Not by changing the saving throw usage. But you get similar behaviour by changing all spell effects to have 95% to allow a save and 5% no save. That's quite a task though
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...
A lot fewer enemies use nonmagical weapons in IWD:EE than in vanilla, at least as of v2.5. Protection from Magical Weapons blocked a lot of attacks in Frisk's run.
The landing of Watcher's Keep 4 and both the illithid and githyanki enclaves are cleared out easily. I dumbly decide to let Anomen take on the Demilich alone. Fortunately, he is wearing the Cloak of the Sewers and he transforms into the Mustard Jelly just before the demilich stops time, which should protect him against any magical assaults.
The Demilich's initial volley of spells fail as I predicted and it casts a second Time Stop. Again, the Demilich's attacks are foiled by the jelly's 100% magic resistance. Anomen's save vs. death is good, so he resists all Trap the Soul attempts. Anomen soon returns to normal form and the Demilich begins spamming Horrid Wilting. Anomen's save vs. spell is also good enough to take half damage from it, though he needs to cast Greater Restoration on himself after the third one. The Demilich seems to be getting desperate and simply bombards Anomen with damage spells in hopes of killing him, but Anomen continues to weather the magical storm, switching to the Flail of Ages +4 to hamper it with Slow and elemental damage since it has many Stoneskin layers.
Anomen eventually kills it with elemental damage, causing him and me to level up. That was actually kind of embarassing.
Time for Saladrex. I send out the Improved Kitthix swarm in hopes of poisoning Sally, but they get toasted.
Next I send out the first Improved Elemental Swarm. The ones that aren't fire elementals get toasted too. Nalia sends hers out as well.
They drill through Sally's stoneskins and kill him. I learn to build Lightning Golems from the tome that he had.
Back in the landing for Watcher's Keep 4, the torches are lit and the minotaur guardians are slain. Carston is freed of his prison and we let him go, because SCS has an irritating habit of crashing the game if you kill a mage before they fire all their protection sequencers and contingencies. Rasaad levels up and learns his final new technique.
Time to operate the Machine of Lum the Mad. I get +1 CHA, +5% MR. Rasaad gets +1 DEX and +1 CON for an extra 9 HP. Anomen gets +1 WIS and +1 INT to help survive any future brain-drain attempts by Illithid by 1 hit. Sarevok gets +1 STR to put him in giant-class with everyone except me so he can carry more potions. I'm not going to attempt the 100k XP jackpot because I took the good path in one of the hell trials, which required a -1 DEX sacrifice, and I'm not comfortable going below 18. On to Watcher's Keep 5.
I beat the imp at some riddles and then take on the green dragon. I summon my Improved Elemental Swarm, but then notice Perfect Clay MK V is completely immune to whatever the dragon attempts.
I send the swarm in anyway and the dragon gets rekt.
I place the skull of the hero on the altar and breeze through it, thanks to the warrior wielding the Killsword (as featured in Gaspar's ctrl+q playthrough). I never liked that part. The orcish horde is defeated thanks to Storm of Vengeance and a planetar. Next is the orb room. Red is cleared. I try purple next and Anomen gibs everything easily, up until the double lich fight. I'm not exactly sure what happened to the first lich, it may have been gibbed by Anomen, but the Elemental Lich gives us more trouble.
Both liches cast Horrid Wilting, dealing heavy damage to Anomen and dehydrating yet another of my Perfect Clay Golems. After the elemental lich fires off its arsenal during the Time Stop, it summons 3 Mordy Swords which I kill with Death Spell as the Perfect Stone Golem is destroyed along with its offspring. Anomen approaches it and attempts to turn it. It works and it flees into a corner. With the lich in a panic, Anomen beats it to life with the improved Mace of Disruption.
Onto green, Rasaad is killed by the triple earth elemental fight because he failed his save vs. 3 Earthquakes but Anomen brings him back with a Mass Raise Dead spell.
Before taking on the seal guardians, I build Perfect Clay MK VI. Then we fight the Rilmanis first. The Aurumach leader is immune to casting failure and has a casting speed bonus of 4 (equal to the Robe of Vecna), so I have Korgan use GWW to get as much damage in as possible before it stops time. But Korgan manages to kill it before it can.
The rest of the Rilmanis fold like tissue paper. Next up is Azamantes. I'm keeping Perfect Clay MK VI away from him because I just know he's got a Horrid Wilting in store. Sarevok lays a couple of traps for him, but it barely damages him at all. He fires up PfMW and I cast a charged Wish. My second wish is the 2x Time Stop + Improved Alacrity. I'll use this to wait out his PfMW and kill him with Shapechange: Mind Flayer after his buff wears off. Sure enough...
Good. I usually don't go for stat-drain kills because it yields no XP, but I can live without 25k. The Time Stop wears off but my third wish is another 2x Time Stop + IA combo. Guess I'll drain the skulls too.
My other wishes are not granted because the genies get unsummoned from waiting too long. Now for the amazonian demon band. Sarevok lays some traps for their arrival. I need to take out the Hive Mother and Y'tossi as fast as possible because they are the major threats. Y'tossi dies pretty much instantly thanks to a lucky vorpal hit from the Planetar.
Nalmissra follows soon after because she's useless. Then the Hive Mother after a series of Wishes, filled with healing and an improved haste on the party. The others collapse easily, with Xei Win Toh getting filleted by the Improved Kitthix Swarm. That's it. The seal is open.
I'm trying my hand at a solo Heart of Fury run of Icewind Dale 2 with a human sorcerer. We just took down Caballus and the last of the Targos goblins at level 17. We actually didn't use much of our spells; we summoned three Boneguard Skeletons for our first three Animate Dead spells instead of zombies, and the Boneguard Skeletons have damage reduction against piercing and slashing damage, making them immune to the attacks of the vast majority of the goblins. They did basically all of the work against the invasion.
Once we hit level 18, we will choose Aegis, which will give us 10 rounds of MGOI, 15- elemental resistances, Stoneskin, +2 saves, Freedom of Movement, +5 deflection AC, +3 spell resistance, and undispellable immunity to Dispel Magic. Combined with Mind Blank, we should be immune to every disabler aside from stun.
That still leaves us with very poor AC and vulnerability to Finger of Death and Disintegrate. To solve the AC problem, we're just going to have to rely on our summons. We'll get immunity to Disintegrate at level 26, which should come before the enemy ever casts the spell, but we won't get Death Ward until we get to cleric level 9, which will come at total level 27 or 29. We've still go issues to deal with, including the high-pressure fight at Shaengarne Bridge and numerous fights in the late game.
Tactics4IWD2 includes a component that gives the player some substantial boosts for Heart of Fury mode, including +10 AC, +2 to ability scores, immunity to Disintegrate at level 26, and constant effect Improved Alacrity. These bonuses are actually most important for defensive purposes: we can always summon a wall of critters and bomb from afar, even without Improved Alacrity, but being able to cast Invisibility at any time is a huge boon.
I won't be using exploits in this run if I can help it. No potion swap glitch; not Resilient Sphere+Fire Shield trick; no scroll/gem/Potion of Explosions duplication; and no import/export trick. No mod-introduced items, either.
Shaengarne Bridge could be very nasty because we can't flee or rest, but the script suggests that we can complete the quest even if the bridge is destroyed.
I forgot to mention: I've also installed a component from Tactics4IWD2 that reduces HP for summoned critters, so summons will not dominate IWD2 the way they did in IWD:EE. I won't be able to just steamroll everything with Animate Dead and Shades.
I do have Vipergout, however, which Tactics4IWD2 buffs. Vipergout summons a single viper per round for one round per level, and each viper lasts for 3 rounds. You can't cast spells while it's in effect, but Caballus' Whispering Staff allows us to cast Invisibility Sphere even while Vipergout is in effect. This means we can have a virtually immortal summons for one round per level, since any viper that dies will be replaced within seconds. It won't deal a bunch of damage, but it should be very draining to enemy spellcasters.
Shaengarne Bridge went well! The key was using Otiluke's Resilient Sphere to isolate Xuki so we could deal with the non-mages more easily. We relied heavily on Animate Dead to tank the enemy while we applied spell damage via Horrid Wilting, which is party-unfriendly but cannot affect undead. Vipergout was instrumental in taking down Xuki and the other two mages on the other side of the map, as we wouldn't have had enough summons to deal with the enemy otherwise.
We managed to stay out of range of the Malarite Priests' Call Lightning spells, which is important because our only other defense against Call Lightning is Aegis. Aegis grants immunity to level 1-3 spells, but the problem is that in IWD2, like in vanilla, pre-EE IWD1, MGOI blocks your own spells as well. The moment we cast Aegis, we can't cast Mirror Image or Invisibility for the next 10 rounds, leaving us incapable of surviving much pressure unless we can escape using Improved Invisibility, which bypasses the MGOI effect of Aegis.
Animate Dead and Horrid Wilting also got us through much of the Horde Fortress's exterior, though we had to do some careful resource management and make sure we kept the shamans away from the War Drums.
We should be able to coast on our existing options all the way through the Horde Fortress and maybe even the ice wall, if not even further. But since we only have 12 Wisdom, we can only cast level 1 and 2 cleric spells even after we start taking cleric levels. It'll be a long time before we get any WIS-boosting items, and since I have 6 levels waiting to level up, I can't use them for sorcerer levels without leaving very little room for cleric levels in the late game. We're probably going to hold off on leveling up for a very long time.
I can't tell you how long I've been saving "Heaven-Piercing" as a title for an entry in this no-reload run. This occasion warrants it, I think, because it's the fight against Ascension's Tougher Demogorgon.
To start, I use a charged Wish to grant us some buffs, namely Improved Haste and Hardiness. Nalia summons a planetar and Rasaad activates Lunar Stance since the very first thing Demogorgon does is stop time. Both of us will be immune to it.
I start using a charged scroll of Pierce Shield to lower Demogorgon's MR, as he is immune to Lower Resistance outright. Rasaad gets held by an Implosion spell and then dies during the Time Stop.
Dammit. Everyone else rushes in. I cast a charged Wish but don't get the Resurrection option, so Nalia attempts one of her own to try to bring back Rasaad while I activate Improved Alacrity and heavily buff myself. I throw out a few AoE debuffs and a Horrid Wilting in hopes that the demons' MR fails to protect them. Anomen and Korgan go ballistic on Demogorgan trying to carve through his stoneskins. The planetar gets vorpalled by the Balor.
Anomen casts Death Ward on himself to avoid such a fate and starts beating up the Balors. I was in the middle of casting Mass Invisibility for the save boosts, so I replace the planetar with another once I finish, but it gets stunned somehow. Nalia is stunned by a Power Word and the demons start crowding around us to take advantage.
I protect myself from magic weapons and summon the Improved Elemental Swarm to surround us as Anomen rushes over to Nalia to cast Free Action. Her stoneskins are protecting her for now. Korgan unleashes a GWW and makes serious progress in damaging Demogorgon.
Anomen finishes his casting and Nalia is freed, and her concentration hasn't been broken yet despite her Stoneskin getting completely used up and then taking a few hits, so Nalia continues the casting of the charged Wish and finishes it. A few seconds later, Demogorgon is destroyed. Now for cleanup duty. A glabrezu teleports over to Nalia but she puts up another Stoneskin. Finally, her genies start granting wishes.
But the demons are just about dead once Nalia's wishes start getting granted. Rasaad gets brought back with a wish after having missed almost the entirety of the fight, and there are no more demons left to slay. It's done. Rasaad, Sarevok, and Nalia all level up, and I get this interesting little prize from Demogorgon's defeat.
Not that I'll get to level 33 in this playthrough to utilize it, but this will let me create a single Perfect Adamantite Golem. Alas, the Pet Basilisk trick will only get you so far. We exit Watcher's Keep and spare the Watch Knights. The rest of ToB awaits.
Screenshots! Our sorcerer is Frisky Bits, this time with a new portrait with Frisk nuzzling Asriel.
With our summons nerfed, we have to rely pretty heavily on spell damage. The Improved Alacrity effect from Tactics4IWD2's HoF tweaks makes cheap mobs much less of a hassle to deal with.
Since I'm using a workaround to get the Improved Initiative feat to work (even with patches, the feat does nothing by itself), Frisky Bits has a -1 bonus to casting speed, which means we can spam one Chromatic Orb spell per frame. Chromatic Orb paralyzes the target for 13 rounds on a failed Reflex save, and while the base save DC is low due to it being a level 1 spell, our sky-high Charisma (boosted even further by Eagle's Splendor) and two pips in the Spell Focus: Evocation feat give our Chromatic Orbs a crushing save DC of 23. It's not always reliable, but if we burn the spell slots, we have a decent shot at disabling even high-end targets like Tactics mages.
Phaen, like basically every mage in the Tactics4IWD2 mod, pre-buffs with Improved Invisibility, but that doesn't grant immunity to single-target spells in IWD2; it just imposes a 50% miss chance (25% with the Blind-Fight feat).
As I mentioned before, we get lucky with our Animate Dead spells on the final assault on Targos, getting three Boneguard Skeletons instead of zombies. The basic goblins can't even scratch the Boneguards; only the bosses of this fight can touch them.
Undead are immune to Horrid Wilting, so when the friendly critters like Olap Tamewater are out of the way, we can bomb the goblins with magic damage. Spells get a base save DC equal to 10 plus the spell level, so high-level spells like Horrid Wilting are much harder to save against. Having two pips in Spell Focus: Necromancy makes it even harder.
I have to be very careful about positioning, though. If Frisky Bits gets inside the radius of Horrid Wilting, they'd lose about 75% of their HP on a failed save.
As for Caballus, he has a much better Reflex save than Phaen, but a Resilient Sphere spell has a save DC of 26 compared to a Chromatic Orb's 23. We still need Caballus to make a very low roll in order to get trapped, but we get the roll we need on the first try.
We clear up the local goblins while Caballus is trapped so we don't have any distractions when Caballus escapes. He spams his own Animate Dead spells (disrupting enemy mage spells is extremely challenging in IWD2 in HoF mode; spell disruption can be prevented by skill checks), but I keep re-sending our undead the order to attack Caballus instead of his summons. Eventually we eat through his multiple Stoneskin spells, multiple Mirror Image spells, and massive HoF HP in spite of the 50% miss chance imposed by his Improved Invisibility.
By the way, this is the reason I'm not using mod items:
It costs over 100,000 gold, but that's actually affordable in HoF mode. In IWD2, playing HoF mode means you get HoF items, which are basically significantly higher-powered versions of normal IWD2 items. So, a +1 weapon will become a +3 weapon with some special effects, and a +3 weapon will become a +5 weapon with some really crazy powers on top.
Those items are also worth thousands of gold. Merely by completing the Veira questline in Targos, we got a magical dagger that netted 16,000 gold when selling it.
