As usual it took literally seconds to shake off the unusual sensation of failure in the previous run and we generated a new random pairing - this time getting a promising mix of fighting, thieving and arcane abilities.
Laran objected to the inclusion of infravision in her suggested spell selection and did a spot of optimisation. That allowed an easy start against Shoal to get an early level up.
Iter took his level immediately, but Laran went to get a ring for Mad Arcand before levelling up. That proved to be a problem when MP asynchronization reared its ugly head. In SP a monster will only respawn in a location if all party members are out of sight. However, in MP that condition could be fulfilled on one machine, but not another - which proved costly for Laran.
A few tasks around Beregost proved easy with the help of sleep before the duo headed north to pick up a nice ring for Laran at the FAI. While there Tarnesh lost sight of Iter - and shortly afterwards of everything else.
A bit further north we took on an ankheg, despite the potential danger of mis-timing our actions in MP. This time we got it right though and the ankheg co-operated by collapsing into sleep.
Coming back through Beregost Silke succumbed to blindness before a room full of spiders all decided to take a nap.
There was enough time left for Laran to treat herself to some spells at High Hedge. DHL were being slow, so we finished by going ourselves to pick up Melicamp.
I've been busy of late, and haven't been reading the thread, but I can see by a cursory glance that congratulations are in order- especially to semiticgod for his LoB solo. Outstanding work- both in the game world and in your head. I respect the lessons you learned from the experience as much as the triumph itself. Well done!
Welcome back. Take a seat. There is some soup by the fireplace. (Watch for the cat.)
I myself was away for some months. Fortunately, the dedicated people of this thread keep the fire going with neverending creativity.
Adamant, Half-Elf Fighter/Mage, BG1EE Update 9 Previous update found here Next update found here
As promised, the party pours through the fourth underground level of Durlag's, cleansing it utterly.
Greater Wyverns are dealt with using the dire charmed heroes as meatshields, and then disposing of the remainders. Tarnor yields a fourth set of Full Plate, which goes to Jaheira.
We clear three of the four elemental rooms as we pass, saving the fission slime for last. Gorion's belt versus the frostwolves and Kadran the Bear, Protection from Fire against the Phoenix Guard, and brute force against the Air Aspect and its attendant Invisible Stalkers. Adamant takes a few knocks during the latter, but a Slow from Imoen turns things decidedly in our favour.
I always kill the skeleton archers in the room directly south of where you enter this level. They have enormous amounts of magical ammunition (including 10 Arrows of Dispelling), but not much hitpoints, and no fire resistance. A perfect spot to use those Wands of Fire we've been hoarding.
Thinking myself devastatingly clever, I decide to keep using our Wands of Fire to toast the Ashirukuru, saving myself the irritation of them constantly going invisible (fireball does not need a target, after all). Turns out they have 90% fire resistance, so we have to kill them the annoying way after all. Speaking of fire, I have to quaff a Potion of Fire Resistance when Adamant gets a little too eager to go after the last Ashirukuru, and triggers a Scorcher trap twice in two seconds. Durlag's is really the wrong place to be careless...
The level cleared, we turn back towards the Fission Slime. Before killing it with fire, we buff meticulously: Most importantly, everyone gets 100% immunity to lightning (we have 5 L4 priest slots, so 5 spells, and Ajantis quaffs a potion). This will allow unhindered movement on the chess board, although this turns out to be largely unnecessary, as all enemies bar a Rook, a Pawn and the King perish in the massive barrage we let loose at the start of the fight. There's no killin' like overkillin', Ajantis exclaims as he picks up World's Edge +3.
Though a long slog, Underground level 5 really has no dangerous fights. All you need is Free Action on the frontliners (Ajantis has the Spider's Bane +2, and Adamant the Ring of Free Action), and you can pretty much slay the Greater Ghouls/Crypt Crawlers with impunity. Lots of nice loot to be had here, and indeed, we have it all. Notably, Adamant gets the Burning Earth +1 for later use. I opt to leave the Demon Knight alone. We need none of his (unremarkable) loot, and we're closing on the XP cap. Islanne teleports us out instead, and we sell off a crapton of stuff.
So, Durlag's is (essentially) cleared! I decide to, for once, clear Balduran's Isle as well. We have Burning Earth +1 in the hands of Adamant, Ajantis has ++ in Bastard Swords for Balduran's Sword, and I kind of like the Chain Mail +3 that you can import into BG2EE if you clear the isle. Let's do it!
Unsurprisingly, the Wolfweres outside Balduran's ship are hopelessly outmatched by now. We begin the task of penetrating the ship's defenses. As expected, the basic Wolfweres and most of their wolf allies remain a non-issue. They do have a few Vampiric Wolves with them (causing Hold on hit), but Free Action counters this nicely. We prepare for the assault on the fourth level.
I'm not even worried about the Greater Wolfwere, but rather about the Mage that comes with him. In fact, I am so worried we quaff a few Potions of Magic Shielding to nullify her ability to influence the fight, but this turns out to be unnecessary: Constant application of Wands of Flamestrike and focused fire means she only gets a single Sequencer off (Invisibility, Mirror Image).
Once she goes down, the Greater Wolfwere follows very quickly: Imoen sneaked past and grabbed the Sword of Balduran for Ajantis, and I even went to the trouble of turning everyone immune to lightning again, just so Imoen and Adamant can hit said Greater Wolfwere with Lightning Bolt. Victory!
We finish off the quests in the village, and talk Kaishas Gan out of fighting us. We would've been fine even if we had to fight, though.
Back in Ulgoth's Beard, I refrain from raiding our potion supply yet again, and apply only standard buffs (Bless, Chant, Remove Fear, Defensive Harmony, Haste). Focusing Mendas (again with the help of our beloved Wands of Flamestrike) keeps him from getting more than a Remove Magic off. Once he turns into a Loup Garou, his attendant bodyguard actually morphs into two (!) Loup Garous. This odd behaviour nonwithstanding, they are utterly helpless against the might of Adamant. The Chain Mail +3 is ours. Huzzah!
Now there is almost literally nothing left to do. Candlekeep beckons! Cue the Ogre Mage ambush. Yet again I underestimate enemy mages (although these Ogre Magi seem to be no higher than L6). The result is that Branwen succumbs to a Horror (not a big deal), and Khalid, our fine sniper using Arrows of Fire +2, gets hit by a Dire Charm and leers evilly in Imoen's general direction (this is a big deal). Thankfully, we actually came prepared for dealing with magic. I manage to round the Ogre Magi up so that both Imoen and Jaheira can cast (Khalid switches targets to Ajantis, who can endure it better than Imoen). Imoen's subsequent Remove Magic clears the Dire Charm from Khalid as well as tears down most of the Ogres' defenses, and Jaheira's Dispel Magic returns Branwen to her senses. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat! Not quite, but still, an unchecked Khalid could've caused some serious damage.
We head for the Candlekeep Inn to rest and restore our spells, dreading what horrors we shall uncover within the central keep...
Adamant, Half-Elf Fighter/Mage, BG1EE Update 10 Previous update found here Next update found here
A swift looting of the central keep is interrupted by bloody murder! However, for once, Rieltar and company did not meet their end at our hands, lending credence to the party's insistence that they are innocent. Little does it help, however, and we are whisked away into the catacombs. Adamant's inconsolability at such cruel twists of fate is somewhat lessened by the appropriation of another Wisdom tome (Really... there's no point. Accept you'll be on par with Minsc wisdom-wise and move on), and a lovely Strength tome. Power overwhelming!
Nothing in the catacombs can withstand our passing. Nor can Prat, as it turns out: To my surprise he does not prebuff with MGoI this time around, and immediately pays the painful price, falling prey to a triple Web.
Making our way back to Baldur's Gate, we save Eltan (uneventful), beat Cythandria into submission (more uneventful), and take care of Slythe and Krystin (Krystin being supremely annoying by turning invisible without casting or using a potion several times, I'm guessing my install is a little buggy). You know the drill, a cadre of Skeleton Warriors to soak up the worst, followed by charging Adamant to mop up the leftovers (sometimes, as below, he doesn't even need to do that much).
Following a night's rest, we make our way to the palace. The palace fight is always a bit tense. There's not a great deal of room for error; if one of your characters or summons gets confused (there's a Doppleganger Mage that does his darndest to ensure this happens) and attacks a friendly, the game ends. If both Dukes die, the game ends. If you have a squishy character and do not notice him being targetted by the Doppleganger Assassin before said character explodes into a red mist, the game ends.
Fortunately, Adamant is anything but squishy. The Confusion problem is best solved by sticking to Skeleton Warriors (which should ideally be sent slightly ahead of the party to form a wall between the Dukes and the Greater Dopplegangers), and hitting the Doppleganger Mage with everything and the kitchen sink as soon as he appears. Branwen and Jaheira apparently did not get the memo though, and instead immediately deep-fry the Doppleganger Shaman. All's well that ends well, however; Detect Illusion from Adamant strip the Doppleganger Mage of his Mirror Images, and down he goes. Also pictured: Imoen weaving through the throng to cast Invisibility on Liia Jannath as a final precaution, and Branwen after taking two Backstabs to the face.
The end draws nigh! But first, roast some mercenaries (Adamant literally cannot be bothered with fighting these goons fairly).
Just the final battle left, but really, this should be a breeze. We've got one excellent melee character (Adamant) and one excellent ranged character (Khalid). In the interest of minimizing risk, I'll just put a PfM-scroll on each of these two, and let the rest hide invisibly for the duration of the fight, pitching in with ranged when it's just Sarevok left. Branwen summons 4 Skeleton Warriors before going invisible, to hold the line for a few rounds at the beginning (why not?). Adamant and Khalid down every potion known to Faerun, and charge!
Unfortunately, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. It takes a round or so for Sarevok's friends to pop in. When they do, I'm not sure what happens, but something strips Adamant of every single buff he had, apart from the PfM-effect. Not spectacular! Does Diarmid have Arrows of Dispelling? If so that'd be my guess as to the source of my misfortune.
So instead of laying a grotesque smackdown, the final fight devolves into a Benny Hill-esque farce, with Adamant scrambling around the area to avoid getting shot/poked/sliced'n'diced while slowly attempting to re-apply all his potion buffs, and Khalid taking potshots at whatever target presents itself. After a few tense rounds, we regain control. Diarmid goes down, which takes some pressure off us (he's downright nasty at range).
It's all downhill from here for Team Sarevok. Tazok, being Tazok, just dies without making much trouble. Angelo succumbs to the relentless pummeling of Arrows of Dispelling, and drops. Eventually, Semaj fails to renew his Stoneskin in time, and Adamant exploits the momentary lack of physical damage immunity .
With nothing but hopeless Skeleton Warriors left as allies, Sarevok stands no chance. Our hitherto invisible party members join the fray with a Wand of Summoning, the enemy skeletons are mopped up, and yes, Sarevok meets his end at the hands of Khalid. Death by Khalid... how humiliating.
Adamant remains a L7/L7 Fighter/Mage. Next up, SoD!
I finally make it out of the Underdark. It wasn't as pointless as I thought, because I got the Staff of Command, Mind Flayer control circlets, and a few things to get Cromwell to forge from Item Upgrades. In particular, I forge Water's Talon +4, which will make it so much easier to kill things protected by Stoneskins, assuming they aren't also immune to poison.
Bodhi's lair is one big slaughterfest.
The inner den is also one big slog. Twice I have to escape the area and rest off Constitution drain before I finally kill Bodhi's goons, and then I have to escape a third time from Bodhi's CON drain. I was almost mazed twice by Hazarmarveth, but remembering a trick from @histamiini, I used Protection from Magic scrolls to escape it before they could trap me.
A couple of Mace of Disruption +2 whacks later...
Now it's time for Venduris' little band. I was feeling pretty anxious about this, but equipping the Bloody Bone Plate +2 saved my bacon by conferring immunity to backstabs. I first start by summoning my clone, which activates the Staff of Elemental Mastery +5's elemental swarm. Immediately afterward, my clone and I combine our attacks and kill Grok first.
Venduris and Zaeron T'ane are both KO'd by the Earthquake from the earth elemental. Our summons swarm Bodak Hangthorn and he is killed right quick. I deal with Zaeron's mislead clone and kill him while he's knocked out too. Then follows Venduris himself after he backstabs my air elemental.
Selina then kills all my summons with a Death Spell scroll, including my clone. I notice Kerith the Bleak has casted Harm in the combat log. I go invisible, but he responds with True Sight. I have no way to reveal him, so I use an oil of speed to stall him until it fizzles out. I hear it fizzle, but he casts another. His improved invisibility from Venduris' ring wears off afterward. He rolls to hit me with Harm, and misses, and I respond with a one-hit-kill.
Only Selina Shadowstorm remains. I hit her earlier with Water's Talon +4 and she doesn't know what to do. She's stayed improved invisible for a while just accumulating poison damage and trying to stay afloat with healing potions, but she's out of antidotes. She eventually keels over. I win.
I make well over 100k in gold selling their loot. Off to Suldanessellar. Nizi is killed, though I have to make a getaway from an Insect Swarm, but I abuse the stairway to hit him from out of his reach.
Not wanting to deal with Irenicus' goons, I place the three artifacts on the altar to have Rillifane kill them. But Suneer is completely immune to Rillifane's attacks because of a Globe of Invulnerability, which means I had to kill all of them anyway.
Up on the tree, while Irenicus is powering up, I smack him with Water's Talon and it actually does damage to him. I shrug and destroy the tree parasites, and by the time I confront him, he's already badly wounded. I expected him to put up more of a fight. He gates in a Fallen Planetar just before I win. Before the cutscene transition, I turn around and one-shot it. It explodes into gibs and I get sent to hell.
From the hell trials, I get +2 saves, +2 CON, +20% fire/cold/electric resist, and I take +10% MR twice in exchange for -1 DEX (wearing DEX gauntlets, doesn't matter), -2 HP, and -75k XP.
Time to fight Irenicus again. I start with killing the Balors in one hit so they don't vorpal hit me. Irenicus stops time twice in a row and does... jack squat to me. I was expecting him to beat me up more in between spell castings.
Next I try dealing with the Glabrezus but Johnny gates in a Fallen Planetar again. Seems it hasn't learned its lesson the first time. I'm not afraid of them anymore.
The glabrezus are killed for real this time, thanks to some lucky hits through their Mirror Images. I tank 4 or 5 Horrid Wiltings and assorted Level 1-3 direct damage spells, and its as if Irenicus doesn't know what to do now since I'm still standing and I have plenty of health left over. I can't poison him and I can't vorpal him either, so I use my Throwing Impaler +4 to get through his Stoneskins. Eventually, his slayer form wears off and I swallow my soul, taking it back from him.
The Trio found themselves at the entrance to Davaoern's level. The battle horrors weren't too hard, and a simple magic blocking potion enabled Trukk to draw out the nasty stuff then Mikel finished Davaeorn off.
Time to do the city quests. The Trio used their assests well, and won most battles with ease. There were a few hiccups though: 1) We were unable to trap Lothander and he escaped with his haste boots. Fortunately, they aren't critical to our game plans. 2) We intended to kill the basilisk in the warehouse. Grond0/Gate70 asked Mikel to scout so he did - but he got seen and ran. Alor paid the price and was turned to stone. So we went to Beregost Temple, got a stone to flesh scroll and also bought some potions of mirror eyes. Our rematch went much better and Alor was avenged. 3) Trukk led the assault on the baddies on the 5th floor of the Iron Throne - he was protected by a protection from magic scroll, and tanked well. But Mikel got confused. Luckily Alor managed to pull an enemy away from Mikel so he was OK. Once Mikel got a hold of himself, he was able to finish the enemies off with his crossbow.
Candlekeep went well. Trukk was protected by magic and tripped the traps. A slight hiccup was Mikel got attacked by two phase spiders, but he had expected this and did protection from poison. Eventually we got to Prat. Gate70 got some kind of multi-player lag when battling Prat - fortunately Alor and Mikel did very well. Except Mikel got hit by horror and wandered around - luckily he didn't wander into any enemies or spiders so everything went quite well.
We were just about out of time, so sold our junk at Sorcerous Sundries and saved our session there.
Griban and his half-orc horde descend further into Durlags Tower.
The "Doors" level is safely negotiated, with party members playing to their strengths. Of particular note, the four dwarven doomguards protecting the resting place of Kiel proved to be of little danger and the party only took one or two hits in total.
The next level was going well. Three greater wyverns were put down with combat and snares when backstabs were not enough. What I consider to be the "garden of death" saw Ashirukuru and Greater Ghouls outwitted. Our barbarian used a ring of free action to front up to the greater ghouls, with the assassin providing quick put-downs for them.
Griban was detecting traps nicely, while the Bounty Hunter was doing the same but with 100% in Detect Illusion. The Ashirukuru could easily one-shot several party members but all fell for the Barbarian decoy and wasted their backstabs. Each time they appeared, our assassin would try her own backstab and the area was cleared.
On to the challenge rooms. First, the phoenix guards. No problem.
Second, the Air Aspect. It switches from the Barbarian to Griban. He's not suited to fighting this enemy so steps away, but has been hit once and poisoned. He tries moving again and a second hit proves to be fatal.
It was fun while it lasted, half-orc assassin being the most enjoyable element. I'm out of games now, so will have a think about what is next, and when.
Adamant, Half-Elf Fighter/Mage, SoD Update 1 Previous update found here Next update found here
So, some groundrules for the attempted SoD run. Mods: None (no SCS for SoD, sob!) Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage (hopefully the larger spawns add some challenge), max HP on level up Additional restrictions: Do not import entire party. I've played around a fair bit in early SoD and found that a well-stocked inventory trivializes a lot of encounters. I settle for just importing Adamant's personal gear, with bounds on how ludicrous I can get (I don't bring over a full stack of magic protection potions etc). See the spoiler below for what Adamant starts with; I've no doubt it'll be sufficient. Finally, I won't stoop to stripping the default party members of their gear at the end of the dungeon either: I'll use their ammunition/charged items/potions to get through the initial dungeon, but that's it.
Full Plate Armor Legacy of the Masters Helm of Balduran Amulet of Metaspell Influence Ring of Protection +2 Ring of Fire Resistance Balduran's Cloak Boots of Speed Golden Girdle The Harrower +1, +3 vs Undead The Burning Earth +1 Varscona +2 Chain Mail +3 (for later importing into BG2EE, my precious!) Robe of the Good Archmagi 24 Potions of Healing (the 9 HP kind) Durlag's Goblet One 20/20 Wand of Fire
With that out of the way, on to the adventure!
