Before we can enter the ice temple, we have to get past the Aurilite druids and rangers of Andora. We've got multiple druids here that cast summoning spells and Call Lightning and rangers with lots of ranged attacks that can cut through our Mirror Images. They also have excellent Fortitude saves; it takes three tries to kill Odea Winterthaw with Finger of Death.
Notice we're using multiple undead to hold off the melee enemies to the west and one remorhaz to block the path up the hill to the north.
Ilium Ar'Ghrenoir is even worse. As a high-level ranger, he can cast Call Lightning as well as fire crossbow bolts with frightening speed and accuracy, and as I've discussed, we can't maintain our Mirror Images and our Aegis spell at the same time. Worse yet, he's on a distant ledge and you have to fight your way through lots of enemies before you can climb up and engage him in melee combat. It takes seven tries before we land an instant death spell on him.
We proceed to the next batch of enemies, who fail multiple saves against Symbol of Hopelessness, Chromatic Orb, and Finger of Death spells, but Frisky Bits can't keep Aegis active without becoming vulnerable to melee attacks, and they end up failing their third save against Dispel Magic, forcing us to go invisible and flee.
Fortunately, we don't get hit by any Call Lightning strikes from the dead druids on the way back.
We rest and return and combine our fast-casting Symbol of Hopelessness spells with our slow-casting Wail of the Banshee spells. The former is a great way of neutralizing enemies fast and buying us enough time to cast the latter.
Andora is done! Next comes the ice temple exterior. We've got several nasty fights here. First is a Crystal Golem, which hits like a truck and is only vulnerable to crushing weapons. Our Boneguard Skeletons are at a real disadvantage, and it takes a long time to bring down the golem.
The ice temple has three different types of priests: Aurilite Postulants, Aurilite Stormsisters/Stormbrothers, and Aurilite Frosttouches. The Postulants are the weakest and the Frosttouches are the strongest, but they all have access to cleric spells that make them very resistant to spells: Freedom of Movement, Chaotic Commands, Remove Paralysis, and Death Ward. Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee are practically useless against them, Chromatic Orb and Symbol of Hopelessness are relatively ineffective, and the Aurilite Frosttouches also cast Divine Shell, which makes them immune to missile weapons and gives them 15- resistance to all elemental spells.
Aside from our summons, there's really only one spell that works reliably against them. Luckily, Frisky Bits has invested heavily in sorcerer spells and our Horrid Wilting spells hit very hard indeed.
It still takes several castings and gives the enemy the opportunity to cast Animate Dead.
Our next problem is the Queen Remorhaz and then Lord Rengar, who appears after the remorhaz has fallen. The Queen Remorhaz has many attacks per round and deals massive crushing and fire damage, and also has a habit of firing off Sol's Searing Orb spells that are especially devastating to undead critters.
Our undead aren't just for soaking up damage, though. They also have pretty decent offensive output, especially with Executioner's Eyes to increase the odds of a critical hit.
Lord Rengar appears shortly, and he is a tough nut to crack. Aside from being a strong fighter, he can teleport, see through invisibility, and cast mage spells (we make our saves against Dispel Magic, fortunately), and also has some pretty high resistances that take 30 damage out of our opening Delayed Blast Fireball. He's even immune to paralysis; Chromatic Orb is useless against him, and his saves are good enough to shrug off Finger of Death.
But to my surprise, his Will save is terrible and he rolls low against Slow. We summon a remorhaz of our own via Shades and rush him with Executioner's Eyes active.
We kill the local necromancers with our own necromancy spells and get a brief scare when Frisk gets boxed in by Snow Trolls and loses a spell, forcing us to re-cast Mirror Image and then Invisibility.
Our last problem is Sherincal. Sherincal, like all half-dragons, has massive damage output, excellent stats, and spell resistance on top. She comes bolstered by barbarians, clerics, mages, Soarsmen (which are little wyverns or something), and a Crystal Golem that flanks you midway through the fight. But to my surprise, much of the enemy collapses after we throw out Symbol of Hopelessness and Wail of the Banshee.
We keep up the pressure, focusing on bringing down Sherincal's allies instead of tackling the half-dragon herself, and the Crystal Golem approaches from behind. We have prepared for this, however, and summoned a remorhaz that can deal lots of crushing damage to the golem.
We've got a Barbarian Shaman up north to deal with, but he's immune to both Finger of Death and Chromatic Orb. Fortunately, we can still disrupt his spells with a fast-casting Skull Trap.
The enemy wears thin, but we discover that Sherincal, just like Lord Rengar, can see through invisibility. We cannot dodge her Dispel Magic by casting Invisibility, and Frisky Bits loses all of their buffs due to a critical failure on their saving throw.
The interesting thing is that we can restore all of our buffs in a single round. Shield, Mirror Image, Eagle's Splendor, Ghost Armor, and Stoneskin all have a casting time of 1, which Improved Initiative reduces to 1. That only leaves Mind Blank, which has a casting time of 10, or 9 with II.
By the time Frisk goes out to help bring down Sherincal, our undead have already done the job for us. We grab a Potion of Arcane Absorption from Sherincal's body, granting us +2 spell resistance.
That's actually pretty much worthless because spell resistance in IWD2 is an opposed roll: 1d20 plus your spell resistance against a DC of 10 plus the other critter's caster level. So a base 2 SR isn't going to help at all in HoF mode for a character who isn't a high-level monk, a drow, or a deep gnome. However, it should stack with some other sources of SR we can get later on in the game.
Inside the temple, we get another scare from the Ice Golem Champion at the start, who apparently has a stun effect on hit!
Fortunately, it does not last long. Stun effects in IWD2 usually only work for 3 seconds, when a round is 7 seconds.
There are three high priestesses in this temple: Cathin, Lysara, and Oria. The first one, Cathin, is close to the entrance and comes with lots of Frosttouches spread across the room, and there's not much you can do to stop them from spamming Animate Dead and crowding up the room. We apply heavy pressure with Horrid Wilting and get mixed messages about whether it affects Drowned Dead or not.
Notice that we're relying on our saving throws to block Dispel Magic instead of Aegis. This is because I've decided that it's safer to avoid casting Aegis in most cases to make sure that we can always go invisible without resorting to Improved Invisibility and its long casting time.
Improved Invisibility imposes a 50% miss chance on enemies (25% with Blind-fight), but it has one fatal flaw: if you break Improved Invisibility, casting Invisibility or Improved Invisibility will have no effect. Enemies will keep attacking you. Improved Invisibility is a great buff, but it cuts off our best escape option.
Anyway, we finish up the Frosttouches with Horrid Wilting, Animate Dead, and Shades, then do a few minor fights before resting up for the next high priestess fight. The second priestess, Lysara, comes with weaker priests at her side, but she also has an Ice Golem Champion guarding her. We take advantage of the narrow entrance to the room and chain-cast Horrid Wilting while the enemy is stuck.
To my surprise, Lysara comes without Death Ward. Against the odds, she falls to Finger of Death.
Most of the fights in this temple involve no special tactics; they're all the same enemies in the same circumstances. One notable change in our strategy is Frisky Bits switching to Skull Trap spam to stop Frosttouches from casting Animate Dead.
I consider using the prisoner trick to give Frisky Bits some bonus XP, but ultimately decide against it. I want to do this run without using any exploits. Basically, you just free the prisoners, then quick save and quick load repeatedly. Every time you load the game, it re-applies the XP bonus for freeing each prisoner still alive (they die over time if you don't reach them fast), making it possible to bump a solo character up several levels depending on their current level.
The next several fights are long but unexciting. I'll just post three screenshots to show what it looks like.
There's a mirror in this area that imposes a long-lasting -20 luck when you break it. I don't know if it's required, but I do it anyway. As long as go invisible and rest before engaging in any fighting, the luck penalty can wear off safely.
See those people behind the glass on the north side of the room? Those are a band of mercenaries that have been trapped in this temple. If you free them, they immediately go hostile, and one of them using Bolts of Stunning that could easily result in Frisky Bits getting stun-locked and killed. Not trusting invisibility and summons to win the fight without Frisky Bits' active intervention, I decide that the risk is not worth the reward.
One of the reasons this area is so slow is because there's so much loot that's distributed in the form of over 10 types of magical ammunition, and it's hard not to pick up every bit because the sum total nets you about 100,000 gold. Fortunately, we have an ammo bag and a mod that identifies all items, which saves a lot of inventory management.
The Battle Square goes poorly when I erroneously assumed that we can use summons during the fights. But when I try again, Finger of Death, Sunfire, Skull Trap, and Luck-boosted dual-wielding allow us to bring down each of the enemies who otherwise would be too sturdy for us to tackle in melee (and in some cases would be immune to our disablers and instant death spells).
The ice temple is coming to a close. We have to bring down the final priestess, Oria, a mage who comes with a bunch of winter wolves and also opens a door to a room full of clerics who will flank you and start casting Animate Dead if you don't stop them. Before engaging Oria, we put summons on the doorway to the clerics nearby and bomb them from outside.
When the clerics are out, we return to Oria and have our undead stomp the Winter Wolves before finally engaging the mage. Executioner's Eyes gives us our critters some nice critical hits on Oria, but most of the time it's just a long string of misses due to Improved Invisibility and Mirror Image.
Oria takes no damage from a string of hits, at which point I realize that she's coded to be immortal until she can deliver her next dialogue line and transform. I break invisibility by picking up an item and she breaks her staff, but I'm well out of the way when the thing detonates.
Oria is ethereal and untouchable until we hurry down to the Battle Square and active the "Inner Sanctum" mode. We restore our buffs and then smash Oria while she's vulnerable.
We get Caged Fury's true name from talking to Nickademus, banish the spirit that's keeping the ice wall intact, and then give Nathaniel his items, opening the way to the Wandering Village.
Before we head out, I go back to Oswald's ship, which has since left without us because plot. But Oswald has left us a reward for giving him the materials for the mending spell: a randomized permanent stat boost potion. In my first, undocumented, glitch-heavy no-reload run of IWD2, I used the import/export trick to duplicate this thing and make both of my party members immune to piercing and slashing damage.
This potion is actually not much use to us, because it'll only amount to maybe an extra 5-15 HP in a few limited circumstances. A stat boost or SR potion probably would have helped us more.
But we are in good shape nonetheless. Frisk has enough XP to put 10 levels in cleric, and we won't even need those levels until some distance into the future, so we can keep holding off on the level up.
Blaggerd gets back into his stride after a couple of weeks. First order of the day is to try and find the previous valuables he hawked off while travelling solo. Who'd have thought that a ring of wizardry would be so complained about, while Imoen picked up bracers of archery and Dorn took gauntlets of dexterity. After checking out every store Blaggerd admits defeat and has no idea where the ring of wizardry was.
Dorn's quest is progressed a little.
It all looked good, but Baeloth ran into some gibberlings while scared and waving his dart at them proved to be a tad fatal. Temple run.
Neear's quest is handled cautiously, with the two mages taken down as quick as possible. Baeloth had mirror images active but a first hit of one guard badly injured him so he cast on the run.
As usual with Blaggerd, his party took a beating.
Baeloth aimed a fireball inaccurately on Durlag's tower exterior wall. Blaggerd emerged in flames while Neera perished. Cue a long trip to a temple.
On our return, a bit of jostling saw the protected Blaggerd shoved aside just as a basilisk turned to step away and turned back. Rasaad turned to stone so after finishing the basilisk we made another arduous trip to the temple. Was Rasaad thankful? No he was not, insisting we meet him at Nashkel. We've just come from there...
Another long trip and he is back in the party. At the third attempt we manage to have the exterior areas cleared but Blaggerd has had his fill for one day.
This session actually took place several weeks ago, but my annoyance at how it ended meant I didn't write it up at the time. After playing various solo games for a while though I think I'm ready to do a bit more with the monks.
Doing a bit of clean-up around the place included the Beregost temple wolf pack and Kelddath in the temple itself (he doesn't cost reputation), the Red Wizard area
and Gullykin (investing a hill giant strength potion to get another +1 sling). The monks used sleep for the first time at Firewine Bridge when they couldn't be bothered to muck about with a big kobold spawn.
They then gave Kahrk a warm, if brief, welcome back to the world.
Thalantyr is another that doesn't cause reputation loss and he failed to survive a sneak attack.
Ulcaster was the last target before heading back to the City and the monks started out there by taking on Icharyd. I thought they would kill him before lightning caused too much of a problem and that proved to be the case.
In the ruins the Wolf survived an initial set of attacks with wands and scared Spectre into running through the trap before holding her.
It only lasted just long enough though to start bringing out some ghouls and they were burnt down before they could target Spectre.
In Baldur's Gate they went straight to the main quest. Jalantha and Lothander were stunned without problems. Larze was said to be stunned, but ignored that - though the second time around he did hold still as expected.
Marek survived 2 rounds of stunning blows, but didn't offer much offensively and was eventually beaten into the ground (with the odd bit on the ceiling).
On the way to the Iron Throne I was surprised that Entillis Fulsom went hostile (reputation was only 6, but Chimera's charisma was 19), but he didn't last long enough to do any damage - the monks nipped into the Iron Throne building before coming out to stun him.
Inside, they went up to base themelves on the roof while Wraith charmed the casters and let them fight it out with the invisible Shennaras.
With the four of them dead and a Shennara as well (thanks to a hold person from Aasim) I decided it was time to fight fair. Zhalimar was attacked and stunned and finished off while Phantom soaked up a Shennara backstab. Spirit then took Gardush for a wander while the others cleared the decks before shooting Gardush down.
When they went to kill the ogre mage in the sewers, a couple of phase spiders teleported in to complicate things. That resulted in Chimera using his Bhaal horror for the first time to reduce the pressure from carrion crawlers. The round's delay before he could then use slow poison meant Spook got uncomfortably low on HPs, but he survived.
With those all dead, still out of sight of the ogre mage, taking him down was no problem.
A few dopplegangers later and the monks were sent by Duke Eltan to Candlekeep. In my solo LoB games the ogre magi ambush there can be very dangerous if you don't use buffs or invisibility, but with a party it's much less of a problem and I didn't use any protections on arrival. The opening exchanges saw only Spirit being affected by anything - blinded by Glitterdust - while one of the ogre magi ran from a horror. The others were soon stunned or beaten down and the monks moved inside.
Since they were going to get blamed anyway they killed the Iron Throne leaders - stunning the thief and mage before switching to ranged weapons.
That should have allowed an easy victory, but I got careless with movement and Spirit paid the price.
That mistake was compounded when I left all her gear on the floor while going to the temple to get her raised. I hadn't though expected there to be guards outside waiting to haul the monks off to prison - and they wouldn't take no for an answer.
What was doubly annoying about that is one of my rules is that no-one can level up until the whole party is able to do so. With Spirit being dead that means that all XP gained in the catacombs is potentially wasted. The monks still killed the spiders and ghasts while looting before moving through to find Prat. He used a sequencer to disappear when he saw the battle going against him.
The monks went back to the doppleganger area to rest for a day before returning to give him a good stunning.
Due to the XP issue they didn't bother killing the spiders or basilisks though.
A badly played session finished with yet another mistake. I'd deliberately kept reputation down to 9 to give Chimera vampiric touch as a Bhaal ability in Candlekeep, but the intention was to get DUHM for his final ability. I was actually just writing up a note saying I'd done that when I want back to the game and with a reflex twitch of my finger rested right outside the FAI temple .
There are a bunch of quests to do in the city of Baldur's Gate, and everything ticks along nicely for a while.
Jardak puts an end to that, switching targets a few times and avoiding many attacks including two backstab attempts. Our shaman tries to break free but collapses in a pool of blood. Jardak does the same moments later, but he has no friends to take him to a temple.
We arrive at the Wandering Village. There are a lot of barbarians and Ferocious Dire Wolves to deal with first, but they have no tricks up their sleeves and defeating them is a simple matter of spamming Wail of the Banshee.