Another valuable source of gold are Arrows of Fire, which for some reason have absurdly high high prices considering they just deal 1d6 fire damage. You can find them on Orc Firestarters, but if you let them shoot the arrows, you can't collect any from their bodies. Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (which cast instantly thanks to Improved Initiative!) holds them in place while we bomb the other orcs from behind the wall of kegs.
Chromatic Orb paralyzes the other Orc Firestarters in the area. We get a brief scare in one of the late fights when we accidentally catch Frisky Bits in our own Skull Trap spell.
In IWD2, Stoneskin grants no protection from spells, even those that deal physical damage like Skull Trap or Lance of Disruption. Stoneskin only blocks the first 10 damage from hits from weapons below +5 enchantment (+5 weapons ignore it outright) and only absorbs at most 150 damage before vanishing, so it's a very important defensive tool, but it is not remotely as strong as it is in the other IE games.
Mirror Image, however, can block area-effect spells of all kinds, and I'm not sure it's even possible to hit somebody without first removing their Mirror Images, making it very similar to the Stoneskin spell from BG and IWD.
Anyway, once we sell off all the Arrows of Fire from the first orc area, we can afford the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits, a +5 longsword that grants +2 STR and DEX, +25 HP, Freedom of Movement, and constant effect Haste, which means +1 APR and +4 AC. It's a fabulous defensive asset that works great when dual-wielded.
Frisky Bits has terrible THAC0 (also known as AB, attack bonus, in IWD2) and it's even worse when they try to dual-wield without the Ambidexterity or Two-Weapon Fighting feats, or even a single pip in longswords, but we get automatic hits against disabled critters, so it'll be very helpful in taking down enemies who fail their Reflex saves against Chromatic Orb.
As in Targos, we get through fights primarily by hiding behind undead summons and throwing out Horrid Wilting. When our summons aren't around, we resort to other damage spells, like Sunfire or Delayed Blast Fireball. Delayed Blast Fireball deals 1d8 damage instead of 1d6, has the widest area of effect of any damage spell in the IE games, and scales all the way to level 30, making it the highest-damage spell in the game, second only to Fiery Cloud (a damage over time spell).
With a save DC of 31, Frisky Bits' DBFB can bring almost anything to Near Death with a couple of castings, including our own summons.
Notice we have a summoned dog in that screenshot. We used Monster Summoning I, our fastest-casting summoning spell, because we arrived in that area without summons and needed a quick wall.
At the Shaengarne Bridge, Xuki plays out much the same as Caballus did. We have a 30% chance per casting of trapping her with Otiluke' Resilient Sphere and manage to land it on the second try.
That semi-transparent Frost Giant is our own. The level 6 Shades spell summons illusory critters whose power scales with levels, making it a very cheap alternative to other high-end summoning spells.
We nail one of the ogres trying to destroy the bridge with a Chromatic Orb on the second try and then start applying spell damage. Oddly enough, the bridge's support beams take damage from Horrid Wilting.
Frisky Bits paralyzes the other ogre and moves in for the kill with the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits in our off hand and a special bastard sword in our main hand that deals 5d6 acid damage on hit (one of my mods buffs bastards swords because they're pretty terrible in the vanilla game). Automatic hits help us bring down the ogre fast.
Without those automatic hits, Frisky Bits has basically no chance of hitting anything when dual-wielding. Their best attack roll has an AB of -4, which is the equivalent of 24 THAC0 in a 2nd edition game. But against a disabled target, we can land four attacks per round.
When the map begins to clear, Frisk casts Vipergout, uses Caballus' Whispering Staff to go invisible despite being unable to cast spells, and camps out in the corner while spitting out vipers to bite Xuki once she breaks out of the sphere. She lasts a really long time thanks to her mage buffs, but the constantly respawning vipers are effectively immortal as long as Vipergout lasts; her spells are all wasted on them.
There are two other mages left, hiding out in the west. We go scout them out, successfully trap one of them, and then fall back so we can focus on bombing the rest of the melee horde from behind a wall of undead. We start with Horrid Wilting, then switch to Delayed Blast Fireball when our summons are about to die anyway.
We kill the mages with two more castings of Vipergout and clear up the survivors with our last summons.
While shopping, I get a reminder that there is one way to achieve immunity to Finger of Death without needing Death Ward. It's a weapon I've never actually used, but is actually quite excellent.
I can't afford it, though. HoF items are designed to be affordable by full parties who arrive in HoF mode after completing normal mode, and therefore have tens of thousands of gold in extra loot they can sell off. Frisky Bits can only afford a few precious items in Targos before we'll have to leave later on.
The exterior of the Horde Fortress is very dangerous. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you let the shamans reach the War Drums; they can summon Goblin Worg Riders infinitely if you don't stop them. I sneak across the bridge while invisible to trigger the traps, rest, and then come back to summon a few undead to destroy the nearby War Drum. IWD2 enemy AI is weak enough that the rest of the enemies don't even respond, despite our summons being in their field of vision.
After that, dealing with the remaining enemies is a matter of bombing, summoning, re-casting Mirror Image, and then going invisible when the pressure on Frisky Bits becomes too much to bear.
Somehow we've triggered the entry of a bunch of Goblin Worg Riders despite having destroyed the War Drum. We head north, tanking a lot of trap damage while still invisible, and discover that somehow we've triggered the shamans at a separate War Drum all the way across the map!
We paralyze both shamans using Chromatic Orb to stop them from summoning Goblin Worg Riders and get to work.
Our last major enemy is Trugnuk. He comes bolstered by multiple spellcasters and lots of archers and melee enemies, and they're all positioned in such a way that you can't reach the War Drum without getting flanked or getting boxed into a corner. But I manage to find a place where I can cast Animate Dead without being noticed and then send our summons over to the drum.
Only when the undead are there do I send in Frisky Bits, whose presence allows our summons to attack the War Drum, and also allows the enemy to attack our summons. An Invisibility spell forces the nearest enemies to switch targets and attack our undead, giving Frisky Bits lots of breathing room to cast Chaos and then start spamming Horrid Wilting.
Notice the Dispel Magic coming from the enemy. Frisky Bits doesn't have Aegis to block it, but our summons were the target anyway, making Frisky Bits safe. Also note that Chaos' +4 save penalty effectively makes it strike as a level 9 spell with a base 19 save DC. In Frisky Bits' hands, that amounts to a save DC of 30, and since enemy fighters have poor Will saves, it can really screw with enemy hordes.
The enemy changes targets and chases after Frisky Bits, but with Mirror Image and Invisibility spells, we escape the pressure and can win the fight once we find a safe place to re-engage.
Basically all of the same tactics work in the interior of the Horde Fortress, but in the spirit of an Undertale-themed run, not all monsters should be fought.
The only truly new thing about the interior is using Aegis to block Dispel Magic and using Improved Invisibility to escape combat when Aegis makes Frisky Bits immune to Invisibility and Invisibility Sphere. Otherwise it's just more pictures of Delayed Blast Fireball and Horrid Wilting.
The top of Horde Fortress is a disaster waiting to happen. We have multiple spellcasters, lots of enemies, very little room in which to navigate, and Tactics4IWD2 gives both Arrows of Fire (good loot) and Arrows of Lesser Dispelling to the orcish archers.
Arrows of Lesser Dispelling have a 25% chance of dispelling magic on a failed Will save. The save DC is pathetic--it's a base 10, making it almost useless for the player--but with a 5% chance of a critical failure on the save, that amounts to a 1.25% chance of losing all of our buffs with every arrow they land on us. And there are multiple archers, each of which will have multiple attacks per round, and they will have very high accuracy rates.
Our only means of blocking the dispel magic effect is to use Aegis, which will also block the even more fatal Ice Lance spells from the enemy shamans. However, being unable to cast Mirror Image for 10 rounds basically means we're toast if we suffer more than just the slightest pressure. We'd have to cast Aegis, hole up at the exit, and then spam spells until we eventually get overwhelmed and are forced to retreat. Clearing the area would take numerous rests and a very long time.
Our reward would be quite lovely--tens of thousands of gold and XP--but the time and the risk are not worth it. I head inside, where I discover that the Tactics mod makes the Old Orc into a monk!
Stunning Attack works differently from a BG2-style monk's Stunning Blow. Stunning Attack only works for one single hit, no matter how many attacks you have in a single round, but the save DC scales very high: the DC for Stunning Attack is equal to 10 plus half the monk's level plus its Wisdom modifier.
That Old Orc's Stunning Attack probably has a save DC well north of 20, which is more than enough to reliably pin down Frisky Bits. A single round of automatic hits could easily spell Frisky Bits' doom; a second Stunning Attack would guarantee it.
Instead, we go invisible, only to find that the Old Orc can somehow see through invisibility. We have to run around to wait out the duration of Stunning Attack. Eventually, we summon some beetles to distract the bugbears and then paralyze the Old Orc with a Chromatic Orb.
Our normal tactics take down most of the other enemies at the top of Horde Fortress headquarters: Animate Dead and Shades for the enemy grunts, Chromatic Orb for the priests, and Vipergout and Invisibility Sphere for the Goblin Sorcerers. I'll deal with Guthma later.
Frisky Bits has fallen at the Horde Fortress. After taking down Guthma (Chromatic Orb on the spellcasters; Animate Dead and Horrid Wilting on the fighters), I realized that I'd forgotten all about Braston. Assuming that you can't complete the quest without leading him safely to Ennelia outside, I decided to try to clear the field outside.
I tried numerous tactics to thin the herd. Here's what you're dealing with:
That's 30 archers, 10 spellcasters, and 41 melee fighters, for a total of 81 enemies and maybe 16,000 HP across the lot of them.
They are spread out fairly evenly across the map; there are no positions where you can act without being flanked. They won't follow you during invisibility, but the moment you break invisibility, lots of them will approach, and their sheer numbers translate into very dramatic movement patterns. Think of them as a very dense and very wide moving wall with very rare gaps. They will make short work of any summoned critters. It might be different without Tactics4IWD2's "Moderate HP for summons" component, but they will kill your summons faster than you can bring them out.
The orc archers have an attack bonus of 40 and will remove an extra Mirror Image per hit thanks to the fire damage from their arrows. They have 2 or 3 attacks per round. You need an AC of 60 to force them to roll a critical hit, so they'll quickly remove your Mirror Images and leave you vulnerable to the melee critters.
The spellcasters will use Hold Person, (irrelevant thanks to Freedom of Movement from either the Golden Heart of Charname or Vghotan's Band), Chromatic Orb (also irrelevant for the same reasons), Dispel Magic, Unholy Blight, and Ice Lance, so Aegis is your only guarantee against losing your buffs, getting stunned, or suffering lots of magic damage. This limits your escape options, because the only way to go invisible under Aegis is to use Improved Invisibility, which has a fairly long casting time compared to Invisibility. The only character that could tank this fight is a high-AC tank; you'd basically need to have monk levels.
Crowd control is not an option so long as the spellcasters remain active. The spellcasters will cast Dispel Magic on their allies if they're under the effects of Chaos or what have you, and in IWD2, Dispel Magic works automatically on your allies; only enemies get a saving throw against its effects.
Attempts to use Vipergout failed. Due to the enemy's movement patterns, it's impossible to get the vipers to focus on one target; the other enemies will crowd around the previous one and box them out.
They'd be strong enough to kill at least one enemy before Vipergout expired, but only if they could focus on a single target. Nor could we get very close to the enemy to keep the vipers close to their target, since a Dispel Magic spell might reveal us.
Getting boxed in is a serious concern. Unless you're a druid and use shapeshifting to teleport to the nearest free space, only summons can break the box and let you escape. But summoning spells have long casting times and leave you very vulnerable. We escaped once due to having some pre-existing summons who could lure the enemy away.
Even when I lured the enemy to one side of the map and then started summoning critters on the other end of the map, I did not have enough time to do much before the enemy reached us and overwhelmed our summons. I only took down a very small number of critters.
We went downstairs, rested, and returned. We made more progress by trapping the spellcasters with Resilient Sphere and spamming Sunfire, but without summons, we couldn't take the pressure and had to retreat.
Repeating the process got us some more kills. But the next time we went upstairs, I found myself directly in the middle of the enemy, already boxed in.
Apparently the point at which you arrive in this area is a short distance away from the point at which you can exit. This means that if you flee the area while the enemy is already crowding around the stairway, you will be unable to go back downstairs unless you slay the enemies directly behind you.
With absolutely nowhere to go and enemies on all sides, we couldn't cast Aegis; we needed to be able to re-cast Mirror Image. This left us with no defense against Icelance.
However, testing found that all of this could have been avoided. First, you don't need Braston to survive in order to complete the quest; all you have to do is kill Guthma and get out. Second, that stairway is not your only exit: you can also flee via the main gate to the south. It's still possible to get boxed in, but you do have an alternative to the crowded stairway.
The Deepstone Clanhold beckons. Its been so long since the last time I did this companion quest that I forget what to expect except for good equipment for Rasaad. We take out some Sharrans and sneak into the clanhold by riding the logs down the stream. Once inside, Sarevok scouts out the area under invisibility.
We start the fight with the Sharrans under Mass Invisibility to take them on from a different angle. They are wiped out without trouble.
In the next room, Sarevok trips a trap.
Intense frustration fills me. Goodbye magical stuff I wanted for Rasaad. Shani is protected by Stoneskin so Sarevok can't just one-shot her. She goes under Mislead but Sarevok kills her clone, immediately exposing her to a vicious beatdown by the rest of the party. I check the containers and it looks like the magical stuff actually survived, but I check NearInfinity and see that the Night Walker boots have been destroyed. Turns out none of that monk stuff was good enough to replace anything for Rasaad, so I just roll my eyes and continue on.
We carve our way through the rest of the clanhold and free the dwarves as we go, then we go into the Plane of Shadows. Sarevok is just 2 levels away from regaining his fighter abilities.
Time for Alorgoth and Yxtrazzal. I have our fighters concentrate on the dragon while Rasaad, Nalia, and I concentrate on Alorgoth. The dragon dies quickly.
Alorgoth is effectively unkillable thanks to his MINHP1 ring, so we make our escape from the Plane of Shadows using the Wheel of Obliteration. Except for us mages, our party is taking damage from some unknown source with each passing round, so we have to get out quick. We're pretty beaten up by the time we make it out.
After Rasaad's quest is finished, we sell the loot to Karthis Al-Hezzar and build Perfect Iron MK I!
It is completely immune to elemental damage and takes no damage from piercing and missiles, with 75% slashing resist and 50% crushing resist. It needs +3 weapons to hit and deals 4d10+12 damage. Its gas cloud is its most potent weapon: every second for about a round and a half, opponents must save vs. death at -2 or be poisoned for 1 HP/sec for 3 rounds.