Adamant gets the standard good party: Minsc, Dynaheir, Safana, Khalid and Jaheira. Interestingly we will be without cleric in a dungeon full of undead... I reckon we may need to use the Flaming Fist healer a few times. Everyone (apart from Adamant) immediately gets bumped up a few levels. I get Safana up to 100/100 Find Traps/Open Lock and pour the remaining 60 points into Detect Illusion.
We use brute force to deal with the first group of enemies. Nothing much to report, apart from an enemy Shadowdancer that gets a single backstab in. Porios gives up without a fight, and we swipe his cloak. I opt to be nice to the mummy to later get his shield, and agree to beat up Korlasz for him. We descend into the catacombs.
The first major group of undead turns into a mess. Safana is spotted by a Bonebat (they see through stealth) and the enemy descends upon us: A few Shadowed Souls keep healing the skeletons at the front, a Skeletal Mage tosses out a Stinking Cloud at Adamant... all bad things. Liberal application of the Wand of Fire and a few Magic Missiles from Dynaheir sorts the situation out, though we had to quaff some of the good healing potions during the fight.
I'm more cautious with the second undead group. Safana comes with a 5-charge Necklace of Missiles, and Dynaheir has a Fireball memorized. Combine with Adamant's Wand of Fire for triple Fireball carnage: They can't Hold/Disease/Level Drain us if they don't live long enough to get into melee range.
Mass Fireballs isn't much of a tactic, but it should see us through the tomb. A cluster of Shadows fall to it (though an invisible Wraith survives and proceeds to level drain Minsc twice. No big deal, as the Flaming Fist Healer restores him free of charge! Didn't know she'd do that).
Loot the Full Plate and assorted other goodies in the "hidden" room, spawn undead, watch them succumb to fiery conflagration...
A group of mercenaries are treated to fireballs, but as we are running low on charges (and I want one volley available for Korlasz), we finish them off with the help of Jaheira's Entangle and mass ranged fire. Minsc gets poisoned (twice) but otherwise we're good.
We're almost at Korlasz! Fiery skeletons and attendant Skeletal Mage prove no real issue; once the Mage and Shadowed Soul goes down to ranged fire, it's just a matter of time until the grunts do too.
Korlasz never even gets a spell off. Dynaheir had a Haste memorized, and so everyone focuses Korlasz. Her Stoneskin and Mirror Images go down almost instantly, and she surrenders. We accept her surrender, loot everything, and go up the rope (Safana caught a Dart of Stunning during the few seconds there was actually a fight on, but she will be fine). Also pictured: Adamant leveling up. Yay!
Almost done, but Minsc first has to spoil our good performance by being level drained into oblivion by a couple of Wraiths. Yet again, the Flaming Fist Healer helps out, raising him for free. We also swing by the mummy, gets his excellent +3 Medium Shield, and swipe a Pearl Necklace and Emerald.
I must say, I rather enjoy Korlasz's tomb. Plenty of nice loot, some large enemy groups to fight off, not too difficult when starting out. Alright, out into the city. Not much to report. My intended party is Corwin, Safana, Viconia, Edvin, M'Khiin. We'll see just how good/bad Adamant will have to be to keep everyone happy... The errands in the city are taken care of. Killing Korlasz requires a Potion of Clarity as Adamant on his own cannot keep her from getting a few spells off, but otherwise there's no trouble.
We (at this stage, I) recruit Safana who helps burglarize the chest at the bottom of the palace, beat up some sailors and get 2 (!) magical weapons for my efforts, etc etc. We finish by purchasing a few potions from Sorcerous Sundries (notably his two anti-magic potions), recruit Viconia just before ending Chapter 7, and buy several containers including the Bag of Holding. Finally inventory management will be less of a chore.
Upon starting Chapter 8, Corwin and Edwin are both immediately recruited. This seems a good spot to stop for now; next session we'll pick up M'Khiin and actually get down to some real adventuring.
Adamant is now a L7/L8 Fighter/Mage, and with two Stoneskins a day, only enemies with bad effects on hit can really threaten him in a brawl.
And Jharam has died to the triple mage fight helping Baron Ployer: Remove Magic and Chaos prove too much for the incredibly low number of immunities provided by the early game. I might try picking up a Shaman again after a short break.
Onto ToB. Illasera is easy because I've been saving the Reflection Shield +2 specifically for her. While her first arrow was in mid-flight, I swapped to it, causing her to inflict spell failure on herself so she couldn't go invisible or apply any buffs. 1/5 down.
My first challenge is completed thanks to my clone and some summons. Chucking the Throwing Impaler +4 at anyone in range at 4 attacks/round is quite effective and the Evil challenge is personally much easier than the Good challenge.
I ignore Saradush's sidequests and head straight for Gromnir. Throughout the fight, I use invisibility potions to pretend I'm a backstabbing thief. Its surprisingly effective because only Gromnir can see through the invisibility.
I stay on the other side of the area to avoid the mages joining the fight. When their PfMW wears off, I slice them once with Water's Talon and wait for them to fall. Then I kite Gromnir in a rectangle just like Sarevok in BG1.
At the fire giant temple, I'm given much trouble by the Fire Lich and the Flaming Skull. The fire lich just has a ton of Stoneskins and PfMW that I can't just ignore with the Flail of Ages +4 because its also immune to elemental damage. The flaming skull flies at double-strength Haste speed, so I use an Oil of Speed to catch up to it. Brimstone is taken out with Water's Talon from safety. A maze trap almost catches me, but I use a duplicated Protection from Magic scroll to stop it.
Onto Yaga-Shura. I'm not feeling too confident about this because armies of enemies are one of my weaknesses. I get to the center of the battlefield and summon my clone, who summons elementals. We haste ourselves with oils, then throw more Impalers into the enemy. But a mage casts Death Spell, erasing my clone and his summons.
Dang it. Now its just me. Yaga-Shura arrives shortly after. I toss out Improved Kitty to take at least some pressure off me. He webs Yaga and I use this opportunity to poison him with Water's Talon. He has a truckload of HP so I'll take what I can get. Improved Kitty eventually dies so I run around the battlefield poisoning people and taking more potshots at Yaga. He falls eventually. 2/5 down.
I'm rude to the Solar for the Regeneration power. The challenge is easily completed, though I'm frustrated that I always have to wait out mages' several castings of PfMW now that everything can save against Greater Deathblow.
Next is Draconis. I easily beat his human form. When he transforms, he seems to be...stuck. He will attack if I get in range, but it seems he can't move. Unphased by his breath weapon, I peel away his Stoneskins with Throwing Impaler +4 and then go in for the kill.
Now for his daddy. The named wyverns are fast, but they only seem to have 2 attacks/round. I have to summon my clone for his help to get rid of their stoneskins, but I get hit after about 3 of them are killed, dismissing Clone Krieg. The other one is dealt with. Tamah is also killed after burning through her stoneskins. I really fucking hate needing to do this to every boss character.
Abby just needs 2 hits to transform into a dragon. He does not attack me at all for some reason in human form. Once he transforms, I survive against everything he throws at me. My saves are at rock-bottom and his breath weapon does negligible damage thanks to my high electrical resistance. I just have to put on a Protection from Magic scroll to avoid his Maze spam. For whatever reason, Abazigal refuses, just absolutely refuses, to use melee attacks. I would've thought Abby would've ended my run, but thanks to this AI glitch, I'm able to kill him after more than 10 agonizing minutes wearing down his HP with the Flail of Ages +4 because I can't FUCKING break through his Stoneskin spam, not even with summons helping me. He has infinite uses of it! 3/5 down.
With the Bronze Pantalettes, I forge the Big Metal Unit and its weaponry. Now I have a way to deal with groups.
Odamaron is weathered quite easily. Liches pose absolutely no threat to me.
Ogremoch, Diayatha, and all of her goons are disposed of. Sendai is a breath of fresh air compared to Abazigal. 4/5 down.
For the next two challenges, I'm rude to the solar and then nice to her to get Dark Taint and Negative Plane Protection. I skip Cyric's challenge by telling him that I already destroyed Venduris' band. Next I enlist Balthazar's help for the final fight despite being Chaotic Evil, but I have 19 CHA and 20 rep. 5/5 down.
The final challenge is The Ravager. I take a look at it in NearInfinity and think I'm going to lose because its regeneration is way too fast in addition to its physical resistance. I start the fight by summoning my clone to summon elementals. The Ravager charms him!
It's too bad I can't put the Citadel Helmet back on him. I use the Staff of Command to get my clone back under control. Before he decides to go rogue again, I have him summon his Improved Kitty to help kill the Bone Blades. He gets charmed again, but I re-establish control of him again with the Staff of Command. Working together, we kill The Ravager.
I was rude to the Solar for the physical damage resistance. Still, I can't believe I've come this far. I'm questioning whether I'll survive the Throne and wondering if it will glitch out because I'll take too long to kill everything. I know I can outlast just about anything at this point, even a Whirlwind Attack from Melissan without using Focus, but I'm still not sure if burst damage will win me the fight and not sustained DPS.
Krieg - War Hulk 50
EDIT: I took a look at Abazigal in NearInfinity and noticed his APR was set to 0. That explains that. I set it to what I assume should be 3 APR and replayed the fight. I was fully prepared for Abazigal to kill me this time and just end the run there. I still couldn't find a way to get through his Stoneskin spam when I figured out that I had a solution all along. Even though Protection from Magic scrolls cause casting failure (which Abazigal is immune to), they still dispel effects when applied. I used this to get rid of his stoneskins and beat him down! I hid in the bottom left corner to avoid him most of the time because he's too big to fit, only coming out when his skins were down.
@Flashburn: Clever use of the Throwing Impaler. I hadn't realized that was a possibility. War Hulks only get the temporary 0-APR effect on hit for melee attacks instead of ranged attacks (melee and ranged on-hit effects use a different opcode), but I assumed that since they couldn't use missile weapons, that would never come into play.
Ascension Melissan will be a nightmare, but you should be able to deal with her provided you can remove the Five from the equation. Once she's alone, it should be possible to kite her by switching back and forth between the Impaler and the Shield of Reflection to block her darts.
I've been doing no reloads on Vanilla insane. I randomly roll for race/class and I take the first ability roll without any modification. Then when I'm out of Candlekeep I roll to see who will be my next joinable NPC. I only roll again after the NPC has joined, meaning I have no idea what my party composition will be and when it will be full. If I roll a ch. 5 NPC, it means I'm soloing until Baldur's Gate.
Here are some of the deaths I recall:
- Dragon Disciple walking by accident into the Nashkel carnival tent with the evil mage. After the mage saves 3 times against Spook, charname's face is dissolved by Melf's Acid Arrow. - Going for Ankhegs at level 2 with my Priest of Tyr. First Ankheg goes down with 3 Commands. I quickly take the shell and head back to the map corner. With only one cast of Command left, another Ankheg shows up and wipes out my party. - Ranger/Cleric succumbing to the fastest dart thrower in the realms - 1-Chunked by Karlat - Held by Mulahey - Poisoned by the Amazon party - 10-bandit ambush heading to the Friendly Arm Inn - Bounty hunter dying to her own failed set trap
Here we go... First thing's first like always: kill the Fallen Solars. I go for the one on the right while Balthazar goes for the one on the left, but Johnny's Time Stop makes me reconsider and I go for the one on the left.
Balthazar dies pretty fast from the demon horde. I tag Johnny with Water's Talon; seems he forgot to put up a Stoneskin.
I haste myself with an oil and run laps around the Throne. My next target is Bodhi; I'm leaving the Solars alone for the time being because they're really fast and they won't dare to shoot at me with the Reflection Shield on.
Imoen regains her senses while I'm fighting the demons and solars and skedaddles.
I put my new Protection from Magic scroll strategy to use and kill the Mariliths with it. All that's left now are the Solars and a couple of Alu-Fiends. I kill the first Solar.
The second one casts a Creeping Doom on me, which I get hit with. I think to myself that its over then, but use a Protection from Magic scroll on myself to dispel it. The second Solar gets destroyed.
I use more PfM scrolls on the Alu-Fiends to one-shot them. This one is the last before I have to exterminate the pools full of demons.
The pools are cleared easily for the most part. The most troublesome thing is that Balors seem to have a Stoneskin ring equipped, so I resort to using the Big Metal Rod's Pulse Ammo. I score a Greater Deathblow on the Balors from two of the pools.
At this point, Ascension glitches out. Melissan and the Five appear as normal, but they're all Neutral... Killing the Five can still be done but Melissan is immortal, surviving ctrl+y too. So I restart from the third pool's save, as I anticipated something would go wrong this time. It appears that if you get Balthazar's help, my version of Ascension glitches out if Balthazar dies before talking to Melissan again at this point. So I spawn Balthazar in again, and Melissan's dialogue works correctly this time.
You cannot directly control Balthazar when he's spawned in like this, but that's okay. Now that the Six are here, its go time. My first action is to charm Sarevok with a Mind Flayer circlet.
Now that my aura has been expended, Abazigal casts Time Stop and beats the everliving crap out of me. I survive it and retain control of myself, but I'm reduced to 35% of my HP.
I use a PfM scroll on Abazigal to keep him from doing anything else. He also gated in a Planetar while he was beating me, which I promptly destroy immediately after using the scroll.
Gromnir feels my heavily-enraged wrath the next round, getting killing in one hit.
This makes Melissan come down to play. I already expended my aura again so I couldn't use Focus, but she chooses to kick the crap out of Balthazar.
I'm pretty sure he's dead now, but I don't know for sure because Mel gates in a bunch of demons. Lovely... Time to go back to Avernus tactics.
I heal myself with the Rez Rod. While doing laps around the Throne again, I tag some of the Five with Water's Talon and use a PfM scroll on Sendai and Mel. But Mel's had enough. She stops time again and I was in the middle of casting Focus!! Why oh why does Focus have a spellcasting Speed Factor of 1 and not 0!?!?
Melissan beats me up. She doesn't hit as hard as Abazigal, but the repeated hits take their toll. After the Time Stop is over, I lose control and fall into my final rage death-spiral. All the marilith demons teleport over and box me in, giving me no chance of escape even if I did stay in control. Krieg is overwhelmed and Melissan scores the final hit.
Burst damage does not, in fact, win the fight at the Throne.
The window for Focus is incredibly small. Melissan's Time Stop has a casting time of 3, so it's easy to lose a run by a fraction of a second even if you have the Amulet of Power.
I'm amazed you got so far, @Flashburn. I would have thought getting past SoD alone was impossible, much less BG2 or ToB. But you've demonstrated that a solo War Hulk run is nevertheless possible, however daunting it may be.
This was a marvelous demonstration of the kit and your own abilities as a no-reloader. I look forward to your next run, whatever it may be.
After passing through Nashkel to pick up the ankheg armor, the duo moved on to the basilisk area. Laran used PfP to make killing them simple and pick up a few more levels.
Mutamin then had only an instant to realize he'd been backstabbed before a magic missile homed in on him.
Peter, Baerin and Lindin were all blinded before a couple of stinking clouds and skull traps helped ensure Kirian would pose no problems either.
We had previously postponed tackling the Doomsayer, but with Laran now at level 5 she had plenty of magic missiles available for him.
She felt tired after those exertions though and was looking forward to a nice chicken dinner - apparently Melicamp didn't feel the same way though.
In preparation for the sirines Laran bought detect invisibility while at High Hedge. That both made the sirines easier to hit and a sucker for magic missiles - and neither group at the Lighthouse area lasted long.
The first golem took a bit of running round to shoot down, but Laran acted as an invisible blocker to allow Iter to finish off the other two at his leisure.
With reputation at 19 it seemed appropriate to call on the ankhegs on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. The first one in the nest took a bite out of Iter, but sleep helped deal with several more to allow the treasure to be collected. With Laran out of sleeps that meant the intelligent thing to do was to leave the nest - so obviously Iter plowed onwards to find more ankhegs . Two or three later another one got a successful hit on him, bringing him down to 24 HPs and vulnerable to death from one further hit. As he started to run, Laran managed a well-targeted skull trap to kill that ankheg - but another one had just popped up as well and managed to target Iter before he could get out of range.
Shrugging that blow off with still a comfortable cushion of 3 HPs remaining, Iter managed to dodge any further attacks on his way out.
After a bit of shopping the duo made their way quickly through the Cloud Peaks. They only tackled enemies without distance attacks and made simple progress to pick up the charisma tome. Looking for something a bit more worthwhile they then moved on to Durlag's Tower. Laran had only memorized a single magic missile spell and after Iter missed with a couple of stealth attacks she lost patience and resorted to a first use of wands against a battle horror.
After a rest though normal service was resumed to clear the exterior.
On the roof backstabs and magic damage saw off the basilisks
and Iter was able to swap his mundane ninjato from Candlekeep (a good weapon for scimitar users as it never rusts) for a +2 scimitar.
With time running out Iter was intending to start the main quest, but Laran pointed out that Meilum was still at large. A short diversion later
and the duo arrived at the Nashkel Mines ready to dive in next time.
Adamant, Half-Elf Fighter/Mage, Final update Previous update found here
This is humiliating. Adamant has fallen. The party went north from the encampment and picked up M'Khiin without incident. We then started exploring to the east, meaning to do the Dwarves of Dumathoin questline. Enter 4 Sword Spiders and one Gargantuan Spider.
You can guess what happened: The Gargantuan Spider dropped a Web Tangle on Adamant, who had no Free Action up, paralyzing him. Viconia got Remove Paralysis off, but it apparently has no effect on Web Tangle. Maybe Dispel Magic would've worked, or just Free Action from one of our plentiful scrolls. Edwin threw a Horror, but that only affected a single Sword Spider, and the remaining three happily turned Adamant into a pincushion, Stoneskin notwithstanding. Blast!
I guess the lesson (along with Remove Paralysis not working against Web Tangle) is don't underestimate anything that can cause a status effect, but I do the latter constantly anyway, so meh. I'll need to think on what to do next...
Hard luck @aldain. You're right that web is a different effect from hold, so remove paralysis won't help. I'm also fairly sure that the web tangle is a natural effect rather than magical, so free action would have been your best bet there.
