Bronin developed into what I called "the Ultimate Tank Fighter" with heaps of HP and excellent saves. I used him mainly as a ranged throwing axe guy when I got suitable returning throwing axes.
There were 134 days on the game clock by the time I finished bg1 (with Ajantis, Yeslick, Kivan, Imoen and Quayle). Coran got chunked by Slythe. Unfortunately, Khalid and Jaheira left permanently during chapter four when I removed them from the party at the Friendly Arm Inn. Imoen got killed twice and Khalid once before this time but at least I could resurrect these NPCs.
I was more efficient in bg2, finishing the saga with the game clock at about 79 or 80 days I think. I haven't checked the save game. I had Keldorn, Anomen, Nalia, Imoen and Jaheira in my party. From memory, the only one who died in Bg2 was Nalia (once, by a Lavok Horrid Wilting). I reckon Keldorn was the MVP of bg2. He was using Foebane +5 and had an AC of -12 with Shuruppak's Plate Armor, Darksteel Shield and Gauntlets of Dexterity. Items such as the Amulet of Spell Warding also meant he had saves vs spell at 1 with Foebane before quaffing any potions. Life draining Greater Whirlwinds with him were awesome. His Dispel and True Sight was probably life saving too (e.g. in the Portal Maze vs the Alufiends/Seccubi).
If there was anymore interest I could add stuff or answer questions. By the way, I got lucky with Siege of Dragonspear (which I am still in the middle of my first playthrough for having played the rest of the saga before I picked up siege). Refer to my previous comment if interested.
Lazramar, Human Necromancer, BG1EE Update 4 Previous update found here Next update found here
Alright! We have a full party to play with, and lots of things left unattended to. After raiding the Sorcerous Sundries for scrolls and scribing said scrolls, I opt to do one thing in Baldur's Gate before clearing the wilderness areas we've so far left alone: Namely, grabbing the Ogre Strength Gauntlets for Khalid. Finally I do not have to juggle how many healing potions he carries to keep him from being encumbered.
This is another place where you need to exercise a little care with a mage protagonist. Desreta begins the fight by quaffing an Invisibility potion, and can (and will) deliver some pretty hefty backstabs given a chance. Lazramar is of course prepared for such shenanigans: A Detect Invisibility swifty reveals her, followed by a double Hold Person, one of which sticks. Without her companion, Vay-Ya stands little chance, especially since she fails her save against Command (and with Quayle + Branwen in the party, we have a lot of those available).
Next, we clear Ankhegs (prodigious amounts of Sleep and Command make it trivial, but by now we could just brute-force it without any trouble) and the Wolves at the Beregost Temple (Web and some Skull Traps/Holy Smite). Jaheira gets the Ankheg Plate Mail, and I am considering keeping her in that rather than Full Plate Mail; the AC difference is somewhat neglible and this way I do not have to always worry about her becoming encumbered.
The Basilisks of course get a visit. Korax obediently stuns Mutamin, and then stays Dire Charmed just long enough to finish off every single Basilisk on the map with the help of two Skeleton Warriors (I had 2x PfP memorized as backup if necessary). Also interesting is that Quayle's innate Invisibility power does not have the listed duration; it ran out after what I estimate to be 2 ingame hours (could be more, could be less, but certainly not the 12 hours it says in the description). Good to keep in mind I suppose.
I of course provoke Kirian and friends into a fight. Usually I err on the side of caution with Web, but for some reason I didn't memorize it this time. Instead I just healed up my somewhat battered Skeleton Warriors (yep.. you can heal them), sent them in, and everyone just charged. Works fine, as Kirian is really too low level to be any threat, much like their cleric.
Next up was Durlag's. Not all of it, of course! But the upper floors and the second underground level with Fear, Love, Pride and Avarice. The Battle Horrors and Doom Guards are handled via Scorcher from Wand of Fire, a Wand of Missiles and some scrolls of LMD (they don't have tremendous amounts of hitpoints). Most of the above ground levels are simple enough; just Ghasts. I had Khalid quaff a Potion of Freedom as they paralyze on hit, but really, you can get by without it. The Basilisks on the balcony are handled by Khalid and Coran under PfP.
There are two noteworthy fights above ground: The Ghost Mage and Kirinhale. The Ghost Mage is handled via summoned Skeleton Warriors. Unfortunately, this time said Ghost opts to precast Fire Shield: Red instead of Fire Shield: Blue, meaning the first Skeleton Warrior beats himself to death on the shield, even though resisting and/or being immune to everything else the Ghost throws at him. At which point the bloody Ghost starts wandering toward the party, for some reason ignoring the Skeleton Warrior I sent at him. Quick, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!