Nyalee's ruins are cleared.
All goes well in the fire giant temple until a Fire Lich appears.
I didn't expect it to be in this room, I thought it was in room on the opposite side. Anomen gibs its Mislead clone via turning, but only turns the lich. Even so, the Fire Lich spams Meteor Swarm at us and some Noble Efreetis also bombard us with Fire Storm, forcing us to retreat. I summon a planetar to help eradicate the lich, but it looks like it wasn't even needed since it didn't have PfMW up.
I scribe a Protection from Fire scroll and charge it up to place it on all party members. Its pretty clear that enemies here like to use fire. In the next room, the Planetar and Perfect Iron solo a bunch of Burning Men and Noble Fire Salamanders. The planetar is ok but Perfect Iron takes a beating. Anomen opens the container surrounded by lava and we get ambushed by more burning men, one of which casts Banefire on me, dispelling all my buffs!
These things are so annoying. They are luckily already dead, but they'll make for a good candidate for dominating with either the Staff of Command or the Enchanter's Staff +5. From a charged wish from earlier, I replenish my buffs and have Nalia cast Protection from Fire on me. All the wardstones are gathered and we head upstairs. The fire giants are slaughtered with ease, and we encounter Brimstone the dragon.
Fortunately, dragonslaying is so routine for us.
We encounter Imix next, but Sarevok hasn't recovered his fighter levels yet, so nobody in our party can hit Imix with the Wave +4. Gotta do this the hard way. I expended Wish already and didn't get the Rest option, so I resort to a charged Horrid Wilting scroll, which thins the elementals' ranks nicely.
We return to the pocket plane and forge the Axe of the Unyielding +5, which Korgan now dual-wields with Crom Faeyr. Back at Nyalee's glade, the axe is already proving itself.
Next we fight Yaga-Shura. We buff up and charge on in. I use a charged wish to grant us buffs, and also intoxicate everyone on the map. This will ensure that any elemental damage rolls for its maximum, so I have Anomen cast Mass Cure on us to remove our own intoxication.
Nalia uses a charged wish and causes a Horrid Wilting to affect everyone on the map and then heals us back to full. It wipes out Yaga-Shura's drunken soldiers, but also nuked the fleeing commoners, obliterating our reputation. Crap...
Eventually, the army is destroyed. We wait for about 20 seconds, and Yaga-Shura and his entourage appear. Not long after they do, his goons are dispatched and Yaga-Shura gets decapitated by Korgan.
The Solar pulls us back to the Pocket Plane for a talk. I choose to be nice to the Solar to get the Mass Healing ability from the second challenge room. Sarevok now has his fighter abilities back which vastly improves his saving throws, and he's going to be exceedingly deadly in one-on-one combat (as if he wasn't already)! The challenge room is easily completed and the new Bhaal power is mine. Now I have a way to quickly and fully heal my party without relying in Wish, in addition to removing certain status effects including intoxication.
Today's session started with a descent into the Cloakwood Mine. The battle horrors were malisoned and then pulled back to be blinded - allowing Skyler to easily hide and get sneak attacks in. She was relatively low on HPs, but was still happy to use a potion of magic blocking to engage Davaeorn - he was not happy about the result.
In the City there was the usual targeting of tomes, but Duoa also took the opportunity to pen Lothander in to grab his boots of speed.
There was a nasty moment when Marek ignored damage to confuse Skyler. Marek died within a couple of seconds after that, which left Skyler free to attack nearby innocents - providing a high potential for fallen ranger syndrome. Duoa nipped in to try and blind Skyler, but only managed to put her body on the line floor instead. Her sacrifice was not in vain though as the slight delay allowed Skyler to first go inactive and then run away and no further attacks were made before she came to her senses.
Skyler attempted to convince a priest to hand over a tome for free, but without success and it was left to Duoa to cast friends and show how major sucking up should work.
At the Iron Throne Duoa threw in some disablers before attacking. There was a potential problem when Alai managed to send a confusion back, but Skyler had time to get out of the area of effect and was able to finish off the casters while Duoa was disabled. She then sneaked up on Zhalimar to attack him, while Duoa also attacked - but before Zhalimar switched weapons and Duoa had to scurry away after taking arrow damage.
Moving on to Candlekeep various traps were tanked while grabbing the tomes. There was an amusing moment though when Duoa put 3 of the spiders down using emotion - but that didn't stop them teleporting (one step on from sleep walking I suppose).
A few dopplegangers later and Prat's gang got the malisoned disabler treatment - none of them managing to break free.
Duoa didn't have PfP memorized, so Skyler used a green scroll to attack the basilisks. With one of those down and the other at near death Duoa felt the need to make one final contribution and tried blinding the basilisk. Unfortunately her line of sight wasn't perfect and as she approached the basilisk she froze in place. Luckily Skyler had been given some Stone to Flesh scrolls by Degrodel and was able to get the party moving again straight away.
Back in the City Slythe and then Krystin were hit with dispelling arrows.
Skyler then tried to get into the palace only to be told that the letter he'd dropped on the floor was not the one to Quenash, but an invitation to the palace. A short detour later and battle was joined. The only buff used was an oil of speed to make Skyler's arrows of dispelling more effective, though Duoa also put some monsters up ahead of time. That was a relatively low-powered assault and things looked like becoming a bit too interesting when Belt got to near death before the dopplegangers were brought under control.
We didn't manage to retreat quite far enough after killing the last of them before Belt demanded a word and he was still just in sight of Sarevok. Fortunately the big man ignored his attack and concentrated on a guard until he teleported away.
More disablers accounted for the Undercity party before entering the temple. Inside there we checked that bats were not listed as a protected species before clearing the belfry chamber. That allowed Duoa to put some skull traps up for Semaj to teleport into - they didn't kill the mage, but he died pretty quickly.
Sarevok was then quickly pulled out into the stinking cloud and web traps with the aim of getting him stuck. There was an odd moment when both Gate70 and I thought that Sarevok had done his death animation, but closer investigation showed he'd just been rendered unconscious - normally stinking cloud wouldn't have a chance to affect him, but he'd been made vulnerable by malison. Skyler quickly put the boot in and managed a killing blow just as Sarevok was trying to get to his feet.
Dropping from the no-resurrection challenge to try to get a better taste of SoD, and also attempting to knock another class from the list: Sondral, Elf Stalker. Picture from Viveer from Deviantart.
Shoal is killed, and Melicamp is luckily saved after a little hide-and-seek with a wolf:
In Beregost, 1-1-3-3-1 and Spiders are enough for level 4, and Neira in Nashkel is backstabbed in Nashkel. En route, we picked up Zhurlong's boots, which are providing Sondral some good safety.
Greywolf is killed with more backstabbing, and basilisks provide level 6. Ankhegs and Sirines and Flesh Golems provide level 7, and Sondral's actually going to move on the main quest, with hopefully no more distractions until SoD.
I didn't think I would do this, but I re-started the solo HoF IWD2 run. This time, I made Frisky Bits an aasimar instead of a human. It imposes a -1 level penalty, but I figured the +2 CHA and WIS would be worth it. I also made Frisky Bits Lawful Good and gave them a level in paladin, which gives us a bunch of weapon feats and boosts all of our saving throws by our CHA modifier, which basically means all of our saving throws will be 10 higher than normal.
We level-squatted a little while fighting goblins in Targos and then jumped to sorcerer level 14, just enough to get Finger of Death. We had to rely pretty heavily on Summon Monster I, since we only had 9 sorcerer levels at the start and therefore no Animate Dead spells.
Finger of Death is extremely effective thanks to its high level and our two pips in Spell Focus: Necromancy. With Eagle's Splendor to boost our CHA, Frisky Bits' FoD has a save DC of 31. Finger of Death is also the only way of obtaining the Young Ned's Knucky from Jemeliah, one of the best items in the game. Pickpocketing him is impossible in HoF mode, and trying to kill him with Flesh to Stone or Disintegrate will turn Targos hostile.
That +2 luck is a huge boon. In IWD2, luck doesn't just offer a flat bonus; it alters the dice rolls themselves. A single point of luck prevents you from every rolling a critical miss, and increases the chance of rolling a critical hit. Since there's no such thing as critical hit immunity in IWD2, every point of luck represents a 5% bonus to damage without even counting the bonuses to your attack and damage rolls. For hammers, halberds, arrows, and axes, which deal triple damage on critical hits, a point of luck gives a 10% boost.
Frisky Bits will never be a melee bruiser, but it's still a very nice prize.
We get lucky in Targos: Phaen rolls very low against Chromatic Orb, and we get two Boneguard Skeletons for the invasion.
Best of all, Caballus rolls low against Finger of Death, ending the fight before it began.
Finger of Death was a very excellent choice. It's a very reliable kill against all kinds of enemies, and makes Shaengarne Ford much faster.
We do get a nasty surprise when Frisky Bits' Mirror Images run out against a jelly, but we can escape with an instant-casting Mirror Image followed by an Invisibility spell with a casting time of 1.
It's very important to keep at least one or two level 2 spells on hand to make sure we can escape if a fight goes sour.
By level-squatting much of the way through Shaengarne Ford, Frisky Bits makes it to sorcerer level 20, giving us near-maximum spell slots and access to Aegis, Wail of the Banshee, and Executioner's Eyes. Selling off some HoF loot lets us buy the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits for constant effect Haste and Freedom of Movement. All of their saving throws are above 20.
Executioner's Eyes give +4 to hit and +4 to critical hit range, which translates into an area-effect +20% damage boost for 10 rounds. Wail of the Banshee is one of the absolute best spells in IWD2: it has massive range, instantly kills anyone who fails a save, works with Spell Focus: Necromancy, and it's a level 9 spell. Frisky Bits casts Wail of the Banshee with a ridiculous save DC of 34. On top of that, we also have Symbol of Hopelessness, which imposes fear or stun for 10 rounds with a save DC of 29. We have high-end summons, strong defenses, devastating bombing options, powerful disablers, and the ability to wipe out whole crowds of enemies in less than 7 seconds.
Our only problem is that we have a pitiful AC of 47 and no access to healing spells. We will be sitting at level 21 (20 sorcerer levels, 1 paladin level) until we can gain at least 9 cleric levels in one massive jump. Ideally, we'll do it for 11 levels so we can cast Heal, which will put us at level 30, but since we've removed the level cap, Frisk can add one more level of monk, albeit with massive difficulty, in the late game, just for a slight bonus to our AC.
Things will get harder and harder as time goes on, but 20 sorcerer levels should make us strong enough to handle almost anything for quite some time into the future.
Time to save the Shaengarne Bridge. We dodge Xuki's Icelance spell using Invisibility rather than resort to Aegis to block it, and when she makes her save against the slow-casting Wail of the Banshee, we trap her with a fast-casting and easily spammable Resilient Sphere.
To save our Wail of the Banshee spells, we adopt a (relatively) low-pressure approach, neutralizing key enemies with Chromatic Orb, disrupting a Call Lightning spell using a high-damage Skull Trap, and applying spell damage with Horrid Wilting. It wipes out our Greater Feyr (high-level Shades spells can summon Greater Feyrs), but they're lousy summons anyway; they use fear spells that often send themselves into a panic.
The moment Xuki breaks out of her shell, we nail her with Finger of Death.
Wail of the Banshee wipes out entire crowds of enemies, rendering the second half of the fight a cakewalk.
A blue flower appears over every enemy that dies to Wail of the Banshee. IWD2 being the hack-and-slash game that it is, we turn the battlefield at the Horde Fortress into a field of flowers.
In IWD2, traps tend to remove your Mirror Images and apply lots of lingering damage. We trigger all of the bridge traps under invisibility and rest between each one to make sure we can engage the enemy at full health.
We use Invisibility Sphere to destroy the first War Drum from outside the enemy's field of vision, then use Wail of the Banshee to clear the field. A pair of Chromatic Orbs bring down some shamans who were summoning Goblin Worg Riders via the War Drum to the far north, just like in our first run.
We use Animate Dead to keep Trugnuk and company busy while we throw out Symbol of Hopelessness and Wail of the Banshee. Trugnuk has excellent saving throws and consistently resists our attempts to slay him. After 10 separate attempts to pin him down fail due to a successful save, we finally land a Finger of Death on him.
Our area-effect options are enough to bring down everything in the Horde Fortress interior.
We sneak past the enemies at the top and manage to paralyze the Old Orc with a string of Chromatic Orb spells in spite of his incredible saving throws.
We had a 90% chance of landing that, which is pretty terrible from a no-reload perspective. I don't know how many Stunning Attacks the Old Orc has, but the odds of getting stun-locked are probably pretty high. We'd have had to spend many rounds running away from him until we were sure he was out of Stunning Attacks.
Wail of the Banshee got us through the rest of the fights at the Horde Fortress headquarters, though we needed to use Invisibility three times to avoid Dispel Magic.
I don't think Braston will follow you if you're invisible, so the only way to get him out safely is to either wipe out the enemies at the top or cast Invisibility on Braston instead of Frisk. Taking down the enemies at the top should be doable with Wail of the Banshee, but since it got us killed the last time we tried it, I am not willing to take the risk.
Nor am I willing to stay visible and expose Frisky Bits to all of the enemies just to keep Braston safe, even if it's only for a couple of rounds. In the end, I run ahead of him and escape before he can make it out. He doesn't die, but that's little consolation to Ennelia, who goes off in search of her lover.
Before we fly off to the ice wall in Oswald's airship, we buy the Saga of Wandering Sky greatsword for its immunity to Finger of Death (as well as Harm and Slay Living) and its on-hit Doom effect, which offers no saving throw, unlike the normal spell in IWD2.
It won't bypass magic resistance or MGOI, but it's an on-hit -2 penalty to saving throws, which could be very useful considering how much we depend on the enemy's failed saves.
Frisky Bits cast Invisibility to hide from the Boring Beetles who spawn shortly after the crash, but in the end, they don't wake up until the beetles somehow find them and attack them.
The Invisibility spell was unnecessary; that sleep effect that applies during the crash ends the moment you take any damage.
Outside, we clear the map with some Wail of the Banshee spells. We make sure to buy the Necklace of Missiles before we fight Beodaewn, just because we won't get another chance to buy it.
The druids might require multiple rests. They're very nasty in HoF mode and in Tactics4IWD2; the rangers fire off lots of arrows and the druids summon lots of animals and cast Call Lightning. It's a very ugly situation for lots of reasons, but hopefully Wail of the Banshee will take down the enemies before they can apply much pressure to us.
After that, we have to trudge through the ice temple, which involves a LOT of backtracking if you don't know exactly what to do (which I still don't, despite playing this game numerous times) and fighting through lots of repetitive enemies. At least it will net us thousands and thousands of XP.