I actually managed to beat bg1, bg2 SOA and TOB no reload on my first playthrough (blind, no max HP on level up, core rules, no mods). I played the original IE versions of the game. I played slow and carefully and it wasn’t easy (I felt quite stressed out at times too). Thankfully, I had prior D&D experience with Temple of Elemental Evil which I felt was helpful (even with the differences in the two games).
I played as the pre-generated dwarven fighter that ships with original IE bg1. I named him Bronin. His starting stats are str 18/58, dex 15, con 19, and the other stats were around 10. More details to follow...
@Mantis37 good spot O eagle-eyed one . Laran is a diviner - I used my report from 2 runs previously as a template and forgot to adjust the character in the heading there from conjurer .
Alright, leading from the front didn't work out so hot for us. Let's try boldly directing the battle from the back instead.
Starting: In BG1EE. Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage (which I guess is indistinguishable from Core in BG1EE), max HP on level up. Mods: Basically full SCS (including full pre-buffing for mages and priests), see spoiler for WeiDU.
Initialise mod (all other components require this): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Replace many +1 magical weapons with Fine ones -> Fine weapons are affected by the iron crisis: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Stores sell a maximum of 5 Arrows of Dispelling: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Faster Bears: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Make party members less likely to die irreversibly: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/4 the normal rate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility NPCs go to inns: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Ease-of-use party AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Stackable ankheg shells, winterwolf pelts and wyvern heads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Ensure Shar-Teel doesn't die in the original challenge: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Smarter general AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Better calls for help: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Spiders: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Smarter sirines and dryads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Smarter basilisks: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved doppelgangers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Relocated bounty hunters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Ulcaster: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Balduran's Isle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Durlag's Tower: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Demon Cultists: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Cloakwood Druids: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Bassilus: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Drasus party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Red Wizards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved Undercity party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Tougher chapter-two end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Tougher chapter-three end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Tougher chapter-four end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Tougher chapter-five end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved final battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility Improved minor encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Self-imposed restrictions: No easter eggs (tree diamond, extra Ring of Wizardry/Ankheg Plate/Ring of Fire Resistance, gold from Firebead etc), no recharging items by selling and buying them back
Meet our protagonist, Lazramar the Human Necromancer.
That is a legit 99 roll (highest I've ever gotten), no auto-reroller or anything. If he makes it to ToB, he'll have some darn impressive mental stats. No illusions will certainly hurt, both offensively and defensively, and I reckon Potions of Invisibility will be even more important as an emergency escape option than usual, until we get our hands on the Stoneskin scroll. It's of course not all bad. We may not have Blindness, Spook, Invisibility or Mirror Image, but we still have Sleep, Web, Horror, Glitterdust... We'll just have to hope Armor/Shield/Ghost Armor will keep us alive until we hit level 7. Lazramar has put + in Slings, and starts with the spells Find Familiar (memorized), Larloch's Minor Drain (memorized), Sleep.
Let's get this show on the road. Lazramar, Human Necromancer, BG1EE Update 1 Next update found here
Lazramar summons a Fairy Dragon and proceeds to clear out the usual Candlekeep errands. Shanks expires from a LMD to the face, and Carbos fails to land a poisoning hit on our Mirror Image'd Fairy Dragon. Lazramar successfully scribes the Armor scroll from the Inn while failing with the Infravision scroll (hooray!). Two Sleep are memorized, and off we go.
I recruit Imoen, Xzar and Montaron to assist in the battle against Tarnesh. Montaron whiffs his backstab, is put to sleep, but Xzar steps up to the plate and absorbs a Horror, Melf's Acid Arrow and a Magic Missile before dropping. Imoen soaks up a second Magic Missile, and that's all Tarnesh wrote, as Lazramar grinds him down with Imoen running in circles.
Since Montaron survived, an interesting opportunity presents itself. Khalid and Jaheira are picked up, and we make a quick detour north. Outside the Ankheg nest, Imoen and Montaron (after quite a few attempts) stealth and move inside. Montaron catches the attention of the Ankheg guarding the treasure hoard, and draws it away an inch at a time. Cue Imoen sneaking in and stealing everything, including that titan of the early game, a Wand of Fire with 12/12 charges! Imoen stealths and sneaks back out, and amazingly, Montaron manages his stealth check before the Ankheg backs him into a corner, and lives to tell the tale. What was the point of this exercise? Imoen didn't have to quaff the Potion of Invisibility we got from Jaheira, leaving us with a panic button if we get an unfavourable ambush. Nice.
For their valor, Imoen and Montaron are dropped off at the FAI. The rest of the party heads to Beregost, slaying the belt ogre on the way through a combination of Doom and Sleep (Sleep on its own is sufficient 99% of the time, but why not be on the safe side). After resting, we swing by High Hedge, picking up Kivan, as well as a Potion Case and scrolls of Identify and Friends, the plan being to pick up the Red Potion at the Nashkel Carnival to scribe these important spells (both helping to save us a lot of money this early, and early is the only time when money is in short supply). The interim areas are handled without incident: Kivan could probably kill everything unassisted, but we have Sleep and Entangle available as well.
Branwen is picked up at the Carnival along with the red/violet potions, and scrolls are scribed (we nipped on over to Nashkel beforehand to pick up the free Shield scroll, as well as an extra Potion of Invisibility). We now have the party we will be using for a while; Kivan will be replaced by Coran later on, and we will add Yeslick during the Cloakwood mines (to in turn be replaced by Quayle). The party talks to Noober and brings Neira down using Command before departing Nashkel in a westerly direction.
The intent here is to clear Xvart Village, that little area where you get the Boots of the North, and rescue Dynaheir from the Gnoll Fortress. We need the Gauntlets of Dexterity to turn Jaheira into a capable off-tank, and the other areas are on the way, relatively simple and yield some decent experience this early on.
Entangle triumphs over the Xvarts; it's surprisingly effective, forcing them to dribble in 1-2 at a time. Ursa and her mate succumb to focus fire (the latter being lured from its cave and run in circles).
Neville is Doomed and kited to death. It takes a while, but SCS didn't give him a healing potion this time. The 3 Hobgoblin Elites and 2 Ogre Berserkers at the bridge get a taste of what the Wand of Fire can do: A Fireball kills the Hobgoblins, one Berserker gets to experience the business end of a Scorcher, and the lone remaining Berserker can be safely kited down.
Time for the first, well, not close call, but close call to a close call! We agree to help Laurel fight off a gibberling "horde". Little do we know, this time it truly is a horde. I guess the script figured since we had L2 Jaheira, Kivan and Branwen we could handle about 40 gibberlings at once... there are about 10 more charging in from out of view.
A Sleep from Lazramar only affects 4 of the little buggers. Jaheira's Entangle does a much better job at blocking the southern horde (with the help of Laurel), but there are still Gibberlings pouring in from the west, north, and east. After a lot of careful movement, potshots, and several Potions of Healing, I begin to worry that our Entangle will give out before we make a dent in the horde. Then, Laurel falls, and the flanks start to collapse. This leaves me with little choice: Jaheira and Khalid just manage to kill a blocking Gibberling and fall back, and a low roar signals the imminent detonation of a Fireball.
With the bulk of the horde finally vanquished, we are able to mop up the stragglers. Khalid don's Laurel's Plate Mail, and we finish up the eating Ogre as well as the Polar Bear. Finally, Khalid gets a level, as does Branwen and (hooray!) Lazramar, reducing but not eliminating the risk of him dying to a single Kobold.
The cleansing of Gnoll Fortress follows the standard modus operandi. Sleep to deal with hordes, Command to handle Hairtooth/Gnarl/Gnoll Chieftain/Carrion Crawler, Chant and Bless for buffs. No troubles, and Jaheira gets the Gauntlets of Dexterity, boosting our frontliner capacity by 100%.
I considered clearing the areas south of Nashkel, but there's not really anything we need there: Studded Leather +2 we can do without, Bracers of archery would be useful (but only until we clear the Bandit Camp, at which point they are superceded by Legacy of the masters), and we are on the clock what with Kivan in the party. We instead head to bring Brage back, and while in the area take the time to kill Baruk and his annoying band of Kobold Commandos, as well as kill the Doomsayer. A fully buffed Khalid proves surprisingly difficult for the Doomsayer to hit, and said Doomsayer's 50% Fire Resistance will not prevail against the mighty Wand of Fire (not to mention potshots by the Wand of Missiles and some scrolls of LMD). 4000 experience, not too shabby at this stage.
We are now slightly overleveled for the areas southwest of Beregost, but that won't stop us. We sweep through; Teyngan and his merry band of cutthroats fall to Command and Hold Person, Zargal is undone by Sleep, and though Bassilus gets a Hold Person of his own off, Khalid to my astonishment actually makes his save (and Bassilus is Silenced right after). Melicamp did not make it, alas.
The west of Beregost pacified, we move into the village proper, clearing the low-level quests. Silke is handled via Scorcher from our trusty (and still surprisingly well-charged) Wand of Fire. Not pictured: Idiot Commoner being one step away from frying and our reputation subsequently plummeting (One step away! Somehow he avoided the flame stream).
Beregost cleared, we head to the FAI to turn in Landrin's quests. I take the opportunity to purchase a few Potions of Genius as well as a full stack of Healing Potions; while in Beregost and High Hedge we also bought several scrolls (Glitterdust, Horror, Ray of Enfeeblement) as well as three Potions of Explosions and a Scroll of Protection from Magic. We still have a fair bit of gold left, which is invested at the Nashkel Carnival: Necklace of Missiles and Shield Amulet.
We're feeling good. The initial hurdles are handled. We have an inventory to work with, levels enough that we won't immediately be wiped out when things turn sour, and if everything else fails, we can just bomb the crap out of anything that moves. As we leave the party, they are making preparations for the descent into Nashkel Mines, and the horror that will follow (Read: Being hunted by the assassins).
Lazramar is now a level 3 Human Necromancer. He will scribe scrolls under the influence of Potions of Genius once we have the Web scroll available from Mulahey's chest, but in the meantime his only level 2 spell is Horror (+15% chance to scribe Necromancy scrolls in conjunction with 18 Intelligence means 100% chance to scribe Necromancy scrolls).
Not giving up yet! Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer surges onto the scene! This will be my first time playing the Chaos Sorcerer. Still playing on Insane with extra damage disabled. Mod installation has still not changed from either Brunash's, Spaz's, or Krieg's playthrough (though I updated a couple mods in my BG2EE install this time). @argent77's Chaos Sorcerer kit description and abilities can be found here.
Basically you take a wild mage, turn it into a sorcerer, but then completely change how Nahal's Reckless Dweomer works. Instead of picking from a list of your known spells and attempting to cast it, you pick from a random list of mage spells of various levels and you get to pick which one to cast. You still have to deal with the Wild Surge roll, however.
Let's get dangerous. With the Protection from Evil buff from Firebead, I seek out Shank. I use my first Chaotic Weave ever and choose Vampiric Touch.
Well... Can't say I wasn't expecting that. Let's try again from the beginning.
Woo, I'm a girl for a while! I rest in Shank's shack and shuffle over to Carbos' crib. I give the Chaotic Weave another try and I choose Finger of Death! The first one results in both of us getting healed, but the Chaotic Weave menu stays open for some reason...so I try Finger of Death again. This time it takes.
I follow in Krieg's and Spaz's footsteps: kill Neera, kill Algernon since I can't pickpocket him, give Firebead his book and then charm him, toast Landrin's spiders, petrify Karlat, assassinate Firebead, charm Silke and assassinate her. This time was special because I tried to summon a Chaos Elemental to deal with Silke and ended up getting a Stinking Cloud wild surge which knocked her out. I disarmed her beforehand and beat her to death with my staff.
For Kelddath's sirine harem, I try to summon something to help deal with them after I've expended their spells. After 10 Chaotic Weaves or so, I finally summon a Greater Air Elemental. It killed the first sirine I lured outside beforehand and then the second one after charming it, earning me a level.
I lure the other two sirines outside and summon a skeleton warrior through Chaotic Weave and command it to kill them. It gets killed by the wolf pack further away. After about 30 unsuccessful Chaotic Weave attempts (many of which I discarded due to bad spell picks), I finally get something good.
I learn Knock and raid the Travenhurst manor for the wand of lightning and a potion of invisibility. At the Friendly Arm, I summon a Lesser Earth Elemental with a Chaotic Weave and it gibs Tarnesh.
I buy 9 stone to flesh scrolls from Gellana and return to Basilisk Country. The loop is initiated after several flubs trying to get Protection from Petrification. I level up twice and nearly a third time.
I summon a fire elemental and it destroys Kirian's group, getting me the level I was so close to.
I sell the group's loot and return with more stone to flesh scrolls. Now this is irony.
This round of farming is almost enough for me to level up again. I summon an earth elemental to beat up the orgrillons that stole Roe's letter and take it back to Mirianne's earning the level.
Shoal is killed through Project Image and Simulacrum shenanigans even though it took like 15 entire minutes just to kill her because my clones kept turning up fruitless Chaotic Weaves. I didn't document this part just because it took so long that the clones I conjured expired before the definitive end to the fight.
I move on and try to summon a fire elemental to save Melicamp, but the Weave goes wrong and summons an elemental that's on the wolf's side, but Melicamp's gone hostile to me! I weave Mislead and dominate Melicamp so he'll talk to me, but the fire elemental kills him! You can't write drama better than this!
Bassilus is dealt with using Greater Malison and a scroll of Hold Person. After turning in his holy symbol, I use the gold to buy a shiny new wizard staff.
Dushai is killed for the Ring of Free Action, which will help me avoid some disabling wild surges, but my reputation is in the gutter. I do a bunch of sidequests in the wilderness and get enough gold for an Archmagi robe and buy all the stone to flesh scrolls available from Kelddath, Alvanhendar, and Gellana, causing me to gain a couple levels.
Nashkel's scrolls are bought but they aren't even close to getting me to level 12. I'm going to be plateaued at 11 for a while it seems. I pay Drizzt a visit and pull a Mordy Sword out of my hat. The sword hardly even needs my help beating him.
I just lost a solo IWD2 run with a cleric. I didn't buff with Protection from Petrification before opening a container in Dragon's Eye that had a Flesh to Stone trap on it. Like my solo HoF run before it, I didn't feel much when I lost the run. I guess I just wasn't that invested in it.
Sometimes instead of buffing up before opening a container that might be trapped, I'll just mutter "let's assume" to myself and accept a reload from a failed save on the grounds that I would have taken the time to pre-buff before the trap. I actually did this in this case, but I'm not sure if I would have remembered to cast Protection from Petrification before opening that container because Protection from Petrification only lasted 15 rounds and it wasn't part of my standard set of pre-buffs. Survival would have depended on whether I remembered encountering that trap in my first no-reload IWD2 run (the party run with Frisk, Asriel, and Chara). I probably would have remembered it, which would mean I could reload, but I'm not sure. So, the run is over.
Regardless, I've found that a solo no-reload run is nevertheless possible for Tactics4IWD2 in normal mode. Mostly it boils down to these things:
1. Playing a cleric to gain early access to Animate Dead to tank enemies and early access to Freedom of Movement to block the many Hold Person spells that early game Tactics spellcasters spam 2. Selling off excess loot in order to afford Potions of Explosions and Oils of Fiery Burning to deal with the Targos invasion and later the fight at Shaengarne Bridge 3. Using stealth and summons to drain Caballus' Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells 4. Adding a monk level partway through the game to maximize AC with WIS bonuses to keep pace with enemy attack bonuses 5. Using Sanctuary to avoid the fight atop the Horde Fortress 6. Using Vghotan's Band to gain immunity to Sherincal's numerous fear spells 7. Relying on summons to deal with the Black Raven Monastery trials, with Divine Shell to deal with the constant Flame Strikes in the Chamber of Immolation 8. Using a low-pressure, evasive approach with lots of Sanctuary spells and summons to deal with the drider spellcasters with their Dispel Magic and Icelance spells (note that the derro mages outside also spam Icelance) 9. Using Sanctuary and summons to deal with the mind flayer city (the mind flayers can still stun you, but while Sanctuary is active, their allies can't attack you and the mind flayers don't have strong damage output on their own)--or alternatively, a character with 12 Intimidation or higher should be able to bypass the mind flayers entirely by running directly to the Elder Brain and picking the right dialogue option. You can talk-block the first mind flayer if necessary. 10. Using Gate and Sanctuary to wear down Mirabel and Majrash 11. Stacking Spell Resistance with Holy Aura to get 50 SR and resist enemy Blasphemy spells (not necessary for evil-aligned characters, who are immune by default) and Power Word: Stun 12. Keeping Potions of Invisibility and (later on) a Wand of Sanctuary to escape Icelance and Dispel Magic spells 13. Using Insect Plague to disable spellcasting for enemies (the spell failure lasts for many rounds even after the target leaves the swarm, and Tactics enemies still don't have the AI to deal with it) 14. Using the Black Adder bastard sword and lots of summoning spells to hold off the numerous enemies during the invasion of Kuldahar, with Heal spells, Sanctuary, and/or Otiluke's Resilient Sphere to keep Iselore alive (he is not immortal in the Tactics mod) and a Protection from Petrification scroll on self to block Flesh to Stone spells 15. Using a Protection from Magic scroll on Izbelah if necessary to prevent her from casting Temporal Stasis 16. Using a Protection from Magic scroll on Saablic Tan to remove his buffs to score an early kill on him so you can flee the area and return after resting (you can't leave the area until Saablic Tan is dead) 17. Using a Protection from Magic scroll on either Isair or Madae to remove their buffs and block their spellcasting, allowing you to score an early kill on one of them and force them to flee to the next room
There are lots of other little optimizations that are also very important (level squatting before Shaengarne Bridge, landing early kills on Orc Firestarters to get their expensive Arrows of Fire, etc.), but those are the things that are most likely to end a run that's already well-optimized.
The character should have the Blind-Fight feat to deal with enemy mages' Improved Invisibility, and should dedicate some buffs to improving his or her own damage output, because summons alone will have trouble keeping up at higher levels unless you're a sorcerer with Shades. Note that Gelugons are very hard to kill, but are incompatible with other summons unless you pre-buff them with Protection from Evil. If you have a single green critter without Protection from Evil active for even a second, your gated Gelugon will go red and stay red indefinitely, even if you cover everyone with Protection from Evil.