I purchase the Avarine Decanter from Nym, but it fails to work because the djinni counts as a summons and we already had all 6 active. Since using the Avarine Decanter causes it to vanish, I dismiss the event as a bug and console in a new one. Freeing the djinn right off the bat gives us the best pair of bracers in the game:
That AC bonus is generic, the only type of AC that stacks in IWD2. It's absolutely key to attaining HoF-grade AC with practically any character.
We use Wail of the Banshee on some trolls and then some more barbarians, one of which drops a very nice bastard sword. In the unmodded game, the sword is all but worthless, but one of my mods buffs up bastard swords, which are otherwise very underpowered (like half of the magical ones are cursed).
Unfortunately, lawful-aligned characters like Frisk cannot wield it. Our Lawful Good alignment is worth it, though, to get a paladin level for the save bonuses and eventually a monk level for evasion and some Wisdom-based AC bonuses.
Suoma, the head of the Wandering Village, makes you undertake three tasks before she'll tell you how to get through the forest. First off is finding all the missing children. Limha the witch is responsible, and paladins turn her hostile right off the bat because they can sense her evil alignment. We take the fight outside, using Wail of the Banshee to deal with her trolls.
Limha is a very tough cookie. She comes with lots of mage buffs thanks to the Tactics mod, including a Seven Eyes spell that's largely pointless because she already has Mirror Image and immunity to both disablers and instant death effects.
Basically this fight is about spamming summons and watching Limha trash them one after another.
With Improved Invisibility and Blink on Limha, basically any critter we can summon will have a flat 75% chance of missing her outright, regardless of their attack bonuses. Taking down those Mirror Image spells takes an awfully long time.
Mages in the Tactics4IWD2 mod are actually even harder to kill than SCS mages. SCS mages have more reliable defensive spells, but in IWD2, there's no such thing as magic attacks. The only counter for Improved Invisibility is Invisibility Purge, which can be blocked by spell resistance or Non-Detection, and the only way to remove any other buffs is to use Dispel Magic, which can be blocked by a Will save. Mages, of course, have spectacular Will saves, and since Dispel Magic is a level 3 spell and has no Spell Focus feat to improve it, it really only offers a 5% chance of success under normal circumstances.
Tactics, however, gives Dispel Magic an amazing +6 bonus to the save DC, which means Frisky Bits would have a 30 save DC for Dispel Magic. But I didn't know that at the time.
We keep throwing summons out at Limha and Frisky Bits switches to Sophia's Flight, a bow from the Horde Fortress, to help remove Limha's Mirror Images. But un-equipping the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits removes its +25 HP bonus, rendering Frisky Bits vulnerable to Power Word: Stun.
For a moment I think the run is over, but Frisky Bits' defenses hold off Limha for a few precious seconds. Just after Frisky Bits has started taking real damage, we recover from the stun and down a Potion of Invisibility to escape.
We fall back, cast Vipergout, drink another Potion of Invisibility just to be safe (the alternative, the Invisibility Sphere spell from Caballus' Whispering Staff, would leave us vulnerable for 8 or 9 seconds), and let Limha wrestle with the vipers. Unfortunately, she has a vampiric dagger that neutralizes much of the damage our vipers are dealing.
The vipers struggle to make progress on Limha. Meanwhile, Frisky Bits drinks a bottle of Spirit Essence to get their HP up and attain immunity to Power Word: Stun and goes invisible via Caballus' Whispering Staff. It takes many, many rounds, but finally the vipers bring down Limha.
That was incredibly scary, and an important wake-up call that Frisky Bits cannot coast on their 20 sorcerer levels forever. I finally decide to level them up, giving them 11 cleric levels.
Frisky Bits is now effectively level 32 and will get basically no experience from fighting anything but the absolute strongest of critters. Worse yet, they'll have a 20% XP penalty from a bad class combination. But they now have access to Death Ward, lots of healing spells and other cleric stuff, as well as a lot more HP, 4 base attacks per round, high attack bonuses, and just a lot of really high numbers in general. This is what Frisky Bits looks like when I apply absolutely every buff I possibly can.
Frisky Bits is now a very competent damage dealer in their own right; any decent weapon will be very effective in their hands. Usually, though, we'll still rely on our spells and our summons, since melee combat costs us lots of Mirror Images and we have a limited supply of level 2 spell slots.
The second task in the Wandering Village is to placate the local Barrow Wight, Sordirskin the Tusked. I accidentally insult him during dialogue and turn him hostile, which I've never done before. He comes bolstered by a whole bunch of lesser wights, too, but fortunately undead have no immunity to stun in IWD2.
We put him down, but when we go to report to our questgiver, Tahvo the Huntmaster, we get no dialogue option to claim success. Worried that we've broken the game by killing a plot-relevant character, I hurry to the Fell Woods, grab Sordirskin's horn via invisibility, and bring it back to him. To my relief, he accepts the horn and goes away, letting us off the hook for fighting him previously.
The third and final task is to solve the mystery of Kyosti's death. He was murdered by his girlfriend's lover or something, but we can't prompt his ghost to appear unless we promise a different ghost to kill the "ghost lights" of the Fell Woods, a bunch of Will o' Wisps and Devil's Candles. All of them have unstoppable spell resistance, but Wail of the Banshee ignores SR.
Suoma tells us how to get through the Fell Woods. All we have to do is fight a few Dark Treants and the way is clear.
The next area has a bunch of Snow Trolls and barbarians. The Snow Troll Shamans are immune to death magic, forcing us to spam Horrid Wilting and burn a lot of summoning spells, making the fight a very trying ordeal but ultimately not interesting enough to discuss in detail. We do see two interesting things on this map: first, for some reason, there's a frostrose in this area, a reference to an Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter questline despite using a different icon for the item. I have no idea what it's for--I didn't even know it existed until today.
Second, the Abominable Snowman can stun on hit!
Fortunately, the stun is short-lived, as on-hit stun effects in IWD2 usually are, and we escape without getting pummeled.
Next up, dragons! They're not nearly as dangerous or interesting as BG2 dragons. In fact, they can all be taken down just by using Malison, Symbol of Hopelessness, Wail of the Banshee, and Finger of Death.
I don't know where we are in terms of the plot, but it doesn't matter. IWD2 is more about fighting monsters than its storyline. All I need to know is that we're about to fight a whole bunch of Hook Horrors, and then a lot more Hook Horrors and beetles, and then some jellies, and then a LOT more Hook Horrors.
We're not going to get a single experience point in the process. But as far as I know, taking down every single one of them is more or less mandatory, so we have to do it anyway.
After putting Spirit back together the monks returned to Baldur's Gate to finish the rest of their work in the City. At the Helm and Cloak they prepared for a fight by leading Gretek into the back room. They quickly then got in position to attack before he had a chance to return. The initial attack killed the mage, but the thief survived at near death and took an invisibility potion just before running scared from Chimera's Bhaal horror. The other casters went down quickly and the archer soon followed. The thief missed with one backstab, but took another invisibility potion quickly enough to try again - but only managed a modest hit before being crushed. A hasted Gretek is a dangerous enemy in a general melee and saved against a number of stunning blows, but he couldn't stand up long against the weight of attacks.
A few more encounters were done without incident before the monks tried to attack a greater basilisk without protection. It saved against several stunning blows before managing to win a game of guess which side of the door the monks are hiding and stoning Spook - the others quickly took revenge though before more harm could be done.
Generally the monks just used their own abilities during these encounters, but there was one use of a wand to ensure an attacking ghast couldn't take advantage of Wraith's paralyzation.
Chimera also got some use out of his vampiric touch ability against Degrodel's guards before dealing with the mage himself.
A few more reputation tasks pushed that back up to 20 and the monks invested most of their funds in charging up wands. I mis-clicked on Brevlik and lost the chance to do his quest, but all other encounters were completed before going to find Slythe. An initial attack on him failed and he got a couple of backstabs in before some wand damage helped take him down before Krystin could join in.
After resting up they came back and dodged areas to avoid Krystin's opening spell from invisibility before stunning her.
For the fight at the palace I decided to leave nothing to chance. First, the monks charmed Ithyl and dragged her into the palace with them. Inside, they charmed all the Flaming Fist before each taking various potions. Ithyl then made Liia invisible before the monks showed themselves. Ithyl tagged all 3 of the normal dopplegangers with chaos while the monks used wands to kill the cleric and mage. The assassin was then beaten up to pretty much end the fight, though the monks did make sure Belt was out of sight of Sarevok before letting him talk.
The XP from all the dopplegangers was enough to give the monks their final BG1 level. There was another good set of rolls there, meaning Chimera dragged himself up to within 1/2 HP of the theoretical average, while everyone else is well above that.
They took the shortest route through the maze, rather than seeking out extra things to kill. However, they did take out the Undercity party - including a first use of necklace fireballs there. Tamoko was then burnt down to get access to the temple.
Inside the temple there was again nothing fancy tried. Sarevok was lured into a corner with everyone except Angelo. Wraith then showed herself to Angelo and used hide in shadows to wait out a couple of mirror images so that when he eventually attacked he could be burnt down immediately. By that time Diarmid's PfM scroll had expired, so Wraith commenced a fireball barrage. Once Sarevok was all alone Spook took off the ring of free action (that he normally wears to prevent boots of speed making him faster than everyone else) and kited Sarevok while the others shot him up.
Frisky Bits has mediocre AC by HoF standards (low 50's instead of mid-60's), but we have a solid strategy to avoid getting overwhelmed: summon a critter, go invisible, slip out of the way, and then apply a fast-casting Symbol of Hopelessness followed by a slow-casting Wail of the Banshee while the enemy is still distracted by our summoned critter.
This is enough for basic hordes, but there are lots of enemies it won't work on due to their immunities. The perfect example is the swarm of Ochre Jellies we have to deal with. The jellies can only be killed with fire damage and multiply constantly, and due to HoF's HP bonuses it takes massive, massive fire damage to bring them down. For this fight, we have to repeatedly throw out a summoned critter and then torch everything in sight with a 20d8 Delayed Blast Fireball.
Even then it takes numerous castings and we have to resort to Sunfire when all of our Delayed Blast Fireball spells run out. For a character without sorcerer levels, this process would take numerous rest periods.
Like I said, we still have more Hook Horrors to deal with. One of the disadvantages of a solo run is that you tend to end up resolving many different fights with the same set of strategies, which is optimal from a practical perspective but fairly boring. At least the field of flowers visual effect from Wail of the Banshee is pretty.
The duergar are more resistant thanks to superior Fortitude saves, though, and while they have weak Will saves that make them vulnerable to Symbol of Hopelessness, the enemy clerics can cure them with Remove Paralysis. When the clerics prove immune to Chromatic Orb, I nail one with a spell that practically nothing is immune to.
Notice that Frisky Bits is staying outside the doorway even though the enemies go back very far to the northeast. Normally I prefer to keep all enemies within visual range so I see what's going on, but those Duergar Bolters can shoot down Frisky Bits' Mirror Images with frightening speed and I want to avoid that kind of pressure.
We forge ahead with Animate Dead and Shades, bolstering our summons with Improved Haste (an area-effect +1 APR spell, not an APR doubling spell; normal Haste is just single-target in IWD2) and Executioner's Eyes. I discover that if I switch to Sophia's Flight and an Everlast Arrow, the combination of Holy Power (+4 to damage) and Executioner's Eyes plus our base +2 luck from Young Ned's Knucky allows us to land some very impressive critical hits from long range.
Not all weapons benefit equally from luck bonuses and critical hit range bonuses like that of Executioner's Eyes. Most weapons only deal double damage on critical hits, but there are some that deal triple damage: bows, hammers, axes and halberds. Those weapons have the highest potential damage output due to their better-scaling criticals.
Next up, Beastlord Harshom. As he so dramatically boasts, he is not known as the Beastlord for his "prowess with women alone" and comes with Battlecats and Warbears bearing magical collars or something, plus some mages and archers. You get teleported up to him without your summons coming along, so we go invisible (which appears to do nothing; the enemies still chase us) and hurry back to the south end of the map, where our summons are waiting. Some low rolls on the part of the enemy give us an early advantage.
We've already neutralized basically everyone but Harshom himself, who is unfortunately immune to disablers and death magic, like many bosses are, making him nigh-immortal like many Tactics4IWD2 mages. Fortunately, Frisky Bits' Mind Blank blocks Harshom's Beltyn's Burning Blood spells, which otherwise would impose several rounds of berserk with every casting.
We surround him with summons and start making attack rolls, beginning the very long and frankly tedious process of removing his Mirror Images despite his Improved Invisibility and Blink spells. Frisky Bits has the Blind-Fight feat now, reducing the miss chance against Harshom's Improved Invisibility from 50% to 25%, but the 50% miss chance from Blink is impossible to reduce without actually dispelling it.
Tactics is supposed to make Frisky Bits immune to Disintegrate by level 26, but I burn an Invisibility spell just to be sure that we don't get killed. We very, very slowly bring him down.
Frisky Bits takes one level in monk, giving us evasion and +4 to AC from our Wisdom at the cost of bumping their XP penalty to 40%. It'll make it harder to gain levels in the future, but we're already at near-maximum power and additional levels will make little impact.
To the Black Raven Monastery! As always, the first order of business is grabbing "How To Be An Adventurer," which grants double its normal XP in HoF mode.
The writing in Icewind Dale 2 can vacillate wildly between entertaining and charming like this example, deeply moving and vivid like the chapter transitions, or sometimes just stupid and weak like a few scattered dialogue options. The beautiful parts are most memorable, but I still find it interesting how much the quality can vary in this game.
Okay. The Black Raven Monastery is a very dangerous area in HoF mode, and I'm honestly really worried about how this is going to play out. There are only two ways of getting through to the next area:
1. Fighting the monk trials in the basement. 2. Killing the monks themselves.
The monks themselves are extremely dangerous. That's a lot of fighters with high stats and access to two potentially fatal on-hit effects: Stunning Attack and Quivering Palm. As I've mentioned, there is no way to achieve sustainable immunity to stun effects without mod items or modded druid shapeshifting. Worse yet, Quivering Palm goes right through Death Ward. This means only our subpar AC and excellent saving throws will keep us alive if one of the monks attacks Frisky Bits instead of our summons.
But there's always a 5% chance of a critical failure on a save, and since the save DC's of Stunning Attack and Quivering Palm are level-dependent and also scale with Wisdom, it's entirely possible that the chance of Frisky Bits failing their Fortitude save is even higher than 5%.
This indicates that the monk trials in the basement are the superior option. But there are several problems with that method as well:
1. We have to fight monk/golem hybrid critters that are completely immune to spells and resistant to melee attacks. 2. One of the fights involves a bunch of venomous spiders and Web spells we'd have to make saving throws to avoid. 3. One of the chambers throws out Flame Strike spells every round or so and cannot be disrupted or disabled. 4. We can't bring any items to any of the trials; the only weapons we can use are the few nonmagical weapons they provide in each chamber. 5. We get all of our buffs dispelled before every chamber. 6. Once you enter a chamber, you can't leave until you defeat the enemies. Escaping from a bad situation is not an option.
At first, I think both options are about equally luck-dependent. But then I realize that we have Aegis. And sure enough, Aegis can block the Dispel Magic effect before we enter each chamber. This means we can enter the spider web and Flame Strike rooms with all of our buffs intact--including a Protection from Poison scroll to cover one of the few vulnerabilities we normally have.
The first trial is easy. Summoned critters are enough to break down the Stone Monks.
But the Crystal Monk room is very different. Apparently these monks are actually coded as monks and have at least 20 levels in the monk class, giving them 20/+1 resistance to weapons. This means they ignore the first 20 points of damage from any nonmagical weapon--the only kind of weapon we have. They're also immune to critical hits, which I didn't even know was possible in IWD2.
Guess how much damage Frisky Bits can do with a nonmagical weapon without a critical hit?
Just 16. Hitting the monks ourselves is impossible. We have to use summons.
But due to a pre-existing bug, we can't summon any critters. Apparently our Animate Dead summons from the previous rest period are still around. I've benefited from that bug on some non-critical situations, so I'm not sure if I'm willing to fix it by teleporting the summons over and hitting them with CTRL-Y so I can summon new ones.