And a mistake in the Bandit Camp gets Sondral swarmed and killed: accidentally clicked on a bandit while stealthed in the camp, and the plan to get the documents and run is impossible. No potions of invisibility doom Sondral.
I made a B line for my wild mage (walking past most mobs without fighting) then we took a side step to fetch a spider leg and an armour upgrade for Vicky.
With our reputation in the gutter, we slaughter the Tethyrian army and make it to Amkethran, then visit the temple to repair my reputation. By accident, I do the two small sidequests which raise your reputation first instead of saving them for later, though the one where the monk attacks the old man is unavoidable. Should've used Time Stop to enter the temple, bought my way back up to 18 rep, and then done the +rep tasks to get back to 20.
I correct two little mistakes with a vengeance.
Jesus, Sarevok! I think you killed her 4 times over!
Vongoethe gets Marlowe's soul and Malla's soul is returned to her body. We give her 5000 gold to get us back to 19 rep. Onto Abazigal's enclave. I use a charged blue Protection from Acid scroll on everyone because I've seen runs end because of Draconis' breath weapon. Its pretty much a walk in the park, though, by using charged Spell Striking wands to get rid of Draconis' PfMW buffs so everyone can beat him down.
Inside, the golems take care of the annoying eye things and we subcontract Bondari to get the gauth's eyestalk.
Eventually we free Fll'Yissetat with the reversal scroll. I'm becoming more aware of this Thrall power that the Staff of Enchantment +5 holds, so I recruit the help of an old friend to help us fight Abazigal...
He's back! I've re-outfitted him with some new gear, too! For all intents and purposes, Coran is now a helper (read: familiar without the CON drain on death) like the golems, so he does not earn any XP. I think he'll be okay without direct inventory management, since I've set him up with all the stuff he could need. I've swapped out Teleomortis +4 for Taralash +4, since Teleomortis cannot swap arrows using the quickbar. But that's ok, because Coran is equipped with the Quiver of Plenty +3 and delicious Arrows of Dispelling - well worth the reduced damage he'll be doing. Even so, Coran is still a deadly archer and on par with Sarevok in terms of levels, and he retains his HLAs.
We march into Abazigal's cave. The wyvern thingies are taken care of as they deal minor damage to us. We move to the left to keep Abazigal from spotting us and kill whatever's in our way. Before taking on Tamah, I cast a charged wish to get us Improved Haste and Hardiness, which should help immensely in taking down both dragons quickly. Tamah is then killed, as expected.
Abby transforms. Perfect Iron is stuck to Abby since he's so heavy. He concentrates on Perfect Iron solely until he Imprisons it. Nalia uses a charged Iron Horn to bait Abby's Death Spell, but they all get nuked by his electrical breath weapon. I cast Improved Alacrity and send out a couple MR-lowering spells in addition to some buffs and a Greater Malison, and summon a planetar, plus 2 Horrid Wiltings.
Soon, Abby goes down.
This time when the Solar drags us back to the pocket plane, I choose to be rude. I never cast Divine Might, so I might as well get a spell that does poison damage instead. The pocket plane challenge is easily won; it's just a game of keep-away since all the slayer shadow does is target CHARNAME.
Back at Abby's cave, I cast Freedom to get Perfect Iron back, who is actually none worse for wear. Back at Amkethran, after having held on to the pantaloons for the entire saga, we finally forge the Big Metal Unit!
I have modified it so that it does not change your avatar, and spells and thief skills can be used while wearing it in addition to being immune to wing buffets. It now belongs to Sarevok. That's 3 of the 5 taken care of.
Before starting Sendai's enclave proper, I forge the Flail of Ages +5 and the Runehammer +5 for Anomen and Korgan. Sendai's enclave is the definition of easy, even without abusing WoL-charged Wishes. Not even Odameron poses a threat to us. The enclave is slaughtered wholesale and so is Sendai.
I am nice to the Solar this time because Hand of Murder only works on melee weapons, so permanent Negative Plane Protection and +5% MR sounds better. By now I'm wondering why I haven't found the second page of the Adamantite Golem tome yet...then I remember that Vongoethe had it. Crap. I sigh and take the fourth challenge, but I inform Cyric that I already beat Venduris' band. Cyric remembers that encounter, so Ao won't allow him to interfere any further which allows me to skip this challenge and get the benefits anyway.
Next I convince Balthazar to join us.
Pulled back to the pocket plane for the last time, I taunt Melissan to gain the permanent physical damage resistance power from fighting the Ravager. I probably should've gone with the Resurrection power to use during an Improved Alacrity, but damage resistance should help more if I find myself in a pinch.
The Ravager is beaten handily.
There is nothing left to do now. The final fight awaits. It can get glitchy so I hope it goes smoothly the first time. I usually have to reload at least once because it never seems to work correctly the first time around.
Time for the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT6LFOIofRE Brunash - Enchanter 29 Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 40 Korgan - Berserker 36 Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 39 Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 23 Nalia - Sorcerer 29 Coran - Fighter 17/Bounty Hunter 21
A wizard staff can be upgraded to +5 in ToB, though it can be imbued with a school of magic at 250k XP when its still +3. Thrall is exclusive to the Staff of Enchantment +5. If I were to guess, I'd say it works similarly to your Seducer's Recruit Follower ability, but it's only 1x/day instead of at-will.
After disposing of Sarevok at the end of the previous session we found ourselves stuck in another dungeon this time. It didn't take long to make some progress with Skyler sneaking through to Porios and persuading him to surrender.
Things got a bit more difficult on the next level down when some skeletons survived an early skull trap and put on pressure, while a Shadowed Soul was rapidly draining Skyler's life to restore its own - that required a bit of a retreat in order to persuade the Flaming Fist to provide a helping hand.
More skull traps for undead kept things moving before Duoa gratefully accepted the chance to target living beings. She had a chaos in reserve, but that wasn't needed after a malison + emotion combination.
Korlasz was hit by a dispelling arrow, but put mirror images up almost instantly in response. With most of her troops disintegrating from area damage she didn't get a chance to do much though before missile damage persuaded her to give in.
Baldur's Gate provided a chance to visit the shops and pick up the Spectacles of Spectacle, but no quests were done before hitting the trail.
On arrival there was another quick trip to track down a vampire - only to help it out against its attackers.
The main intention there was to get the shield for a way to cast Sunray, though the regeneration ioun stone could potentially be used as well. On the way back to camp some orcs and trolls were disposed of while picking up a better sling for Duoa.
Duoa froze while searching a burned inn for Takos' mirror. While Gate70 was rejoining the game that resulted in Skyler picking it up and going to talk to Takos, but he wasn't impressed by her charisma - and refused to hand back the Sunray shield. Ignoring that setback the duo moved on to the bridge. They tried to stay out of trouble until they heard a call to parley, but couldn't then resist attacking. However, with no buffs or summons they were outclassed and Skyler had to take a potion of invisibility when she saw an emotion being cast at her while already nearly dead.
I didn't then do Gate70 any favors by saying that Skyler had 'hidden' rather than gone invisible. He reasonably assumed that meant Skyler was in the shadows and would soon appear again and Duoa came back in to try and draw the enemies away - which cost her another life.
The enemies failed to use any detection spells though and Skyler was able in due course to visit Mizhaena before coming back to seek revenge.
A wizard staff can be upgraded to +5 in ToB, though it can be imbued with a school of magic at 250k XP when its still +3. Thrall is exclusive to the Staff of Enchantment +5. If I were to guess, I'd say it works similarly to your Seducer's Recruit Follower ability, but it's only 1x/day instead of at-will.
Are there any limitations on it? Recruit Follower could only work on critters half the caster's level.
Trio EE attempt 5, update 1234567 8 Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
We've spent two weeks resting near Thax'llsillyia the dragon. As we start our buffs, the dragon reacts (possibly due to one of us being in inventory and multiplayer treating the wardstone as being gone).
We scatter in all directions and things go from bad to worse. Felai is drained to level 4, Killye restoring her only for her to try a dragon breath on Thaxxy and realising too late she was still blinded. One hit is painful but the dragon breath has rooted her to the spot and Thaxxy doesn't need more than a moment to snack on a disciple.
A wizard staff can be upgraded to +5 in ToB, though it can be imbued with a school of magic at 250k XP when its still +3. Thrall is exclusive to the Staff of Enchantment +5. If I were to guess, I'd say it works similarly to your Seducer's Recruit Follower ability, but it's only 1x/day instead of at-will.
Are there any limitations on it? Recruit Follower could only work on critters half the caster's level.
Magic Resistance can block it but there's no HD limit and it bypasses mind-affecting immunities. Immunity to opcode 82 (Set AI script) will block it, but from a look at NearInfinity, nobody has that immunity except The Winged.
A wizard staff can be upgraded to +5 in ToB, though it can be imbued with a school of magic at 250k XP when its still +3. Thrall is exclusive to the Staff of Enchantment +5. If I were to guess, I'd say it works similarly to your Seducer's Recruit Follower ability, but it's only 1x/day instead of at-will.
Are there any limitations on it? Recruit Follower could only work on critters half the caster's level.
Magic Resistance can block it but there's no HD limit and it bypasses mind-affecting immunities. Immunity to opcode 82 (Set AI script) will block it, but from a look at NearInfinity, nobody has that immunity except The Winged.
That's pretty darn powerful. You could recruit an army of demons and golems by lowering their MR with Lower Resistance/Pierce Shield/Magic Resistance/The Answerer, as well as NPCs with customized equipment. Unless its spell level is 1-5, you could even recruit liches, and if it wasn't level 6 or 7, either, you could recruit rakshasas.
In fact, you could just chain-cast the Gate spell and use the staff to generate an army of 20 Pit Fiends. I know that you can make temporary summons into permanent party members using opcode 82, and I can only assume you can also make permanent familiars with the same opcode.
Or go with Summon (Fallen) Planetar instead and create an army of 40 planetars with instant-casting Heal spells.
I'm one level short of creating perfect Mithril Golems. I could use the item duplication trick to scribe level 9 spells repeatedly, but I'm not going to cross that line. Introducing, Mitty the Greater Mithril Golem!
Mitty is slightly inferior to Perfect Iron MK I in most respects, but she has 2 attacks per round instead of 3/2. Mitty can heal from fire, however, and can be superheated by high level fire spells just like Perfect Iron MK I. She can trample targets smaller than her for 8d10+30 crushing damage, save vs. death at -4 for half and a save negates a 1 round hold effect.
Before entering the throne, I buff with my standard routine including some medium duration spells like Spell Shield and Spell Turning. Anomen buffs us all with Prayer, Recitation, and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. Nalia uses a charged wish for Hardiness and Improved Haste on everyone. Onto the throne. Our first plan of attack is to get rid of the Fallen Solars, who are easily the most dangerous threats here. Our fighters tear into them while the golems keep Bodhi busy. Irenicus casts Time Stop, but Rasaad activated Lunar Stance as I heard the incantations for it. Combined with the Staff of the Magi, we can take them out.
While Rasaad focuses on the Solars, I dispel Irenicus' Mislead clone, exposing him. Seems he's trying to make a getaway.
Rasaad kills the Solar on the right side as I dispel any buffs the left one has. Rasaad uses Dragon Fist on Irenicus during the Time Stop, which resolves after its over, but he puts up another PfMW. Bodhi uses her dreaded Cloud of Bats ability, which causes us spell interruption and accumulating damage over time. Our stoneskins are torn to shreds and the damage just keeps piling up, worrying me somewhat.
I step over back to where Irenicus used to be and use a charged Wish scroll to get us some healing. Casting from scrolls cannot be interrupted. I get Breach on enemies, Improved Hasted party, 25 stats, and Hardiness refresh. This opens Irenicus up to a death blow from Sarevok. Poetic.
During this skirmish with Irenicus, I wonder what happened to the second solar and to Bodhi. Apparently it was Improved Invisible, as it reveals itself after everything else is dead. We focus fire on it and obliterate it. Bodhi was apparently so little threat outside of her special abilities that the golems must have killed her or something.
Still covered in bats and taking double damage from them due to the Improved Haste wish, we stumble about trying to spare Imoen. Despite our double-strength haste, every hasted damage tick causes hitstun, making movement awkward at best and downright impossible in some situations. Twice I have to resort to charged potions to prevent myself from dying, as trying to cast spells in this condition is asking to be interrupted. Eventually Imoen snaps out it.
Next up comes the demon pools with Rasaad's Dragon Fist getting a workout on all three pools against the Mariliths. We start on the leftmost pool and they are dealt with pretty easily. Coran and Sarevok trap the hell out of where Illasera and Sendai will spawn. The traps intended for Illasera are wiped out by some Babau that get summoned from the next pool though. Pool #2 is cleared.
Sarevok lays down more traps where Illasera spawns. Nalia uses a charged wish to get us Hardiness, healing, and hasting everyone. Next is third pool up top which gets cleared.
Melissan resurrects the Five and offers Sarevok a chance to betray me. He doesn't take it.
The traps set for Sendai and Illasera go off, but Gromnir took most of the damage for Illasera. Dammit. At least Sendai, Abazigal, and Gromnir are at near death.
Sendai apparently uses a sequencer to go back to full health before Feedback triggered to Melissan and she summons a Fallen Deva. Illasera goes invisible and skulks off somewhere to recover. Rasaad goes over to Sendai and punches her with Dragon Fist, allowing the rest of us to pile onto her and kill her.
Gromnir is killed soon afterward and Melissan comes down to play. For her opening attack, she uses Power Word Blind on Coran, reducing him to using the Daystar +4. But I dare not send Coran into melee combat regardless. I'll just wait out his blindness.
Abazigal is troublesome because he keeps protecting himself from magic weapons. A Spell Striking wand fixes this and he gets killed.
Illasera reveals herself and Nalia sics the Improved Kitthix swarm on her. But she's protected from magic weapons at the moment. I think to myself that I can kill Yaga-Shura and use the time for when Melissan is KO'd from Feedback to deal with Illasera.
While Mel's down I scurry on over to where Anomen and the swarm are keeping Illasera busy. Nalia casts another charged Wish and breaches Illasera, allowing them to finish her off in addition to topping off our health and buffs.
All Five are dead and Melissan is now mortal.
Mel gates in some demons and teleports back to our starting position as most of us follow, sensing blood in the water. I only heard her begin to say "Praeses..." when she stops time. I didn't react quick enough to get Rasaad into Lunar Stance. This would be the infamous Time Stop I've heard so much about.
She does not initiate a Whirlwind Attack as I expected, probably because my staff is keeping me safe. She starts beating up Rasaad instead. I summon a planetar to deal with the demon host she's gated in and attempt a Pierce Shield on her for whatever good that'll do me. Time is still stopped and she's got Rasaad on the ropes. I cast a charged Mass Cure in hopes that he survives. Time resumes and my spells resolve.