If you import the character back to Targos for a HoF run, it's important to invest in mage or sorcerer levels for access to Mirror Image, Improved Invisibility, and possibly Blink. You might be able to get by with a single level and rely on mage scrolls, but Tactics HoF Improved Alacrity synergizes better with spells than with scrolls.
I started the normal mode run specifically to get some better gear in preparation for a HoF run, but I'm not sure I'll bring this character into HoF mode, even though a continuous narrative from normal mode to HoF wasn't what I was going for. The character would be very capable of handling the challenge, but it wouldn't be very rewarding. My character was at a very high level and was suffering from an 80% XP penalty due to a multi-classing mistake. We were only getting like 18 XP per kill, and without Wail of the Banshee, HoF mode would take a long time. RPGs are generally only fun if your character is experiencing growth, and we had already reached our peak. Plus, the levels we would gain in HoF mode would just improve our already-excellent defenses, and defensive bonuses are never as satisfying as offensive ones.
Clerics of Ilmater, Helm, and Bane are all excellent choices for a solo Tactics run. Ilmater domain spells include Emotion: Hope, Holy Power, and Stoneskin, which make the character much tougher in combat; Helm domain spells include Aegis and can let you black Dispel Magic and Icelance spells; and clerics of Bane get +1 to the save DC of any spell that forces a Will save, which works well with their disabler-oriented domain spells. Clerics of Bane also get +2 Wisdom from the Kuldahar Valley graveyard, which amounts to another +1 AC for clerics with monk levels.
Lazramar, Human Necromancer, BG1EE Update 2 Previous update found here Next update found here
The party embarks towards the mines, triggering the Dorn ambush. I am always a bit paranoid about this: There are two bandit archers that will invariably target the weakest character, and there also seems to be a bug where even if you Command one of them, both will get a first shot off (I've had Xzar/Dynaheir die to this several times). Lazramar has Armor up (the ambush happens after 4 hours travelling so you can cast it on the Nashkel map) and immediately tosses a LMD at the nearest bandit, Branwen Commanding the other. I needn't have worried so much: The bandits target Branwen (!) and accomplish nothing. We get a second set of Plate Mail which goes to Jaheira.
Outside the Nashkel Mines, Greywolf immediately quaffs a Potion of Freedom, rendering the plan to Hold him moot. We have no Blindness, but we do have a (somewhat supercharged thanks to our specialization) Horror available... can it work? Yes, it can! In fact, Greywolf does us the courtesy of running in circles around our ranged characters until finally expiring, granting Khalid a solid sword to go with his by now +++ in Longswords.
In the mines, Lazramar is keenly reminded of his own mortality when a bog-standard Kobold crits him for 10 out of his 24 HP. I take the hint and have Lazramar relax in the back while the people not using paper tissues for armor deal with the monsters. We have no thief, so Khalid has to trip traps manually, but we've got enough healing potions to weather the storm. I pondered blowing a Fireball charge on the Kobold Chieftain and his friends, but a Sleep worked just as well. The attendant Shaman is really quite harmless; he only casts Horror and Mirror Image inbetween trying unsuccessfully to hit us with a dagger. Remove Fear completely neutralizes him as a threat.
With Mulahey, a charge of Fireball is used to clear out the half-dozen Kobolds and few Skeletons he calls for. Jaheira tanks the Kobold Elites while the rest of the party converges on Mulahey; he proves remarkably resilient, but it seems he spent almost all his spell slots on self-buffs this time around. It takes a little while, but he eventually drops without having done anything except failing to cast a Hold Person through a barrage of arrow and spell damage.
I opt to head back out using the shortcut, and we emerge to the north-east of Nashkel. While here, the party of course takes the opportunity to loot the south-eastern tomb for the 8 charge Wand of Monster Summoning. The three guardian Ghasts prove a bit of a nuisance as they manage to Hold Khalid, but Jaheira picks up the slack and we shoot them down. We leave the Revenant and Narcillicus for later.
Handing in quests on our return to Nashkel nets Lazramar level 4. Excellent! Less excellent is Nimbul, who makes a big nuisance of himself but fails to kill even a single party member. He went for a MGoI this time, and several Melf's Acid Arrow/Charm Person/Chromatic Orb, but we manage to spread the damage around and take him down without even needing a charge of Scorcher. Not sure if he had a Horror ready, but I always buff with Remove Fear against any mage regardless.
Lazramar quaffs 2x Potions of Genius, and proceeds to scribe what we have. We now have a surprisingly versatile spellbook, including that holy grail of BG1, Web.
In Beregost, Tranzig actually puts up a better fight than I've seen in a while. He successfully Slows Khalid and Jaheira, then gets some decent summons from 2x Monster Summoning I, and takes surprisingly long to drop. But drop he does.
With >10k in gold, I splurge on consumables. Pushing through the Nashkel Mines surprisingly took a toll on our supply of healing potions (with so many kobolds there will be a few critical hits getting through), so I purchase another 20 from the temple in Beregost. High Hedge also gets a visit; 3x Potions of Magic Protection and 3x Potions of Freedom will certainly come in handy. The party moves north to the crossroads, and heads east towards Larswood. But then... dun dun DUN!
Sorry fellas, that's just not an optimal placement for you. If, as in our case, you get this ambush before most of your party is level 5 (none of our characters is, at the moment), some care is required: The gnome Halacan has a scroll of Sleep which he will ALWAYS cast immediately. Since it's a scroll, it can't be interrupted, and it's very difficult to deal enough damage to kill him before it casts as he prebuffs with Mirror Image. Usually it's best to scatter so no more than one character gets caught by it. This time however, Halacan gets Commanded. We're not able to kill him in the 6 seconds he's down, but he loses all his Mirror Images and dies almost immediately after getting back up. Meanwhile, Jaheira and Khalid are holding off Morvin and Molkar. Drakar, the cleric, gets a Scorcher, and the second blast kills him. Without their casters, the would-be assassins have no hope. They fall, we collect their frankly rather paltry gear, and continue on our merry way. Pictured: The last few seconds when Molkar still thought today was going to be a good day.
Larswood and Peldvale (mostly) proceed without issue. I run into the SCS Osmadi bug where the game crashes when he tries to attack using his cursed spear, so I just Web him instead and kill him without giving him a chance to attack (we were in no danger of dying during the time it crashed; Osmadi was interrupted and about to die). Corsone subsequently dies, but gets a Call Lightning off on Khalid beforehand (the latter wearing Boots of Grounding and so is fine despite a failed save).
There is another brief scare when attempting to rest in Peldvale causes 8 bandits to spawn. Lazramar runs off but is targetted by one bandit, who proceeds to crit him for 16 (!) out of his 30 hitpoints. Another stern reminder that we are not omnipotent yet... In other news, Viconia is rescued and sent on her way. The third Plate Mail goes to Kivan (Branwen gets to wear Molkar's Mail of the Dead +2).
So, we arrive at the Bandit Camp. Thankfully it's safe to rest on this map, so we do. We'll be using the same old tactic as we always do: Web/Entangle/Grease to create a kill zone, a few Fireballs to thin the herd (Venkt, being a Mage, must die quickly, and the more Black Talon Elites we kill in the initial blasts, the better), then just take potshots at whatever survives. I barely bother with potions/buffs, given that we are fairly high level. Lazramar quaffs a Potion of Defense and Branwen tosses out a Remove Fear, but that's it. As always, we set up in the south-eastern corner of the map. Kivan goes north, shoots a bandit once, and runs back, and the entire camp obediently follows on his tail.
Everything goes as planned. I blow 2 charges each from our Wand of Fire and Necklace of Missiles, killing all the named enemies apart from Ardenor Crush (who arrived a little late to the party), and almost all the Black Talon Elites. There are about 8-10 enemies left that arrived after the others and circumvented our kill zone, but they're mostly Hobgoblins and so are mopped up without much difficulty.
We'll leave looting the camp for when we actually have a thief. For now, we gather what the poor bandits had on them (Full Plate Mail going to Khalid), and head for the main tent. Khalid trips the lightning bolt trap wearing Boots of Grounding, getting hit twice but still having >50% hitpoints left. We gather the scrolls and Legacy of the Masters, and rest/heal up before leaving the camp. Finally, we sell off what loot we did get, including all our scalps. As we leave the party, they are encamped outside the Friendly Arm Inn, preparing to venture deep into the Cloakwood Forest.
After beating Drizzt, I do a little tour of the Sword Coast making sure I bought all the XP scrolls from the temples outside of Baldur's Gate. Karkh is next is on the agenda, and I summon a Chaos Elemental to fight him. Chaos Elementals are immune to most elemental damage types. I weave a Bigby's Crushing Hand to help out and Karkh is defeated.
To fight the amazon band in the Valley of the Tombs, I try using a Simulacrum to use Chaotic Weave so I don't have to. It blows itself up after a couple of Farsight weave attempts. A painful reminder to always have Protection from Fire active.
I try weaving a Mislead spell instead but summon a Chaos Elemental by accident. I shrug and send it in to fight the amazons. I follow up with a previously-woven spell sequencer of Greater Malison, Grease, and Slow, followed by a woven Horrid Wilting. The amazons are wiped out.
At the bandit camp, I summon a Greater Fire Elemental to clean up the trash. It plows through all resistance. I bring it inside the tent too.
I go to the Seawatcher area before leaving for Cloakwood to get the CON tome. I weave a Spell Turning to protect against the Sirene's charm spells, and then weave Shapechange for the flesh golems inside the cave. The Iron Golem form actually takes damage from the flesh golems, so I swap to the Greater Wolfwere, which has an insane regeneration rate of 8 HP/sec! I destroy the golems with my claws since I might as well be invulnerable to them.
I roll a crazy-ass wild surge against the Cloakwood wyvern nest. Well, it only looks crazy because of the number of re-rolls, but I basically just cast a Lightning Bolt and Monster Summoning IV, but it sure is fun when something like that happens.
I try another Weave at the Cloakwood mines and its guardians are slaughtered by a Greater Chaos Elemental. I tried to help more but my Weaves just ended up fizzling, so the elemental did most of the work.
The interior of the mine is easy because I just waltz past while invisible. At Davaeorn's sanctum, I weave a Dimension Door to jump over all of his traps.
Dimension Door provides invisibility for 1 second after casting, so I make use of my new Boots of Speed to escape Dave's line of sight. I summon a skeleton warrior to fight him and end up refreshing my repertoire.
The skeleton soaks up Dave's spells and starts dicing him up after his Mirror Images are cut through. I accidentally double Dave's HP with a wild surge and he's beating up my skeleton now. I cast Greater Malison on Dave and try to weave something to disable or kill him. I try Polymorph Other to offset his doubled HP and it takes! I follow up with a wave of my staff.
Onto the big city. I acquire the DEX tome and kill the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse, earning me a long-awaited level.
I choose Mislead as my first 6th level spell and put it to use against the Iron Throne party, leaving my clone near the right-side staircase at the top. I cast a Greater Malison from behind them which causes everyone except the doppelganger to bunch up into a pile. It's the perfect time for a Hold Person scroll. It snares all of them except 2, so I follow up with Web and a Stinking Cloud scroll, incapacitating all of them.
I poke the doppelganger with Darts of Wounding and it walks into the people pile. I try to weave something highly damaging to finish them off with. But "Don't dish it out if you can't take it yourself" is one of the golden rules of being a practitioner of wild magic, so I try to weave a Delayed Blast Fireball. My first couple of attempts fail, so I keep poking them with more darts, but I eventually toast most of them. My Mislead wears off as the AoE cloud spells dissipate, so I finish off Zhalimar Cloudwulfe with a Magic Missile.
I reduce the doppelgangers of the Seven Suns to red smears on the ground with the Iron Golem form and stroll up Ramazith's tower while invisible and assassinate him with Minute Meteors.
I finish up a few more profitable sidequests.
I buy all the XP scrolls in Baldur's Gate including the 6 that Degrodel gives you, for a total of 63. Back in Basilisk Country, I recruit Korax and he aids me in reaching the next level.
Lazramar, Human Necromancer, BG1EE Update 3 Previous update found here Next update found here
We enter the Cloakwood, where Kivan is substituted for Coran. Aldeth's druids are left alone for the moment; we prioritize killing the Wyverns to keep Coran happy, and will handle the druids on our way back out. Likewise we do not cleanse the spider infestation in the second Cloakwood. I made a small mistake here: Jaheira inadvertently triggers a Web trap, just as a Huge Spider is approaching. This could've turned bad if one of the numerous Phase Spiders on the map decided to teleport in (you'll note Lazramar was webbed for a round), but none do, and so we are able to finagle our way out of trouble.
Clearing the Wyvern cave presents no difficulty. Wyverns sure have impressive saves against spell though; they are remarkably hard to land anything on, even when Doomed. Here we actually exited the Cloakwood to hand in the wyvern head even though it's not strictly necessary. We take the time to loot the Bandit Camp with the help of Coran, but on our return to Cloakwood, things take a turn for the worse... dun dun DUN!
The Amazons have done a better job positioning themselves than Molkar and friends. I can at best expect to catch two of them in a barrage of death, and I cannot expect to kill both thieves. Hence, I opt to handle this differently. Note that even though the two thieves start off visible, they'll immediately stealth when you unpause. Funnily enough, when you play a mage PC, the two thieves are actually much more dangerous than the two clerics. The clerics may get a Hold Person or Unholy Smite off, but by now we have the HP to survive the latter, and said clerics will not target someone with good save vs spell with Hold Person (i.e. the mage protagonist). What will kill you is both thieves backstabbing and/or using their very nasty magical ammunition and surprisingly good THAC0 to bring you down in an instant.
Khalid and Jaheira go after the cleric in chainmail, Coran starts pelting the one in plate mail, and Branwen pitches in with a few Command. The goal is to keep both enemy clerics interrupted if possible. Meanwhile, Lazramar runs off to the southeast. True to plan, neither of the stealthed thieves can resist such a juicy target of opportunity, and the log indicates they are indeed moving to backstab Lazramar.
However, once Lazramar is out of room to run, he quaffs an Invisibility potion. Both thieves stop in their tracks, but we've achieved what we wanted: They are now in the same general area, and so are treated to delicious, fiery death. Telka dies instantly; Maneira lives for a moment longer and tries to attack at range, but Coran gets the better of her with a final arrow.
The major threats neutralized, two clerics on their own cannot stand up to the party. The last of the Amazons fall, and their great treasures are ours (they actually have some decent stuff; nice potions and ammunition)! So, we start making our way back into Cloakwood. We successfully protect Aldeth. I always use Silence 15' Radius for this fight; otherwise you'd probably need to be very good at aiming a Fireball to interrupt the druids, as it's not uncommon (as happened in this picture) for all five of them to try and cast Call Lightning! If that Silence hadn't landed on every single druid, Lazramar would've had to quaff the last Invisibility potion just to be safe.
Time for another pivotal fight; Drasus and his mercenary band. I cheese this fight just like I will cheese the Hareishan one: Mass Web and Entangle from out of view (after having talked to Drasus so they all turn red), followed by mass Fireballs. The fight is perfectly doable in the "fair" way, but usually ends up costing several Potions of Magic Blocking, and I'd rather save those for Davaeorn.
We descend into the mines and pick up Yeslick. This was mainly since we had a slot open and it seems fair that he get to witness Davaeorn undone, but he will actually turn out to be quite important in the battle against Davaeorn. For now, however, Hareishan and her goons are given the same treatment as Drasus.
I actually take the precaution of buffing properly before entering the third level. Lazramar has no defenses except his AC, and there's a small ambush at the start (4 guards, 2 hobgoblins, 1 hobgoblin elite). With the buffs we smash through quickly. There are now two encounters of note before Davaeorn: The ogre mage (who is too low level to be much of a threat, and falls to a Command):
And Natasha the Bloody (surname given by me). Natasha likes her Invocations... but this is why we picked up the Wand of Summoning. After devastating 7 monsters, she is out of spells, and can be finished off undramatically (you can draw out her guards by having a stealthed character pop in the room: They'll start wandering. Or just let her kill her own guards with Sunfire/Lightning Bolt/Fireball).
We pop down to the fourth level, kill the guard, then retreat to the Wyvern cave area to prepare for the big confrontation with D. Every single time I do this fight, something goes horribly wrong, and I end up surviving by the skin of my teeth. Will this time be different?
No, it will not. My intent is to use the standard tactic of Khalid with PfM and Giant Strength/Heroism/Haste to beat down D, while the rest of the party holds off the reinforcements. Typically I'd prefer having everyone else invisible and just do a massive barrage on Khalid's position once enough reinforcements have arrived, but with a Necromancer, such fancy stunts are beyond us (we only have one Invisibility potion available).
Since Khalid will be on his own, I figure it'll make things smoother if we lay down a bombardment to start the fight. I've no expectation to kill D with it, but maybe we can kill/severely injure his two Battle Horrors. The rest of the party lines up just outside of D's sight. Khalid is fully buffed, Jaheira and Yeslick get a Strength potion each etc. Fire in the hole!
Great success! One Battle Horror goes down, and the other is Badly Injured. D himself is hurt too, but his defenses come up. Not so great is what happens next. As everyone knows (except me, apparently...) D begins the fight by firing a Stinking Cloud/Web sequencer. Aimed pretty much precisely where the rest of the party is cheering after the good start to the battle.
Craaaaaaaap. Lazramar, Yeslick, Branwen and (worst of all for our damage output) Coran are all incapacitated. By some minor miracle, Jaheira makes both her saves. I immediately have her quaff a Potion of Magic Blocking for 5 rounds of immunity, and send her to occupy D (I do NOT want him to find 2/3 of the party just ripe for a Sunfire). Khalid is doing his best to finish off the Battle Horror in the meantime.
Jaheira actually manages to keep D from noticing the rest of the party for a few rounds. Khalid kills the Battle Horror, and takes over the duty of wailing on D. By now, Branwen and Yeslick have managed their saves and have, along with Jaheira and two of our three Skeleton Warriors (since the entire party except Khalid is at the entrance, I keep the third Skeleton Warrior in the side room, as a decoy if D teleports up there), been sent to intercept the reinforcements that by now are pouring in.
