 5% chance of one character dying still gave us a lot of wiggle room when we had 3 and 6 characters, respectively.
no mods*, most of my team has nicked off somewhere and assassins are sniffing about
*I dialed the difficulty back to insane so turn undead would work
Brunash "Rise from Your Grave" the Halfling Enchanter!
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9SoD: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
SoA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6.5, 7, 8
ToB: 1
Rise, if you would... for that is our curse.
The first floor of Watcher's Keep is cleared up to the book ritual to open the gate to the second floor. Anomen levels up, which makes this his final HLA. We put the candle on the altar which causes some statues to come to life. One of the statues stuns Nalia via Power Attack due to my rustiness and general unwillingness to go all-out after having taken a break from the game for so long.
Nalia is ok due to her Stoneskin, but I have Rasaad knock the statue away from her with Shadowless Kick. The rest of the statues go down easily.
The ritual is performed. The mage statue casts PfMW with a trigger of Spell Shield + Spell Deflection + something else. Nalia removes this with a charged Wand of Spell Striking, allowing Sarevok to gib the statue with a critical backstab.
The rest of the statues fall and Korgan and Rasaad level up. Rasaad learns Shadow Stance.
On the second level, I learn to construct Ice Golems.
A Horrid Wilting trap in the slime lab dehydrates my Perfect Clay Golem MK IV and converts it into a Perfect Stone Golem, which causes it to lose its immunity to slashing and piercing weapons. In this form, the golem is far less useful to me. The second level of Watcher's Keep is cleared without any more incident. Time to fight the Chromatic Demon.
I summon the Kitthix Swarm and Haste all of us because the Chomatic Demon has huge damage resistance, so we need to carve through it with lots and lots of smaller hits instead of big ones. It survives a Deathbringer Assault from Sarevok! After beating on it for a few rounds, it dies. This laboratory is suited to build golems, so I'll create Perfect Clay MK V before descending to level 3.
I'm feeling antsy about descending down to level 3. aTweaks makes demons and devils significantly stronger, not to mention all the dead magic zones in the maze. I must be careful. We arrive at Tahazzar's group and they spare us from attacking immediately due to my non-good alignment, which lets us make the first moves. I summon in my planetar and the Kitthix Swarm and haste everyone, then Nalia and I both use a charged Wish. The Kitthix swarm attacks Tahazzar to initiate the fight.
Improved Haste on party, Resurrection, Hardiness, Greater Deathblow, Breach on enemies, and Rest are my 6 wishes. The Greater Deathblow wish allows us to shred through the Glabrezus and Quasits, the most troublesome enemies, in one hit. Nalia's wishes are irrelevant because all the enemies are already dead. Apparently my planetar scored a vorpal hit on Tahazzar; and here I was worried that would happen to one of my party members.
The next area is a dead magic zone with demons rushing to take a bite out of our squishiest party members. Anomen and Rasaad fail a save vs. spell and lose their composure, but the rest of us pull through.
A succubus and Alu-fiends bar our path. Nalia uses a charged Spell Striking wand to eliminate their PfMW but Korgan gets charmed by the succubus. I try to throw out a Dispel Magic but Korgan kills the Perfect Stone Golem with Crom Faeyr before it hits, causing it to split into 2 normal ones.
Released from her hold, Korgan enrages to prevent that from happening again. All thots are slain soon after. Next we arrive at Ka'rashur's domain. I wasn't expecting them to attack immediately and I only have Stoneskin active with nobody else buffed. Not good.
I start with Improved Alacrity, then begin my standard buffing routine with extra defenses thrown in that I can cast instantly, with some debuffs and disablers too along with a charged Wish. By the time the genies are summoned, most things are already dead. The wishes don't help much since the fight was already won in the blink of an eye. Rasaad levels up and his movement rate severely increases.
The tiefling wild magic area is cleared easily. Sarevok executes the mage with a backstab and our tanks kill the fighters. Onto the demon wraith room, I immediately loot the area with quickloot and then "NOPE" the fuck out of there into Aesgareth's party. That is one fight that I will not be taking on because its absolutely not worth it.
Sarevok gains the white dragon armor from the Demon Wraith's room. Against Aesgareth, I have Nalia cast SI: Necromancy and play Aesgareth for the golem building tome. She draws Plague while Aesgareth draws Construct, which causes him to win the draw, though he steals no XP from Nalia due to the SI: necromancy. Anomen removes her Plague curse.
We try again. Nalia draws Guile.
Aesgareth draws The Empress and wins, but does not steal any of Nalia's XP. We say "screw it" and fight Aesgareth, and win. I learn to build Magic Golems, though I don't plan on actually making one.
Now, about the deck...
I buff myself with Spell Trap and SI: Evocation to avoid Euryale, and pack on as many save bonuses as I can to avoid imprisonment.
The elementals and the balor are easily put down. Damn, no Throne card for me. I rest and buff again, this time with SI: Alteration. I draw Rogue, but it has no effect on me because of the good ol' Staff of the Magi.
I rest and buff with SI: Necromancy to avoid Fool. I draw Talons, which is Conjuration, and it affects Anomen too, but its nothing the Planetar can't fix.
I draw from the Deck again to get rid of it. That was a flop. Time to move on to Watcher's Keep 4.
Brunash - Enchanter 23
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 30
Korgan - Berserker 28
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 30
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 13
Nalia - Sorcerer 23