The solution? I cast Invisibility and wait it out. Even when undead summons persisted after an 8-hour rest, I always found that they vanished after a second 8-hour rest. A single Invisibility spell lasts about half of that, so I can maintain invisibility long enough for the undead to eventually despawn.
But since that would take forever, I just teleport them over and CTRL-Y them. We bring out new summons and start dealing damage to the Crystal Monks, though their damage resistance apparently applies to our summons' attacks; undead summons use nonmagical weapons.
The next two chambers proceed the same way. Then comes the spider chamber. We use a Protection from Poison scroll before entering the chamber, with an Aegis spell to make sure the scroll doesn't get dispelled. Regardless, the spiders prove to be little threat; they don't have the immunities or resistances of the monk golems.
I use up several important scrolls, including our only Fire Shield scroll, in preparation for the final room, only to discover that we still have one challenge before the Flame Strike room. The second-to-last room is not hard, but it's enough of a strain on our resources that we still have to rest before the next challenge, wasting all the scrolls we used before the final chamber.
It's finally time to tackle the final chamber. We can damage the Brass Monks using our summons, but those constant Flame Strike spells apply massive pressure to our summons, none of which has any resistance to fire damage. Only Frisk escapes damage thanks to monk evasion and Mirror Image.
Everything we summon just gets torched in a matter of rounds. We quickly run low on Animate Dead spells and have no choice but to switch to Shades.
But no matter how hard they try, our Greater Feyrs can't do a single point of damage to the monks. Both Brass Monks are still at Barely Injured.
A horrible realization comes over me. We can't deal any more damage to the monks!
They're at Barely Injured and we already have nearly exhausted our only means of dealing damage to the monks.
We need to escape. But you're not allowed to leave until the monks have fallen.
But we're right next to the room that leads upstairs. I cast Vipergout and run to the corner with our vipers. I once read in the notes to a speedrun that stealth is one of the things that trigger a collision check in BG2, and while I don't have any means of altering Frisky Bits' circle, I'm hoping that I screw with the collision enough to force the game to teleport Frisky Bits to the adjacent room. But we're in trouble: Frisk has run out of Mirror Images as well as Aegis, leaving us with only our Reflex save and evasion to block the Flame Strikes. Frisk rolls a 1.
Vipergout runs out, allowing Frisk to go invisible and avoid getting pummeled by the monks, but I'm not sure where to go from here.
I scour our spellbook and innate abilities. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. But then I notice that the staircase in the adjacent room is very close to the wall. I click on the staircase and try to activate it through the wall.
It works!
We've escaped, but the challenge remains incomplete; we can't proceed unless we either take down those Brass Monks or wipe out all the monks in the monastery.
I study our cleric spellbook. I realize that we actually have other ways of dealing damage to the monks if we memorize them: some cleric summoning spells can deal more than 20 damage per hit, we can cast Champion's Strength on our summons and Emotion: Hope on our non-undead summons, and if we cast Spiritual Weapon, we'll get a ranged hammer that gets no Strength bonuses but strikes as a +1 weapon and will go right through the monks' resistances!
I change up our spell picks, buff Frisky Bits with only the necessities, saving our cleric spell slots for summoning spells, and enter the chamber.
But all is not well. The Brass Monks from our previous attempt are still there, and by re-starting the challenge, two new Brass Monks enter the chamber. We now have FOUR Brass Monks to deal with, and they deal damage very fast indeed.
Frisky Bits casts Spiritual Weapon and deactivates Expertise to maximize their attack bonus. With Haste, Emotion: Hope, Prayer and Holy Power, Frisky Bits deals 1d8+8 damage per hit with 5 attacks per round.
Our summons are dying fast, but we're finally making good progress against the enemy. The first monk goes down!
We're already out of Animate Dead spells, but we get better luck with Shades than we did in the previous attempt. Instead of Greater Feyrs, we get a pair of Remorhazes, which have far superior damage output and can actually hurt the monks. The second monk goes down.
The Remorhazes crumple, but we manage to take down the third monk.
We're low on spells, though, and pretty much out of summons. We'll have to finish the job ourselves with Spiritual Weapon. To keep the enemy occupied so we can attack from afar, we cast Vipergout, only to discover that it dispels our existing Spiritual Weapon.
We should still be able to tackle the monk, but I don't trust Frisky Bits' saves to keep them alive when those Flame Strikes remove their Mirror Images. I make another attempt to activate the stairs from the other room, and with a little finagling, we manage to break out.
The challenge is still not complete, but we've established that we can kill 3 out of 4 monks with our existing strategy, and when we re-enter the chamber, there should be only 3 total. But when I speak with the monk to rest first, the game decides the challenge is complete!
Apparently taking down two of the Brass Monks was sufficient. We speak with Salisam Harbash and gain one more level, which we use to take a cleric level to get another casting of Heal.
And now for a playstyle change-up. Whereas Brunash was quite conservative with his magic because he had a ton of bodyguards doing the heavy lifting, this playthrough I'm going to be much more aggressive in my use of magic, mainly because I've got infinite caster resources.
For my next no-reload challenge, I introduce to you:
Spaz the Warlock!
I will be playing solo on Insane with extra damage disabled. Mod installation has not changed from Brunash's playthrough. The Warlock's kit description and abilities can be found here.
From my experience playing one in NWN2 and in NWN1's PRC pack, this Warlock will also be about spamming Eldritch Blast. But resting in BG is more restrictive than NWN1 and NWN2, so with infinite caster resources, I think a solo Warlock is going to accrete power at a terrifying rate, especially since it uses the thief/bard XP table. But without being able to pick Extra Invocation feats like in NWN1's PRC, I'm going to have to be very choosy about which invocations I pick. Only at epic levels will I be able to select Extra Invocation I - IV as HLAs. I won't go into super-deep detail in documentation in the beginning like I did with Brunash mainly because it doesn't seem as necessary like my first time playing no-reload. Instead I'll post about milestones and unusual events but often enough that it will be coherent.
Gaining invocations is conversation-based, just like the PRC pack in NWN1. At every level up, you may choose to trade an invocation for a different one of equal grade.
My first choice is Leaps and Bounds. For 8 hours, the warlock gains a +2 bonus to Dexterity and AC. An additional +1 bonus is granted for every two points of the warlock's Charisma above 16. I would've chosen Darkness for the visual range reduction against enemies, but I found it didn't really reduce it enough to be useful.
Shank and Carbos get blasted.
Marl is dealt with, earning me a level.
With this level combined with Leaps and Bounds, I've got enough Pickpocket points to filch Algernon's Cloak.
With the extra +2 CHA from the cloak, Leaps and Bounds now provides +4 AC and DEX instead of +3. What a lovely synergy! I charm Firebead with the cloak and have him toast Landrin's spiders, earning me another level. Hideous Blow is learned at this level, which lets me channel an Eldritch Blast into my next melee attack.
I take Firebead into the Red Sheaf and he petrifies Karlat with a Chromatic Orb.
I expend the rest of Firebead's spells and return him to his house, then assassinate him, earning me another level.
3 of Kelddath's Sirines are killed, gaining me yet another level.
I get +10% physical damage resistance and learn Dark One's Own Luck, which works like Leaps and Bounds, except it increases Luck and Saving Throws by the same amount (+4!). Back in Beregost, I charm Silke with the cloak and expend all her spells. She casts Improved Invisibility on me, and then I attack her starting off with Hideous Blow. It is quite effective when alternating between Eldritch Blast and then attacking while my aura is clouded.
I buy all of Kelddath's Stone to Flesh scrolls. Onto the Basilisk farm. The loop is initiated.
From 19 scrolls I gain 3 levels, up to level 9. Invisibility and Animate Dead, both at-will, will be extremely helpful. Eldritch Spear will help me take on groups, and I now have 1 HP/3 rounds regeneration. Things are looking up. I go to the Friendly Arm and buy all of Gellana's Stone to Flesh scrolls, reducing me to just 71 gold. The Ring of Wizardry has certainly proven itself. Tarnesh gets rekt by a pair of my skellybros while I sit back and watch.
Back at Basilisk Country, I initiate the loop again and get to level 11, learning Brimstone Blast and Eldritch Chain.
I have 9 more scrolls to use, but they aren't enough to get me a level, so I just drop them and add the XP I would've gotten from them using the console. It seems this is as high as I'm going to go for a little while.
Still in Basilisk Country, I take on Kirian's group. I summon my skellybros, who have undergone an upgrade, and then assault the group with Brimstone Eldritch Chain. They get annihilated in one cast.
It looks cool too. Shakes the screen upon impact and sounds powerful. I move on to Durlag's Tower's outskirts and kill the pair of Doomguards near Erdane for 8k XP. Onto Gullykin. Lendarn and the ogre mage are put down and Alvenhendar's scrolls are bought as well. 17 scrolls are expended for 112k XP, which isn't enough to get me a level, but its kind of close.
Shoal is next on the chopping block.
Bassilus is dealt with and his holy symbol is turned in to Kelddath.
Melicamp is returned to Thalantyr and he survives being anti-chickenated this time.
I go up to Ulgoth's Beard and steal Dushai's Ring of Free Action. I go to the farmlands south of Wyvern's Crossing and level up inside the Ankheg Nest, though I don't get anything this level.
The wolf pack on the Temple map is put to the torch.
At Nashkel, I buy up all the Stone to Flesh scrolls plus the one from Zeke at the carnival and initiate the Basilisk loop again, but its still not enough to make level 13. At the digsite, the Doomsayer is killed and Brage is brought back to the Nashkel temple.
I loot the CON tome from Black Alaric's cave, using a potion of stone form to help save against the traps. Several skellybros died to make it possible, though all the flesh golems in the cave were killed.
Most of the sidequests around the wilderness are cleared as well. Nashkel Mine is cleared with ease. Upon killing Tranzig, I level up to 13. I finally gain Vitriolic Blast and replace Brimstone Blast with Flee the Scene.
Vitriolic Blast is what I wanted to use the Basilisk Loop for. Against anything with large or total magic resistance, I am severely hampered because Eldritch Blast can be blocked, and I don't have a way to lower magic resistance by myself. Spaz cannot beat Belhifet without Vitriolic Blast. But now that I have it, its time to pay a certain drow a visit. With 4 skellybros, I begin my assault on him. Drizzt crumples after a few castings.
Now I have his armor and Frostbrand +3, making my AC extremely low. The bandit camp is next and it gets wiped out with no survivors.
Cloakwood is a walk in the park. The mines are just as easy since all I have to do is stroll right through with Walk Unseen. At Davaeorn's sanctum, I use Flee the Scene to jump over all the traps and then summon my skellies. Dave goes down.
I book it for Baldur's Gate, pick up the DEX tome, and buy a Bag of Holding.
Mirlen, a Beastmaster in a Horrifically Modded Baldur's Gate
This is a no-reload playthrough of Baldur's Gate 1 with my own mod, High Power Baldur's Gate. In this mod, all the creatures in the game are given ridiculous supernatural powers they have no right to have. This is a mod where xvarts stop time whenever they move, and even a kobold might be able to cast a level 9 spell. Yet meanwhile, the good guys also get ridiculous abilities. An NPC party member might automatically critically hit on each attack, or they might have permanent Aura Cleansing, increased vision range, extra attacks per round, instant casting time on all spells, or various other abilities like that. Different NPCs have different abilities.
A player-character does not get any passive powers like the ones above. Instead, they gain innate spells. Which spells they get depend on their class and their kit.
Here is Mirlen and her abilities:
Mirlen is starting with 20000 experience, so she's at level 5.
I have a component installed that lets Beastmasters get their Animal Summoning spells as innate abilities rather than as ranger spells. I also have a component that lets Rangers learn spells faster.
Most of these abilities do what you'd expect them to do, though the Shillelagh creates a +5 club and the animals summoned by the Animal Summoning abilities are empowered by this mod. The ability with the Conjure Animals icon is Conjure Grizzly Bear. Grizzly Bears are powerful bears with command over all the elements.
Familiars are empowered, too. Mirlen's Faerie Dragon can cast Blindness three times per day, and Improved Invisibility, Mirror Image and Pixie Dust once per day each. Mirlen put her familiar in the bag for now.
After buying equipment and talking to Gorion, they headed out. The Armored Figure ambushed them. Gorion put up quite a fight. He threw meteor swarms, 60-foot radius fireballs, and over 100 Magic Missiles, but even his powerful magic could not stop the onslaught.
Mirlen teamed up with Imoen and did NOT just take her equipment and kick her out of the party.
Imoen is a multiclassed mage-thief. She has five attacks per round with all weapons and immunity to acid. She can cast Breach, Minor Spell Turning, Protection from Normal Weapons and Phantom Blade once per day each as innate abilities. The Phantom Blade can attack at long range in this mod.
In the next area, the hunter Aoln provided a foreboding story...
When the party arrived at the Friendly Arm Inn, they talked to a guard, who warned of shapeshifter trouble.
The guards ARE professional fighters in this mod.
Mirlen summoned a black bear and two wild dogs. Black bears automatically cast Bearacid whenever they are hit. Wild dogs can cast Dog Slow.
In the fight with Tarnesh, two of the nearby guards revealed themselves to be doppelgangers! Doppelgangers in this mod have 25 Strength and do a lot of damage. However, they have poor AC and saving throws.
Tarnesh instantly buffed with Armor, Mirror Image, and Protection from Normal Weapons. Both him and Imoen cast Phantom Blade and started attacking each other. Meanwhile the doppelgangers were tearing through Mirlen's animal defenses. However, a nearby cat helped out by casting Ratify on a doppelganger, polymorphing it into a rat! The guards killed the rat-doppelganger and Mirlen finished off the other one with a critical hit. With a bit more work, Tarnesh was killed.
(EDIT: Stupid Tarnesh, casting Larloch's Minor Drain on himself... That will be fixed in the next patch.)
The party went in the inn and met with Khalid and Jaheira. Khalid is a fighter-transmuter; he's permanently hasted and he can cast Flesh to Stone, Tenser's Transformation and Time Stop as innate abilities. Jaheira has 18/00 Strength and 18 in all other stats; she has grandmastery in spears, clubs and quarterstaves, as well as proficiency in weapon styles; she can cast Iron Skins, Animal Summoning 2, Pixie Dust, Harper's Call and Hardiness once per day each.
After resting in royal-class beds, the party went to Beregost. There, they visited Feldepost's to get Algernon's Cloak.
It was a bit trickier than expected.
The doppelganger, still wearing the cloak, charmed Mirlen. Jaheira cast Iron Skins and attacked the doppelganger, but then another doppelganger came down the hallway and cast Hold Person on Jaheira! But just before Jaheira could get killed, Khalid got off his Time Stop. While time was frozen, he finished off the first doppelganger and cast Flesh to Stone on the second. That was close!
The party went to Firebead's house and gave him his book. The mod moves the containers to the inn in Candlekeep (where Mirlen bought them), so instead, Firebead gave a Tome of Understanding! One thing I haven't mentioned is that this mod fills the game with stat-increasing books. It's possible to get one or two characters to 25 in all stats by the end of the game. We're a long way from that, though.
The last thing the party did in Beregost was go clear Landrin's house of spiders. However, they hadn't actually talked to Landrin yet, so the only way the party had of curing poison was Jaheira's Slow Poison spells. Spiders in this mod have -20 THAC0 and summon smaller spiders each time they hit with an attack. The party went in the house, then immediately went back out to draw out the spiders. However, this strategy led Mirlen and Khalid to be cornered. Khalid died from poison while Mirlen just barely survived, and only because she drank Jaheira's invisibility potion just in time to get the spiders away from her. Jaheira summoned a black bear to help kill the spiders, and Imoen killed some of them with her Phantom Blade. Jaheira raised Khalid with Harper's Call.
That's it for now. Next episode, the party heads for Nashkel!
The monks started the SoD dungeon the easy way by persuading Porios to surrender. Fireballs allowed them to make rapid progress through the undead with minimal damage.