I said Yeslick would turn out to be important, and he well and truly is. Jaheira really can't do much on her own, but Branwen and Yeslick toss out Hold Person and Commands like nobody's business. They succeed in locking down almost the entirety of the first two enemy waves like this. Finally, Lazramar and Coran make it out of the disablers and join the fray. The reinforcements are now woefully outmatched.
You'll note Coran has taken a good bit of damage (fortunately I had him quaff a Potion of Fortitude before starting the fight). He caught the fringe of a Fireball from D. If Lazramar had been just a smidge farther south, he would've caught it too... But best not to dwell on such things. The situation is now finally under control. A third enemy wave arrives but is Horror'd into oblivion. Soon after, D has exhausted all of his spells, and meets his end.
That could've easily gone bad. But it didn't! We thank our lucky stars, flood the mines, and leave the Cloakwood (we'll come back to clear the spiders in a little bit). Baldur's Gate is now open to us. On the way to the Sorcerous Sundries, we thank Yeslick heartily for his invaluable service, and replace him with Quayle. Our party is now in its final configuration.
If you are talking about Shoal the Nereid, Ajantis talked to her since he was party leader. I guess I didn't make it clear that it wasn't a solo playthrough.
My character got webbed too in a similar encounter, but he had over 100 HP and survived even the Huge Spider or Phase Spider poison (not sure which one) when webbed. I was unlucky in failing that poison save though with saves vs poison at 1 (the save is made at a -2 penalty). There were no or only one Sword Spiders. I know how critical avoiding status effects is and normally play accordingly. I was surprised by that Gargantuan Spide ability and usually I am not as surprised by monsters (having the AD&D 2nd Edition Monster Manual and D&D 3.5 experience). My party was Corwin, Glint, Minsc, Dynaheir and charname but it has since changed.
Comments
Iter (dwarf fighter/thief, Grond0); Laran (Human Conjurer, Gate70)
Previous run:
As usual it took literally seconds to shake off the unusual sensation of failure in the previous run and we generated a new random pairing - this time getting a promising mix of fighting, thieving and arcane abilities.
Laran objected to the inclusion of infravision in her suggested spell selection and did a spot of optimisation. That allowed an easy start against Shoal to get an early level up.
A few tasks around Beregost proved easy with the help of sleep before the duo headed north to pick up a nice ring for Laran at the FAI. While there Tarnesh lost sight of Iter - and shortly afterwards of everything else.
A bit further north we took on an ankheg, despite the potential danger of mis-timing our actions in MP. This time we got it right though and the ankheg co-operated by collapsing into sleep.
Coming back through Beregost Silke succumbed to blindness before a room full of spiders all decided to take a nap.
There was enough time left for Laran to treat herself to some spells at High Hedge. DHL were being slow, so we finished by going ourselves to pick up Melicamp.
Iter, Fighter 3 / Thief 3, 37 HPs, 33 kills
Laran, Diviner 3, 16 HPs, 7 kills, 1 death
There is some soup by the fireplace. (Watch for the cat.)
I myself was away for some months. Fortunately, the dedicated people of this thread keep the fire going with neverending creativity.
Previous update found here
Next update found here
As promised, the party pours through the fourth underground level of Durlag's, cleansing it utterly.
Greater Wyverns are dealt with using the dire charmed heroes as meatshields, and then disposing of the remainders. Tarnor yields a fourth set of Full Plate, which goes to Jaheira.
We clear three of the four elemental rooms as we pass, saving the fission slime for last. Gorion's belt versus the frostwolves and Kadran the Bear, Protection from Fire against the Phoenix Guard, and brute force against the Air Aspect and its attendant Invisible Stalkers. Adamant takes a few knocks during the latter, but a Slow from Imoen turns things decidedly in our favour.
I always kill the skeleton archers in the room directly south of where you enter this level. They have enormous amounts of magical ammunition (including 10 Arrows of Dispelling), but not much hitpoints, and no fire resistance. A perfect spot to use those Wands of Fire we've been hoarding.
Thinking myself devastatingly clever, I decide to keep using our Wands of Fire to toast the Ashirukuru, saving myself the irritation of them constantly going invisible (fireball does not need a target, after all). Turns out they have 90% fire resistance, so we have to kill them the annoying way after all.
Speaking of fire, I have to quaff a Potion of Fire Resistance when Adamant gets a little too eager to go after the last Ashirukuru, and triggers a Scorcher trap twice in two seconds. Durlag's is really the wrong place to be careless...
The level cleared, we turn back towards the Fission Slime. Before killing it with fire, we buff meticulously: Most importantly, everyone gets 100% immunity to lightning (we have 5 L4 priest slots, so 5 spells, and Ajantis quaffs a potion). This will allow unhindered movement on the chess board, although this turns out to be largely unnecessary, as all enemies bar a Rook, a Pawn and the King perish in the massive barrage we let loose at the start of the fight. There's no killin' like overkillin', Ajantis exclaims as he picks up World's Edge +3.
Though a long slog, Underground level 5 really has no dangerous fights. All you need is Free Action on the frontliners (Ajantis has the Spider's Bane +2, and Adamant the Ring of Free Action), and you can pretty much slay the Greater Ghouls/Crypt Crawlers with impunity. Lots of nice loot to be had here, and indeed, we have it all. Notably, Adamant gets the Burning Earth +1 for later use.
I opt to leave the Demon Knight alone. We need none of his (unremarkable) loot, and we're closing on the XP cap. Islanne teleports us out instead, and we sell off a crapton of stuff.
So, Durlag's is (essentially) cleared! I decide to, for once, clear Balduran's Isle as well. We have Burning Earth +1 in the hands of Adamant, Ajantis has ++ in Bastard Swords for Balduran's Sword, and I kind of like the Chain Mail +3 that you can import into BG2EE if you clear the isle. Let's do it!
Unsurprisingly, the Wolfweres outside Balduran's ship are hopelessly outmatched by now.
We begin the task of penetrating the ship's defenses. As expected, the basic Wolfweres and most of their wolf allies remain a non-issue. They do have a few Vampiric Wolves with them (causing Hold on hit), but Free Action counters this nicely. We prepare for the assault on the fourth level.
I'm not even worried about the Greater Wolfwere, but rather about the Mage that comes with him.
In fact, I am so worried we quaff a few Potions of Magic Shielding to nullify her ability to influence the fight, but this turns out to be unnecessary: Constant application of Wands of Flamestrike and focused fire means she only gets a single Sequencer off (Invisibility, Mirror Image).
Once she goes down, the Greater Wolfwere follows very quickly: Imoen sneaked past and grabbed the Sword of Balduran for Ajantis, and I even went to the trouble of turning everyone immune to lightning again, just so Imoen and Adamant can hit said Greater Wolfwere with Lightning Bolt. Victory!
We finish off the quests in the village, and talk Kaishas Gan out of fighting us. We would've been fine even if we had to fight, though.
Back in Ulgoth's Beard, I refrain from raiding our potion supply yet again, and apply only standard buffs (Bless, Chant, Remove Fear, Defensive Harmony, Haste). Focusing Mendas (again with the help of our beloved Wands of Flamestrike) keeps him from getting more than a Remove Magic off. Once he turns into a Loup Garou, his attendant bodyguard actually morphs into two (!) Loup Garous.
This odd behaviour nonwithstanding, they are utterly helpless against the might of Adamant. The Chain Mail +3 is ours. Huzzah!
Now there is almost literally nothing left to do. Candlekeep beckons! Cue the Ogre Mage ambush.
Yet again I underestimate enemy mages (although these Ogre Magi seem to be no higher than L6). The result is that Branwen succumbs to a Horror (not a big deal), and Khalid, our fine sniper using Arrows of Fire +2, gets hit by a Dire Charm and leers evilly in Imoen's general direction (this is a big deal).
Thankfully, we actually came prepared for dealing with magic. I manage to round the Ogre Magi up so that both Imoen and Jaheira can cast (Khalid switches targets to Ajantis, who can endure it better than Imoen).
Imoen's subsequent Remove Magic clears the Dire Charm from Khalid as well as tears down most of the Ogres' defenses, and Jaheira's Dispel Magic returns Branwen to her senses. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat! Not quite, but still, an unchecked Khalid could've caused some serious damage.
We head for the Candlekeep Inn to rest and restore our spells, dreading what horrors we shall uncover within the central keep...
Adamant is now a L7/L7 Fighter/Mage.
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A swift looting of the central keep is interrupted by bloody murder! However, for once, Rieltar and company did not meet their end at our hands, lending credence to the party's insistence that they are innocent. Little does it help, however, and we are whisked away into the catacombs. Adamant's inconsolability at such cruel twists of fate is somewhat lessened by the appropriation of another Wisdom tome (Really... there's no point. Accept you'll be on par with Minsc wisdom-wise and move on), and a lovely Strength tome. Power overwhelming!
Nothing in the catacombs can withstand our passing. Nor can Prat, as it turns out: To my surprise he does not prebuff with MGoI this time around, and immediately pays the painful price, falling prey to a triple Web.
Making our way back to Baldur's Gate, we save Eltan (uneventful), beat Cythandria into submission (more uneventful), and take care of Slythe and Krystin (Krystin being supremely annoying by turning invisible without casting or using a potion several times, I'm guessing my install is a little buggy).
You know the drill, a cadre of Skeleton Warriors to soak up the worst, followed by charging Adamant to mop up the leftovers (sometimes, as below, he doesn't even need to do that much).
Following a night's rest, we make our way to the palace.
The palace fight is always a bit tense. There's not a great deal of room for error; if one of your characters or summons gets confused (there's a Doppleganger Mage that does his darndest to ensure this happens) and attacks a friendly, the game ends. If both Dukes die, the game ends. If you have a squishy character and do not notice him being targetted by the Doppleganger Assassin before said character explodes into a red mist, the game ends.
Fortunately, Adamant is anything but squishy. The Confusion problem is best solved by sticking to Skeleton Warriors (which should ideally be sent slightly ahead of the party to form a wall between the Dukes and the Greater Dopplegangers), and hitting the Doppleganger Mage with everything and the kitchen sink as soon as he appears.
Branwen and Jaheira apparently did not get the memo though, and instead immediately deep-fry the Doppleganger Shaman. All's well that ends well, however; Detect Illusion from Adamant strip the Doppleganger Mage of his Mirror Images, and down he goes. Also pictured: Imoen weaving through the throng to cast Invisibility on Liia Jannath as a final precaution, and Branwen after taking two Backstabs to the face.
The end draws nigh! But first, roast some mercenaries (Adamant literally cannot be bothered with fighting these goons fairly).
Just the final battle left, but really, this should be a breeze. We've got one excellent melee character (Adamant) and one excellent ranged character (Khalid). In the interest of minimizing risk, I'll just put a PfM-scroll on each of these two, and let the rest hide invisibly for the duration of the fight, pitching in with ranged when it's just Sarevok left. Branwen summons 4 Skeleton Warriors before going invisible, to hold the line for a few rounds at the beginning (why not?).
Adamant and Khalid down every potion known to Faerun, and charge!
Unfortunately, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. It takes a round or so for Sarevok's friends to pop in. When they do, I'm not sure what happens, but something strips Adamant of every single buff he had, apart from the PfM-effect. Not spectacular! Does Diarmid have Arrows of Dispelling? If so that'd be my guess as to the source of my misfortune.
So instead of laying a grotesque smackdown, the final fight devolves into a Benny Hill-esque farce, with Adamant scrambling around the area to avoid getting shot/poked/sliced'n'diced while slowly attempting to re-apply all his potion buffs, and Khalid taking potshots at whatever target presents itself.
After a few tense rounds, we regain control. Diarmid goes down, which takes some pressure off us (he's downright nasty at range).
It's all downhill from here for Team Sarevok. Tazok, being Tazok, just dies without making much trouble. Angelo succumbs to the relentless pummeling of Arrows of Dispelling, and drops. Eventually, Semaj fails to renew his Stoneskin in time, and Adamant exploits the momentary lack of physical damage immunity .
With nothing but hopeless Skeleton Warriors left as allies, Sarevok stands no chance. Our hitherto invisible party members join the fray with a Wand of Summoning, the enemy skeletons are mopped up, and yes, Sarevok meets his end at the hands of Khalid. Death by Khalid... how humiliating.
Adamant remains a L7/L7 Fighter/Mage. Next up, SoD!
Krieg the War Hulk
"I'll slice yer eyelids so you can watch the end!"
BG1: 1, 2SoD: 1
BG2: 1, 2, 3, 4
Here's the rest of Chapter 5. Boring...
I finally make it out of the Underdark. It wasn't as pointless as I thought, because I got the Staff of Command, Mind Flayer control circlets, and a few things to get Cromwell to forge from Item Upgrades. In particular, I forge Water's Talon +4, which will make it so much easier to kill things protected by Stoneskins, assuming they aren't also immune to poison.
Bodhi's lair is one big slaughterfest.
The inner den is also one big slog. Twice I have to escape the area and rest off Constitution drain before I finally kill Bodhi's goons, and then I have to escape a third time from Bodhi's CON drain. I was almost mazed twice by Hazarmarveth, but remembering a trick from @histamiini, I used Protection from Magic scrolls to escape it before they could trap me.
A couple of Mace of Disruption +2 whacks later...
Now it's time for Venduris' little band. I was feeling pretty anxious about this, but equipping the Bloody Bone Plate +2 saved my bacon by conferring immunity to backstabs. I first start by summoning my clone, which activates the Staff of Elemental Mastery +5's elemental swarm. Immediately afterward, my clone and I combine our attacks and kill Grok first.
Venduris and Zaeron T'ane are both KO'd by the Earthquake from the earth elemental. Our summons swarm Bodak Hangthorn and he is killed right quick. I deal with Zaeron's mislead clone and kill him while he's knocked out too. Then follows Venduris himself after he backstabs my air elemental.
Selina then kills all my summons with a Death Spell scroll, including my clone. I notice Kerith the Bleak has casted Harm in the combat log. I go invisible, but he responds with True Sight. I have no way to reveal him, so I use an oil of speed to stall him until it fizzles out. I hear it fizzle, but he casts another. His improved invisibility from Venduris' ring wears off afterward. He rolls to hit me with Harm, and misses, and I respond with a one-hit-kill.
Only Selina Shadowstorm remains. I hit her earlier with Water's Talon +4 and she doesn't know what to do. She's stayed improved invisible for a while just accumulating poison damage and trying to stay afloat with healing potions, but she's out of antidotes. She eventually keels over. I win.
I make well over 100k in gold selling their loot. Off to Suldanessellar. Nizi is killed, though I have to make a getaway from an Insect Swarm, but I abuse the stairway to hit him from out of his reach.
Not wanting to deal with Irenicus' goons, I place the three artifacts on the altar to have Rillifane kill them. But Suneer is completely immune to Rillifane's attacks because of a Globe of Invulnerability, which means I had to kill all of them anyway.
Up on the tree, while Irenicus is powering up, I smack him with Water's Talon and it actually does damage to him. I shrug and destroy the tree parasites, and by the time I confront him, he's already badly wounded. I expected him to put up more of a fight. He gates in a Fallen Planetar just before I win. Before the cutscene transition, I turn around and one-shot it. It explodes into gibs and I get sent to hell.
From the hell trials, I get +2 saves, +2 CON, +20% fire/cold/electric resist, and I take +10% MR twice in exchange for -1 DEX (wearing DEX gauntlets, doesn't matter), -2 HP, and -75k XP.
Time to fight Irenicus again. I start with killing the Balors in one hit so they don't vorpal hit me. Irenicus stops time twice in a row and does... jack squat to me. I was expecting him to beat me up more in between spell castings.
Next I try dealing with the Glabrezus but Johnny gates in a Fallen Planetar again. Seems it hasn't learned its lesson the first time. I'm not afraid of them anymore.
The glabrezus are killed for real this time, thanks to some lucky hits through their Mirror Images. I tank 4 or 5 Horrid Wiltings and assorted Level 1-3 direct damage spells, and its as if Irenicus doesn't know what to do now since I'm still standing and I have plenty of health left over. I can't poison him and I can't vorpal him either, so I use my Throwing Impaler +4 to get through his Stoneskins. Eventually, his slayer form wears off and I swallow my soul, taking it back from him.
Shadows of Amn Complete!
Krieg - War Hulk 50Puks run is over
we killed every shark, stripped a drow raiding party of their armour and played with a soul trap device but that same daemon knight had my number!
Mikel - elven archer, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Alor - Half-orc shaman (Grond0)
Trukk - dwarven dwarven defender (Gate70)
The Trio found themselves at the entrance to Davaoern's level. The battle horrors weren't too hard, and a simple magic blocking potion enabled Trukk to draw out the nasty stuff then Mikel finished Davaeorn off.
Time to do the city quests. The Trio used their assests well, and won most battles with ease. There were a few hiccups though:
1) We were unable to trap Lothander and he escaped with his haste boots. Fortunately, they aren't critical to our game plans.
2) We intended to kill the basilisk in the warehouse. Grond0/Gate70 asked Mikel to scout so he did - but he got seen and ran. Alor paid the price and was turned to stone. So we went to Beregost Temple, got a stone to flesh scroll and also bought some potions of mirror eyes. Our rematch went much better and Alor was avenged.
3) Trukk led the assault on the baddies on the 5th floor of the Iron Throne - he was protected by a protection from magic scroll, and tanked well. But Mikel got confused. Luckily Alor managed to pull an enemy away from Mikel so he was OK. Once Mikel got a hold of himself, he was able to finish the enemies off with his crossbow.
Candlekeep went well. Trukk was protected by magic and tripped the traps. A slight hiccup was Mikel got attacked by two phase spiders, but he had expected this and did protection from poison. Eventually we got to Prat. Gate70 got some kind of multi-player lag when battling Prat - fortunately Alor and Mikel did very well. Except Mikel got hit by horror and wandered around - luckily he didn't wander into any enemies or spiders so everything went quite well.
We were just about out of time, so sold our junk at Sorcerous Sundries and saved our session there.
The "Doors" level is safely negotiated, with party members playing to their strengths. Of particular note, the four dwarven doomguards protecting the resting place of Kiel proved to be of little danger and the party only took one or two hits in total.
The next level was going well. Three greater wyverns were put down with combat and snares when backstabs were not enough. What I consider to be the "garden of death" saw Ashirukuru and Greater Ghouls outwitted. Our barbarian used a ring of free action to front up to the greater ghouls, with the assassin providing quick put-downs for them.