Rasaad survives, thankfully. Coran is not blinded anymore and gets to work on the demon swarm. The golems help up there too and they get cleared out quickly. Korgan scores a vorpal hit on Melissan and she disappears...and I dread that the fight has glitched. I unpause and in reality, she's just teleported over to where the demon swarm is in the upper left. We surround her now that she's relatively defenseless and initiate beatdown mode.
Brunash chooses to remain mortal. Thus ends the saga of the giant halfling who towered over not just his own race, but over everyone else too.
Well, Thaxxy took down our Trio, so it was my turn to be the child of Bhaal. Here is the protagonist:
And here are his friends:
Our first hiccup happened due to Corey_Russell's inexperience with EE - he accidentally triggered the Neira fight - Grond0 said run, so Mikel did, but Gate70 was expecting attacks from the distance. Without Mikel's help, Trukk couldn't hold together and died. However, with spirit animals and Mikel's trusty crossbow, we avenged Trukk then resurrected him.
The rest of the session was much smoother. We did the basilisks level 1, including Mutamutin and Kirian. This went well.
We did other things too, like take down Shoal, Zax and Val, Caldo and Krumm, and others. We didn't have much trouble, though Mikel's friends did get hurt a lot protecting Mikel. Mikel hides in the shadows a lot so isn't targeted very often. We also took down Bassilus. Alor tried to doom him, but he was apparently already doomed before the spell hit and died. : P. Trukk welcomed the warhammer.
By this point, we didn't have much time left. So we had just enough time to take down Mulahey and save our session.
Comments
Did @Vynn play in the vanilla game or EE?
Brunash the Super-Galactic 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, 2
The landing of Watcher's Keep 4 and both the illithid and githyanki enclaves are cleared out easily. I dumbly decide to let Anomen take on the Demilich alone. Fortunately, he is wearing the Cloak of the Sewers and he transforms into the Mustard Jelly just before the demilich stops time, which should protect him against any magical assaults.
The Demilich's initial volley of spells fail as I predicted and it casts a second Time Stop. Again, the Demilich's attacks are foiled by the jelly's 100% magic resistance. Anomen's save vs. death is good, so he resists all Trap the Soul attempts. Anomen soon returns to normal form and the Demilich begins spamming Horrid Wilting. Anomen's save vs. spell is also good enough to take half damage from it, though he needs to cast Greater Restoration on himself after the third one. The Demilich seems to be getting desperate and simply bombards Anomen with damage spells in hopes of killing him, but Anomen continues to weather the magical storm, switching to the Flail of Ages +4 to hamper it with Slow and elemental damage since it has many Stoneskin layers.
Anomen eventually kills it with elemental damage, causing him and me to level up. That was actually kind of embarassing.
Time for Saladrex. I send out the Improved Kitthix swarm in hopes of poisoning Sally, but they get toasted.
Next I send out the first Improved Elemental Swarm. The ones that aren't fire elementals get toasted too. Nalia sends hers out as well.
They drill through Sally's stoneskins and kill him. I learn to build Lightning Golems from the tome that he had.
Back in the landing for Watcher's Keep 4, the torches are lit and the minotaur guardians are slain. Carston is freed of his prison and we let him go, because SCS has an irritating habit of crashing the game if you kill a mage before they fire all their protection sequencers and contingencies. Rasaad levels up and learns his final new technique.
Time to operate the Machine of Lum the Mad. I get +1 CHA, +5% MR. Rasaad gets +1 DEX and +1 CON for an extra 9 HP. Anomen gets +1 WIS and +1 INT to help survive any future brain-drain attempts by Illithid by 1 hit. Sarevok gets +1 STR to put him in giant-class with everyone except me so he can carry more potions. I'm not going to attempt the 100k XP jackpot because I took the good path in one of the hell trials, which required a -1 DEX sacrifice, and I'm not comfortable going below 18. On to Watcher's Keep 5.
I beat the imp at some riddles and then take on the green dragon. I summon my Improved Elemental Swarm, but then notice Perfect Clay MK V is completely immune to whatever the dragon attempts.
I send the swarm in anyway and the dragon gets rekt.
I place the skull of the hero on the altar and breeze through it, thanks to the warrior wielding the Killsword (as featured in Gaspar's ctrl+q playthrough). I never liked that part. The orcish horde is defeated thanks to Storm of Vengeance and a planetar. Next is the orb room. Red is cleared. I try purple next and Anomen gibs everything easily, up until the double lich fight. I'm not exactly sure what happened to the first lich, it may have been gibbed by Anomen, but the Elemental Lich gives us more trouble.
Both liches cast Horrid Wilting, dealing heavy damage to Anomen and dehydrating yet another of my Perfect Clay Golems. After the elemental lich fires off its arsenal during the Time Stop, it summons 3 Mordy Swords which I kill with Death Spell as the Perfect Stone Golem is destroyed along with its offspring. Anomen approaches it and attempts to turn it. It works and it flees into a corner. With the lich in a panic, Anomen beats it to life with the improved Mace of Disruption.
Onto green, Rasaad is killed by the triple earth elemental fight because he failed his save vs. 3 Earthquakes but Anomen brings him back with a Mass Raise Dead spell.
Before taking on the seal guardians, I build Perfect Clay MK VI. Then we fight the Rilmanis first. The Aurumach leader is immune to casting failure and has a casting speed bonus of 4 (equal to the Robe of Vecna), so I have Korgan use GWW to get as much damage in as possible before it stops time. But Korgan manages to kill it before it can.
The rest of the Rilmanis fold like tissue paper. Next up is Azamantes. I'm keeping Perfect Clay MK VI away from him because I just know he's got a Horrid Wilting in store. Sarevok lays a couple of traps for him, but it barely damages him at all. He fires up PfMW and I cast a charged Wish. My second wish is the 2x Time Stop + Improved Alacrity. I'll use this to wait out his PfMW and kill him with Shapechange: Mind Flayer after his buff wears off. Sure enough...
Good. I usually don't go for stat-drain kills because it yields no XP, but I can live without 25k. The Time Stop wears off but my third wish is another 2x Time Stop + IA combo. Guess I'll drain the skulls too.
My other wishes are not granted because the genies get unsummoned from waiting too long. Now for the amazonian demon band. Sarevok lays some traps for their arrival. I need to take out the Hive Mother and Y'tossi as fast as possible because they are the major threats. Y'tossi dies pretty much instantly thanks to a lucky vorpal hit from the Planetar.
Nalmissra follows soon after because she's useless. Then the Hive Mother after a series of Wishes, filled with healing and an improved haste on the party. The others collapse easily, with Xei Win Toh getting filleted by the Improved Kitthix Swarm. That's it. The seal is open.
Brunash - Enchanter 25
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 33
Korgan - Berserker 30
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 32
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 15
Nalia - Sorcerer 24
Once we hit level 18, we will choose Aegis, which will give us 10 rounds of MGOI, 15- elemental resistances, Stoneskin, +2 saves, Freedom of Movement, +5 deflection AC, +3 spell resistance, and undispellable immunity to Dispel Magic. Combined with Mind Blank, we should be immune to every disabler aside from stun.
That still leaves us with very poor AC and vulnerability to Finger of Death and Disintegrate. To solve the AC problem, we're just going to have to rely on our summons. We'll get immunity to Disintegrate at level 26, which should come before the enemy ever casts the spell, but we won't get Death Ward until we get to cleric level 9, which will come at total level 27 or 29. We've still go issues to deal with, including the high-pressure fight at Shaengarne Bridge and numerous fights in the late game.
Tactics4IWD2 includes a component that gives the player some substantial boosts for Heart of Fury mode, including +10 AC, +2 to ability scores, immunity to Disintegrate at level 26, and constant effect Improved Alacrity. These bonuses are actually most important for defensive purposes: we can always summon a wall of critters and bomb from afar, even without Improved Alacrity, but being able to cast Invisibility at any time is a huge boon.
I won't be using exploits in this run if I can help it. No potion swap glitch; not Resilient Sphere+Fire Shield trick; no scroll/gem/Potion of Explosions duplication; and no import/export trick. No mod-introduced items, either.
Shaengarne Bridge could be very nasty because we can't flee or rest, but the script suggests that we can complete the quest even if the bridge is destroyed.
I do have Vipergout, however, which Tactics4IWD2 buffs. Vipergout summons a single viper per round for one round per level, and each viper lasts for 3 rounds. You can't cast spells while it's in effect, but Caballus' Whispering Staff allows us to cast Invisibility Sphere even while Vipergout is in effect. This means we can have a virtually immortal summons for one round per level, since any viper that dies will be replaced within seconds. It won't deal a bunch of damage, but it should be very draining to enemy spellcasters.
We managed to stay out of range of the Malarite Priests' Call Lightning spells, which is important because our only other defense against Call Lightning is Aegis. Aegis grants immunity to level 1-3 spells, but the problem is that in IWD2, like in vanilla, pre-EE IWD1, MGOI blocks your own spells as well. The moment we cast Aegis, we can't cast Mirror Image or Invisibility for the next 10 rounds, leaving us incapable of surviving much pressure unless we can escape using Improved Invisibility, which bypasses the MGOI effect of Aegis.
Animate Dead and Horrid Wilting also got us through much of the Horde Fortress's exterior, though we had to do some careful resource management and make sure we kept the shamans away from the War Drums.
We should be able to coast on our existing options all the way through the Horde Fortress and maybe even the ice wall, if not even further. But since we only have 12 Wisdom, we can only cast level 1 and 2 cleric spells even after we start taking cleric levels. It'll be a long time before we get any WIS-boosting items, and since I have 6 levels waiting to level up, I can't use them for sorcerer levels without leaving very little room for cleric levels in the late game. We're probably going to hold off on leveling up for a very long time.
Brunash the Heaven-Piercing 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, 2, 3
I can't tell you how long I've been saving "Heaven-Piercing" as a title for an entry in this no-reload run. This occasion warrants it, I think, because it's the fight against Ascension's Tougher Demogorgon.
To start, I use a charged Wish to grant us some buffs, namely Improved Haste and Hardiness. Nalia summons a planetar and Rasaad activates Lunar Stance since the very first thing Demogorgon does is stop time. Both of us will be immune to it.
I start using a charged scroll of Pierce Shield to lower Demogorgon's MR, as he is immune to Lower Resistance outright. Rasaad gets held by an Implosion spell and then dies during the Time Stop.
Dammit. Everyone else rushes in. I cast a charged Wish but don't get the Resurrection option, so Nalia attempts one of her own to try to bring back Rasaad while I activate Improved Alacrity and heavily buff myself. I throw out a few AoE debuffs and a Horrid Wilting in hopes that the demons' MR fails to protect them. Anomen and Korgan go ballistic on Demogorgan trying to carve through his stoneskins. The planetar gets vorpalled by the Balor.
Anomen casts Death Ward on himself to avoid such a fate and starts beating up the Balors. I was in the middle of casting Mass Invisibility for the save boosts, so I replace the planetar with another once I finish, but it gets stunned somehow. Nalia is stunned by a Power Word and the demons start crowding around us to take advantage.
I protect myself from magic weapons and summon the Improved Elemental Swarm to surround us as Anomen rushes over to Nalia to cast Free Action. Her stoneskins are protecting her for now. Korgan unleashes a GWW and makes serious progress in damaging Demogorgon.
Anomen finishes his casting and Nalia is freed, and her concentration hasn't been broken yet despite her Stoneskin getting completely used up and then taking a few hits, so Nalia continues the casting of the charged Wish and finishes it. A few seconds later, Demogorgon is destroyed. Now for cleanup duty. A glabrezu teleports over to Nalia but she puts up another Stoneskin. Finally, her genies start granting wishes.
But the demons are just about dead once Nalia's wishes start getting granted. Rasaad gets brought back with a wish after having missed almost the entirety of the fight, and there are no more demons left to slay. It's done. Rasaad, Sarevok, and Nalia all level up, and I get this interesting little prize from Demogorgon's defeat.
Not that I'll get to level 33 in this playthrough to utilize it, but this will let me create a single Perfect Adamantite Golem. Alas, the Pet Basilisk trick will only get you so far. We exit Watcher's Keep and spare the Watch Knights. The rest of ToB awaits.
Brunash - Enchanter 25
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 33
Korgan - Berserker 31
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 33
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 16
Nalia - Sorcerer 25
With our summons nerfed, we have to rely pretty heavily on spell damage. The Improved Alacrity effect from Tactics4IWD2's HoF tweaks makes cheap mobs much less of a hassle to deal with.
Since I'm using a workaround to get the Improved Initiative feat to work (even with patches, the feat does nothing by itself), Frisky Bits has a -1 bonus to casting speed, which means we can spam one Chromatic Orb spell per frame. Chromatic Orb paralyzes the target for 13 rounds on a failed Reflex save, and while the base save DC is low due to it being a level 1 spell, our sky-high Charisma (boosted even further by Eagle's Splendor) and two pips in the Spell Focus: Evocation feat give our Chromatic Orbs a crushing save DC of 23. It's not always reliable, but if we burn the spell slots, we have a decent shot at disabling even high-end targets like Tactics mages.
Phaen, like basically every mage in the Tactics4IWD2 mod, pre-buffs with Improved Invisibility, but that doesn't grant immunity to single-target spells in IWD2; it just imposes a 50% miss chance (25% with the Blind-Fight feat).
As I mentioned before, we get lucky with our Animate Dead spells on the final assault on Targos, getting three Boneguard Skeletons instead of zombies. The basic goblins can't even scratch the Boneguards; only the bosses of this fight can touch them.
Undead are immune to Horrid Wilting, so when the friendly critters like Olap Tamewater are out of the way, we can bomb the goblins with magic damage. Spells get a base save DC equal to 10 plus the spell level, so high-level spells like Horrid Wilting are much harder to save against. Having two pips in Spell Focus: Necromancy makes it even harder.
I have to be very careful about positioning, though. If Frisky Bits gets inside the radius of Horrid Wilting, they'd lose about 75% of their HP on a failed save.
As for Caballus, he has a much better Reflex save than Phaen, but a Resilient Sphere spell has a save DC of 26 compared to a Chromatic Orb's 23. We still need Caballus to make a very low roll in order to get trapped, but we get the roll we need on the first try.
We clear up the local goblins while Caballus is trapped so we don't have any distractions when Caballus escapes. He spams his own Animate Dead spells (disrupting enemy mage spells is extremely challenging in IWD2 in HoF mode; spell disruption can be prevented by skill checks), but I keep re-sending our undead the order to attack Caballus instead of his summons. Eventually we eat through his multiple Stoneskin spells, multiple Mirror Image spells, and massive HoF HP in spite of the 50% miss chance imposed by his Improved Invisibility.