The mercenaries managed to get a critical backstab on Spook that hurt,
but the monks carried on without resting anyway and surrounded Korlasz. He was duly stunned, but tried to pull a cute trick by turning blue when injured despite not being able to talk - the monks attacked again and killed him anyway though .
That meant the remaining mercenaries stayed to fight and in the running battle they dragged some skeletons into the combat - the monks resorting to their wands to kill the skeleton mage there.
Rather battered by the combat the monks rested up before looting the dungeon and leaving. In Baldur's Gate they beat up a few NPCs to raise cash to buy more potions and scrolls and did a few minor chores before marching out with the Flaming Fist.
Proceeding immediately to the Coast Way Forest they decided to help Tsolak the vampire. Things seemed under control when Ikros was stunned through his fire shield and beaten up.
However, Tsolak then decided to run away and went past a group of orcs - dragging them into the combat. I still thought things should be under control just using standard attacks, but hadn't realized how much damage their leader could do with a critical and Spook collapsed.
The leader was then burnt down and the remaining enemies duly finished off.
On the return journey the remaining monks came across a troll cave. As they wouldn't get another opportunity to go there later they ignored Spook's absence and dived in. The trolls were soon dead with the help of fireballs.
Back at the Coast Way Crossing the monks made their way through the map. They were careful not to get stuck in the web traps while spiders were around. They got a returning dart from Takos along with an identifying mirror. Next they shot Teleria down from range without talking to her (that meant the golem stayed neutral, so Wraith took the opportunity to hit it at leisure with her Gemblade) before spotting a spirit wandering around. As I nearly always play solo I have very limited experience of using the Spectacles, so didn't know what that was - it proved to be a gauth (with a ring of fire resistance).
After activating the menhirs the monks were able to grab the bard's treasure in the dwarven mine before moving deeper inside. The early undead groups were no trouble, but there certainly was trouble after Wraith was confused by a trap and activated a large nearby group of undead, including a mummy that quickly scared 2 of the monks. With lots of dangerous enemies, a cloudkill trap now activated and half the party incapacitated things looked tricky for a while. However, the wands of heavens proved their worth again and everyone just survived.
The Bronze Sentry did plenty of damage, but all the monks had magic missile wands they could have used if necessary there.
After clearing the remainder of the undead, Coldhearth's secrets were revealed and he was shot down in a single salvo.
The monks hastened to destroy the phylactery (it always annoys me that doing that dumps you into a cutscene, but doesn't stop enemies attacking - they didn't do too much damage though).
The dwarves agreed to help against the Crusade later on.
Time for BG's sidequest hell. Desreta and Vay-ya are killed and I have the gauntlets of ogre power, so I'll be able to bash some locks now, in addition to being better able to inflict Hideous Blow. The Iron Throne party is wiped out thanks to Eldritch Chain and the skellybros' magic resistance.
40 Stone to Flesh scrolls are bought from the High Hall of Wonders and from the temple of Tymora. I pickpocket the WIS tome and consume it.
I visit Degrodel and get 6 more stone to flesh scrolls. His Doom Guards and Invisible Stalkers slaughter my skellybros, leaving the place awash with their corpses.
Ramazith's Tower is cleared and I consume the INT tome. While I'm there, I buy the Temple of Helm's Stone to Flesh scrolls. I have 63 total now.
The Cloak of Balduran is pickpocketed. My backup plan would've been to charm Quenash and have Larze squish her again.
At the Umberlee temple, I level up from killing Jalantha Mistmyr while doing both Tremain's son's quest and Lothander's.
With all my scrolls collected, I head back into Basilisk Country and use 27 of my 63 scrolls for another level. I learn Tenacious Plague, which is basically an AoE version of Summon Insects (not Insect Plague). Devour Magic was a close contender, but I can choose that for my 3rd Greater invocation. Eldritch Cone and +5% physical damage resist is gained this level, and my skellybros are at their strongest and now immune to normal weapons! I console in the rest of the XP and drop the remaining scrolls on the ground for yet another level. My regeneration rate improves to 1 HP/2 rounds.
I return to the city and do Scar's quests and talk to Duke Eltan. Back in Candlekeep, I buy even more XP scrolls. I kill the Iron Throne leaders and test out Eldritch Cone.
In the catacombs, See the Unseen allows me to detect traps, but I can't force this lock open for the stat tome. I can't get the other stat tome either.
Back on the outside, I return to Basilisk Country and set up the loop again, consoling in the rest of the XP, but its not enough for another level. I think I've exhausted all the Stone to Flesh scrolls in BG1.
I believe its time for TotSC. I'm not especially looking forward to Durlag's Tower with all its traps, but I will do the ice island at least. Balduran's Isle is out of the question.
Mirlen, a Beastmaster in a Horrifically Modded Baldur's Gate: Part 2
So, the party went down the road to Nashkel until they found an ogrillion and a half-ogre. Ogrillions move very fast and cause wing buffet-esque knockback with each punch. Half-ogres have AC -20. Mirlen and Jaheira summoned two brown bears. Regardless of their AC, the ogres were no match for Bearlightning. The party delivered the message to Mirianne.
When the party arrived at Nashkel, Mirlen immediately traveled over to the farm and found Fallorain's Plate in the dirt. In this mod, magical weapons and armor are modified. Fallorain's Plate gives the effects of Draw Upon Holy Might at level 6 (+2 Strength, Dexterity, Constitution). Jaheira put it on.
The party headed to the inn, at which point Neira burst out of invisibility and one of the commoners reverted to doppelganger form. Mirlen used Stunning Attack (this mod's name for the Throne of Bhaal ability Power Attack) and stunned the doppelganger with an arrow. Neira paralyzed Jaheira and proceeded to cast some buffs, but the party killed her and the doppelganger before anything really bad could happen. Neira dropped the Studded Leather Armor of Missile Attraction +4, which Mirlen put on.
After resting at the inn, Mirlen had a dream and gained her first Bhaalspawn ability: Cure Serious Wounds!
The party found Berrun Ghastkill and agreed to investigate the mines. Then they found Minsc and agreed to help him rescue Dynaheir. Forget about the mines for now; this could take a while.
The first area they came across in their journey to the gnoll stronghold was a village of xvarts. The xvarts were numerous and supported by war cows. Once per round, a cow can use Great Leap to jump high and land on a creature, dealing 4d6 crushing damage (Save vs. Breath for half).
Xvarts stop time whenever they move, but Khalid could move during Time Stop no matter whose Time Stop it was. He still needed help with the war cows, though.
By the way, Burning Hands is really awesome in this mod.
The party fought its way through the village until they reached the cave. Inside the cave was a cave bear. Whenever a cave bear is hit, it automatically uses Bearfire, which deals 5d6 damage to everyone within 30 feet. But the bear was not alone, for there were bats which revealed themselves to be doppelgangers! Mirlen charmed the cave bear and had it fight the doppelgangers. the doppelgangers attacked the bear, only to be incinerated by Bearfire. The bear survived the fight, but only bearly. Still charmed, the cave bear watched over the party as they rested.
The next day, the bear (which was now fully healed) followed the party outside of the cave, at which point Mirlen charmed it again. The party then confronted Nexlit the Xvart. Nexlit called Ursa for help, and Ursa did NOT kill Nexlit.
Ursa is a Dire Cave Bear, the first truly powerful enemy the party has faced so far. Not only does Ursa have access to Bearfire, he can also breathe fire. Nexlit used Deathblow (which would allow him to kill a party member in one hit) and came at Khalid, but he ran away until the deathblow effect wore off.
Meanwhile Ursa was fighting the party's own cave bear. It wasn't long until the weaker bear was killed. The party huddled together and Jaheira cast Pixie Dust. They snuck out of the village and prepared to strike back.
The party lured out Nexlit first. Now that he had exhausted his Deathblow, he wasn't that dangerous. He dropped a Cloak of Cave Bear Control, which gives +50% fire resistance and allows the wearer to use Bearfire and charm cave bears with no save.
But there was no point in charming Ursa when he was the only foe left. Instead, the party summoned two brown bears and sent them against Ursa.
The bearfight was extremely violent and only lasted a couple of seconds.
Next, Jaheira put on the Cloak of Cave Bear Control and drank a potion of fire resistance, giving her 100% fire resistance. She cast Iron Skins and bravely went in to fight Ursa with her trusty quarterstaff.
Jaheira did better than I expected, but she still couldn't beat Ursa on her own. Mirlen, Khalid and Imoen supported her with ranged attacks. Each hit triggered a Bearfire, but it didn't damage Jaheira.
At last, the party slew the beast!
Now that the party had conquered the xvart village, they moved on to the next area. There, they encountered Ludrug the gnoll, who challenged Mirlen to a fight. Mirlen accepted.
But the next enemy the party came across was much worse. It was a winter wolf. Winter wolves are by default invisible, and they turn invisible again each time they hit someone. Thus, they are only visible while their frost breath projectile is on its way to the target. The wolf killed Khalid (luckily not freezing him), at which point, in desperation, Mirlen charmed a squirrel and had it stand guard against the wolf while the party ran away. When a squirrel in this mod dies, it explodes, dealing 10d6 fire damage to everyone within 120 feet. The winter wolf killed the squirrel. The explosion killed the wolf, but then things got worse. There were more squirrels in the radius of the explosion, and those squirrels exploded too. The party was suddenly running away from multiple huge infernos, like heroes in an action movie.
Minsc didn't make it. After the explosions settled down, Jaheira raised Minsc. The party rested, then Jaheira raised Khalid.
In the same area, the party agreed to help the dryad kill the idiotic tree-robbers. Caldo was heavily armored but unarmed, while Krumm critically hit with every attack and was permanently under the effects of Physical Mirror. Minsc used Smite and knocked Krumm away; this gave the rest of the party a chance to fight Caldo. He was tough to kill, but once the party had dealt with Krumm, there was nothing to fear from getting knocked out by Caldo.
In exchange for this service, the dryad rewarded the party with the Protector of the Dryads short bow. It grants huge bonuses whenever the archer is within close proximity of an eagle.
Minsc picked up Caldo's armor, only to find that it was too heavy even for him to carry around.
3 skull trap spell sequencer kills the mage with no fuss then the ranger chips away at the boss, Goblin heals the lady and we deal with peons... I'm the big hero (which is handy when the murder rap sticks) but I still wake up in a cage
Puk is moving on to Bg2 insane level, no mods... I did agree to make an item so if any one has a wish, now is the time to speak up
How about a figurine to summon a ferret called @Nimran which can backstab? If it's too goofy, then @OlvynChuru will likely come with a good suggestion, just look at his crazy ideas!
So, lately I had a bit of a... diversion, which I suppose I am submitting to the judgment of this thread (on the no-reloadness of said diversion, of course).
With NWN:EE coming, I wanted to go back and visit the NWN campaigns, no-reload of course, for both NWN1 & NWN2.
Assessment:
- Vanilla campaigns are a joke. The rest-anywhere feature, combined with get-back-up-if-you-die, makes it a no-brainer to survive a well played game. (It is actually possible to lose the game, as I have reported earlier for NWN OC, but not with a serious approach.)
Other than comic relief, I wouldn't think of reporting my vanilla NWN runs here.
- 'Storms of Zehir' (which I had never played before) is an unexpected delight of an exception: rest is costly and risky, death is also costly. I built an overpowered and well-optimized party, which in the late game was a power house, but I died in the Final Fight! (A high level enemy cleric disabled key party members. Things then went downhill.)
- NWN2 campaigns (OC + MotB) both have mods that turn them in to a 'Storms of Zehir' kind challenge with rest and death restrictions. *THAT* mod makes the NWN2 campaigns worth playing. Suddenly, you can lose the game. (In the early game, there is a finite number of expensive "coins" to revive characters. If your party members bleed out and you are out of coins, you may lose the game.)
- The necessary ingredient for a good game in NWN2 are:
Core Difficulty (friendly fire and full disables) + AI enhancement (it is a global option on the character control tab) that prebuffs enemy casters (similar to the SCS feature) which makes enemy cleric and mages an actual challenge! + Storms of Zehir type mod.
- NWN1: OC is impossibly boring and not a challenge. SoZ + HotU may be a different story.
I seriously hope that Beamdog will learn the lessons of Storms of Zehir in its development of NWN:EE for updating old campaigns as well as designing new ones.
--
Okay, bonus question to the thread:
Did anyone play the NWN2 mod 'Baldur's Gate Reloaded' (a remake of BG+ToSC)?
Is it stable and playable? Balanced? Is it a decent no-reload challenge?
For a change, I thought that I would try a party who are all serving the same god but who are all quite different. They are all Chaotic Neutral servants of Tempus: A Gloryblood; A Battleguard of Tempus; A Broken Blade of Tempus; A Fighter/Thief; and a Fighter Mage. Wiki states that chaotic good thieves can follow Tempus, and I cannot see any reason why a Fighter/Mage shouldn't either. The entire party is humanand they have got as far as the FAI. One complaint that I have is that I only got 100 gp to equip 5 party members. As I have a thief who could open the upstairs chest, it wasn't a major problem, but it would have been if I hadn't had a thief in the party. As per usual I equipped the assassins in Candlekeep, but they only had theives' equipment, most of it only usable by thieves, though there was a short sword +2 and +2 leather armour in the mix. The equipment thus gained does mean that my thief is well equipped. The others aren't. They will soon have to fight some well armoured enemies to get better armour. The ogre with the belt fetish has been disposed of.
First time with sphere system for FnP installed. Weidu attached: Needless to say: Because they are all aligned with Tempus there are some gaps in their abilities. No druids as it wouldn't fit their ethos and the clerics are all martially aligned.
Did anyone play the NWN2 mod 'Baldur's Gate Reloaded' (a remake of BG+ToSC)?
Is it stable and playable? Balanced? Is it a decent no-reload challenge?
I played it years ago and it was kind of buggy, but its received several patches since then so its probably okay now. It was balanced just fine though, so if you want to try it no-reload, be my guest.
SoZ is a good candidate for no-reload challenges too, though I never liked the economy management with trade bars.
I played it years ago and it was kind of buggy, but its received several patches since then so its probably okay now. It was balanced just fine though, so if you want to try it no-reload, be my guest.
SoZ is a good candidate for no-reload challenges too, though I never liked the economy management with trade bars.
Thanks. That's good feedback.
As you mention, with Storms of Zehir what I am liking is indeed not the trade stuff, but rather:
1. challenge of resting and death, making no-reload relevant. (I actually lost my game, after all.)
2. skills are actually useful! (Search, Spot, Listen, Appraise, Survival, .... they all have some legitimate use and frequently mentioned in dialogs as well! Also, crafting skills & feats are basically necessary.) NWN1 original campaigns fails this miserably.
Having an overland encounter map is also a plus. Wish other campaigns implemented it.
(Really hoping that some Beamdog guru is paying attention to this.)
Up in Ulgoth's Beard, I accept Shandalar's job. I level up while inside and choose Devour Magic, which is Remove Magic plus a minor bonus of +2 max HP per target affected.
The top side of Durlag's Tower is cleared and I consume the WIS tome.
As laden with traps as Durlag's Tower is, I suddenly remember that Mislead applies Improved Invisibility's +4 save bonus, so I can use Flee the Scene to tank traps with my rock-bottom saving throws and good Luck. Traps are mostly fire and electrical, so I gulp a potion of fire ressitance and absorption. Any damage I do take from traps is regenerated. Level 1 is cleared. I thought the warders were going to be tougher, but Tenacious Plague took a big bite out of them because they're hasted.
Level 2 and 3 are cleared without trouble; time for the chess game. I take protective measures so I don't get disabled by quaffing a potion of clarity and wielding Spider's Bane. I summon 4 skellybros to my sides and send out a fifth into the board to bait them all into attacking it. And then my jaw drops.
The ENTIRE chessboard is annihilated in a single casting of Vitriolic Chain. This bodes VERY well for Dragonspear. I can't wait to put it to the test. Plumbing the depths of level 4, I level up, though I don't get any bonuses this level.
For the Demon Knight, I have to summon a bunch of skellybros because he trashes them in a round or so. Still, my skellies do good damage against him and I find enough time to throw a Vitriolic Blast at him, but he's pretty resistant to acid. But the skellies save the day.