Griban was detecting traps nicely, while the Bounty Hunter was doing the same but with 100% in Detect Illusion. The Ashirukuru could easily one-shot several party members but all fell for the Barbarian decoy and wasted their backstabs. Each time they appeared, our assassin would try her own backstab and the area was cleared.
On to the challenge rooms. First, the phoenix guards. No problem.
Second, the Air Aspect. It switches from the Barbarian to Griban. He's not suited to fighting this enemy so steps away, but has been hit once and poisoned. He tries moving again and a second hit proves to be fatal.
It was fun while it lasted, half-orc assassin being the most enjoyable element. I'm out of games now, so will have a think about what is next, and when.
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So, some groundrules for the attempted SoD run.
Mods: None (no SCS for SoD, sob!)
Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage (hopefully the larger spawns add some challenge), max HP on level up
Additional restrictions: Do not import entire party. I've played around a fair bit in early SoD and found that a well-stocked inventory trivializes a lot of encounters.
I settle for just importing Adamant's personal gear, with bounds on how ludicrous I can get (I don't bring over a full stack of magic protection potions etc). See the spoiler below for what Adamant starts with; I've no doubt it'll be sufficient. Finally, I won't stoop to stripping the default party members of their gear at the end of the dungeon either: I'll use their ammunition/charged items/potions to get through the initial dungeon, but that's it.
Full Plate Armor
Legacy of the Masters
Helm of Balduran
Amulet of Metaspell Influence
Ring of Protection +2
Ring of Fire Resistance
Balduran's Cloak
Boots of Speed
Golden Girdle
The Harrower +1, +3 vs Undead
The Burning Earth +1
Varscona +2
Chain Mail +3 (for later importing into BG2EE, my precious!)
Robe of the Good Archmagi
24 Potions of Healing (the 9 HP kind)
Durlag's Goblet
One 20/20 Wand of Fire
With that out of the way, on to the adventure!
Adamant gets the standard good party: Minsc, Dynaheir, Safana, Khalid and Jaheira.
Interestingly we will be without cleric in a dungeon full of undead... I reckon we may need to use the Flaming Fist healer a few times. Everyone (apart from Adamant) immediately gets bumped up a few levels. I get Safana up to 100/100 Find Traps/Open Lock and pour the remaining 60 points into Detect Illusion.
We use brute force to deal with the first group of enemies. Nothing much to report, apart from an enemy Shadowdancer that gets a single backstab in.
Porios gives up without a fight, and we swipe his cloak. I opt to be nice to the mummy to later get his shield, and agree to beat up Korlasz for him. We descend into the catacombs.
The first major group of undead turns into a mess. Safana is spotted by a Bonebat (they see through stealth) and the enemy descends upon us: A few Shadowed Souls keep healing the skeletons at the front, a Skeletal Mage tosses out a Stinking Cloud at Adamant... all bad things. Liberal application of the Wand of Fire and a few Magic Missiles from Dynaheir sorts the situation out, though we had to quaff some of the good healing potions during the fight.
I'm more cautious with the second undead group. Safana comes with a 5-charge Necklace of Missiles, and Dynaheir has a Fireball memorized. Combine with Adamant's Wand of Fire for triple Fireball carnage: They can't Hold/Disease/Level Drain us if they don't live long enough to get into melee range.
Mass Fireballs isn't much of a tactic, but it should see us through the tomb. A cluster of Shadows fall to it (though an invisible Wraith survives and proceeds to level drain Minsc twice. No big deal, as the Flaming Fist Healer restores him free of charge! Didn't know she'd do that).
Loot the Full Plate and assorted other goodies in the "hidden" room, spawn undead, watch them succumb to fiery conflagration...
A group of mercenaries are treated to fireballs, but as we are running low on charges (and I want one volley available for Korlasz), we finish them off with the help of Jaheira's Entangle and mass ranged fire.
Minsc gets poisoned (twice) but otherwise we're good.
We're almost at Korlasz! Fiery skeletons and attendant Skeletal Mage prove no real issue; once the Mage and Shadowed Soul goes down to ranged fire, it's just a matter of time until the grunts do too.
Korlasz never even gets a spell off. Dynaheir had a Haste memorized, and so everyone focuses Korlasz. Her Stoneskin and Mirror Images go down almost instantly, and she surrenders. We accept her surrender, loot everything, and go up the rope (Safana caught a Dart of Stunning during the few seconds there was actually a fight on, but she will be fine). Also pictured: Adamant leveling up. Yay!
Almost done, but Minsc first has to spoil our good performance by being level drained into oblivion by a couple of Wraiths. Yet again, the Flaming Fist Healer helps out, raising him for free.
We also swing by the mummy, gets his excellent +3 Medium Shield, and swipe a Pearl Necklace and Emerald.
I must say, I rather enjoy Korlasz's tomb. Plenty of nice loot, some large enemy groups to fight off, not too difficult when starting out.
Alright, out into the city. Not much to report. My intended party is Corwin, Safana, Viconia, Edvin, M'Khiin.
We'll see just how good/bad Adamant will have to be to keep everyone happy...
The errands in the city are taken care of. Killing Korlasz requires a Potion of Clarity as Adamant on his own cannot keep her from getting a few spells off, but otherwise there's no trouble.
We (at this stage, I) recruit Safana who helps burglarize the chest at the bottom of the palace, beat up some sailors and get 2 (!) magical weapons for my efforts, etc etc. We finish by purchasing a few potions from Sorcerous Sundries (notably his two anti-magic potions), recruit Viconia just before ending Chapter 7, and buy several containers including the Bag of Holding. Finally inventory management will be less of a chore.
Upon starting Chapter 8, Corwin and Edwin are both immediately recruited. This seems a good spot to stop for now; next session we'll pick up M'Khiin and actually get down to some real adventuring.
Adamant is now a L7/L8 Fighter/Mage, and with two Stoneskins a day, only enemies with bad effects on hit can really threaten him in a brawl.
Krieg the War Hulk
"You can't stop what I've become!"
BG1: 1, 2SoD: 1
BG2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Onto ToB. Illasera is easy because I've been saving the Reflection Shield +2 specifically for her. While her first arrow was in mid-flight, I swapped to it, causing her to inflict spell failure on herself so she couldn't go invisible or apply any buffs. 1/5 down.
My first challenge is completed thanks to my clone and some summons. Chucking the Throwing Impaler +4 at anyone in range at 4 attacks/round is quite effective and the Evil challenge is personally much easier than the Good challenge.
I ignore Saradush's sidequests and head straight for Gromnir. Throughout the fight, I use invisibility potions to pretend I'm a backstabbing thief. Its surprisingly effective because only Gromnir can see through the invisibility.
I stay on the other side of the area to avoid the mages joining the fight. When their PfMW wears off, I slice them once with Water's Talon and wait for them to fall. Then I kite Gromnir in a rectangle just like Sarevok in BG1.
At the fire giant temple, I'm given much trouble by the Fire Lich and the Flaming Skull. The fire lich just has a ton of Stoneskins and PfMW that I can't just ignore with the Flail of Ages +4 because its also immune to elemental damage. The flaming skull flies at double-strength Haste speed, so I use an Oil of Speed to catch up to it. Brimstone is taken out with Water's Talon from safety. A maze trap almost catches me, but I use a duplicated Protection from Magic scroll to stop it.
Onto Yaga-Shura. I'm not feeling too confident about this because armies of enemies are one of my weaknesses. I get to the center of the battlefield and summon my clone, who summons elementals. We haste ourselves with oils, then throw more Impalers into the enemy. But a mage casts Death Spell, erasing my clone and his summons.
Dang it. Now its just me. Yaga-Shura arrives shortly after. I toss out Improved Kitty to take at least some pressure off me. He webs Yaga and I use this opportunity to poison him with Water's Talon. He has a truckload of HP so I'll take what I can get. Improved Kitty eventually dies so I run around the battlefield poisoning people and taking more potshots at Yaga. He falls eventually. 2/5 down.
I'm rude to the Solar for the Regeneration power. The challenge is easily completed, though I'm frustrated that I always have to wait out mages' several castings of PfMW now that everything can save against Greater Deathblow.
Next is Draconis. I easily beat his human form. When he transforms, he seems to be...stuck. He will attack if I get in range, but it seems he can't move. Unphased by his breath weapon, I peel away his Stoneskins with Throwing Impaler +4 and then go in for the kill.
Now for his daddy. The named wyverns are fast, but they only seem to have 2 attacks/round. I have to summon my clone for his help to get rid of their stoneskins, but I get hit after about 3 of them are killed, dismissing Clone Krieg. The other one is dealt with. Tamah is also killed after burning through her stoneskins. I really fucking hate needing to do this to every boss character.
Abby just needs 2 hits to transform into a dragon. He does not attack me at all for some reason in human form. Once he transforms, I survive against everything he throws at me. My saves are at rock-bottom and his breath weapon does negligible damage thanks to my high electrical resistance. I just have to put on a Protection from Magic scroll to avoid his Maze spam. For whatever reason, Abazigal refuses, just absolutely refuses, to use melee attacks. I would've thought Abby would've ended my run, but thanks to this AI glitch, I'm able to kill him after more than 10 agonizing minutes wearing down his HP with the Flail of Ages +4 because I can't FUCKING break through his Stoneskin spam, not even with summons helping me. He has infinite uses of it! 3/5 down.
With the Bronze Pantalettes, I forge the Big Metal Unit and its weaponry. Now I have a way to deal with groups.
Odamaron is weathered quite easily. Liches pose absolutely no threat to me.
Ogremoch, Diayatha, and all of her goons are disposed of. Sendai is a breath of fresh air compared to Abazigal. 4/5 down.
For the next two challenges, I'm rude to the solar and then nice to her to get Dark Taint and Negative Plane Protection. I skip Cyric's challenge by telling him that I already destroyed Venduris' band. Next I enlist Balthazar's help for the final fight despite being Chaotic Evil, but I have 19 CHA and 20 rep. 5/5 down.
The final challenge is The Ravager. I take a look at it in NearInfinity and think I'm going to lose because its regeneration is way too fast in addition to its physical resistance. I start the fight by summoning my clone to summon elementals. The Ravager charms him!
It's too bad I can't put the Citadel Helmet back on him. I use the Staff of Command to get my clone back under control. Before he decides to go rogue again, I have him summon his Improved Kitty to help kill the Bone Blades. He gets charmed again, but I re-establish control of him again with the Staff of Command. Working together, we kill The Ravager.
I was rude to the Solar for the physical damage resistance. Still, I can't believe I've come this far. I'm questioning whether I'll survive the Throne and wondering if it will glitch out because I'll take too long to kill everything. I know I can outlast just about anything at this point, even a Whirlwind Attack from Melissan without using Focus, but I'm still not sure if burst damage will win me the fight and not sustained DPS.
Krieg - War Hulk 50
EDIT: I took a look at Abazigal in NearInfinity and noticed his APR was set to 0. That explains that. I set it to what I assume should be 3 APR and replayed the fight. I was fully prepared for Abazigal to kill me this time and just end the run there. I still couldn't find a way to get through his Stoneskin spam when I figured out that I had a solution all along. Even though Protection from Magic scrolls cause casting failure (which Abazigal is immune to), they still dispel effects when applied. I used this to get rid of his stoneskins and beat him down! I hid in the bottom left corner to avoid him most of the time because he's too big to fit, only coming out when his skins were down.
Ascension Melissan will be a nightmare, but you should be able to deal with her provided you can remove the Five from the equation. Once she's alone, it should be possible to kite her by switching back and forth between the Impaler and the Shield of Reflection to block her darts.
Here are some of the deaths I recall:
- Dragon Disciple walking by accident into the Nashkel carnival tent with the evil mage. After the mage saves 3 times against Spook, charname's face is dissolved by Melf's Acid Arrow.
- Going for Ankhegs at level 2 with my Priest of Tyr. First Ankheg goes down with 3 Commands. I quickly take the shell and head back to the map corner. With only one cast of Command left, another Ankheg shows up and wipes out my party.
- Ranger/Cleric succumbing to the fastest dart thrower in the realms
- 1-Chunked by Karlat
- Held by Mulahey
- Poisoned by the Amazon party
- 10-bandit ambush heading to the Friendly Arm Inn
- Bounty hunter dying to her own failed set trap
Krieg the War Hulk
"It's the end...but the meat has been prepared!"
BG1: 1, 2SoD: 1
BG2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
ToB: 1
Here we go... First thing's first like always: kill the Fallen Solars. I go for the one on the right while Balthazar goes for the one on the left, but Johnny's Time Stop makes me reconsider and I go for the one on the left.
Balthazar dies pretty fast from the demon horde. I tag Johnny with Water's Talon; seems he forgot to put up a Stoneskin.
I haste myself with an oil and run laps around the Throne. My next target is Bodhi; I'm leaving the Solars alone for the time being because they're really fast and they won't dare to shoot at me with the Reflection Shield on.
Imoen regains her senses while I'm fighting the demons and solars and skedaddles.
I put my new Protection from Magic scroll strategy to use and kill the Mariliths with it. All that's left now are the Solars and a couple of Alu-Fiends. I kill the first Solar.
The second one casts a Creeping Doom on me, which I get hit with. I think to myself that its over then, but use a Protection from Magic scroll on myself to dispel it. The second Solar gets destroyed.
I use more PfM scrolls on the Alu-Fiends to one-shot them. This one is the last before I have to exterminate the pools full of demons.
The pools are cleared easily for the most part. The most troublesome thing is that Balors seem to have a Stoneskin ring equipped, so I resort to using the Big Metal Rod's Pulse Ammo. I score a Greater Deathblow on the Balors from two of the pools.
At this point, Ascension glitches out. Melissan and the Five appear as normal, but they're all Neutral... Killing the Five can still be done but Melissan is immortal, surviving ctrl+y too. So I restart from the third pool's save, as I anticipated something would go wrong this time. It appears that if you get Balthazar's help, my version of Ascension glitches out if Balthazar dies before talking to Melissan again at this point. So I spawn Balthazar in again, and Melissan's dialogue works correctly this time.
You cannot directly control Balthazar when he's spawned in like this, but that's okay. Now that the Six are here, its go time. My first action is to charm Sarevok with a Mind Flayer circlet.
Now that my aura has been expended, Abazigal casts Time Stop and beats the everliving crap out of me. I survive it and retain control of myself, but I'm reduced to 35% of my HP.
I use a PfM scroll on Abazigal to keep him from doing anything else. He also gated in a Planetar while he was beating me, which I promptly destroy immediately after using the scroll.
Gromnir feels my heavily-enraged wrath the next round, getting killing in one hit.
This makes Melissan come down to play. I already expended my aura again so I couldn't use Focus, but she chooses to kick the crap out of Balthazar.
I'm pretty sure he's dead now, but I don't know for sure because Mel gates in a bunch of demons. Lovely... Time to go back to Avernus tactics.
I heal myself with the Rez Rod. While doing laps around the Throne again, I tag some of the Five with Water's Talon and use a PfM scroll on Sendai and Mel. But Mel's had enough. She stops time again and I was in the middle of casting Focus!! Why oh why does Focus have a spellcasting Speed Factor of 1 and not 0!?!?
Melissan beats me up. She doesn't hit as hard as Abazigal, but the repeated hits take their toll. After the Time Stop is over, I lose control and fall into my final rage death-spiral. All the marilith demons teleport over and box me in, giving me no chance of escape even if I did stay in control. Krieg is overwhelmed and Melissan scores the final hit.
Burst damage does not, in fact, win the fight at the Throne.
Krieg - War Hulk 50 (RIP)
I'm amazed you got so far, @Flashburn. I would have thought getting past SoD alone was impossible, much less BG2 or ToB. But you've demonstrated that a solo War Hulk run is nevertheless possible, however daunting it may be.
This was a marvelous demonstration of the kit and your own abilities as a no-reloader. I look forward to your next run, whatever it may be.
Iter (dwarf fighter/thief, Grond0); Laran (Human Diviner, Gate70)
Previous updates:
After passing through Nashkel to pick up the ankheg armor, the duo moved on to the basilisk area. Laran used PfP to make killing them simple and pick up a few more levels.
We had previously postponed tackling the Doomsayer, but with Laran now at level 5 she had plenty of magic missiles available for him.
In preparation for the sirines Laran bought detect invisibility while at High Hedge. That both made the sirines easier to hit and a sucker for magic missiles - and neither group at the Lighthouse area lasted long.
With reputation at 19 it seemed appropriate to call on the ankhegs on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. The first one in the nest took a bite out of Iter, but sleep helped deal with several more to allow the treasure to be collected. With Laran out of sleeps that meant the intelligent thing to do was to leave the nest - so obviously Iter plowed onwards to find more ankhegs
After a bit of shopping the duo made their way quickly through the Cloud Peaks. They only tackled enemies without distance attacks and made simple progress to pick up the charisma tome. Looking for something a bit more worthwhile they then moved on to Durlag's Tower. Laran had only memorized a single magic missile spell and after Iter missed with a couple of stealth attacks she lost patience and resorted to a first use of wands against a battle horror.
With time running out Iter was intending to start the main quest, but Laran pointed out that Meilum was still at large. A short diversion later
Iter, Fighter 6 / Thief 6, 66 HPs, 124 kills
Laran, Diviner 7, 36 HPs, 58 kills, 1 death
Previous update found here
This is humiliating. Adamant has fallen. The party went north from the encampment and picked up M'Khiin without incident. We then started exploring to the east, meaning to do the Dwarves of Dumathoin questline. Enter 4 Sword Spiders and one Gargantuan Spider.
You can guess what happened: The Gargantuan Spider dropped a Web Tangle on Adamant, who had no Free Action up, paralyzing him. Viconia got Remove Paralysis off, but it apparently has no effect on Web Tangle. Maybe Dispel Magic would've worked, or just Free Action from one of our plentiful scrolls. Edwin threw a Horror, but that only affected a single Sword Spider, and the remaining three happily turned Adamant into a pincushion, Stoneskin notwithstanding. Blast!
I guess the lesson (along with Remove Paralysis not working against Web Tangle) is don't underestimate anything that can cause a status effect, but I do the latter constantly anyway, so meh. I'll need to think on what to do next...