By the way, this is the reason I'm not using mod items:
It costs over 100,000 gold, but that's actually affordable in HoF mode. In IWD2, playing HoF mode means you get HoF items, which are basically significantly higher-powered versions of normal IWD2 items. So, a +1 weapon will become a +3 weapon with some special effects, and a +3 weapon will become a +5 weapon with some really crazy powers on top.
Those items are also worth thousands of gold. Merely by completing the Veira questline in Targos, we got a magical dagger that netted 16,000 gold when selling it.
Another valuable source of gold are Arrows of Fire, which for some reason have absurdly high high prices considering they just deal 1d6 fire damage. You can find them on Orc Firestarters, but if you let them shoot the arrows, you can't collect any from their bodies. Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (which cast instantly thanks to Improved Initiative!) holds them in place while we bomb the other orcs from behind the wall of kegs.
Chromatic Orb paralyzes the other Orc Firestarters in the area. We get a brief scare in one of the late fights when we accidentally catch Frisky Bits in our own Skull Trap spell.
In IWD2, Stoneskin grants no protection from spells, even those that deal physical damage like Skull Trap or Lance of Disruption. Stoneskin only blocks the first 10 damage from hits from weapons below +5 enchantment (+5 weapons ignore it outright) and only absorbs at most 150 damage before vanishing, so it's a very important defensive tool, but it is not remotely as strong as it is in the other IE games.
Mirror Image, however, can block area-effect spells of all kinds, and I'm not sure it's even possible to hit somebody without first removing their Mirror Images, making it very similar to the Stoneskin spell from BG and IWD.
Anyway, once we sell off all the Arrows of Fire from the first orc area, we can afford the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits, a +5 longsword that grants +2 STR and DEX, +25 HP, Freedom of Movement, and constant effect Haste, which means +1 APR and +4 AC. It's a fabulous defensive asset that works great when dual-wielded.
Frisky Bits has terrible THAC0 (also known as AB, attack bonus, in IWD2) and it's even worse when they try to dual-wield without the Ambidexterity or Two-Weapon Fighting feats, or even a single pip in longswords, but we get automatic hits against disabled critters, so it'll be very helpful in taking down enemies who fail their Reflex saves against Chromatic Orb.
As in Targos, we get through fights primarily by hiding behind undead summons and throwing out Horrid Wilting. When our summons aren't around, we resort to other damage spells, like Sunfire or Delayed Blast Fireball. Delayed Blast Fireball deals 1d8 damage instead of 1d6, has the widest area of effect of any damage spell in the IE games, and scales all the way to level 30, making it the highest-damage spell in the game, second only to Fiery Cloud (a damage over time spell).
With a save DC of 31, Frisky Bits' DBFB can bring almost anything to Near Death with a couple of castings, including our own summons.
Notice we have a summoned dog in that screenshot. We used Monster Summoning I, our fastest-casting summoning spell, because we arrived in that area without summons and needed a quick wall.
At the Shaengarne Bridge, Xuki plays out much the same as Caballus did. We have a 30% chance per casting of trapping her with Otiluke' Resilient Sphere and manage to land it on the second try.
That semi-transparent Frost Giant is our own. The level 6 Shades spell summons illusory critters whose power scales with levels, making it a very cheap alternative to other high-end summoning spells.
We nail one of the ogres trying to destroy the bridge with a Chromatic Orb on the second try and then start applying spell damage. Oddly enough, the bridge's support beams take damage from Horrid Wilting.
Frisky Bits paralyzes the other ogre and moves in for the kill with the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits in our off hand and a special bastard sword in our main hand that deals 5d6 acid damage on hit (one of my mods buffs bastards swords because they're pretty terrible in the vanilla game). Automatic hits help us bring down the ogre fast.
Without those automatic hits, Frisky Bits has basically no chance of hitting anything when dual-wielding. Their best attack roll has an AB of -4, which is the equivalent of 24 THAC0 in a 2nd edition game. But against a disabled target, we can land four attacks per round.
When the map begins to clear, Frisk casts Vipergout, uses Caballus' Whispering Staff to go invisible despite being unable to cast spells, and camps out in the corner while spitting out vipers to bite Xuki once she breaks out of the sphere. She lasts a really long time thanks to her mage buffs, but the constantly respawning vipers are effectively immortal as long as Vipergout lasts; her spells are all wasted on them.
There are two other mages left, hiding out in the west. We go scout them out, successfully trap one of them, and then fall back so we can focus on bombing the rest of the melee horde from behind a wall of undead. We start with Horrid Wilting, then switch to Delayed Blast Fireball when our summons are about to die anyway.
We kill the mages with two more castings of Vipergout and clear up the survivors with our last summons.
While shopping, I get a reminder that there is one way to achieve immunity to Finger of Death without needing Death Ward. It's a weapon I've never actually used, but is actually quite excellent.
I can't afford it, though. HoF items are designed to be affordable by full parties who arrive in HoF mode after completing normal mode, and therefore have tens of thousands of gold in extra loot they can sell off. Frisky Bits can only afford a few precious items in Targos before we'll have to leave later on.
The exterior of the Horde Fortress is very dangerous. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you let the shamans reach the War Drums; they can summon Goblin Worg Riders infinitely if you don't stop them. I sneak across the bridge while invisible to trigger the traps, rest, and then come back to summon a few undead to destroy the nearby War Drum. IWD2 enemy AI is weak enough that the rest of the enemies don't even respond, despite our summons being in their field of vision.
After that, dealing with the remaining enemies is a matter of bombing, summoning, re-casting Mirror Image, and then going invisible when the pressure on Frisky Bits becomes too much to bear.
Somehow we've triggered the entry of a bunch of Goblin Worg Riders despite having destroyed the War Drum. We head north, tanking a lot of trap damage while still invisible, and discover that somehow we've triggered the shamans at a separate War Drum all the way across the map!
We paralyze both shamans using Chromatic Orb to stop them from summoning Goblin Worg Riders and get to work.
Our last major enemy is Trugnuk. He comes bolstered by multiple spellcasters and lots of archers and melee enemies, and they're all positioned in such a way that you can't reach the War Drum without getting flanked or getting boxed into a corner. But I manage to find a place where I can cast Animate Dead without being noticed and then send our summons over to the drum.
Only when the undead are there do I send in Frisky Bits, whose presence allows our summons to attack the War Drum, and also allows the enemy to attack our summons. An Invisibility spell forces the nearest enemies to switch targets and attack our undead, giving Frisky Bits lots of breathing room to cast Chaos and then start spamming Horrid Wilting.
Notice the Dispel Magic coming from the enemy. Frisky Bits doesn't have Aegis to block it, but our summons were the target anyway, making Frisky Bits safe. Also note that Chaos' +4 save penalty effectively makes it strike as a level 9 spell with a base 19 save DC. In Frisky Bits' hands, that amounts to a save DC of 30, and since enemy fighters have poor Will saves, it can really screw with enemy hordes.
The enemy changes targets and chases after Frisky Bits, but with Mirror Image and Invisibility spells, we escape the pressure and can win the fight once we find a safe place to re-engage.
Basically all of the same tactics work in the interior of the Horde Fortress, but in the spirit of an Undertale-themed run, not all monsters should be fought.
The only truly new thing about the interior is using Aegis to block Dispel Magic and using Improved Invisibility to escape combat when Aegis makes Frisky Bits immune to Invisibility and Invisibility Sphere. Otherwise it's just more pictures of Delayed Blast Fireball and Horrid Wilting.
The top of Horde Fortress is a disaster waiting to happen. We have multiple spellcasters, lots of enemies, very little room in which to navigate, and Tactics4IWD2 gives both Arrows of Fire (good loot) and Arrows of Lesser Dispelling to the orcish archers.
Arrows of Lesser Dispelling have a 25% chance of dispelling magic on a failed Will save. The save DC is pathetic--it's a base 10, making it almost useless for the player--but with a 5% chance of a critical failure on the save, that amounts to a 1.25% chance of losing all of our buffs with every arrow they land on us. And there are multiple archers, each of which will have multiple attacks per round, and they will have very high accuracy rates.
Our only means of blocking the dispel magic effect is to use Aegis, which will also block the even more fatal Ice Lance spells from the enemy shamans. However, being unable to cast Mirror Image for 10 rounds basically means we're toast if we suffer more than just the slightest pressure. We'd have to cast Aegis, hole up at the exit, and then spam spells until we eventually get overwhelmed and are forced to retreat. Clearing the area would take numerous rests and a very long time.
Our reward would be quite lovely--tens of thousands of gold and XP--but the time and the risk are not worth it. I head inside, where I discover that the Tactics mod makes the Old Orc into a monk!
Stunning Attack works differently from a BG2-style monk's Stunning Blow. Stunning Attack only works for one single hit, no matter how many attacks you have in a single round, but the save DC scales very high: the DC for Stunning Attack is equal to 10 plus half the monk's level plus its Wisdom modifier.
That Old Orc's Stunning Attack probably has a save DC well north of 20, which is more than enough to reliably pin down Frisky Bits. A single round of automatic hits could easily spell Frisky Bits' doom; a second Stunning Attack would guarantee it.
Instead, we go invisible, only to find that the Old Orc can somehow see through invisibility. We have to run around to wait out the duration of Stunning Attack. Eventually, we summon some beetles to distract the bugbears and then paralyze the Old Orc with a Chromatic Orb.
Our normal tactics take down most of the other enemies at the top of Horde Fortress headquarters: Animate Dead and Shades for the enemy grunts, Chromatic Orb for the priests, and Vipergout and Invisibility Sphere for the Goblin Sorcerers. I'll deal with Guthma later.
I tried numerous tactics to thin the herd. Here's what you're dealing with:
25 orc archers
5 hobgoblin archers
3 hobgoblin elites
1 hobgoblin sergeant
8 orogs
4 verbeegs
3 orcs
4 orc shamans
2 orc witch doctors
1 orc high shaman
11 goblin hordlings
1 goblin overseer
2 goblin sorcerers
1 goblin shaman
2 half-goblins
5 bugbears
2 ice trolls
1 troll
That's 30 archers, 10 spellcasters, and 41 melee fighters, for a total of 81 enemies and maybe 16,000 HP across the lot of them.
They are spread out fairly evenly across the map; there are no positions where you can act without being flanked. They won't follow you during invisibility, but the moment you break invisibility, lots of them will approach, and their sheer numbers translate into very dramatic movement patterns. Think of them as a very dense and very wide moving wall with very rare gaps. They will make short work of any summoned critters. It might be different without Tactics4IWD2's "Moderate HP for summons" component, but they will kill your summons faster than you can bring them out.
The orc archers have an attack bonus of 40 and will remove an extra Mirror Image per hit thanks to the fire damage from their arrows. They have 2 or 3 attacks per round. You need an AC of 60 to force them to roll a critical hit, so they'll quickly remove your Mirror Images and leave you vulnerable to the melee critters.
The spellcasters will use Hold Person, (irrelevant thanks to Freedom of Movement from either the Golden Heart of Charname or Vghotan's Band), Chromatic Orb (also irrelevant for the same reasons), Dispel Magic, Unholy Blight, and Ice Lance, so Aegis is your only guarantee against losing your buffs, getting stunned, or suffering lots of magic damage. This limits your escape options, because the only way to go invisible under Aegis is to use Improved Invisibility, which has a fairly long casting time compared to Invisibility. The only character that could tank this fight is a high-AC tank; you'd basically need to have monk levels.
Crowd control is not an option so long as the spellcasters remain active. The spellcasters will cast Dispel Magic on their allies if they're under the effects of Chaos or what have you, and in IWD2, Dispel Magic works automatically on your allies; only enemies get a saving throw against its effects.
Attempts to use Vipergout failed. Due to the enemy's movement patterns, it's impossible to get the vipers to focus on one target; the other enemies will crowd around the previous one and box them out.
They'd be strong enough to kill at least one enemy before Vipergout expired, but only if they could focus on a single target. Nor could we get very close to the enemy to keep the vipers close to their target, since a Dispel Magic spell might reveal us.
Getting boxed in is a serious concern. Unless you're a druid and use shapeshifting to teleport to the nearest free space, only summons can break the box and let you escape. But summoning spells have long casting times and leave you very vulnerable. We escaped once due to having some pre-existing summons who could lure the enemy away.
Even when I lured the enemy to one side of the map and then started summoning critters on the other end of the map, I did not have enough time to do much before the enemy reached us and overwhelmed our summons. I only took down a very small number of critters.
We went downstairs, rested, and returned. We made more progress by trapping the spellcasters with Resilient Sphere and spamming Sunfire, but without summons, we couldn't take the pressure and had to retreat.
Repeating the process got us some more kills. But the next time we went upstairs, I found myself directly in the middle of the enemy, already boxed in.
Apparently the point at which you arrive in this area is a short distance away from the point at which you can exit. This means that if you flee the area while the enemy is already crowding around the stairway, you will be unable to go back downstairs unless you slay the enemies directly behind you.
With absolutely nowhere to go and enemies on all sides, we couldn't cast Aegis; we needed to be able to re-cast Mirror Image. This left us with no defense against Icelance.
However, testing found that all of this could have been avoided. First, you don't need Braston to survive in order to complete the quest; all you have to do is kill Guthma and get out. Second, that stairway is not your only exit: you can also flee via the main gate to the south. It's still possible to get boxed in, but you do have an alternative to the crowded stairway.
Brunash the Heaven-Slashing 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, 2, 3, 4
The Deepstone Clanhold beckons. Its been so long since the last time I did this companion quest that I forget what to expect except for good equipment for Rasaad. We take out some Sharrans and sneak into the clanhold by riding the logs down the stream. Once inside, Sarevok scouts out the area under invisibility.
We start the fight with the Sharrans under Mass Invisibility to take them on from a different angle. They are wiped out without trouble.
In the next room, Sarevok trips a trap.
Intense frustration fills me. Goodbye magical stuff I wanted for Rasaad. Shani is protected by Stoneskin so Sarevok can't just one-shot her. She goes under Mislead but Sarevok kills her clone, immediately exposing her to a vicious beatdown by the rest of the party. I check the containers and it looks like the magical stuff actually survived, but I check NearInfinity and see that the Night Walker boots have been destroyed. Turns out none of that monk stuff was good enough to replace anything for Rasaad, so I just roll my eyes and continue on.
We carve our way through the rest of the clanhold and free the dwarves as we go, then we go into the Plane of Shadows. Sarevok is just 2 levels away from regaining his fighter abilities.
Time for Alorgoth and Yxtrazzal. I have our fighters concentrate on the dragon while Rasaad, Nalia, and I concentrate on Alorgoth. The dragon dies quickly.