I return to Ulgoth's Beard while invisible and set up an ambush of my own. The cultists never stood a chance, but I'm not fighting Aec'Letec this time either. Time for the coronation. I build a wall of skellybros around the dukes. I hope this will be enough to ward off the dopplegangers because I can't use the Chain blast shape. I'll try Devour Magic + Tenacious Plague.
Devour Magic removes the dopplegangers' haste, making them less deadly. By the time I can follow up with Tenacious Plague, most are already wiped out. Sarevok's vanguard party is thoroughly dissolved.
Inside the temple, I summon 4 skellybros to take out Semaj. I drink a potion of +50% MR plus a potion of Stone Form, for 85% magic resistance and saving throws as low as the Marianas Trench. Semaj goes first once I talk to Sarevok.
After Semaj is dead, I advance back to the throne on the right side. Even though neither I nor any of my skellies touch any traps, a ton of Stinking Clouds and Webs plus a Cloudkill shot out at me. I run away and kite the clouds. Back on the left side, I devour everyone's magic and follow up with Tenacious Plague. Angelo bites it first, followed by Tazok. I used a Vitriolic Blast on Sarevok, but he's pretty resistant to acid too. Still, Sarevok falls!
It would seem that a skellybro got the last hit in. Nice. Onto the Hordes of Dragonspear. Vitriolic Chain is going to get a workout, I suspect...
One complaint that I have is that I only got 100 gp to equip 5 party members. As I have a thief who could open the upstairs chest, it wasn't a major problem, but it would have been if I hadn't had a thief in the party.
Well you can also get 300 from Firebead in addition to the various bits of gold stuck in containers that don't need a thief to open.
The ENTIRE chessboard is annihilated in a single casting of Vitriolic Chain. This bodes VERY well for Dragonspear. I can't wait to put it to the test. Plumbing the depths of level 4, I level up, though I don't get any bonuses this level.
I don't visit this thread frequently but Eldritch Chain should NOT be doing that.
The secondary projectiles are for some reason using the Eldritch Doom projectile, meaning every single creature past the initial target explodes in an AoE causing massive collateral damage. I'd recommend against abusing this.
Edit: I've rolled out an update to fix Eldritch Chain. No more instant AoE wipeouts. Sorry.
Comments
Brunash the Halfling Enchanter : @Flashburn
Full Tetrology Run
Notable mods : SCS v30 (only in BG2; long-duration mage/priest prebuffs only, no Tactics challenges except Original Tactics Improved Bodhi), BP Ascension v15 BETA; aTweaks, Rogue Rebalancing, More Style for Mages, Tweaks Anthology, NPC_EE, Golem Construction, Item Upgrade, Oversight (monk HLAs), Coran
Difficulty : Core
Start (November 2017)
Finish (March 2018)
It also deserves a spotlight-of-the-week.
Notice we're using multiple undead to hold off the melee enemies to the west and one remorhaz to block the path up the hill to the north.
Ilium Ar'Ghrenoir is even worse. As a high-level ranger, he can cast Call Lightning as well as fire crossbow bolts with frightening speed and accuracy, and as I've discussed, we can't maintain our Mirror Images and our Aegis spell at the same time. Worse yet, he's on a distant ledge and you have to fight your way through lots of enemies before you can climb up and engage him in melee combat. It takes seven tries before we land an instant death spell on him.
We proceed to the next batch of enemies, who fail multiple saves against Symbol of Hopelessness, Chromatic Orb, and Finger of Death spells, but Frisky Bits can't keep Aegis active without becoming vulnerable to melee attacks, and they end up failing their third save against Dispel Magic, forcing us to go invisible and flee.
Fortunately, we don't get hit by any Call Lightning strikes from the dead druids on the way back.
We rest and return and combine our fast-casting Symbol of Hopelessness spells with our slow-casting Wail of the Banshee spells. The former is a great way of neutralizing enemies fast and buying us enough time to cast the latter.
Andora is done! Next comes the ice temple exterior. We've got several nasty fights here. First is a Crystal Golem, which hits like a truck and is only vulnerable to crushing weapons. Our Boneguard Skeletons are at a real disadvantage, and it takes a long time to bring down the golem.
The ice temple has three different types of priests: Aurilite Postulants, Aurilite Stormsisters/Stormbrothers, and Aurilite Frosttouches. The Postulants are the weakest and the Frosttouches are the strongest, but they all have access to cleric spells that make them very resistant to spells: Freedom of Movement, Chaotic Commands, Remove Paralysis, and Death Ward. Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee are practically useless against them, Chromatic Orb and Symbol of Hopelessness are relatively ineffective, and the Aurilite Frosttouches also cast Divine Shell, which makes them immune to missile weapons and gives them 15- resistance to all elemental spells.
Aside from our summons, there's really only one spell that works reliably against them. Luckily, Frisky Bits has invested heavily in sorcerer spells and our Horrid Wilting spells hit very hard indeed.
It still takes several castings and gives the enemy the opportunity to cast Animate Dead.
Our next problem is the Queen Remorhaz and then Lord Rengar, who appears after the remorhaz has fallen. The Queen Remorhaz has many attacks per round and deals massive crushing and fire damage, and also has a habit of firing off Sol's Searing Orb spells that are especially devastating to undead critters.
Our undead aren't just for soaking up damage, though. They also have pretty decent offensive output, especially with Executioner's Eyes to increase the odds of a critical hit.
Lord Rengar appears shortly, and he is a tough nut to crack. Aside from being a strong fighter, he can teleport, see through invisibility, and cast mage spells (we make our saves against Dispel Magic, fortunately), and also has some pretty high resistances that take 30 damage out of our opening Delayed Blast Fireball. He's even immune to paralysis; Chromatic Orb is useless against him, and his saves are good enough to shrug off Finger of Death.
But to my surprise, his Will save is terrible and he rolls low against Slow. We summon a remorhaz of our own via Shades and rush him with Executioner's Eyes active.
We kill the local necromancers with our own necromancy spells and get a brief scare when Frisk gets boxed in by Snow Trolls and loses a spell, forcing us to re-cast Mirror Image and then Invisibility.
Our last problem is Sherincal. Sherincal, like all half-dragons, has massive damage output, excellent stats, and spell resistance on top. She comes bolstered by barbarians, clerics, mages, Soarsmen (which are little wyverns or something), and a Crystal Golem that flanks you midway through the fight. But to my surprise, much of the enemy collapses after we throw out Symbol of Hopelessness and Wail of the Banshee.
We keep up the pressure, focusing on bringing down Sherincal's allies instead of tackling the half-dragon herself, and the Crystal Golem approaches from behind. We have prepared for this, however, and summoned a remorhaz that can deal lots of crushing damage to the golem.
We've got a Barbarian Shaman up north to deal with, but he's immune to both Finger of Death and Chromatic Orb. Fortunately, we can still disrupt his spells with a fast-casting Skull Trap.
The enemy wears thin, but we discover that Sherincal, just like Lord Rengar, can see through invisibility. We cannot dodge her Dispel Magic by casting Invisibility, and Frisky Bits loses all of their buffs due to a critical failure on their saving throw.
The interesting thing is that we can restore all of our buffs in a single round. Shield, Mirror Image, Eagle's Splendor, Ghost Armor, and Stoneskin all have a casting time of 1, which Improved Initiative reduces to 1. That only leaves Mind Blank, which has a casting time of 10, or 9 with II.
By the time Frisk goes out to help bring down Sherincal, our undead have already done the job for us. We grab a Potion of Arcane Absorption from Sherincal's body, granting us +2 spell resistance.
That's actually pretty much worthless because spell resistance in IWD2 is an opposed roll: 1d20 plus your spell resistance against a DC of 10 plus the other critter's caster level. So a base 2 SR isn't going to help at all in HoF mode for a character who isn't a high-level monk, a drow, or a deep gnome. However, it should stack with some other sources of SR we can get later on in the game.
Inside the temple, we get another scare from the Ice Golem Champion at the start, who apparently has a stun effect on hit!
Fortunately, it does not last long. Stun effects in IWD2 usually only work for 3 seconds, when a round is 7 seconds.
There are three high priestesses in this temple: Cathin, Lysara, and Oria. The first one, Cathin, is close to the entrance and comes with lots of Frosttouches spread across the room, and there's not much you can do to stop them from spamming Animate Dead and crowding up the room. We apply heavy pressure with Horrid Wilting and get mixed messages about whether it affects Drowned Dead or not.
Notice that we're relying on our saving throws to block Dispel Magic instead of Aegis. This is because I've decided that it's safer to avoid casting Aegis in most cases to make sure that we can always go invisible without resorting to Improved Invisibility and its long casting time.
Improved Invisibility imposes a 50% miss chance on enemies (25% with Blind-fight), but it has one fatal flaw: if you break Improved Invisibility, casting Invisibility or Improved Invisibility will have no effect. Enemies will keep attacking you. Improved Invisibility is a great buff, but it cuts off our best escape option.
Anyway, we finish up the Frosttouches with Horrid Wilting, Animate Dead, and Shades, then do a few minor fights before resting up for the next high priestess fight. The second priestess, Lysara, comes with weaker priests at her side, but she also has an Ice Golem Champion guarding her. We take advantage of the narrow entrance to the room and chain-cast Horrid Wilting while the enemy is stuck.
To my surprise, Lysara comes without Death Ward. Against the odds, she falls to Finger of Death.
Most of the fights in this temple involve no special tactics; they're all the same enemies in the same circumstances. One notable change in our strategy is Frisky Bits switching to Skull Trap spam to stop Frosttouches from casting Animate Dead.
I consider using the prisoner trick to give Frisky Bits some bonus XP, but ultimately decide against it. I want to do this run without using any exploits. Basically, you just free the prisoners, then quick save and quick load repeatedly. Every time you load the game, it re-applies the XP bonus for freeing each prisoner still alive (they die over time if you don't reach them fast), making it possible to bump a solo character up several levels depending on their current level.
The next several fights are long but unexciting. I'll just post three screenshots to show what it looks like.
There's a mirror in this area that imposes a long-lasting -20 luck when you break it. I don't know if it's required, but I do it anyway. As long as go invisible and rest before engaging in any fighting, the luck penalty can wear off safely.
See those people behind the glass on the north side of the room? Those are a band of mercenaries that have been trapped in this temple. If you free them, they immediately go hostile, and one of them using Bolts of Stunning that could easily result in Frisky Bits getting stun-locked and killed. Not trusting invisibility and summons to win the fight without Frisky Bits' active intervention, I decide that the risk is not worth the reward.
One of the reasons this area is so slow is because there's so much loot that's distributed in the form of over 10 types of magical ammunition, and it's hard not to pick up every bit because the sum total nets you about 100,000 gold. Fortunately, we have an ammo bag and a mod that identifies all items, which saves a lot of inventory management.
The Battle Square goes poorly when I erroneously assumed that we can use summons during the fights. But when I try again, Finger of Death, Sunfire, Skull Trap, and Luck-boosted dual-wielding allow us to bring down each of the enemies who otherwise would be too sturdy for us to tackle in melee (and in some cases would be immune to our disablers and instant death spells).
The ice temple is coming to a close. We have to bring down the final priestess, Oria, a mage who comes with a bunch of winter wolves and also opens a door to a room full of clerics who will flank you and start casting Animate Dead if you don't stop them. Before engaging Oria, we put summons on the doorway to the clerics nearby and bomb them from outside.
When the clerics are out, we return to Oria and have our undead stomp the Winter Wolves before finally engaging the mage. Executioner's Eyes gives us our critters some nice critical hits on Oria, but most of the time it's just a long string of misses due to Improved Invisibility and Mirror Image.
Oria takes no damage from a string of hits, at which point I realize that she's coded to be immortal until she can deliver her next dialogue line and transform. I break invisibility by picking up an item and she breaks her staff, but I'm well out of the way when the thing detonates.
Oria is ethereal and untouchable until we hurry down to the Battle Square and active the "Inner Sanctum" mode. We restore our buffs and then smash Oria while she's vulnerable.
We get Caged Fury's true name from talking to Nickademus, banish the spirit that's keeping the ice wall intact, and then give Nathaniel his items, opening the way to the Wandering Village.
Before we head out, I go back to Oswald's ship, which has since left without us because plot. But Oswald has left us a reward for giving him the materials for the mending spell: a randomized permanent stat boost potion. In my first, undocumented, glitch-heavy no-reload run of IWD2, I used the import/export trick to duplicate this thing and make both of my party members immune to piercing and slashing damage.
This potion is actually not much use to us, because it'll only amount to maybe an extra 5-15 HP in a few limited circumstances. A stat boost or SR potion probably would have helped us more.
But we are in good shape nonetheless. Frisk has enough XP to put 10 levels in cleric, and we won't even need those levels until some distance into the future, so we can keep holding off on the level up.
Dorn's quest is progressed a little.
Neear's quest is handled cautiously, with the two mages taken down as quick as possible. Baeloth had mirror images active but a first hit of one guard badly injured him so he cast on the run.
Baeloth aimed a fireball inaccurately on Durlag's tower exterior wall. Blaggerd emerged in flames while Neera perished. Cue a long trip to a temple.
On our return, a bit of jostling saw the protected Blaggerd shoved aside just as a basilisk turned to step away and turned back. Rasaad turned to stone so after finishing the basilisk we made another arduous trip to the temple. Was Rasaad thankful? No he was not, insisting we meet him at Nashkel. We've just come from there...
Another long trip and he is back in the party. At the third attempt we manage to have the exterior areas cleared but Blaggerd has had his fill for one day.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954289/#Comment_954289
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954338/#Comment_954338
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954617/#Comment_954617
This session actually took place several weeks ago, but my annoyance at how it ended meant I didn't write it up at the time. After playing various solo games for a while though I think I'm ready to do a bit more with the monks.
Doing a bit of clean-up around the place included the Beregost temple wolf pack and Kelddath in the temple itself (he doesn't cost reputation), the Red Wizard area
Ulcaster was the last target before heading back to the City and the monks started out there by taking on Icharyd. I thought they would kill him before lightning caused too much of a problem and that proved to be the case.
In Baldur's Gate they went straight to the main quest. Jalantha and Lothander were stunned without problems. Larze was said to be stunned, but ignored that - though the second time around he did hold still as expected.
On the way to the Iron Throne I was surprised that Entillis Fulsom went hostile (reputation was only 6, but Chimera's charisma was 19), but he didn't last long enough to do any damage - the monks nipped into the Iron Throne building before coming out to stun him.
When they went to kill the ogre mage in the sewers, a couple of phase spiders teleported in to complicate things. That resulted in Chimera using his Bhaal horror for the first time to reduce the pressure from carrion crawlers. The round's delay before he could then use slow poison meant Spook got uncomfortably low on HPs, but he survived.
A few dopplegangers later and the monks were sent by Duke Eltan to Candlekeep. In my solo LoB games the ogre magi ambush there can be very dangerous if you don't use buffs or invisibility, but with a party it's much less of a problem and I didn't use any protections on arrival. The opening exchanges saw only Spirit being affected by anything - blinded by Glitterdust - while one of the ogre magi ran from a horror. The others were soon stunned or beaten down and the monks moved inside.
Since they were going to get blamed anyway they killed the Iron Throne leaders - stunning the thief and mage before switching to ranged weapons.
What was doubly annoying about that is one of my rules is that no-one can level up until the whole party is able to do so. With Spirit being dead that means that all XP gained in the catacombs is potentially wasted. The monks still killed the spiders and ghasts while looting before moving through to find Prat. He used a sequencer to disappear when he saw the battle going against him.
A badly played session finished with yet another mistake. I'd deliberately kept reputation down to 9 to give Chimera vampiric touch as a Bhaal ability in Candlekeep, but the intention was to get DUHM for his final ability. I was actually just writing up a note saying I'd done that when I want back to the game and with a reflex twitch of my finger rested right outside the FAI temple
Wraith - L7, 60 HPs, 253 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L7, 58 HPs, 192 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L7, 55 HPs, 173 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L7, 56 HPs, 189 kills, 1 death
Spirit - L7, 61 HPs, 173 kills, 1 death
Chimera - L7, 46 HPs, 269 kills
There are a bunch of quests to do in the city of Baldur's Gate, and everything ticks along nicely for a while.