@Grond0 Is Laran a conjurer or a diviner?
Starting: In BG1EE.
Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage (which I guess is indistinguishable from Core in BG1EE), max HP on level up.
Mods: Basically full SCS (including full pre-buffing for mages and priests), see spoiler for WeiDU.
Initialise mod (all other components require this): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Replace many +1 magical weapons with Fine ones -> Fine weapons are affected by the iron crisis: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Stores sell a maximum of 5 Arrows of Dispelling: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Faster Bears: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Make party members less likely to die irreversibly: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/4 the normal rate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
NPCs go to inns: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Ease-of-use party AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Stackable ankheg shells, winterwolf pelts and wyvern heads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Ensure Shar-Teel doesn't die in the original challenge: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Smarter general AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Better calls for help: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Spiders: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Smarter sirines and dryads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Smarter basilisks: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved doppelgangers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Relocated bounty hunters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Ulcaster: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Balduran's Isle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Durlag's Tower: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Demon Cultists: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Cloakwood Druids: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Bassilus: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Drasus party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Red Wizards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved Undercity party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Tougher chapter-two end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Tougher chapter-three end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Tougher chapter-four end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Tougher chapter-five end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved final battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Improved minor encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
Self-imposed restrictions: No easter eggs (tree diamond, extra Ring of Wizardry/Ankheg Plate/Ring of Fire Resistance, gold from Firebead etc), no recharging items by selling and buying them back
Meet our protagonist, Lazramar the Human Necromancer.
That is a legit 99 roll (highest I've ever gotten), no auto-reroller or anything. If he makes it to ToB, he'll have some darn impressive mental stats. No illusions will certainly hurt, both offensively and defensively, and I reckon Potions of Invisibility will be even more important as an emergency escape option than usual, until we get our hands on the Stoneskin scroll.
It's of course not all bad. We may not have Blindness, Spook, Invisibility or Mirror Image, but we still have Sleep, Web, Horror, Glitterdust... We'll just have to hope Armor/Shield/Ghost Armor will keep us alive until we hit level 7.
Lazramar has put + in Slings, and starts with the spells Find Familiar (memorized), Larloch's Minor Drain (memorized), Sleep.
Let's get this show on the road.
Lazramar, Human Necromancer, BG1EE Update 1
Next update found here
Lazramar summons a Fairy Dragon and proceeds to clear out the usual Candlekeep errands. Shanks expires from a LMD to the face, and Carbos fails to land a poisoning hit on our Mirror Image'd Fairy Dragon.
Lazramar successfully scribes the Armor scroll from the Inn while failing with the Infravision scroll (hooray!).
Two Sleep are memorized, and off we go.
I recruit Imoen, Xzar and Montaron to assist in the battle against Tarnesh. Montaron whiffs his backstab, is put to sleep, but Xzar steps up to the plate and absorbs a Horror, Melf's Acid Arrow and a Magic Missile before dropping. Imoen soaks up a second Magic Missile, and that's all Tarnesh wrote, as Lazramar grinds him down with Imoen running in circles.
Since Montaron survived, an interesting opportunity presents itself. Khalid and Jaheira are picked up, and we make a quick detour north. Outside the Ankheg nest, Imoen and Montaron (after quite a few attempts) stealth and move inside. Montaron catches the attention of the Ankheg guarding the treasure hoard, and draws it away an inch at a time. Cue Imoen sneaking in and stealing everything, including that titan of the early game, a Wand of Fire with 12/12 charges! Imoen stealths and sneaks back out, and amazingly, Montaron manages his stealth check before the Ankheg backs him into a corner, and lives to tell the tale.
What was the point of this exercise? Imoen didn't have to quaff the Potion of Invisibility we got from Jaheira, leaving us with a panic button if we get an unfavourable ambush. Nice.
For their valor, Imoen and Montaron are dropped off at the FAI.
The rest of the party heads to Beregost, slaying the belt ogre on the way through a combination of Doom and Sleep (Sleep on its own is sufficient 99% of the time, but why not be on the safe side).
After resting, we swing by High Hedge, picking up Kivan, as well as a Potion Case and scrolls of Identify and Friends, the plan being to pick up the Red Potion at the Nashkel Carnival to scribe these important spells (both helping to save us a lot of money this early, and early is the only time when money is in short supply).
The interim areas are handled without incident: Kivan could probably kill everything unassisted, but we have Sleep and Entangle available as well.
Branwen is picked up at the Carnival along with the red/violet potions, and scrolls are scribed (we nipped on over to Nashkel beforehand to pick up the free Shield scroll, as well as an extra Potion of Invisibility).
We now have the party we will be using for a while; Kivan will be replaced by Coran later on, and we will add Yeslick during the Cloakwood mines (to in turn be replaced by Quayle).
The party talks to Noober and brings Neira down using Command before departing Nashkel in a westerly direction.
The intent here is to clear Xvart Village, that little area where you get the Boots of the North, and rescue Dynaheir from the Gnoll Fortress. We need the Gauntlets of Dexterity to turn Jaheira into a capable off-tank, and the other areas are on the way, relatively simple and yield some decent experience this early on.
Entangle triumphs over the Xvarts; it's surprisingly effective, forcing them to dribble in 1-2 at a time. Ursa and her mate succumb to focus fire (the latter being lured from its cave and run in circles).
Neville is Doomed and kited to death. It takes a while, but SCS didn't give him a healing potion this time.
The 3 Hobgoblin Elites and 2 Ogre Berserkers at the bridge get a taste of what the Wand of Fire can do: A Fireball kills the Hobgoblins, one Berserker gets to experience the business end of a Scorcher, and the lone remaining Berserker can be safely kited down.
Time for the first, well, not close call, but close call to a close call!
We agree to help Laurel fight off a gibberling "horde". Little do we know, this time it truly is a horde.
I guess the script figured since we had L2 Jaheira, Kivan and Branwen we could handle about 40 gibberlings at once... there are about 10 more charging in from out of view.
A Sleep from Lazramar only affects 4 of the little buggers. Jaheira's Entangle does a much better job at blocking the southern horde (with the help of Laurel), but there are still Gibberlings pouring in from the west, north, and east.
After a lot of careful movement, potshots, and several Potions of Healing, I begin to worry that our Entangle will give out before we make a dent in the horde. Then, Laurel falls, and the flanks start to collapse.
This leaves me with little choice: Jaheira and Khalid just manage to kill a blocking Gibberling and fall back, and a low roar signals the imminent detonation of a Fireball.
With the bulk of the horde finally vanquished, we are able to mop up the stragglers. Khalid don's Laurel's Plate Mail, and we finish up the eating Ogre as well as the Polar Bear.
Finally, Khalid gets a level, as does Branwen and (hooray!) Lazramar, reducing but not eliminating the risk of him dying to a single Kobold.
The cleansing of Gnoll Fortress follows the standard modus operandi. Sleep to deal with hordes, Command to handle Hairtooth/Gnarl/Gnoll Chieftain/Carrion Crawler, Chant and Bless for buffs. No troubles, and Jaheira gets the Gauntlets of Dexterity, boosting our frontliner capacity by 100%.
I considered clearing the areas south of Nashkel, but there's not really anything we need there: Studded Leather +2 we can do without, Bracers of archery would be useful (but only until we clear the Bandit Camp, at which point they are superceded by Legacy of the masters), and we are on the clock what with Kivan in the party. We instead head to bring Brage back, and while in the area take the time to kill Baruk and his annoying band of Kobold Commandos, as well as kill the Doomsayer.
A fully buffed Khalid proves surprisingly difficult for the Doomsayer to hit, and said Doomsayer's 50% Fire Resistance will not prevail against the mighty Wand of Fire (not to mention potshots by the Wand of Missiles and some scrolls of LMD). 4000 experience, not too shabby at this stage.
We are now slightly overleveled for the areas southwest of Beregost, but that won't stop us. We sweep through; Teyngan and his merry band of cutthroats fall to Command and Hold Person, Zargal is undone by Sleep, and though Bassilus gets a Hold Person of his own off, Khalid to my astonishment actually makes his save (and Bassilus is Silenced right after). Melicamp did not make it, alas.
The west of Beregost pacified, we move into the village proper, clearing the low-level quests. Silke is handled via Scorcher from our trusty (and still surprisingly well-charged) Wand of Fire. Not pictured: Idiot Commoner being one step away from frying and our reputation subsequently plummeting (One step away! Somehow he avoided the flame stream).
Beregost cleared, we head to the FAI to turn in Landrin's quests. I take the opportunity to purchase a few Potions of Genius as well as a full stack of Healing Potions; while in Beregost and High Hedge we also bought several scrolls (Glitterdust, Horror, Ray of Enfeeblement) as well as three Potions of Explosions and a Scroll of Protection from Magic. We still have a fair bit of gold left, which is invested at the Nashkel Carnival: Necklace of Missiles and Shield Amulet.
We're feeling good. The initial hurdles are handled. We have an inventory to work with, levels enough that we won't immediately be wiped out when things turn sour, and if everything else fails, we can just bomb the crap out of anything that moves.
As we leave the party, they are making preparations for the descent into Nashkel Mines, and the horror that will follow (Read: Being hunted by the assassins).
Lazramar is now a level 3 Human Necromancer. He will scribe scrolls under the influence of Potions of Genius once we have the Web scroll available from Mulahey's chest, but in the meantime his only level 2 spell is Horror (+15% chance to scribe Necromancy scrolls in conjunction with 18 Intelligence means 100% chance to scribe Necromancy scrolls).
This will be my first time playing the Chaos Sorcerer. Still playing on Insane with extra damage disabled. Mod installation has still not changed from either Brunash's, Spaz's, or Krieg's playthrough (though I updated a couple mods in my BG2EE install this time). @argent77's Chaos Sorcerer kit description and abilities can be found here.
Basically you take a wild mage, turn it into a sorcerer, but then completely change how Nahal's Reckless Dweomer works. Instead of picking from a list of your known spells and attempting to cast it, you pick from a random list of mage spells of various levels and you get to pick which one to cast. You still have to deal with the Wild Surge roll, however.
Let's get dangerous. With the Protection from Evil buff from Firebead, I seek out Shank. I use my first Chaotic Weave ever and choose Vampiric Touch.
Well... Can't say I wasn't expecting that. Let's try again from the beginning.
Woo, I'm a girl for a while! I rest in Shank's shack and shuffle over to Carbos' crib. I give the Chaotic Weave another try and I choose Finger of Death! The first one results in both of us getting healed, but the Chaotic Weave menu stays open for some reason...so I try Finger of Death again. This time it takes.
I follow in Krieg's and Spaz's footsteps: kill Neera, kill Algernon since I can't pickpocket him, give Firebead his book and then charm him, toast Landrin's spiders, petrify Karlat, assassinate Firebead, charm Silke and assassinate her. This time was special because I tried to summon a Chaos Elemental to deal with Silke and ended up getting a Stinking Cloud wild surge which knocked her out. I disarmed her beforehand and beat her to death with my staff.
For Kelddath's sirine harem, I try to summon something to help deal with them after I've expended their spells. After 10 Chaotic Weaves or so, I finally summon a Greater Air Elemental. It killed the first sirine I lured outside beforehand and then the second one after charming it, earning me a level.
I lure the other two sirines outside and summon a skeleton warrior through Chaotic Weave and command it to kill them. It gets killed by the wolf pack further away. After about 30 unsuccessful Chaotic Weave attempts (many of which I discarded due to bad spell picks), I finally get something good.
I learn Knock and raid the Travenhurst manor for the wand of lightning and a potion of invisibility. At the Friendly Arm, I summon a Lesser Earth Elemental with a Chaotic Weave and it gibs Tarnesh.
I buy 9 stone to flesh scrolls from Gellana and return to Basilisk Country. The loop is initiated after several flubs trying to get Protection from Petrification. I level up twice and nearly a third time.
I summon a fire elemental and it destroys Kirian's group, getting me the level I was so close to.
I sell the group's loot and return with more stone to flesh scrolls. Now this is irony.
This round of farming is almost enough for me to level up again. I summon an earth elemental to beat up the orgrillons that stole Roe's letter and take it back to Mirianne's earning the level.
Shoal is killed through Project Image and Simulacrum shenanigans even though it took like 15 entire minutes just to kill her because my clones kept turning up fruitless Chaotic Weaves. I didn't document this part just because it took so long that the clones I conjured expired before the definitive end to the fight.
I move on and try to summon a fire elemental to save Melicamp, but the Weave goes wrong and summons an elemental that's on the wolf's side, but Melicamp's gone hostile to me! I weave Mislead and dominate Melicamp so he'll talk to me, but the fire elemental kills him! You can't write drama better than this!
Bassilus is dealt with using Greater Malison and a scroll of Hold Person. After turning in his holy symbol, I use the gold to buy a shiny new wizard staff.
Dushai is killed for the Ring of Free Action, which will help me avoid some disabling wild surges, but my reputation is in the gutter. I do a bunch of sidequests in the wilderness and get enough gold for an Archmagi robe and buy all the stone to flesh scrolls available from Kelddath, Alvanhendar, and Gellana, causing me to gain a couple levels.
Nashkel's scrolls are bought but they aren't even close to getting me to level 12. I'm going to be plateaued at 11 for a while it seems. I pay Drizzt a visit and pull a Mordy Sword out of my hat. The sword hardly even needs my help beating him.
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 11
Sometimes instead of buffing up before opening a container that might be trapped, I'll just mutter "let's assume" to myself and accept a reload from a failed save on the grounds that I would have taken the time to pre-buff before the trap. I actually did this in this case, but I'm not sure if I would have remembered to cast Protection from Petrification before opening that container because Protection from Petrification only lasted 15 rounds and it wasn't part of my standard set of pre-buffs. Survival would have depended on whether I remembered encountering that trap in my first no-reload IWD2 run (the party run with Frisk, Asriel, and Chara). I probably would have remembered it, which would mean I could reload, but I'm not sure. So, the run is over.
Regardless, I've found that a solo no-reload run is nevertheless possible for Tactics4IWD2 in normal mode. Mostly it boils down to these things:
1. Playing a cleric to gain early access to Animate Dead to tank enemies and early access to Freedom of Movement to block the many Hold Person spells that early game Tactics spellcasters spam
2. Selling off excess loot in order to afford Potions of Explosions and Oils of Fiery Burning to deal with the Targos invasion and later the fight at Shaengarne Bridge
3. Using stealth and summons to drain Caballus' Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells
4. Adding a monk level partway through the game to maximize AC with WIS bonuses to keep pace with enemy attack bonuses
5. Using Sanctuary to avoid the fight atop the Horde Fortress
6. Using Vghotan's Band to gain immunity to Sherincal's numerous fear spells
7. Relying on summons to deal with the Black Raven Monastery trials, with Divine Shell to deal with the constant Flame Strikes in the Chamber of Immolation
8. Using a low-pressure, evasive approach with lots of Sanctuary spells and summons to deal with the drider spellcasters with their Dispel Magic and Icelance spells (note that the derro mages outside also spam Icelance)
9. Using Sanctuary and summons to deal with the mind flayer city (the mind flayers can still stun you, but while Sanctuary is active, their allies can't attack you and the mind flayers don't have strong damage output on their own)--or alternatively, a character with 12 Intimidation or higher should be able to bypass the mind flayers entirely by running directly to the Elder Brain and picking the right dialogue option. You can talk-block the first mind flayer if necessary.
10. Using Gate and Sanctuary to wear down Mirabel and Majrash
11. Stacking Spell Resistance with Holy Aura to get 50 SR and resist enemy Blasphemy spells (not necessary for evil-aligned characters, who are immune by default) and Power Word: Stun
12. Keeping Potions of Invisibility and (later on) a Wand of Sanctuary to escape Icelance and Dispel Magic spells
13. Using Insect Plague to disable spellcasting for enemies (the spell failure lasts for many rounds even after the target leaves the swarm, and Tactics enemies still don't have the AI to deal with it)
14. Using the Black Adder bastard sword and lots of summoning spells to hold off the numerous enemies during the invasion of Kuldahar, with Heal spells, Sanctuary, and/or Otiluke's Resilient Sphere to keep Iselore alive (he is not immortal in the Tactics mod) and a Protection from Petrification scroll on self to block Flesh to Stone spells
15. Using a Protection from Magic scroll on Izbelah if necessary to prevent her from casting Temporal Stasis
16. Using a Protection from Magic scroll on Saablic Tan to remove his buffs to score an early kill on him so you can flee the area and return after resting (you can't leave the area until Saablic Tan is dead)
17. Using a Protection from Magic scroll on either Isair or Madae to remove their buffs and block their spellcasting, allowing you to score an early kill on one of them and force them to flee to the next room
There are lots of other little optimizations that are also very important (level squatting before Shaengarne Bridge, landing early kills on Orc Firestarters to get their expensive Arrows of Fire, etc.), but those are the things that are most likely to end a run that's already well-optimized.
The character should have the Blind-Fight feat to deal with enemy mages' Improved Invisibility, and should dedicate some buffs to improving his or her own damage output, because summons alone will have trouble keeping up at higher levels unless you're a sorcerer with Shades. Note that Gelugons are very hard to kill, but are incompatible with other summons unless you pre-buff them with Protection from Evil. If you have a single green critter without Protection from Evil active for even a second, your gated Gelugon will go red and stay red indefinitely, even if you cover everyone with Protection from Evil.
If you import the character back to Targos for a HoF run, it's important to invest in mage or sorcerer levels for access to Mirror Image, Improved Invisibility, and possibly Blink. You might be able to get by with a single level and rely on mage scrolls, but Tactics HoF Improved Alacrity synergizes better with spells than with scrolls.
I started the normal mode run specifically to get some better gear in preparation for a HoF run, but I'm not sure I'll bring this character into HoF mode, even though a continuous narrative from normal mode to HoF wasn't what I was going for. The character would be very capable of handling the challenge, but it wouldn't be very rewarding. My character was at a very high level and was suffering from an 80% XP penalty due to a multi-classing mistake. We were only getting like 18 XP per kill, and without Wail of the Banshee, HoF mode would take a long time. RPGs are generally only fun if your character is experiencing growth, and we had already reached our peak. Plus, the levels we would gain in HoF mode would just improve our already-excellent defenses, and defensive bonuses are never as satisfying as offensive ones.