Alorgoth is effectively unkillable thanks to his MINHP1 ring, so we make our escape from the Plane of Shadows using the Wheel of Obliteration. Except for us mages, our party is taking damage from some unknown source with each passing round, so we have to get out quick. We're pretty beaten up by the time we make it out.
After Rasaad's quest is finished, we sell the loot to Karthis Al-Hezzar and build Perfect Iron MK I!
It is completely immune to elemental damage and takes no damage from piercing and missiles, with 75% slashing resist and 50% crushing resist. It needs +3 weapons to hit and deals 4d10+12 damage. Its gas cloud is its most potent weapon: every second for about a round and a half, opponents must save vs. death at -2 or be poisoned for 1 HP/sec for 3 rounds.
Nyalee's ruins are cleared.
All goes well in the fire giant temple until a Fire Lich appears.
I didn't expect it to be in this room, I thought it was in room on the opposite side. Anomen gibs its Mislead clone via turning, but only turns the lich. Even so, the Fire Lich spams Meteor Swarm at us and some Noble Efreetis also bombard us with Fire Storm, forcing us to retreat. I summon a planetar to help eradicate the lich, but it looks like it wasn't even needed since it didn't have PfMW up.
I scribe a Protection from Fire scroll and charge it up to place it on all party members. Its pretty clear that enemies here like to use fire. In the next room, the Planetar and Perfect Iron solo a bunch of Burning Men and Noble Fire Salamanders. The planetar is ok but Perfect Iron takes a beating. Anomen opens the container surrounded by lava and we get ambushed by more burning men, one of which casts Banefire on me, dispelling all my buffs!
These things are so annoying. They are luckily already dead, but they'll make for a good candidate for dominating with either the Staff of Command or the Enchanter's Staff +5. From a charged wish from earlier, I replenish my buffs and have Nalia cast Protection from Fire on me. All the wardstones are gathered and we head upstairs. The fire giants are slaughtered with ease, and we encounter Brimstone the dragon.
Fortunately, dragonslaying is so routine for us.
We encounter Imix next, but Sarevok hasn't recovered his fighter levels yet, so nobody in our party can hit Imix with the Wave +4. Gotta do this the hard way. I expended Wish already and didn't get the Rest option, so I resort to a charged Horrid Wilting scroll, which thins the elementals' ranks nicely.
We return to the pocket plane and forge the Axe of the Unyielding +5, which Korgan now dual-wields with Crom Faeyr. Back at Nyalee's glade, the axe is already proving itself.
Next we fight Yaga-Shura. We buff up and charge on in. I use a charged wish to grant us buffs, and also intoxicate everyone on the map. This will ensure that any elemental damage rolls for its maximum, so I have Anomen cast Mass Cure on us to remove our own intoxication.
Nalia uses a charged wish and causes a Horrid Wilting to affect everyone on the map and then heals us back to full. It wipes out Yaga-Shura's drunken soldiers, but also nuked the fleeing commoners, obliterating our reputation. Crap...
Eventually, the army is destroyed. We wait for about 20 seconds, and Yaga-Shura and his entourage appear. Not long after they do, his goons are dispatched and Yaga-Shura gets decapitated by Korgan.
The Solar pulls us back to the Pocket Plane for a talk. I choose to be nice to the Solar to get the Mass Healing ability from the second challenge room. Sarevok now has his fighter abilities back which vastly improves his saving throws, and he's going to be exceedingly deadly in one-on-one combat (as if he wasn't already)! The challenge room is easily completed and the new Bhaal power is mine. Now I have a way to quickly and fully heal my party without relying in Wish, in addition to removing certain status effects including intoxication.
That's 2 of the 5 down.
Brunash - Enchanter 27
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 36
Korgan - Berserker 33
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 36
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 19
Nalia - Sorcerer 26
Skyler (Elf ranger, Grond0); Duoa (Human Conjurer, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/957980/#Comment_957980
Today's session started with a descent into the Cloakwood Mine. The battle horrors were malisoned and then pulled back to be blinded - allowing Skyler to easily hide and get sneak attacks in. She was relatively low on HPs, but was still happy to use a potion of magic blocking to engage Davaeorn - he was not happy about the result.
In the City there was the usual targeting of tomes, but Duoa also took the opportunity to pen Lothander in to grab his boots of speed.
There was a nasty moment when Marek ignored damage to confuse Skyler. Marek died within a couple of seconds after that, which left Skyler free to attack nearby innocents - providing a high potential for fallen ranger syndrome. Duoa nipped in to try and blind Skyler, but only managed to put her body on the
linefloor instead. Her sacrifice was not in vain though as the slight delay allowed Skyler to first go inactive and then run away and no further attacks were made before she came to her senses.Skyler attempted to convince a priest to hand over a tome for free, but without success and it was left to Duoa to cast friends and show how major sucking up should work.
At the Iron Throne Duoa threw in some disablers before attacking. There was a potential problem when Alai managed to send a confusion back, but Skyler had time to get out of the area of effect and was able to finish off the casters while Duoa was disabled. She then sneaked up on Zhalimar to attack him, while Duoa also attacked - but before Zhalimar switched weapons and Duoa had to scurry away after taking arrow damage.
Moving on to Candlekeep various traps were tanked while grabbing the tomes. There was an amusing moment though when Duoa put 3 of the spiders down using emotion - but that didn't stop them teleporting (one step on from sleep walking I suppose).
A few dopplegangers later and Prat's gang got the malisoned disabler treatment - none of them managing to break free.
Duoa didn't have PfP memorized, so Skyler used a green scroll to attack the basilisks. With one of those down and the other at near death Duoa felt the need to make one final contribution and tried blinding the basilisk. Unfortunately her line of sight wasn't perfect and as she approached the basilisk she froze in place. Luckily Skyler had been given some Stone to Flesh scrolls by Degrodel and was able to get the party moving again straight away.
Back in the City Slythe and then Krystin were hit with dispelling arrows.
More disablers accounted for the Undercity party before entering the temple. Inside there we checked that bats were not listed as a protected species before clearing the
belfrychamber. That allowed Duoa to put some skull traps up for Semaj to teleport into - they didn't kill the mage, but he died pretty quickly.Skyler, Ranger 8, 95 HPs incl. 5 from Helm), 330 kills
Duoa, Conjurer 9, 33 HPs, 75 kills, 2 deaths
Sondral, Elf Stalker. Picture from Viveer from Deviantart.
Shoal is killed, and Melicamp is luckily saved after a little hide-and-seek with a wolf:
In Beregost, 1-1-3-3-1 and Spiders are enough for level 4, and Neira in Nashkel is backstabbed in Nashkel. En route, we picked up Zhurlong's boots, which are providing Sondral some good safety.
Greywolf is killed with more backstabbing, and basilisks provide level 6. Ankhegs and Sirines and Flesh Golems provide level 7, and Sondral's actually going to move on the main quest, with hopefully no more distractions until SoD.
We level-squatted a little while fighting goblins in Targos and then jumped to sorcerer level 14, just enough to get Finger of Death. We had to rely pretty heavily on Summon Monster I, since we only had 9 sorcerer levels at the start and therefore no Animate Dead spells.
Finger of Death is extremely effective thanks to its high level and our two pips in Spell Focus: Necromancy. With Eagle's Splendor to boost our CHA, Frisky Bits' FoD has a save DC of 31. Finger of Death is also the only way of obtaining the Young Ned's Knucky from Jemeliah, one of the best items in the game. Pickpocketing him is impossible in HoF mode, and trying to kill him with Flesh to Stone or Disintegrate will turn Targos hostile.
That +2 luck is a huge boon. In IWD2, luck doesn't just offer a flat bonus; it alters the dice rolls themselves. A single point of luck prevents you from every rolling a critical miss, and increases the chance of rolling a critical hit. Since there's no such thing as critical hit immunity in IWD2, every point of luck represents a 5% bonus to damage without even counting the bonuses to your attack and damage rolls. For hammers, halberds, arrows, and axes, which deal triple damage on critical hits, a point of luck gives a 10% boost.
Frisky Bits will never be a melee bruiser, but it's still a very nice prize.
We get lucky in Targos: Phaen rolls very low against Chromatic Orb, and we get two Boneguard Skeletons for the invasion.
Best of all, Caballus rolls low against Finger of Death, ending the fight before it began.
Finger of Death was a very excellent choice. It's a very reliable kill against all kinds of enemies, and makes Shaengarne Ford much faster.
We do get a nasty surprise when Frisky Bits' Mirror Images run out against a jelly, but we can escape with an instant-casting Mirror Image followed by an Invisibility spell with a casting time of 1.
It's very important to keep at least one or two level 2 spells on hand to make sure we can escape if a fight goes sour.
By level-squatting much of the way through Shaengarne Ford, Frisky Bits makes it to sorcerer level 20, giving us near-maximum spell slots and access to Aegis, Wail of the Banshee, and Executioner's Eyes. Selling off some HoF loot lets us buy the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits for constant effect Haste and Freedom of Movement. All of their saving throws are above 20.
Executioner's Eyes give +4 to hit and +4 to critical hit range, which translates into an area-effect +20% damage boost for 10 rounds. Wail of the Banshee is one of the absolute best spells in IWD2: it has massive range, instantly kills anyone who fails a save, works with Spell Focus: Necromancy, and it's a level 9 spell. Frisky Bits casts Wail of the Banshee with a ridiculous save DC of 34. On top of that, we also have Symbol of Hopelessness, which imposes fear or stun for 10 rounds with a save DC of 29. We have high-end summons, strong defenses, devastating bombing options, powerful disablers, and the ability to wipe out whole crowds of enemies in less than 7 seconds.
Our only problem is that we have a pitiful AC of 47 and no access to healing spells. We will be sitting at level 21 (20 sorcerer levels, 1 paladin level) until we can gain at least 9 cleric levels in one massive jump. Ideally, we'll do it for 11 levels so we can cast Heal, which will put us at level 30, but since we've removed the level cap, Frisk can add one more level of monk, albeit with massive difficulty, in the late game, just for a slight bonus to our AC.
Things will get harder and harder as time goes on, but 20 sorcerer levels should make us strong enough to handle almost anything for quite some time into the future.
Time to save the Shaengarne Bridge. We dodge Xuki's Icelance spell using Invisibility rather than resort to Aegis to block it, and when she makes her save against the slow-casting Wail of the Banshee, we trap her with a fast-casting and easily spammable Resilient Sphere.
To save our Wail of the Banshee spells, we adopt a (relatively) low-pressure approach, neutralizing key enemies with Chromatic Orb, disrupting a Call Lightning spell using a high-damage Skull Trap, and applying spell damage with Horrid Wilting. It wipes out our Greater Feyr (high-level Shades spells can summon Greater Feyrs), but they're lousy summons anyway; they use fear spells that often send themselves into a panic.
The moment Xuki breaks out of her shell, we nail her with Finger of Death.
Wail of the Banshee wipes out entire crowds of enemies, rendering the second half of the fight a cakewalk.
A blue flower appears over every enemy that dies to Wail of the Banshee. IWD2 being the hack-and-slash game that it is, we turn the battlefield at the Horde Fortress into a field of flowers.
In IWD2, traps tend to remove your Mirror Images and apply lots of lingering damage. We trigger all of the bridge traps under invisibility and rest between each one to make sure we can engage the enemy at full health.
We use Invisibility Sphere to destroy the first War Drum from outside the enemy's field of vision, then use Wail of the Banshee to clear the field. A pair of Chromatic Orbs bring down some shamans who were summoning Goblin Worg Riders via the War Drum to the far north, just like in our first run.
We use Animate Dead to keep Trugnuk and company busy while we throw out Symbol of Hopelessness and Wail of the Banshee. Trugnuk has excellent saving throws and consistently resists our attempts to slay him. After 10 separate attempts to pin him down fail due to a successful save, we finally land a Finger of Death on him.
Our area-effect options are enough to bring down everything in the Horde Fortress interior.
We sneak past the enemies at the top and manage to paralyze the Old Orc with a string of Chromatic Orb spells in spite of his incredible saving throws.
We had a 90% chance of landing that, which is pretty terrible from a no-reload perspective. I don't know how many Stunning Attacks the Old Orc has, but the odds of getting stun-locked are probably pretty high. We'd have had to spend many rounds running away from him until we were sure he was out of Stunning Attacks.
Wail of the Banshee got us through the rest of the fights at the Horde Fortress headquarters, though we needed to use Invisibility three times to avoid Dispel Magic.
I don't think Braston will follow you if you're invisible, so the only way to get him out safely is to either wipe out the enemies at the top or cast Invisibility on Braston instead of Frisk. Taking down the enemies at the top should be doable with Wail of the Banshee, but since it got us killed the last time we tried it, I am not willing to take the risk.
Nor am I willing to stay visible and expose Frisky Bits to all of the enemies just to keep Braston safe, even if it's only for a couple of rounds. In the end, I run ahead of him and escape before he can make it out. He doesn't die, but that's little consolation to Ennelia, who goes off in search of her lover.
Before we fly off to the ice wall in Oswald's airship, we buy the Saga of Wandering Sky greatsword for its immunity to Finger of Death (as well as Harm and Slay Living) and its on-hit Doom effect, which offers no saving throw, unlike the normal spell in IWD2.
It won't bypass magic resistance or MGOI, but it's an on-hit -2 penalty to saving throws, which could be very useful considering how much we depend on the enemy's failed saves.
Frisky Bits cast Invisibility to hide from the Boring Beetles who spawn shortly after the crash, but in the end, they don't wake up until the beetles somehow find them and attack them.
The Invisibility spell was unnecessary; that sleep effect that applies during the crash ends the moment you take any damage.
Outside, we clear the map with some Wail of the Banshee spells. We make sure to buy the Necklace of Missiles before we fight Beodaewn, just because we won't get another chance to buy it.
The druids might require multiple rests. They're very nasty in HoF mode and in Tactics4IWD2; the rangers fire off lots of arrows and the druids summon lots of animals and cast Call Lightning. It's a very ugly situation for lots of reasons, but hopefully Wail of the Banshee will take down the enemies before they can apply much pressure to us.
After that, we have to trudge through the ice temple, which involves a LOT of backtracking if you don't know exactly what to do (which I still don't, despite playing this game numerous times) and fighting through lots of repetitive enemies. At least it will net us thousands and thousands of XP.
There is some negativity as we leave with a drow but thats nothing to the looks my new goblin gets... a ranger and Edwin will do for these early maps
I made a B line for my wild mage (walking past most mobs without fighting) then we took a side step to fetch a spider leg and an armour upgrade for Vicky.