Phew. I was mildly worried (he was casting some Invocation when he died), but we managed to put him down before he did any harm. Kirinhale is handled by Khalid (assisted by 2x Potion of Magic Protection for 100% Magic Resistance, Fire Giant Strength, Heroism and Haste), with everyone else either Invisible thanks to Quayle, or Sanctuaried. Kirinhale lasts a little longer than usual and has time to Teleport twice, but ultimately cannot do anything against Khalid. The Staff Spear +2 is ours, going to Jaheira.
Finally we clear out the second underground level (apart from the dwarf warders). The only noteworthy thing that happens is that a Greater Doppleganger drops a scroll of Invisibility 10' Radius. Those who followed the exploits of my conjurer Aldain knows how incredibly useful this spell is in BG2EE with SCS, and now Lazramar cannot scribe it. Sob! Otherwise we just soldier on. Everything down here is pure melee, and no status effects apart from Poison from a few Phase Spiders. We gather all the loot and retreat back above ground.
Alright, time for a big sweep to tie up all loose ends. We start with the Helm of Defense. Quayle is ordered to pucker up and take one for the team, but to my great amusement, Shoal refuses to speak with him! Poor Quayle... Coran does the deed instead, the woefully outmatched Droth is slain, and we have our helm (we of course talk to Arkand, clear the ogres and get the Magic Protection potion from the Surgeon while in the area).
Next, the Siren Coast. I actually remember to memorize a few Sleep, which makes battling the Hobgoblin horde much less of an exercise in patience. The first group of Sirines are handled by Web + ranged fire (with a few Detect Invisibility prepared in case one of them gets free and goes invisible, but none do). For the second group, no less than four Skeleton Warriors are buffed and sent ahead. And yes, that's a MGoI around Lazramar. The Sirines actually recognize he's thereby immune to their Dire Charms and try to kiss the skeletons to death instead of casting anything. That didn't work out too well for them.
As expected, the pirate cave poses zero difficulty. Coran with Arrows of Fire and Lazramar helping out with Melf's Minute Meteors means no Flesh Golem lives to reach us, and the Constitution tome goes to Lazramar (so he can later give up a point of Constitution in Spellhold).
We conclude by saving the (never seen) boy from the worg pack. Lazramar is now a level 7 Human Necromancer; unfortunately his L4 spellbook is somewhat lackluster, containing only Fire Shield: Red and Minor Globe of Invulnerability. This will very soon change: Divinations reveal a scroll of Ultimate Arcane Power (tm) located on a frozen island. A visit would seem to be in order...
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.
If it was Phase Spider poison and you bore the full brunt of it, you're very lucky: It deals a total of 100 damage ( 5 hp/second for 20 seconds, https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/390697/#Comment_390697 ). I am very careful about protagonist movement so Lazramar was in no real danger from the Huge Spider: At most it would've had time to kill a few of the NPC's, unless it for some reason decided to ignore the closest webbed enemy. But the Phase Spiders have a tendency to teleport in from across the map when you're caught in a web, often straight to your weakest party member (i.e. Lazramar), and their poison would make very short work of a disabled Lazramar.
If Lazramar makes it as far as SoD, I'll exercise more care against anything that has a status effect on hit. Probably bombing it to bits before it gets close enough to become a threat... we'll have Skull Trap and Cloudkill available by the bucketload by then.
I know it was doing 5hp/second but I quaffed antidote after escaping web. I don't remember if Huge Spiders also do 5hp/second but I suspect they do. Not sure how long the web effect could have lasted here, but charname also had good saves vs spell (but someone else had the Ring of Free Action!). Yeah, I think of D&D as a game where if your main character is not allowed to die, I should have a fighter type I also tend to play as the pre-generated characters. Good luck with your Lazramar run though You like Khalid too, I like him.
I arrive at Candlekeep. First order of business is to buy the XP scrolls there and then kill Koveras. I lower his magic resistance, cast Greater Malison on him, then stun him with the Wand of Paralysis. The only damage type that Koveras is not immune to is poison, so I stab him with the Dagger of Venom to help drain his health. But I realize he's got a lot of HP and my debuffs on him won't last forever. I try the Wand of Polymorphing and it works on the second try. In this squirrelified state, Koveras can now be damaged normally. +15k XP get!
In Candlekeep's Catacombs, I use a Minor Globe scroll to ward off the traps guarding both stat tomes. A lot of traps in BG1 can be no-selled this way, including most traps in Durlag's Tower. I weave a Greater Fire Elemental to my side, who is most instrumental in clearing these areas.
I get my fire elemental to follow me across areas, so he helps me kill the greater doppelganger and his goons and he destroys Prat's group almost by himself.
Once out of the catacombs, I spend the last of the XP scrolls but they aren't enough to redeem a level with. Onto Durlag's Tower, I pick up the third WIS tome.