I purchase the Avarine Decanter from Nym, but it fails to work because the djinni counts as a summons and we already had all 6 active. Since using the Avarine Decanter causes it to vanish, I dismiss the event as a bug and console in a new one. Freeing the djinn right off the bat gives us the best pair of bracers in the game:
That AC bonus is generic, the only type of AC that stacks in IWD2. It's absolutely key to attaining HoF-grade AC with practically any character.
We use Wail of the Banshee on some trolls and then some more barbarians, one of which drops a very nice bastard sword. In the unmodded game, the sword is all but worthless, but one of my mods buffs up bastard swords, which are otherwise very underpowered (like half of the magical ones are cursed).
Unfortunately, lawful-aligned characters like Frisk cannot wield it. Our Lawful Good alignment is worth it, though, to get a paladin level for the save bonuses and eventually a monk level for evasion and some Wisdom-based AC bonuses.
Suoma, the head of the Wandering Village, makes you undertake three tasks before she'll tell you how to get through the forest. First off is finding all the missing children. Limha the witch is responsible, and paladins turn her hostile right off the bat because they can sense her evil alignment. We take the fight outside, using Wail of the Banshee to deal with her trolls.
Limha is a very tough cookie. She comes with lots of mage buffs thanks to the Tactics mod, including a Seven Eyes spell that's largely pointless because she already has Mirror Image and immunity to both disablers and instant death effects.
Basically this fight is about spamming summons and watching Limha trash them one after another.
With Improved Invisibility and Blink on Limha, basically any critter we can summon will have a flat 75% chance of missing her outright, regardless of their attack bonuses. Taking down those Mirror Image spells takes an awfully long time.
Mages in the Tactics4IWD2 mod are actually even harder to kill than SCS mages. SCS mages have more reliable defensive spells, but in IWD2, there's no such thing as magic attacks. The only counter for Improved Invisibility is Invisibility Purge, which can be blocked by spell resistance or Non-Detection, and the only way to remove any other buffs is to use Dispel Magic, which can be blocked by a Will save. Mages, of course, have spectacular Will saves, and since Dispel Magic is a level 3 spell and has no Spell Focus feat to improve it, it really only offers a 5% chance of success under normal circumstances.
Tactics, however, gives Dispel Magic an amazing +6 bonus to the save DC, which means Frisky Bits would have a 30 save DC for Dispel Magic. But I didn't know that at the time.
We keep throwing summons out at Limha and Frisky Bits switches to Sophia's Flight, a bow from the Horde Fortress, to help remove Limha's Mirror Images. But un-equipping the Golden Heart of Frisky Bits removes its +25 HP bonus, rendering Frisky Bits vulnerable to Power Word: Stun.
For a moment I think the run is over, but Frisky Bits' defenses hold off Limha for a few precious seconds. Just after Frisky Bits has started taking real damage, we recover from the stun and down a Potion of Invisibility to escape.
We fall back, cast Vipergout, drink another Potion of Invisibility just to be safe (the alternative, the Invisibility Sphere spell from Caballus' Whispering Staff, would leave us vulnerable for 8 or 9 seconds), and let Limha wrestle with the vipers. Unfortunately, she has a vampiric dagger that neutralizes much of the damage our vipers are dealing.
The vipers struggle to make progress on Limha. Meanwhile, Frisky Bits drinks a bottle of Spirit Essence to get their HP up and attain immunity to Power Word: Stun and goes invisible via Caballus' Whispering Staff. It takes many, many rounds, but finally the vipers bring down Limha.
That was incredibly scary, and an important wake-up call that Frisky Bits cannot coast on their 20 sorcerer levels forever. I finally decide to level them up, giving them 11 cleric levels.
Frisky Bits is now effectively level 32 and will get basically no experience from fighting anything but the absolute strongest of critters. Worse yet, they'll have a 20% XP penalty from a bad class combination. But they now have access to Death Ward, lots of healing spells and other cleric stuff, as well as a lot more HP, 4 base attacks per round, high attack bonuses, and just a lot of really high numbers in general. This is what Frisky Bits looks like when I apply absolutely every buff I possibly can.
Frisky Bits is now a very competent damage dealer in their own right; any decent weapon will be very effective in their hands. Usually, though, we'll still rely on our spells and our summons, since melee combat costs us lots of Mirror Images and we have a limited supply of level 2 spell slots.
The second task in the Wandering Village is to placate the local Barrow Wight, Sordirskin the Tusked. I accidentally insult him during dialogue and turn him hostile, which I've never done before. He comes bolstered by a whole bunch of lesser wights, too, but fortunately undead have no immunity to stun in IWD2.
We put him down, but when we go to report to our questgiver, Tahvo the Huntmaster, we get no dialogue option to claim success. Worried that we've broken the game by killing a plot-relevant character, I hurry to the Fell Woods, grab Sordirskin's horn via invisibility, and bring it back to him. To my relief, he accepts the horn and goes away, letting us off the hook for fighting him previously.
The third and final task is to solve the mystery of Kyosti's death. He was murdered by his girlfriend's lover or something, but we can't prompt his ghost to appear unless we promise a different ghost to kill the "ghost lights" of the Fell Woods, a bunch of Will o' Wisps and Devil's Candles. All of them have unstoppable spell resistance, but Wail of the Banshee ignores SR.
Suoma tells us how to get through the Fell Woods. All we have to do is fight a few Dark Treants and the way is clear.
The next area has a bunch of Snow Trolls and barbarians. The Snow Troll Shamans are immune to death magic, forcing us to spam Horrid Wilting and burn a lot of summoning spells, making the fight a very trying ordeal but ultimately not interesting enough to discuss in detail. We do see two interesting things on this map: first, for some reason, there's a frostrose in this area, a reference to an Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter questline despite using a different icon for the item. I have no idea what it's for--I didn't even know it existed until today.
Second, the Abominable Snowman can stun on hit!
Fortunately, the stun is short-lived, as on-hit stun effects in IWD2 usually are, and we escape without getting pummeled.
Next up, dragons! They're not nearly as dangerous or interesting as BG2 dragons. In fact, they can all be taken down just by using Malison, Symbol of Hopelessness, Wail of the Banshee, and Finger of Death.
I don't know where we are in terms of the plot, but it doesn't matter. IWD2 is more about fighting monsters than its storyline. All I need to know is that we're about to fight a whole bunch of Hook Horrors, and then a lot more Hook Horrors and beetles, and then some jellies, and then a LOT more Hook Horrors.
We're not going to get a single experience point in the process. But as far as I know, taking down every single one of them is more or less mandatory, so we have to do it anyway.
Previous updates:
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After putting Spirit back together the monks returned to Baldur's Gate to finish the rest of their work in the City. At the Helm and Cloak they prepared for a fight by leading Gretek into the back room. They quickly then got in position to attack before he had a chance to return. The initial attack killed the mage, but the thief survived at near death and took an invisibility potion just before running scared from Chimera's Bhaal horror. The other casters went down quickly and the archer soon followed. The thief missed with one backstab, but took another invisibility potion quickly enough to try again - but only managed a modest hit before being crushed. A hasted Gretek is a dangerous enemy in a general melee and saved against a number of stunning blows, but he couldn't stand up long against the weight of attacks.
A few more encounters were done without incident before the monks tried to attack a greater basilisk without protection. It saved against several stunning blows before managing to win a game of guess which side of the door the monks are hiding and stoning Spook - the others quickly took revenge though before more harm could be done.
A few more reputation tasks pushed that back up to 20 and the monks invested most of their funds in charging up wands. I mis-clicked on Brevlik and lost the chance to do his quest, but all other encounters were completed before going to find Slythe. An initial attack on him failed and he got a couple of backstabs in before some wand damage helped take him down before Krystin could join in.
For the fight at the palace I decided to leave nothing to chance. First, the monks charmed Ithyl and dragged her into the palace with them. Inside, they charmed all the Flaming Fist before each taking various potions. Ithyl then made Liia invisible before the monks showed themselves. Ithyl tagged all 3 of the normal dopplegangers with chaos while the monks used wands to kill the cleric and mage.
The assassin was then beaten up to pretty much end the fight, though the monks did make sure Belt was out of sight of Sarevok before letting him talk.
They took the shortest route through the maze, rather than seeking out extra things to kill. However, they did take out the Undercity party - including a first use of necklace fireballs there. Tamoko was then burnt down to get access to the temple.
Inside the temple there was again nothing fancy tried. Sarevok was lured into a corner with everyone except Angelo. Wraith then showed herself to Angelo and used hide in shadows to wait out a couple of mirror images so that when he eventually attacked he could be burnt down immediately. By that time Diarmid's PfM scroll had expired, so Wraith commenced a fireball barrage. Once Sarevok was all alone Spook took off the ring of free action (that he normally wears to prevent boots of speed making him faster than everyone else) and kited Sarevok while the others shot him up.
Wraith - L8, 69 HPs, 277 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L8, 65 HPs, 212 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L8, 65 HPs, 190 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L8, 65 HPs, 213 kills, 1 death
Spirit - L8, 68 HPs, 189 kills, 1 death
Chimera - L8, 55 HPs, 294 kills
This is enough for basic hordes, but there are lots of enemies it won't work on due to their immunities. The perfect example is the swarm of Ochre Jellies we have to deal with. The jellies can only be killed with fire damage and multiply constantly, and due to HoF's HP bonuses it takes massive, massive fire damage to bring them down. For this fight, we have to repeatedly throw out a summoned critter and then torch everything in sight with a 20d8 Delayed Blast Fireball.
Even then it takes numerous castings and we have to resort to Sunfire when all of our Delayed Blast Fireball spells run out. For a character without sorcerer levels, this process would take numerous rest periods.
Like I said, we still have more Hook Horrors to deal with. One of the disadvantages of a solo run is that you tend to end up resolving many different fights with the same set of strategies, which is optimal from a practical perspective but fairly boring. At least the field of flowers visual effect from Wail of the Banshee is pretty.
The duergar are more resistant thanks to superior Fortitude saves, though, and while they have weak Will saves that make them vulnerable to Symbol of Hopelessness, the enemy clerics can cure them with Remove Paralysis. When the clerics prove immune to Chromatic Orb, I nail one with a spell that practically nothing is immune to.
Notice that Frisky Bits is staying outside the doorway even though the enemies go back very far to the northeast. Normally I prefer to keep all enemies within visual range so I see what's going on, but those Duergar Bolters can shoot down Frisky Bits' Mirror Images with frightening speed and I want to avoid that kind of pressure.
We forge ahead with Animate Dead and Shades, bolstering our summons with Improved Haste (an area-effect +1 APR spell, not an APR doubling spell; normal Haste is just single-target in IWD2) and Executioner's Eyes. I discover that if I switch to Sophia's Flight and an Everlast Arrow, the combination of Holy Power (+4 to damage) and Executioner's Eyes plus our base +2 luck from Young Ned's Knucky allows us to land some very impressive critical hits from long range.
Not all weapons benefit equally from luck bonuses and critical hit range bonuses like that of Executioner's Eyes. Most weapons only deal double damage on critical hits, but there are some that deal triple damage: bows, hammers, axes and halberds. Those weapons have the highest potential damage output due to their better-scaling criticals.
Next up, Beastlord Harshom. As he so dramatically boasts, he is not known as the Beastlord for his "prowess with women alone" and comes with Battlecats and Warbears bearing magical collars or something, plus some mages and archers. You get teleported up to him without your summons coming along, so we go invisible (which appears to do nothing; the enemies still chase us) and hurry back to the south end of the map, where our summons are waiting. Some low rolls on the part of the enemy give us an early advantage.
We've already neutralized basically everyone but Harshom himself, who is unfortunately immune to disablers and death magic, like many bosses are, making him nigh-immortal like many Tactics4IWD2 mages. Fortunately, Frisky Bits' Mind Blank blocks Harshom's Beltyn's Burning Blood spells, which otherwise would impose several rounds of berserk with every casting.
We surround him with summons and start making attack rolls, beginning the very long and frankly tedious process of removing his Mirror Images despite his Improved Invisibility and Blink spells. Frisky Bits has the Blind-Fight feat now, reducing the miss chance against Harshom's Improved Invisibility from 50% to 25%, but the 50% miss chance from Blink is impossible to reduce without actually dispelling it.
Tactics is supposed to make Frisky Bits immune to Disintegrate by level 26, but I burn an Invisibility spell just to be sure that we don't get killed. We very, very slowly bring him down.
Frisky Bits takes one level in monk, giving us evasion and +4 to AC from our Wisdom at the cost of bumping their XP penalty to 40%. It'll make it harder to gain levels in the future, but we're already at near-maximum power and additional levels will make little impact.
To the Black Raven Monastery! As always, the first order of business is grabbing "How To Be An Adventurer," which grants double its normal XP in HoF mode.
The writing in Icewind Dale 2 can vacillate wildly between entertaining and charming like this example, deeply moving and vivid like the chapter transitions, or sometimes just stupid and weak like a few scattered dialogue options. The beautiful parts are most memorable, but I still find it interesting how much the quality can vary in this game.
Okay. The Black Raven Monastery is a very dangerous area in HoF mode, and I'm honestly really worried about how this is going to play out. There are only two ways of getting through to the next area:
1. Fighting the monk trials in the basement.
2. Killing the monks themselves.
The monks themselves are extremely dangerous. That's a lot of fighters with high stats and access to two potentially fatal on-hit effects: Stunning Attack and Quivering Palm. As I've mentioned, there is no way to achieve sustainable immunity to stun effects without mod items or modded druid shapeshifting. Worse yet, Quivering Palm goes right through Death Ward. This means only our subpar AC and excellent saving throws will keep us alive if one of the monks attacks Frisky Bits instead of our summons.
But there's always a 5% chance of a critical failure on a save, and since the save DC's of Stunning Attack and Quivering Palm are level-dependent and also scale with Wisdom, it's entirely possible that the chance of Frisky Bits failing their Fortitude save is even higher than 5%.
This indicates that the monk trials in the basement are the superior option. But there are several problems with that method as well:
1. We have to fight monk/golem hybrid critters that are completely immune to spells and resistant to melee attacks.
2. One of the fights involves a bunch of venomous spiders and Web spells we'd have to make saving throws to avoid.
3. One of the chambers throws out Flame Strike spells every round or so and cannot be disrupted or disabled.
4. We can't bring any items to any of the trials; the only weapons we can use are the few nonmagical weapons they provide in each chamber.
5. We get all of our buffs dispelled before every chamber.
6. Once you enter a chamber, you can't leave until you defeat the enemies. Escaping from a bad situation is not an option.
At first, I think both options are about equally luck-dependent. But then I realize that we have Aegis. And sure enough, Aegis can block the Dispel Magic effect before we enter each chamber. This means we can enter the spider web and Flame Strike rooms with all of our buffs intact--including a Protection from Poison scroll to cover one of the few vulnerabilities we normally have.
The first trial is easy. Summoned critters are enough to break down the Stone Monks.
But the Crystal Monk room is very different. Apparently these monks are actually coded as monks and have at least 20 levels in the monk class, giving them 20/+1 resistance to weapons. This means they ignore the first 20 points of damage from any nonmagical weapon--the only kind of weapon we have. They're also immune to critical hits, which I didn't even know was possible in IWD2.
Guess how much damage Frisky Bits can do with a nonmagical weapon without a critical hit?
Just 16. Hitting the monks ourselves is impossible. We have to use summons.
But due to a pre-existing bug, we can't summon any critters. Apparently our Animate Dead summons from the previous rest period are still around. I've benefited from that bug on some non-critical situations, so I'm not sure if I'm willing to fix it by teleporting the summons over and hitting them with CTRL-Y so I can summon new ones.