Brunash the Heaven-Crushing 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, 2, 3, 4, 5
With our reputation in the gutter, we slaughter the Tethyrian army and make it to Amkethran, then visit the temple to repair my reputation. By accident, I do the two small sidequests which raise your reputation first instead of saving them for later, though the one where the monk attacks the old man is unavoidable. Should've used Time Stop to enter the temple, bought my way back up to 18 rep, and then done the +rep tasks to get back to 20.
I correct two little mistakes with a vengeance.
Vongoethe gets Marlowe's soul and Malla's soul is returned to her body. We give her 5000 gold to get us back to 19 rep. Onto Abazigal's enclave. I use a charged blue Protection from Acid scroll on everyone because I've seen runs end because of Draconis' breath weapon. Its pretty much a walk in the park, though, by using charged Spell Striking wands to get rid of Draconis' PfMW buffs so everyone can beat him down.
Inside, the golems take care of the annoying eye things and we subcontract Bondari to get the gauth's eyestalk.
Eventually we free Fll'Yissetat with the reversal scroll. I'm becoming more aware of this Thrall power that the Staff of Enchantment +5 holds, so I recruit the help of an old friend to help us fight Abazigal...
He's back! I've re-outfitted him with some new gear, too! For all intents and purposes, Coran is now a helper (read: familiar without the CON drain on death) like the golems, so he does not earn any XP. I think he'll be okay without direct inventory management, since I've set him up with all the stuff he could need. I've swapped out Teleomortis +4 for Taralash +4, since Teleomortis cannot swap arrows using the quickbar. But that's ok, because Coran is equipped with the Quiver of Plenty +3 and delicious Arrows of Dispelling - well worth the reduced damage he'll be doing. Even so, Coran is still a deadly archer and on par with Sarevok in terms of levels, and he retains his HLAs.
We march into Abazigal's cave. The wyvern thingies are taken care of as they deal minor damage to us. We move to the left to keep Abazigal from spotting us and kill whatever's in our way. Before taking on Tamah, I cast a charged wish to get us Improved Haste and Hardiness, which should help immensely in taking down both dragons quickly. Tamah is then killed, as expected.
Abby transforms. Perfect Iron is stuck to Abby since he's so heavy. He concentrates on Perfect Iron solely until he Imprisons it. Nalia uses a charged Iron Horn to bait Abby's Death Spell, but they all get nuked by his electrical breath weapon. I cast Improved Alacrity and send out a couple MR-lowering spells in addition to some buffs and a Greater Malison, and summon a planetar, plus 2 Horrid Wiltings.
Soon, Abby goes down.
This time when the Solar drags us back to the pocket plane, I choose to be rude. I never cast Divine Might, so I might as well get a spell that does poison damage instead. The pocket plane challenge is easily won; it's just a game of keep-away since all the slayer shadow does is target CHARNAME.
Back at Abby's cave, I cast Freedom to get Perfect Iron back, who is actually none worse for wear. Back at Amkethran, after having held on to the pantaloons for the entire saga, we finally forge the Big Metal Unit!
I have modified it so that it does not change your avatar, and spells and thief skills can be used while wearing it in addition to being immune to wing buffets. It now belongs to Sarevok. That's 3 of the 5 taken care of.
Brunash - Enchanter 28
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 37
Korgan - Berserker 34
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 37
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 20
Nalia - Sorcerer 27
Coran - Fighter 17/Bounty Hunter 21
Brunash the Heaven-Missile (???) 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, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Before starting Sendai's enclave proper, I forge the Flail of Ages +5 and the Runehammer +5 for Anomen and Korgan. Sendai's enclave is the definition of easy, even without abusing WoL-charged Wishes. Not even Odameron poses a threat to us. The enclave is slaughtered wholesale and so is Sendai.
I am nice to the Solar this time because Hand of Murder only works on melee weapons, so permanent Negative Plane Protection and +5% MR sounds better. By now I'm wondering why I haven't found the second page of the Adamantite Golem tome yet...then I remember that Vongoethe had it. Crap. I sigh and take the fourth challenge, but I inform Cyric that I already beat Venduris' band. Cyric remembers that encounter, so Ao won't allow him to interfere any further which allows me to skip this challenge and get the benefits anyway.
Next I convince Balthazar to join us.
Pulled back to the pocket plane for the last time, I taunt Melissan to gain the permanent physical damage resistance power from fighting the Ravager. I probably should've gone with the Resurrection power to use during an Improved Alacrity, but damage resistance should help more if I find myself in a pinch.
The Ravager is beaten handily.
There is nothing left to do now. The final fight awaits. It can get glitchy so I hope it goes smoothly the first time. I usually have to reload at least once because it never seems to work correctly the first time around.
Time for the end.
Brunash - Enchanter 29
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 40
Korgan - Berserker 36
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 39
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 23
Nalia - Sorcerer 29
Coran - Fighter 17/Bounty Hunter 21
A wizard staff can be upgraded to +5 in ToB, though it can be imbued with a school of magic at 250k XP when its still +3. Thrall is exclusive to the Staff of Enchantment +5. If I were to guess, I'd say it works similarly to your Seducer's Recruit Follower ability, but it's only 1x/day instead of at-will.
Skyler (Elf ranger, Grond0); Duoa (Human Conjurer, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/957980/#Comment_957980
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/959603/#Comment_959603
After disposing of Sarevok at the end of the previous session we found ourselves stuck in another dungeon this time. It didn't take long to make some progress with Skyler sneaking through to Porios and persuading him to surrender.
Things got a bit more difficult on the next level down when some skeletons survived an early skull trap and put on pressure, while a Shadowed Soul was rapidly draining Skyler's life to restore its own - that required a bit of a retreat in order to persuade the Flaming Fist to provide a helping hand.
More skull traps for undead kept things moving before Duoa gratefully accepted the chance to target living beings. She had a chaos in reserve, but that wasn't needed after a malison + emotion combination.
Korlasz was hit by a dispelling arrow, but put mirror images up almost instantly in response. With most of her troops disintegrating from area damage she didn't get a chance to do much though before missile damage persuaded her to give in.
Baldur's Gate provided a chance to visit the shops and pick up the Spectacles of Spectacle, but no quests were done before hitting the trail.
On arrival there was another quick trip to track down a vampire - only to help it out against its attackers.
Duoa froze while searching a burned inn for Takos' mirror. While Gate70 was rejoining the game that resulted in Skyler picking it up and going to talk to Takos, but he wasn't impressed by her charisma - and refused to hand back the Sunray shield. Ignoring that setback the duo moved on to the bridge. They tried to stay out of trouble until they heard a call to parley, but couldn't then resist attacking. However, with no buffs or summons they were outclassed and Skyler had to take a potion of invisibility when she saw an emotion being cast at her while already nearly dead.
Skyler, Ranger 8, 95 HPs incl. 5 from Helm), 367 kills
Duoa, Conjurer 9, 33 HPs, 123 kills, 3 deaths
Corey_Russell: Killye, Dwarven Fighter / Cleric. Lawful Good
Grond0: Evas, Dwarven Fighter / Thief. Chaotic Good
Gate70: Felai, Human Dragon Disciple and Protagonist. Lawful Neutral
We've spent two weeks resting near Thax'llsillyia the dragon. As we start our buffs, the dragon reacts (possibly due to one of us being in inventory and multiplayer treating the wardstone as being gone).
We scatter in all directions and things go from bad to worse. Felai is drained to level 4, Killye restoring her only for her to try a dragon breath on Thaxxy and realising too late she was still blinded. One hit is painful but the dragon breath has rooted her to the spot and Thaxxy doesn't need more than a moment to snack on a disciple.
In fact, you could just chain-cast the Gate spell and use the staff to generate an army of 20 Pit Fiends. I know that you can make temporary summons into permanent party members using opcode 82, and I can only assume you can also make permanent familiars with the same opcode.
Or go with Summon (Fallen) Planetar instead and create an army of 40 planetars with instant-casting Heal spells.
Brunash the Super Heaven-Piercing 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, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
I'm one level short of creating perfect Mithril Golems. I could use the item duplication trick to scribe level 9 spells repeatedly, but I'm not going to cross that line. Introducing, Mitty the Greater Mithril Golem!
Mitty is slightly inferior to Perfect Iron MK I in most respects, but she has 2 attacks per round instead of 3/2. Mitty can heal from fire, however, and can be superheated by high level fire spells just like Perfect Iron MK I. She can trample targets smaller than her for 8d10+30 crushing damage, save vs. death at -4 for half and a save negates a 1 round hold effect.
Before entering the throne, I buff with my standard routine including some medium duration spells like Spell Shield and Spell Turning. Anomen buffs us all with Prayer, Recitation, and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. Nalia uses a charged wish for Hardiness and Improved Haste on everyone. Onto the throne. Our first plan of attack is to get rid of the Fallen Solars, who are easily the most dangerous threats here. Our fighters tear into them while the golems keep Bodhi busy. Irenicus casts Time Stop, but Rasaad activated Lunar Stance as I heard the incantations for it. Combined with the Staff of the Magi, we can take them out.
While Rasaad focuses on the Solars, I dispel Irenicus' Mislead clone, exposing him. Seems he's trying to make a getaway.
Rasaad kills the Solar on the right side as I dispel any buffs the left one has. Rasaad uses Dragon Fist on Irenicus during the Time Stop, which resolves after its over, but he puts up another PfMW. Bodhi uses her dreaded Cloud of Bats ability, which causes us spell interruption and accumulating damage over time. Our stoneskins are torn to shreds and the damage just keeps piling up, worrying me somewhat.
I step over back to where Irenicus used to be and use a charged Wish scroll to get us some healing. Casting from scrolls cannot be interrupted. I get Breach on enemies, Improved Hasted party, 25 stats, and Hardiness refresh. This opens Irenicus up to a death blow from Sarevok. Poetic.
During this skirmish with Irenicus, I wonder what happened to the second solar and to Bodhi. Apparently it was Improved Invisible, as it reveals itself after everything else is dead. We focus fire on it and obliterate it. Bodhi was apparently so little threat outside of her special abilities that the golems must have killed her or something.
Still covered in bats and taking double damage from them due to the Improved Haste wish, we stumble about trying to spare Imoen. Despite our double-strength haste, every hasted damage tick causes hitstun, making movement awkward at best and downright impossible in some situations. Twice I have to resort to charged potions to prevent myself from dying, as trying to cast spells in this condition is asking to be interrupted. Eventually Imoen snaps out it.
Next up comes the demon pools with Rasaad's Dragon Fist getting a workout on all three pools against the Mariliths. We start on the leftmost pool and they are dealt with pretty easily. Coran and Sarevok trap the hell out of where Illasera and Sendai will spawn. The traps intended for Illasera are wiped out by some Babau that get summoned from the next pool though. Pool #2 is cleared.
Sarevok lays down more traps where Illasera spawns. Nalia uses a charged wish to get us Hardiness, healing, and hasting everyone. Next is third pool up top which gets cleared.
Melissan resurrects the Five and offers Sarevok a chance to betray me. He doesn't take it.
The traps set for Sendai and Illasera go off, but Gromnir took most of the damage for Illasera. Dammit. At least Sendai, Abazigal, and Gromnir are at near death.
Sendai apparently uses a sequencer to go back to full health before Feedback triggered to Melissan and she summons a Fallen Deva. Illasera goes invisible and skulks off somewhere to recover. Rasaad goes over to Sendai and punches her with Dragon Fist, allowing the rest of us to pile onto her and kill her.
Gromnir is killed soon afterward and Melissan comes down to play. For her opening attack, she uses Power Word Blind on Coran, reducing him to using the Daystar +4. But I dare not send Coran into melee combat regardless. I'll just wait out his blindness.
Abazigal is troublesome because he keeps protecting himself from magic weapons. A Spell Striking wand fixes this and he gets killed.
Illasera reveals herself and Nalia sics the Improved Kitthix swarm on her. But she's protected from magic weapons at the moment. I think to myself that I can kill Yaga-Shura and use the time for when Melissan is KO'd from Feedback to deal with Illasera.
While Mel's down I scurry on over to where Anomen and the swarm are keeping Illasera busy. Nalia casts another charged Wish and breaches Illasera, allowing them to finish her off in addition to topping off our health and buffs.
All Five are dead and Melissan is now mortal.
Mel gates in some demons and teleports back to our starting position as most of us follow, sensing blood in the water. I only heard her begin to say "Praeses..." when she stops time. I didn't react quick enough to get Rasaad into Lunar Stance. This would be the infamous Time Stop I've heard so much about.
She does not initiate a Whirlwind Attack as I expected, probably because my staff is keeping me safe. She starts beating up Rasaad instead. I summon a planetar to deal with the demon host she's gated in and attempt a Pierce Shield on her for whatever good that'll do me. Time is still stopped and she's got Rasaad on the ropes. I cast a charged Mass Cure in hopes that he survives. Time resumes and my spells resolve.
Rasaad survives, thankfully. Coran is not blinded anymore and gets to work on the demon swarm. The golems help up there too and they get cleared out quickly. Korgan scores a vorpal hit on Melissan and she disappears...and I dread that the fight has glitched. I unpause and in reality, she's just teleported over to where the demon swarm is in the upper left. We surround her now that she's relatively defenseless and initiate beatdown mode.
Brunash chooses to remain mortal. Thus ends the saga of the giant halfling who towered over not just his own race, but over everyone else too.
Throne of Bhaal complete!
Brunash - Enchanter 29
Sir Anomen - Fighter 7 -> Priest of Helm 40
Korgan - Berserker 37
Rasaad - Sun Soul Monk 40
Sarevok - Fighter 18 -> Assassin 23
Nalia - Sorcerer 29
Coran - Fighter 17/Bounty Hunter 21
Balthazar - Monk 30
Mikel - elven archer, protagonist (corey_russell)
Alor - orcish shaman (Grond0)
Trukk - dwarven defender (Gate70)
Well, Thaxxy took down our Trio, so it was my turn to be the child of Bhaal. Here is the protagonist:
And here are his friends:
Our first hiccup happened due to Corey_Russell's inexperience with EE - he accidentally triggered the Neira fight - Grond0 said run, so Mikel did, but Gate70 was expecting attacks from the distance. Without Mikel's help, Trukk couldn't hold together and died. However, with spirit animals and Mikel's trusty crossbow, we avenged Trukk then resurrected him.
The rest of the session was much smoother. We did the basilisks level 1, including Mutamutin and Kirian. This went well.
We did other things too, like take down Shoal, Zax and Val, Caldo and Krumm, and others. We didn't have much trouble, though Mikel's friends did get hurt a lot protecting Mikel. Mikel hides in the shadows a lot so isn't targeted very often. We also took down Bassilus. Alor tried to doom him, but he was apparently already doomed before the spell hit and died. : P. Trukk welcomed the warhammer.
By this point, we didn't have much time left. So we had just enough time to take down Mulahey and save our session.