In the dungeon's first level, I weave a Greater Earth Elemental to help. It kills the Greater Doppelgangers in the library room, which gives me enough XP for my next level. For my first 7th level spell, I choose Mordy's Sword. Project Image was tempting, but I needed a reliable summon more because getting through two luck gates to summon an elemental (the wild surge then the mental combat) is a chore.
The rest of this floor is cleared out by using assorted summons. For the four guardians, I decide to gate in a glabrezu. Surely it would be enough to kill them.
Only Fear is left standing, but since the wardstone to unlock the next floor was dropped, I pick it up and venture forth into the next level, ignoring Fear. While weaving Shades to fight the Greater Doppelganger in Fuernebol's archery range, I get a neat wild surge. They all get killed by it anyway so I finish it off with a frost wand.
The rest of the level goes smoothly with assistance from a Greater Chaos Elemental. On the 3rd level, I notice something different. The Air Aspect has dropped a cloak... I'll have to identify it later since my lore isn't good enough and I don't carry Identify scrolls with me since I have Tweaks Anthology installed before the Chaos Sorcerer kit.
Now it's time for the chess game. I weave Protection from Lightning on myself, then cast Mislead and park my clone in a corner. I cast Greater Malison which affects the entire enemy force.
I follow up with a Chaos scroll and it sends most of them into disarray. A couple of the knights venture out and discover my clone, becoming Queens by reaching my side of the board. I didn't have time to weave a summon and couldn't risk weaving a damage spell, so I decided to use the board's lightning traps against them. I dance all over the board and lightning's shooting out everywhere, killing my opponents. I spot the King and guide the lightning over to him, which fries him and wins me the match.
The 4th level goes as planned and I reach the Demon Knight's sanctum. I buff with SI: Abjuration and Spell Turning to avoid his Remove Magic and Power Word, Stun spells respectively.
I weave Shades to swamp the demon knight in summons while I weave a Greater Fire Elemental afterward, but it decides not to help me. I go invisible, reposition myself, and weave a Greater Chaos Elemental instead. This one decides to help and valiantly fights the pair. It gets beaten up pretty badly when I weave Monster Summoning VI, and those summons aren't any help either. The demon knight tears through my summons and I weave Monster Summoning VII. A fire salamander and carrion crawler finish it off.
After leaving Durlag's Tower, I have the mysterious cloak identified. Apparently it can be combined with other Chaos Sorcerer artifacts...
Kristin and Slythe are dealt with and I attend Sarevok's coronation. I summon a skeleton warrior, accidentally wild surge in a friendly Chaos Elemental, and summon a platoon of gnolls with the Monster Summoning Wand. I haste all of us and seed the crowd of nobles with my summons. Once they turn, I cast Improved Invisibility on Liia and then use a Spell Sequencer of Greater Malison + Grease + Slow to prevent the mirrorkin from moving too much. They chip away at the gnoll platoon so I use another wand charge for reinforcements. Soon the doppelgangers are all killed.
Sarevok's guardian party is crushed so now its time to deal with the big man himself. I cast SI: Abjuration to prevent Semaj from dispelling my buffs. I summon my Mordy Sword where Semaj teleports to to keep him occupied, then cast Mislead and park my clone in the bottom left corner.
I cast Greater Malison on Sarevok and consider weaving Incendiary Cloud to roast him, Tazok, and Angelo. But I decide to only kill Sarevok. I cast Unluck on Sarevok, putting his saving throw penalty at -5. I expend the Wand of Polymorphing's 3 remaining charges and it takes on the last one! Sarevok dies instantly!
Lazramar, Human Necromancer, BG1EE Update 5 Previous update found here Next update found here
This was a session of tying up loose ends, and attaining the Holy Grail of BG1 spells.
First: The party finishes cleansing every nook and cranny of the sword coast. Every area around Nashkel that we skipped early on is revisited, though we really need neither the loot nor the paltry experience at this point. Sendai, Vax and Zal, assorted Xvarts, even Narcillicus.. they all fall, by little more than brute force.
Our triumphant return to Cloakwood is marred by proof that yes, I am incapable of understanding that there are web traps there. I take my revenge at being humiliated thus by roasting Centeol and her pets (Free Action/Protection from Fire on both Khalid and Jaheira).
Urg, Firewine Bridge. It's there. We have to clear it. It goes fairly smoothly for once; Lazramar catches an arrow at some point, but we're past the point where a single critical spells the doom of anyone. Quayle has most of the arrogance burned out of him, as Lendarn happily uses the scrolls he's carrying to help kill the Skeleton Warriors arrayed against him (sadly, he fails the save against his own Stinking Cloud and goes down in short order).