The solution? I cast Invisibility and wait it out. Even when undead summons persisted after an 8-hour rest, I always found that they vanished after a second 8-hour rest. A single Invisibility spell lasts about half of that, so I can maintain invisibility long enough for the undead to eventually despawn.
But since that would take forever, I just teleport them over and CTRL-Y them. We bring out new summons and start dealing damage to the Crystal Monks, though their damage resistance apparently applies to our summons' attacks; undead summons use nonmagical weapons.
The next two chambers proceed the same way. Then comes the spider chamber. We use a Protection from Poison scroll before entering the chamber, with an Aegis spell to make sure the scroll doesn't get dispelled. Regardless, the spiders prove to be little threat; they don't have the immunities or resistances of the monk golems.
I use up several important scrolls, including our only Fire Shield scroll, in preparation for the final room, only to discover that we still have one challenge before the Flame Strike room. The second-to-last room is not hard, but it's enough of a strain on our resources that we still have to rest before the next challenge, wasting all the scrolls we used before the final chamber.
It's finally time to tackle the final chamber. We can damage the Brass Monks using our summons, but those constant Flame Strike spells apply massive pressure to our summons, none of which has any resistance to fire damage. Only Frisk escapes damage thanks to monk evasion and Mirror Image.
Everything we summon just gets torched in a matter of rounds. We quickly run low on Animate Dead spells and have no choice but to switch to Shades.
But no matter how hard they try, our Greater Feyrs can't do a single point of damage to the monks. Both Brass Monks are still at Barely Injured.
A horrible realization comes over me. We can't deal any more damage to the monks!
They're at Barely Injured and we already have nearly exhausted our only means of dealing damage to the monks.
We need to escape. But you're not allowed to leave until the monks have fallen.
But we're right next to the room that leads upstairs. I cast Vipergout and run to the corner with our vipers. I once read in the notes to a speedrun that stealth is one of the things that trigger a collision check in BG2, and while I don't have any means of altering Frisky Bits' circle, I'm hoping that I screw with the collision enough to force the game to teleport Frisky Bits to the adjacent room. But we're in trouble: Frisk has run out of Mirror Images as well as Aegis, leaving us with only our Reflex save and evasion to block the Flame Strikes. Frisk rolls a 1.
Vipergout runs out, allowing Frisk to go invisible and avoid getting pummeled by the monks, but I'm not sure where to go from here.
I scour our spellbook and innate abilities. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. But then I notice that the staircase in the adjacent room is very close to the wall. I click on the staircase and try to activate it through the wall.
It works!
We've escaped, but the challenge remains incomplete; we can't proceed unless we either take down those Brass Monks or wipe out all the monks in the monastery.
I study our cleric spellbook. I realize that we actually have other ways of dealing damage to the monks if we memorize them: some cleric summoning spells can deal more than 20 damage per hit, we can cast Champion's Strength on our summons and Emotion: Hope on our non-undead summons, and if we cast Spiritual Weapon, we'll get a ranged hammer that gets no Strength bonuses but strikes as a +1 weapon and will go right through the monks' resistances!
I change up our spell picks, buff Frisky Bits with only the necessities, saving our cleric spell slots for summoning spells, and enter the chamber.
But all is not well. The Brass Monks from our previous attempt are still there, and by re-starting the challenge, two new Brass Monks enter the chamber. We now have FOUR Brass Monks to deal with, and they deal damage very fast indeed.
Frisky Bits casts Spiritual Weapon and deactivates Expertise to maximize their attack bonus. With Haste, Emotion: Hope, Prayer and Holy Power, Frisky Bits deals 1d8+8 damage per hit with 5 attacks per round.
Our summons are dying fast, but we're finally making good progress against the enemy. The first monk goes down!
We're already out of Animate Dead spells, but we get better luck with Shades than we did in the previous attempt. Instead of Greater Feyrs, we get a pair of Remorhazes, which have far superior damage output and can actually hurt the monks. The second monk goes down.
The Remorhazes crumple, but we manage to take down the third monk.
We're low on spells, though, and pretty much out of summons. We'll have to finish the job ourselves with Spiritual Weapon. To keep the enemy occupied so we can attack from afar, we cast Vipergout, only to discover that it dispels our existing Spiritual Weapon.
We should still be able to tackle the monk, but I don't trust Frisky Bits' saves to keep them alive when those Flame Strikes remove their Mirror Images. I make another attempt to activate the stairs from the other room, and with a little finagling, we manage to break out.
The challenge is still not complete, but we've established that we can kill 3 out of 4 monks with our existing strategy, and when we re-enter the chamber, there should be only 3 total. But when I speak with the monk to rest first, the game decides the challenge is complete!
Apparently taking down two of the Brass Monks was sufficient. We speak with Salisam Harbash and gain one more level, which we use to take a cleric level to get another casting of Heal.
For my next no-reload challenge, I introduce to you:
Spaz the Warlock!
I will be playing solo on Insane with extra damage disabled. Mod installation has not changed from Brunash's playthrough. The Warlock's kit description and abilities can be found here.
From my experience playing one in NWN2 and in NWN1's PRC pack, this Warlock will also be about spamming Eldritch Blast. But resting in BG is more restrictive than NWN1 and NWN2, so with infinite caster resources, I think a solo Warlock is going to accrete power at a terrifying rate, especially since it uses the thief/bard XP table. But without being able to pick Extra Invocation feats like in NWN1's PRC, I'm going to have to be very choosy about which invocations I pick. Only at epic levels will I be able to select Extra Invocation I - IV as HLAs. I won't go into super-deep detail in documentation in the beginning like I did with Brunash mainly because it doesn't seem as necessary like my first time playing no-reload. Instead I'll post about milestones and unusual events but often enough that it will be coherent.
Gaining invocations is conversation-based, just like the PRC pack in NWN1. At every level up, you may choose to trade an invocation for a different one of equal grade.
My first choice is Leaps and Bounds. For 8 hours, the warlock gains a +2 bonus to Dexterity and AC. An additional +1 bonus is granted for every two points of the warlock's Charisma above 16. I would've chosen Darkness for the visual range reduction against enemies, but I found it didn't really reduce it enough to be useful.
Shank and Carbos get blasted.
Marl is dealt with, earning me a level.
With this level combined with Leaps and Bounds, I've got enough Pickpocket points to filch Algernon's Cloak.
With the extra +2 CHA from the cloak, Leaps and Bounds now provides +4 AC and DEX instead of +3. What a lovely synergy! I charm Firebead with the cloak and have him toast Landrin's spiders, earning me another level. Hideous Blow is learned at this level, which lets me channel an Eldritch Blast into my next melee attack.
I take Firebead into the Red Sheaf and he petrifies Karlat with a Chromatic Orb.
I expend the rest of Firebead's spells and return him to his house, then assassinate him, earning me another level.
3 of Kelddath's Sirines are killed, gaining me yet another level.
I get +10% physical damage resistance and learn Dark One's Own Luck, which works like Leaps and Bounds, except it increases Luck and Saving Throws by the same amount (+4!). Back in Beregost, I charm Silke with the cloak and expend all her spells. She casts Improved Invisibility on me, and then I attack her starting off with Hideous Blow. It is quite effective when alternating between Eldritch Blast and then attacking while my aura is clouded.
I buy all of Kelddath's Stone to Flesh scrolls. Onto the Basilisk farm. The loop is initiated.
From 19 scrolls I gain 3 levels, up to level 9. Invisibility and Animate Dead, both at-will, will be extremely helpful. Eldritch Spear will help me take on groups, and I now have 1 HP/3 rounds regeneration. Things are looking up. I go to the Friendly Arm and buy all of Gellana's Stone to Flesh scrolls, reducing me to just 71 gold. The Ring of Wizardry has certainly proven itself. Tarnesh gets rekt by a pair of my skellybros while I sit back and watch.
Back at Basilisk Country, I initiate the loop again and get to level 11, learning Brimstone Blast and Eldritch Chain.
I have 9 more scrolls to use, but they aren't enough to get me a level, so I just drop them and add the XP I would've gotten from them using the console. It seems this is as high as I'm going to go for a little while.
Spaz - Warlock 11
Spaz the Warlock!
BG1: 1Still in Basilisk Country, I take on Kirian's group. I summon my skellybros, who have undergone an upgrade, and then assault the group with Brimstone Eldritch Chain. They get annihilated in one cast.
It looks cool too. Shakes the screen upon impact and sounds powerful. I move on to Durlag's Tower's outskirts and kill the pair of Doomguards near Erdane for 8k XP. Onto Gullykin. Lendarn and the ogre mage are put down and Alvenhendar's scrolls are bought as well. 17 scrolls are expended for 112k XP, which isn't enough to get me a level, but its kind of close.
Shoal is next on the chopping block.
Bassilus is dealt with and his holy symbol is turned in to Kelddath.
Melicamp is returned to Thalantyr and he survives being anti-chickenated this time.
I go up to Ulgoth's Beard and steal Dushai's Ring of Free Action. I go to the farmlands south of Wyvern's Crossing and level up inside the Ankheg Nest, though I don't get anything this level.
The wolf pack on the Temple map is put to the torch.
At Nashkel, I buy up all the Stone to Flesh scrolls plus the one from Zeke at the carnival and initiate the Basilisk loop again, but its still not enough to make level 13. At the digsite, the Doomsayer is killed and Brage is brought back to the Nashkel temple.
I loot the CON tome from Black Alaric's cave, using a potion of stone form to help save against the traps. Several skellybros died to make it possible, though all the flesh golems in the cave were killed.
Most of the sidequests around the wilderness are cleared as well. Nashkel Mine is cleared with ease. Upon killing Tranzig, I level up to 13. I finally gain Vitriolic Blast and replace Brimstone Blast with Flee the Scene.
Vitriolic Blast is what I wanted to use the Basilisk Loop for. Against anything with large or total magic resistance, I am severely hampered because Eldritch Blast can be blocked, and I don't have a way to lower magic resistance by myself. Spaz cannot beat Belhifet without Vitriolic Blast. But now that I have it, its time to pay a certain drow a visit. With 4 skellybros, I begin my assault on him. Drizzt crumples after a few castings.
Now I have his armor and Frostbrand +3, making my AC extremely low. The bandit camp is next and it gets wiped out with no survivors.
Cloakwood is a walk in the park. The mines are just as easy since all I have to do is stroll right through with Walk Unseen. At Davaeorn's sanctum, I use Flee the Scene to jump over all the traps and then summon my skellies. Dave goes down.
I book it for Baldur's Gate, pick up the DEX tome, and buy a Bag of Holding.
Spaz - Warlock 13
Mirlen, a Beastmaster in a Horrifically Modded Baldur's Gate
This is a no-reload playthrough of Baldur's Gate 1 with my own mod, High Power Baldur's Gate. In this mod, all the creatures in the game are given ridiculous supernatural powers they have no right to have. This is a mod where xvarts stop time whenever they move, and even a kobold might be able to cast a level 9 spell. Yet meanwhile, the good guys also get ridiculous abilities. An NPC party member might automatically critically hit on each attack, or they might have permanent Aura Cleansing, increased vision range, extra attacks per round, instant casting time on all spells, or various other abilities like that. Different NPCs have different abilities.A player-character does not get any passive powers like the ones above. Instead, they gain innate spells. Which spells they get depend on their class and their kit.
Here is Mirlen and her abilities:
Mirlen is starting with 20000 experience, so she's at level 5.
I have a component installed that lets Beastmasters get their Animal Summoning spells as innate abilities rather than as ranger spells. I also have a component that lets Rangers learn spells faster.
Most of these abilities do what you'd expect them to do, though the Shillelagh creates a +5 club and the animals summoned by the Animal Summoning abilities are empowered by this mod. The ability with the Conjure Animals icon is Conjure Grizzly Bear. Grizzly Bears are powerful bears with command over all the elements.
Familiars are empowered, too. Mirlen's Faerie Dragon can cast Blindness three times per day, and Improved Invisibility, Mirror Image and Pixie Dust once per day each. Mirlen put her familiar in the bag for now.
After buying equipment and talking to Gorion, they headed out. The Armored Figure ambushed them. Gorion put up quite a fight. He threw meteor swarms, 60-foot radius fireballs, and over 100 Magic Missiles, but even his powerful magic could not stop the onslaught.
Mirlen teamed up with Imoen and did NOT just take her equipment and kick her out of the party.
Imoen is a multiclassed mage-thief. She has five attacks per round with all weapons and immunity to acid. She can cast Breach, Minor Spell Turning, Protection from Normal Weapons and Phantom Blade once per day each as innate abilities. The Phantom Blade can attack at long range in this mod.
In the next area, the hunter Aoln provided a foreboding story...
When the party arrived at the Friendly Arm Inn, they talked to a guard, who warned of shapeshifter trouble.
The guards ARE professional fighters in this mod.
Mirlen summoned a black bear and two wild dogs. Black bears automatically cast Bearacid whenever they are hit. Wild dogs can cast Dog Slow.
In the fight with Tarnesh, two of the nearby guards revealed themselves to be doppelgangers! Doppelgangers in this mod have 25 Strength and do a lot of damage. However, they have poor AC and saving throws.
Tarnesh instantly buffed with Armor, Mirror Image, and Protection from Normal Weapons. Both him and Imoen cast Phantom Blade and started attacking each other. Meanwhile the doppelgangers were tearing through Mirlen's animal defenses. However, a nearby cat helped out by casting Ratify on a doppelganger, polymorphing it into a rat! The guards killed the rat-doppelganger and Mirlen finished off the other one with a critical hit. With a bit more work, Tarnesh was killed.
(EDIT: Stupid Tarnesh, casting Larloch's Minor Drain on himself... That will be fixed in the next patch.)
The party went in the inn and met with Khalid and Jaheira. Khalid is a fighter-transmuter; he's permanently hasted and he can cast Flesh to Stone, Tenser's Transformation and Time Stop as innate abilities. Jaheira has 18/00 Strength and 18 in all other stats; she has grandmastery in spears, clubs and quarterstaves, as well as proficiency in weapon styles; she can cast Iron Skins, Animal Summoning 2, Pixie Dust, Harper's Call and Hardiness once per day each.
After resting in royal-class beds, the party went to Beregost. There, they visited Feldepost's to get Algernon's Cloak.
It was a bit trickier than expected.
The doppelganger, still wearing the cloak, charmed Mirlen. Jaheira cast Iron Skins and attacked the doppelganger, but then another doppelganger came down the hallway and cast Hold Person on Jaheira! But just before Jaheira could get killed, Khalid got off his Time Stop. While time was frozen, he finished off the first doppelganger and cast Flesh to Stone on the second. That was close!
The party went to Firebead's house and gave him his book. The mod moves the containers to the inn in Candlekeep (where Mirlen bought them), so instead, Firebead gave a Tome of Understanding! One thing I haven't mentioned is that this mod fills the game with stat-increasing books. It's possible to get one or two characters to 25 in all stats by the end of the game. We're a long way from that, though.
The last thing the party did in Beregost was go clear Landrin's house of spiders. However, they hadn't actually talked to Landrin yet, so the only way the party had of curing poison was Jaheira's Slow Poison spells. Spiders in this mod have -20 THAC0 and summon smaller spiders each time they hit with an attack. The party went in the house, then immediately went back out to draw out the spiders. However, this strategy led Mirlen and Khalid to be cornered. Khalid died from poison while Mirlen just barely survived, and only because she drank Jaheira's invisibility potion just in time to get the spiders away from her. Jaheira summoned a black bear to help kill the spiders, and Imoen killed some of them with her Phantom Blade. Jaheira raised Khalid with Harper's Call.
That's it for now. Next episode, the party heads for Nashkel!
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954289/#Comment_954289
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954338/#Comment_954338
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954617/#Comment_954617
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/960637/#Comment_960637
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/960902/#Comment_960902
The monks started the SoD dungeon the easy way by persuading Porios to surrender. Fireballs allowed them to make rapid progress through the undead with minimal damage.
Rather battered by the combat the monks rested up before looting the dungeon and leaving. In Baldur's Gate they beat up a few NPCs to raise cash to buy more potions and scrolls and did a few minor chores before marching out with the Flaming Fist.