Clerics of Ilmater, Helm, and Bane are all excellent choices for a solo Tactics run. Ilmater domain spells include Emotion: Hope, Holy Power, and Stoneskin, which make the character much tougher in combat; Helm domain spells include Aegis and can let you black Dispel Magic and Icelance spells; and clerics of Bane get +1 to the save DC of any spell that forces a Will save, which works well with their disabler-oriented domain spells. Clerics of Bane also get +2 Wisdom from the Kuldahar Valley graveyard, which amounts to another +1 AC for clerics with monk levels.
Previous update found here
Next update found here
The party embarks towards the mines, triggering the Dorn ambush. I am always a bit paranoid about this: There are two bandit archers that will invariably target the weakest character, and there also seems to be a bug where even if you Command one of them, both will get a first shot off (I've had Xzar/Dynaheir die to this several times). Lazramar has Armor up (the ambush happens after 4 hours travelling so you can cast it on the Nashkel map) and immediately tosses a LMD at the nearest bandit, Branwen Commanding the other.
I needn't have worried so much: The bandits target Branwen (!) and accomplish nothing.
We get a second set of Plate Mail which goes to Jaheira.
Outside the Nashkel Mines, Greywolf immediately quaffs a Potion of Freedom, rendering the plan to Hold him moot. We have no Blindness, but we do have a (somewhat supercharged thanks to our specialization) Horror available... can it work? Yes, it can! In fact, Greywolf does us the courtesy of running in circles around our ranged characters until finally expiring, granting Khalid a solid sword to go with his by now +++ in Longswords.
In the mines, Lazramar is keenly reminded of his own mortality when a bog-standard Kobold crits him for 10 out of his 24 HP. I take the hint and have Lazramar relax in the back while the people not using paper tissues for armor deal with the monsters.
We have no thief, so Khalid has to trip traps manually, but we've got enough healing potions to weather the storm. I pondered blowing a Fireball charge on the Kobold Chieftain and his friends, but a Sleep worked just as well. The attendant Shaman is really quite harmless; he only casts Horror and Mirror Image inbetween trying unsuccessfully to hit us with a dagger. Remove Fear completely neutralizes him as a threat.
With Mulahey, a charge of Fireball is used to clear out the half-dozen Kobolds and few Skeletons he calls for. Jaheira tanks the Kobold Elites while the rest of the party converges on Mulahey; he proves remarkably resilient, but it seems he spent almost all his spell slots on self-buffs this time around. It takes a little while, but he eventually drops without having done anything except failing to cast a Hold Person through a barrage of arrow and spell damage.
I opt to head back out using the shortcut, and we emerge to the north-east of Nashkel. While here, the party of course takes the opportunity to loot the south-eastern tomb for the 8 charge Wand of Monster Summoning. The three guardian Ghasts prove a bit of a nuisance as they manage to Hold Khalid, but Jaheira picks up the slack and we shoot them down. We leave the Revenant and Narcillicus for later.
Handing in quests on our return to Nashkel nets Lazramar level 4. Excellent! Less excellent is Nimbul, who makes a big nuisance of himself but fails to kill even a single party member. He went for a MGoI this time, and several Melf's Acid Arrow/Charm Person/Chromatic Orb, but we manage to spread the damage around and take him down without even needing a charge of Scorcher. Not sure if he had a Horror ready, but I always buff with Remove Fear against any mage regardless.
Lazramar quaffs 2x Potions of Genius, and proceeds to scribe what we have. We now have a surprisingly versatile spellbook, including that holy grail of BG1, Web.
In Beregost, Tranzig actually puts up a better fight than I've seen in a while.
He successfully Slows Khalid and Jaheira, then gets some decent summons from 2x Monster Summoning I, and takes surprisingly long to drop. But drop he does.
With >10k in gold, I splurge on consumables. Pushing through the Nashkel Mines surprisingly took a toll on our supply of healing potions (with so many kobolds there will be a few critical hits getting through), so I purchase another 20 from the temple in Beregost. High Hedge also gets a visit; 3x Potions of Magic Protection and 3x Potions of Freedom will certainly come in handy.
The party moves north to the crossroads, and heads east towards Larswood. But then... dun dun DUN!
Sorry fellas, that's just not an optimal placement for you.
If, as in our case, you get this ambush before most of your party is level 5 (none of our characters is, at the moment), some care is required: The gnome Halacan has a scroll of Sleep which he will ALWAYS cast immediately. Since it's a scroll, it can't be interrupted, and it's very difficult to deal enough damage to kill him before it casts as he prebuffs with Mirror Image. Usually it's best to scatter so no more than one character gets caught by it.
This time however, Halacan gets Commanded. We're not able to kill him in the 6 seconds he's down, but he loses all his Mirror Images and dies almost immediately after getting back up.
Meanwhile, Jaheira and Khalid are holding off Morvin and Molkar. Drakar, the cleric, gets a Scorcher, and the second blast kills him.
Without their casters, the would-be assassins have no hope. They fall, we collect their frankly rather paltry gear, and continue on our merry way. Pictured: The last few seconds when Molkar still thought today was going to be a good day.
Larswood and Peldvale (mostly) proceed without issue. I run into the SCS Osmadi bug where the game crashes when he tries to attack using his cursed spear, so I just Web him instead and kill him without giving him a chance to attack (we were in no danger of dying during the time it crashed; Osmadi was interrupted and about to die). Corsone subsequently dies, but gets a Call Lightning off on Khalid beforehand (the latter wearing Boots of Grounding and so is fine despite a failed save).
There is another brief scare when attempting to rest in Peldvale causes 8 bandits to spawn. Lazramar runs off but is targetted by one bandit, who proceeds to crit him for 16 (!) out of his 30 hitpoints.
Another stern reminder that we are not omnipotent yet...
In other news, Viconia is rescued and sent on her way. The third Plate Mail goes to Kivan (Branwen gets to wear Molkar's Mail of the Dead +2).
So, we arrive at the Bandit Camp. Thankfully it's safe to rest on this map, so we do.
We'll be using the same old tactic as we always do: Web/Entangle/Grease to create a kill zone, a few Fireballs to thin the herd (Venkt, being a Mage, must die quickly, and the more Black Talon Elites we kill in the initial blasts, the better), then just take potshots at whatever survives.
I barely bother with potions/buffs, given that we are fairly high level. Lazramar quaffs a Potion of Defense and Branwen tosses out a Remove Fear, but that's it. As always, we set up in the south-eastern corner of the map. Kivan goes north, shoots a bandit once, and runs back, and the entire camp obediently follows on his tail.
Everything goes as planned. I blow 2 charges each from our Wand of Fire and Necklace of Missiles, killing all the named enemies apart from Ardenor Crush (who arrived a little late to the party), and almost all the Black Talon Elites. There are about 8-10 enemies left that arrived after the others and circumvented our kill zone, but they're mostly Hobgoblins and so are mopped up without much difficulty.
We'll leave looting the camp for when we actually have a thief. For now, we gather what the poor bandits had on them (Full Plate Mail going to Khalid), and head for the main tent. Khalid trips the lightning bolt trap wearing Boots of Grounding, getting hit twice but still having >50% hitpoints left. We gather the scrolls and Legacy of the Masters, and rest/heal up before leaving the camp. Finally, we sell off what loot we did get, including all our scalps. As we leave the party, they are encamped outside the Friendly Arm Inn, preparing to venture deep into the Cloakwood Forest.
Lazramar is now a level 4 Human Necromancer.
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1After beating Drizzt, I do a little tour of the Sword Coast making sure I bought all the XP scrolls from the temples outside of Baldur's Gate. Karkh is next is on the agenda, and I summon a Chaos Elemental to fight him. Chaos Elementals are immune to most elemental damage types. I weave a Bigby's Crushing Hand to help out and Karkh is defeated.
To fight the amazon band in the Valley of the Tombs, I try using a Simulacrum to use Chaotic Weave so I don't have to. It blows itself up after a couple of Farsight weave attempts. A painful reminder to always have Protection from Fire active.
I try weaving a Mislead spell instead but summon a Chaos Elemental by accident. I shrug and send it in to fight the amazons. I follow up with a previously-woven spell sequencer of Greater Malison, Grease, and Slow, followed by a woven Horrid Wilting. The amazons are wiped out.
At the bandit camp, I summon a Greater Fire Elemental to clean up the trash. It plows through all resistance. I bring it inside the tent too.
I go to the Seawatcher area before leaving for Cloakwood to get the CON tome. I weave a Spell Turning to protect against the Sirene's charm spells, and then weave Shapechange for the flesh golems inside the cave. The Iron Golem form actually takes damage from the flesh golems, so I swap to the Greater Wolfwere, which has an insane regeneration rate of 8 HP/sec! I destroy the golems with my claws since I might as well be invulnerable to them.
I roll a crazy-ass wild surge against the Cloakwood wyvern nest. Well, it only looks crazy because of the number of re-rolls, but I basically just cast a Lightning Bolt and Monster Summoning IV, but it sure is fun when something like that happens.
I try another Weave at the Cloakwood mines and its guardians are slaughtered by a Greater Chaos Elemental. I tried to help more but my Weaves just ended up fizzling, so the elemental did most of the work.
The interior of the mine is easy because I just waltz past while invisible. At Davaeorn's sanctum, I weave a Dimension Door to jump over all of his traps.
Dimension Door provides invisibility for 1 second after casting, so I make use of my new Boots of Speed to escape Dave's line of sight. I summon a skeleton warrior to fight him and end up refreshing my repertoire.
The skeleton soaks up Dave's spells and starts dicing him up after his Mirror Images are cut through. I accidentally double Dave's HP with a wild surge and he's beating up my skeleton now. I cast Greater Malison on Dave and try to weave something to disable or kill him. I try Polymorph Other to offset his doubled HP and it takes! I follow up with a wave of my staff.
Onto the big city. I acquire the DEX tome and kill the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse, earning me a long-awaited level.
I choose Mislead as my first 6th level spell and put it to use against the Iron Throne party, leaving my clone near the right-side staircase at the top. I cast a Greater Malison from behind them which causes everyone except the doppelganger to bunch up into a pile. It's the perfect time for a Hold Person scroll. It snares all of them except 2, so I follow up with Web and a Stinking Cloud scroll, incapacitating all of them.
I poke the doppelganger with Darts of Wounding and it walks into the people pile. I try to weave something highly damaging to finish them off with. But "Don't dish it out if you can't take it yourself" is one of the golden rules of being a practitioner of wild magic, so I try to weave a Delayed Blast Fireball. My first couple of attempts fail, so I keep poking them with more darts, but I eventually toast most of them. My Mislead wears off as the AoE cloud spells dissipate, so I finish off Zhalimar Cloudwulfe with a Magic Missile.
I reduce the doppelgangers of the Seven Suns to red smears on the ground with the Iron Golem form and stroll up Ramazith's tower while invisible and assassinate him with Minute Meteors.
I finish up a few more profitable sidequests.
I buy all the XP scrolls in Baldur's Gate including the 6 that Degrodel gives you, for a total of 63. Back in Basilisk Country, I recruit Korax and he aids me in reaching the next level.
Candlekeep beckons.
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 13
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We enter the Cloakwood, where Kivan is substituted for Coran. Aldeth's druids are left alone for the moment; we prioritize killing the Wyverns to keep Coran happy, and will handle the druids on our way back out. Likewise we do not cleanse the spider infestation in the second Cloakwood.
I made a small mistake here: Jaheira inadvertently triggers a Web trap, just as a Huge Spider is approaching.
This could've turned bad if one of the numerous Phase Spiders on the map decided to teleport in (you'll note Lazramar was webbed for a round), but none do, and so we are able to finagle our way out of trouble.
Clearing the Wyvern cave presents no difficulty. Wyverns sure have impressive saves against spell though; they are remarkably hard to land anything on, even when Doomed.
Here we actually exited the Cloakwood to hand in the wyvern head even though it's not strictly necessary.
We take the time to loot the Bandit Camp with the help of Coran, but on our return to Cloakwood, things take a turn for the worse... dun dun DUN!
The Amazons have done a better job positioning themselves than Molkar and friends. I can at best expect to catch two of them in a barrage of death, and I cannot expect to kill both thieves. Hence, I opt to handle this differently. Note that even though the two thieves start off visible, they'll immediately stealth when you unpause.
Funnily enough, when you play a mage PC, the two thieves are actually much more dangerous than the two clerics. The clerics may get a Hold Person or Unholy Smite off, but by now we have the HP to survive the latter, and said clerics will not target someone with good save vs spell with Hold Person (i.e. the mage protagonist). What will kill you is both thieves backstabbing and/or using their very nasty magical ammunition and surprisingly good THAC0 to bring you down in an instant.
Khalid and Jaheira go after the cleric in chainmail, Coran starts pelting the one in plate mail, and Branwen pitches in with a few Command. The goal is to keep both enemy clerics interrupted if possible. Meanwhile, Lazramar runs off to the southeast. True to plan, neither of the stealthed thieves can resist such a juicy target of opportunity, and the log indicates they are indeed moving to backstab Lazramar.
However, once Lazramar is out of room to run, he quaffs an Invisibility potion. Both thieves stop in their tracks, but we've achieved what we wanted: They are now in the same general area, and so are treated to delicious, fiery death. Telka dies instantly; Maneira lives for a moment longer and tries to attack at range, but Coran gets the better of her with a final arrow.
The major threats neutralized, two clerics on their own cannot stand up to the party. The last of the Amazons fall, and their great treasures are ours (they actually have some decent stuff; nice potions and ammunition)!
So, we start making our way back into Cloakwood. We successfully protect Aldeth. I always use Silence 15' Radius for this fight; otherwise you'd probably need to be very good at aiming a Fireball to interrupt the druids, as it's not uncommon (as happened in this picture) for all five of them to try and cast Call Lightning!
If that Silence hadn't landed on every single druid, Lazramar would've had to quaff the last Invisibility potion just to be safe.
Time for another pivotal fight; Drasus and his mercenary band. I cheese this fight just like I will cheese the Hareishan one: Mass Web and Entangle from out of view (after having talked to Drasus so they all turn red), followed by mass Fireballs.
The fight is perfectly doable in the "fair" way, but usually ends up costing several Potions of Magic Blocking, and I'd rather save those for Davaeorn.
We descend into the mines and pick up Yeslick. This was mainly since we had a slot open and it seems fair that he get to witness Davaeorn undone, but he will actually turn out to be quite important in the battle against Davaeorn.
For now, however, Hareishan and her goons are given the same treatment as Drasus.
I actually take the precaution of buffing properly before entering the third level. Lazramar has no defenses except his AC, and there's a small ambush at the start (4 guards, 2 hobgoblins, 1 hobgoblin elite).
With the buffs we smash through quickly. There are now two encounters of note before Davaeorn: The ogre mage (who is too low level to be much of a threat, and falls to a Command):
And Natasha the Bloody (surname given by me). Natasha likes her Invocations... but this is why we picked up the Wand of Summoning. After devastating 7 monsters, she is out of spells, and can be finished off undramatically (you can draw out her guards by having a stealthed character pop in the room: They'll start wandering. Or just let her kill her own guards with Sunfire/Lightning Bolt/Fireball).
We pop down to the fourth level, kill the guard, then retreat to the Wyvern cave area to prepare for the big confrontation with D. Every single time I do this fight, something goes horribly wrong, and I end up surviving by the skin of my teeth. Will this time be different?
No, it will not. My intent is to use the standard tactic of Khalid with PfM and Giant Strength/Heroism/Haste to beat down D, while the rest of the party holds off the reinforcements. Typically I'd prefer having everyone else invisible and just do a massive barrage on Khalid's position once enough reinforcements have arrived, but with a Necromancer, such fancy stunts are beyond us (we only have one Invisibility potion available).
Since Khalid will be on his own, I figure it'll make things smoother if we lay down a bombardment to start the fight. I've no expectation to kill D with it, but maybe we can kill/severely injure his two Battle Horrors. The rest of the party lines up just outside of D's sight. Khalid is fully buffed, Jaheira and Yeslick get a Strength potion each etc. Fire in the hole!
Great success! One Battle Horror goes down, and the other is Badly Injured. D himself is hurt too, but his defenses come up.
Not so great is what happens next. As everyone knows (except me, apparently...) D begins the fight by firing a Stinking Cloud/Web sequencer. Aimed pretty much precisely where the rest of the party is cheering after the good start to the battle.
Craaaaaaaap. Lazramar, Yeslick, Branwen and (worst of all for our damage output) Coran are all incapacitated. By some minor miracle, Jaheira makes both her saves. I immediately have her quaff a Potion of Magic Blocking for 5 rounds of immunity, and send her to occupy D (I do NOT want him to find 2/3 of the party just ripe for a Sunfire). Khalid is doing his best to finish off the Battle Horror in the meantime.
Jaheira actually manages to keep D from noticing the rest of the party for a few rounds. Khalid kills the Battle Horror, and takes over the duty of wailing on D. By now, Branwen and Yeslick have managed their saves and have, along with Jaheira and two of our three Skeleton Warriors (since the entire party except Khalid is at the entrance, I keep the third Skeleton Warrior in the side room, as a decoy if D teleports up there), been sent to intercept the reinforcements that by now are pouring in.
I said Yeslick would turn out to be important, and he well and truly is. Jaheira really can't do much on her own, but Branwen and Yeslick toss out Hold Person and Commands like nobody's business. They succeed in locking down almost the entirety of the first two enemy waves like this. Finally, Lazramar and Coran make it out of the disablers and join the fray. The reinforcements are now woefully outmatched.
You'll note Coran has taken a good bit of damage (fortunately I had him quaff a Potion of Fortitude before starting the fight). He caught the fringe of a Fireball from D. If Lazramar had been just a smidge farther south, he would've caught it too...
But best not to dwell on such things. The situation is now finally under control. A third enemy wave arrives but is Horror'd into oblivion.
Soon after, D has exhausted all of his spells, and meets his end.
That could've easily gone bad. But it didn't!
We thank our lucky stars, flood the mines, and leave the Cloakwood (we'll come back to clear the spiders in a little bit). Baldur's Gate is now open to us. On the way to the Sorcerous Sundries, we thank Yeslick heartily for his invaluable service, and replace him with Quayle. Our party is now in its final configuration.
Lazramar is now a Level 5 Human Necromancer.
@aldain