Proceeding immediately to the Coast Way Forest they decided to help Tsolak the vampire. Things seemed under control when Ikros was stunned through his fire shield and beaten up.
On the return journey the remaining monks came across a troll cave. As they wouldn't get another opportunity to go there later they ignored Spook's absence and dived in. The trolls were soon dead with the help of fireballs.
Back at the Coast Way Crossing the monks made their way through the map. They were careful not to get stuck in the web traps while spiders were around. They got a returning dart from Takos along with an identifying mirror. Next they shot Teleria down from range without talking to her (that meant the golem stayed neutral, so Wraith took the opportunity to hit it at leisure with her Gemblade) before spotting a spirit wandering around. As I nearly always play solo I have very limited experience of using the Spectacles, so didn't know what that was - it proved to be a gauth (with a ring of fire resistance).
After activating the menhirs the monks were able to grab the bard's treasure in the dwarven mine before moving deeper inside. The early undead groups were no trouble, but there certainly was trouble after Wraith was confused by a trap and activated a large nearby group of undead, including a mummy that quickly scared 2 of the monks. With lots of dangerous enemies, a cloudkill trap now activated and half the party incapacitated things looked tricky for a while. However, the wands of heavens proved their worth again and everyone just survived.
Wraith - L8, 69 HPs, 335 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L8, 65 HPs, 282 kills, 1 death
Phantom - L8, 65 HPs, 227 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L8, 65 HPs, 231 kills, 2 deaths
Spirit - L8, 68 HPs, 230 kills, 1 death
Chimera - L8, 65 HPs (incl. 10 from bracers), 360 kills
Spaz the Warlock!
BG1: 1, 2Time for BG's sidequest hell. Desreta and Vay-ya are killed and I have the gauntlets of ogre power, so I'll be able to bash some locks now, in addition to being better able to inflict Hideous Blow. The Iron Throne party is wiped out thanks to Eldritch Chain and the skellybros' magic resistance.
40 Stone to Flesh scrolls are bought from the High Hall of Wonders and from the temple of Tymora. I pickpocket the WIS tome and consume it.
I visit Degrodel and get 6 more stone to flesh scrolls. His Doom Guards and Invisible Stalkers slaughter my skellybros, leaving the place awash with their corpses.
Ramazith's Tower is cleared and I consume the INT tome. While I'm there, I buy the Temple of Helm's Stone to Flesh scrolls. I have 63 total now.
The Cloak of Balduran is pickpocketed. My backup plan would've been to charm Quenash and have Larze squish her again.
At the Umberlee temple, I level up from killing Jalantha Mistmyr while doing both Tremain's son's quest and Lothander's.
With all my scrolls collected, I head back into Basilisk Country and use 27 of my 63 scrolls for another level. I learn Tenacious Plague, which is basically an AoE version of Summon Insects (not Insect Plague). Devour Magic was a close contender, but I can choose that for my 3rd Greater invocation. Eldritch Cone and +5% physical damage resist is gained this level, and my skellybros are at their strongest and now immune to normal weapons! I console in the rest of the XP and drop the remaining scrolls on the ground for yet another level. My regeneration rate improves to 1 HP/2 rounds.
I return to the city and do Scar's quests and talk to Duke Eltan. Back in Candlekeep, I buy even more XP scrolls. I kill the Iron Throne leaders and test out Eldritch Cone.
In the catacombs, See the Unseen allows me to detect traps, but I can't force this lock open for the stat tome. I can't get the other stat tome either.
Back on the outside, I return to Basilisk Country and set up the loop again, consoling in the rest of the XP, but its not enough for another level. I think I've exhausted all the Stone to Flesh scrolls in BG1.
I believe its time for TotSC. I'm not especially looking forward to Durlag's Tower with all its traps, but I will do the ice island at least. Balduran's Isle is out of the question.
Spaz - Warlock 16
Mirlen, a Beastmaster in a Horrifically Modded Baldur's Gate: Part 2
So, the party went down the road to Nashkel until they found an ogrillion and a half-ogre. Ogrillions move very fast and cause wing buffet-esque knockback with each punch. Half-ogres have AC -20. Mirlen and Jaheira summoned two brown bears. Regardless of their AC, the ogres were no match for Bearlightning. The party delivered the message to Mirianne.When the party arrived at Nashkel, Mirlen immediately traveled over to the farm and found Fallorain's Plate in the dirt. In this mod, magical weapons and armor are modified. Fallorain's Plate gives the effects of Draw Upon Holy Might at level 6 (+2 Strength, Dexterity, Constitution). Jaheira put it on.
The party headed to the inn, at which point Neira burst out of invisibility and one of the commoners reverted to doppelganger form. Mirlen used Stunning Attack (this mod's name for the Throne of Bhaal ability Power Attack) and stunned the doppelganger with an arrow. Neira paralyzed Jaheira and proceeded to cast some buffs, but the party killed her and the doppelganger before anything really bad could happen. Neira dropped the Studded Leather Armor of Missile Attraction +4, which Mirlen put on.
After resting at the inn, Mirlen had a dream and gained her first Bhaalspawn ability: Cure Serious Wounds!
The party found Berrun Ghastkill and agreed to investigate the mines. Then they found Minsc and agreed to help him rescue Dynaheir. Forget about the mines for now; this could take a while.
The first area they came across in their journey to the gnoll stronghold was a village of xvarts. The xvarts were numerous and supported by war cows. Once per round, a cow can use Great Leap to jump high and land on a creature, dealing 4d6 crushing damage (Save vs. Breath for half).
Xvarts stop time whenever they move, but Khalid could move during Time Stop no matter whose Time Stop it was. He still needed help with the war cows, though.
By the way, Burning Hands is really awesome in this mod.
The party fought its way through the village until they reached the cave. Inside the cave was a cave bear. Whenever a cave bear is hit, it automatically uses Bearfire, which deals 5d6 damage to everyone within 30 feet. But the bear was not alone, for there were bats which revealed themselves to be doppelgangers! Mirlen charmed the cave bear and had it fight the doppelgangers. the doppelgangers attacked the bear, only to be incinerated by Bearfire. The bear survived the fight, but only bearly. Still charmed, the cave bear watched over the party as they rested.
The next day, the bear (which was now fully healed) followed the party outside of the cave, at which point Mirlen charmed it again. The party then confronted Nexlit the Xvart. Nexlit called Ursa for help, and Ursa did NOT kill Nexlit.
Ursa is a Dire Cave Bear, the first truly powerful enemy the party has faced so far. Not only does Ursa have access to Bearfire, he can also breathe fire. Nexlit used Deathblow (which would allow him to kill a party member in one hit) and came at Khalid, but he ran away until the deathblow effect wore off.
Meanwhile Ursa was fighting the party's own cave bear. It wasn't long until the weaker bear was killed. The party huddled together and Jaheira cast Pixie Dust. They snuck out of the village and prepared to strike back.
The party lured out Nexlit first. Now that he had exhausted his Deathblow, he wasn't that dangerous. He dropped a Cloak of Cave Bear Control, which gives +50% fire resistance and allows the wearer to use Bearfire and charm cave bears with no save.
But there was no point in charming Ursa when he was the only foe left. Instead, the party summoned two brown bears and sent them against Ursa.
The bearfight was extremely violent and only lasted a couple of seconds.
Next, Jaheira put on the Cloak of Cave Bear Control and drank a potion of fire resistance, giving her 100% fire resistance. She cast Iron Skins and bravely went in to fight Ursa with her trusty quarterstaff.
Jaheira did better than I expected, but she still couldn't beat Ursa on her own. Mirlen, Khalid and Imoen supported her with ranged attacks. Each hit triggered a Bearfire, but it didn't damage Jaheira.
At last, the party slew the beast!
Now that the party had conquered the xvart village, they moved on to the next area. There, they encountered Ludrug the gnoll, who challenged Mirlen to a fight. Mirlen accepted.
But the next enemy the party came across was much worse. It was a winter wolf. Winter wolves are by default invisible, and they turn invisible again each time they hit someone. Thus, they are only visible while their frost breath projectile is on its way to the target. The wolf killed Khalid (luckily not freezing him), at which point, in desperation, Mirlen charmed a squirrel and had it stand guard against the wolf while the party ran away. When a squirrel in this mod dies, it explodes, dealing 10d6 fire damage to everyone within 120 feet. The winter wolf killed the squirrel. The explosion killed the wolf, but then things got worse. There were more squirrels in the radius of the explosion, and those squirrels exploded too. The party was suddenly running away from multiple huge infernos, like heroes in an action movie.
Minsc didn't make it. After the explosions settled down, Jaheira raised Minsc. The party rested, then Jaheira raised Khalid.
In the same area, the party agreed to help the dryad kill the idiotic tree-robbers. Caldo was heavily armored but unarmed, while Krumm critically hit with every attack and was permanently under the effects of Physical Mirror. Minsc used Smite and knocked Krumm away; this gave the rest of the party a chance to fight Caldo. He was tough to kill, but once the party had dealt with Krumm, there was nothing to fear from getting knocked out by Caldo.
In exchange for this service, the dryad rewarded the party with the Protector of the Dryads short bow. It grants huge bonuses whenever the archer is within close proximity of an eagle.
Minsc picked up Caldo's armor, only to find that it was too heavy even for him to carry around.
Next stop is the Gnoll Stronghold.
Puk is moving on to Bg2 insane level, no mods... I did agree to make an item so if any one has a wish, now is the time to speak up
If it's too goofy, then @OlvynChuru will likely come with a good suggestion, just look at his crazy ideas!
With NWN:EE coming, I wanted to go back and visit the NWN campaigns, no-reload of course, for both NWN1 & NWN2.
Assessment:
- Vanilla campaigns are a joke. The rest-anywhere feature, combined with get-back-up-if-you-die, makes it a no-brainer to survive a well played game. (It is actually possible to lose the game, as I have reported earlier for NWN OC, but not with a serious approach.)
Other than comic relief, I wouldn't think of reporting my vanilla NWN runs here.
- 'Storms of Zehir' (which I had never played before) is an unexpected delight of an exception: rest is costly and risky, death is also costly. I built an overpowered and well-optimized party, which in the late game was a power house, but I died in the Final Fight! (A high level enemy cleric disabled key party members. Things then went downhill.)
- NWN2 campaigns (OC + MotB) both have mods that turn them in to a 'Storms of Zehir' kind challenge with rest and death restrictions. *THAT* mod makes the NWN2 campaigns worth playing. Suddenly, you can lose the game. (In the early game, there is a finite number of expensive "coins" to revive characters. If your party members bleed out and you are out of coins, you may lose the game.)
- The necessary ingredient for a good game in NWN2 are:
Core Difficulty (friendly fire and full disables) + AI enhancement (it is a global option on the character control tab) that prebuffs enemy casters (similar to the SCS feature) which makes enemy cleric and mages an actual challenge! + Storms of Zehir type mod.
- NWN1: OC is impossibly boring and not a challenge. SoZ + HotU may be a different story.
I seriously hope that Beamdog will learn the lessons of Storms of Zehir in its development of NWN:EE for updating old campaigns as well as designing new ones.
--
Okay, bonus question to the thread:
Did anyone play the NWN2 mod 'Baldur's Gate Reloaded' (a remake of BG+ToSC)?
Is it stable and playable? Balanced?
Is it a decent no-reload challenge?
Wiki states that chaotic good thieves can follow Tempus, and I cannot see any reason why a Fighter/Mage shouldn't either.
The entire party is humanand they have got as far as the FAI.
One complaint that I have is that I only got 100 gp to equip 5 party members.
As I have a thief who could open the upstairs chest, it wasn't a major problem, but it would have been if I hadn't had a thief in the party.
As per usual I equipped the assassins in Candlekeep, but they only had theives' equipment, most of it only usable by thieves, though there was a short sword +2 and +2 leather armour in the mix.
The equipment thus gained does mean that my thief is well equipped. The others aren't.
They will soon have to fight some well armoured enemies to get better armour.
The ogre with the belt fetish has been disposed of.
First time with sphere system for FnP installed. Weidu attached:
Needless to say: Because they are all aligned with Tempus there are some gaps in their abilities. No druids as it wouldn't fit their ethos and the clerics are all martially aligned.
SoZ is a good candidate for no-reload challenges too, though I never liked the economy management with trade bars.
As you mention, with Storms of Zehir what I am liking is indeed not the trade stuff, but rather:
1. challenge of resting and death, making no-reload relevant. (I actually lost my game, after all.)
2. skills are actually useful! (Search, Spot, Listen, Appraise, Survival, .... they all have some legitimate use and frequently mentioned in dialogs as well! Also, crafting skills & feats are basically necessary.) NWN1 original campaigns fails this miserably.
Having an overland encounter map is also a plus. Wish other campaigns implemented it.
(Really hoping that some Beamdog guru is paying attention to this.)
Spaz the Warlock!
BG1: 1, 2, 3Up in Ulgoth's Beard, I accept Shandalar's job. I level up while inside and choose Devour Magic, which is Remove Magic plus a minor bonus of +2 max HP per target affected.
The top side of Durlag's Tower is cleared and I consume the WIS tome.
As laden with traps as Durlag's Tower is, I suddenly remember that Mislead applies Improved Invisibility's +4 save bonus, so I can use Flee the Scene to tank traps with my rock-bottom saving throws and good Luck. Traps are mostly fire and electrical, so I gulp a potion of fire ressitance and absorption. Any damage I do take from traps is regenerated. Level 1 is cleared. I thought the warders were going to be tougher, but Tenacious Plague took a big bite out of them because they're hasted.
Level 2 and 3 are cleared without trouble; time for the chess game. I take protective measures so I don't get disabled by quaffing a potion of clarity and wielding Spider's Bane. I summon 4 skellybros to my sides and send out a fifth into the board to bait them all into attacking it. And then my jaw drops.
The ENTIRE chessboard is annihilated in a single casting of Vitriolic Chain. This bodes VERY well for Dragonspear. I can't wait to put it to the test. Plumbing the depths of level 4, I level up, though I don't get any bonuses this level.
For the Demon Knight, I have to summon a bunch of skellybros because he trashes them in a round or so. Still, my skellies do good damage against him and I find enough time to throw a Vitriolic Blast at him, but he's pretty resistant to acid. But the skellies save the day.
I return to Ulgoth's Beard while invisible and set up an ambush of my own. The cultists never stood a chance, but I'm not fighting Aec'Letec this time either. Time for the coronation. I build a wall of skellybros around the dukes. I hope this will be enough to ward off the dopplegangers because I can't use the Chain blast shape. I'll try Devour Magic + Tenacious Plague.
Devour Magic removes the dopplegangers' haste, making them less deadly. By the time I can follow up with Tenacious Plague, most are already wiped out. Sarevok's vanguard party is thoroughly dissolved.
Inside the temple, I summon 4 skellybros to take out Semaj. I drink a potion of +50% MR plus a potion of Stone Form, for 85% magic resistance and saving throws as low as the Marianas Trench. Semaj goes first once I talk to Sarevok.
After Semaj is dead, I advance back to the throne on the right side. Even though neither I nor any of my skellies touch any traps, a ton of Stinking Clouds and Webs plus a Cloudkill shot out at me. I run away and kite the clouds. Back on the left side, I devour everyone's magic and follow up with Tenacious Plague. Angelo bites it first, followed by Tazok. I used a Vitriolic Blast on Sarevok, but he's pretty resistant to acid too. Still, Sarevok falls!
It would seem that a skellybro got the last hit in. Nice. Onto the Hordes of Dragonspear. Vitriolic Chain is going to get a workout, I suspect...
BALDUR'S GATE 1 COMPLETE!
Spaz - Warlock 18The secondary projectiles are for some reason using the Eldritch Doom projectile, meaning every single creature past the initial target explodes in an AoE causing massive collateral damage. I'd recommend against abusing this.
Edit: I've rolled out an update to fix Eldritch Chain. No more instant AoE wipeouts. Sorry.
Aw. It was fun while it lasted. I'll start Dragonspear over again with the new version.