The SCS-introduced Wolf of Ulcaster actually requires a modicum of preparation. It has four area-of-effect Howls: One dispels, one causes Fear, a third reduces saving throws, and the fourth (triggered when it's at low hitpoints) spawns a handful of Ghouls. It also causes Hold on hit (Free Action counters it), and as long as the wolf lives, there will be periodic Dread Wolf spawns coming to reinforce it. We simply keep several Remove Fear on hand, summon a few Skeleton Warriors to hold off the reinforcements, and hit the Wolf with every fire spell we've got. It goes down without much trouble.
The last bastion of ne'er-do-wells on the Sword Coast is the Red Wizard area. We clear the spiders (having realized my limitations, I just let an invisible Quayle move ahead of the party and trigger every web trap), and then prepare for the wizards. Overprepare, it seems, as they fold almost immediately. See that poison damage Denak is taking? I put Coran's last pip in darts, giving us someone reasonably competent to use all those Darts of Wounding and Stunning. It's actually working out rather well.
These little side excursions are all well and good, but that Stoneskin scroll... I can wait no longer! The party prepares as best it can, and are whisked away to the Ice Island.
Though we are capable (with Quayle and Branwen we have exactly five L3 cleric spell slots) to summon a full complement of Skeleton Warriors, I opt for Wands of Summoning to blunt the razor-sharp edge of Andris' and friends spell arsenal. It works rather well, and as usual, they split up. Marcelus wanders into the party and drops in no time flat from a concentrated barrage, Beyn blundered off somewhere to the south, and after a little while, Andris also finds the party. We wail on him (he has nothing powerful left to cast), and he teleports away. After a few rounds, we see him activate his second Contingency (the first being the teleport). We spent these rounds buffing as well as we could in preparation. Andris teleports back in, and it's on!
We could've certainly done better. Andris is buffed to the hilt when he shows back up, and we have trouble hurting him. The party scatters as best as possible under the circumstances, but Andris still tags Jaheira and Coran with a Sunfire (both had Protection from Fire from a potion up.. I had a feeling Andris would go with Sunfire when he didn't turn toward any character while casting an Invocation). Back at it, and Andris lets loose a Lightning Bolt at an unprotected Khalid (he exchanged Boots of Grounding for Boots of Speed back at the Cloakwood Mine). Thankfully, it only deals some 22ish damage, and doesn't bounce. Finally, the dread wizard falls, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
The rest of the dungeon goes smoothly (nothing is remotely as dangerous as Andris). We run into Beyn in a side corridor, and he has just enough time for a Melf's Acid Arrow before dropping. Also, I couldn't be bothered with tanking Garan's Confusion spells, so I just bombarded him. There truly is always a number of Fireballs against which there can be no defense. Finally, Cuchol doesn't buff with Protection from Normal Missiles, and so is treated to Darts of Stunning (he did not much care for them).
Alright, we're almost through, just Tellan and Dezkiel left. Tellan unwittingly helps us by having the weirdest script ever. You can talk him into helping you escape (though by the time you meet him there's only 3 Winter Wolves and Dezkiel standing in your way), but he'll only agree to throw darts at your enemies, conserving his spells in case you turn on him. Funny thing is, even if you provoke him into fighting you instead, if there's no enemy in sight, he'll seek out the nearest Winter Wolf and start wailing on it. In fact, he'll keep trying to kill the Winter Wolves to the exclusion of anything else, even renewing his defenses or attacking the Skeleton Warriors slowly carving their way through his Stoneskin. Silly gnome.
We'd have been fine even if his script hadn't bugged out, but still.. Alright! DEZKIEL! I've come for the scroll cloak!
Yes! YES! POWER! UNLIMITED POOOOOOWER! Ahem.
We teleport back to the mainland. I opt to do a few small quests in Baldur's Gate to finish off the session. The mages in Sorcerous Sundries are webbed and fireballed (we just fought an island of mages in mostly stand-up fashion, I think we've earned this), and relieved of their Spider Spawn scroll. We also solve the Thieves Guild quest the non-violent way (it feels wrong to just kill the three mages; heck, the whole quest basically feels wrong, but what don't you do for a little bit of XP and a Tome of Dexterity). Or as non-violent as it gets, as Resaar still tries to kill you.
Finally, we free the nymph and rub Ramazith's nose in it. Ramazith seems to be a Necromancer in SCS, and so (sorry Lazramar) is quite weak given that he lacks proper defenses due to not having L6 spells. A few Darts of Wounding from Coran is all it takes.
With a mighty Intelligence of 19, Lazramar raids the Sorcerous sundries for Potions of Genius and every single scroll he has not yet scribed. And scribe them he does.
As we leave our party, they can be found in the Elfsong Tavern, preparing to sweep through the city of Baldur's Gate, leaving no quest nor villain undisturbed. Lazramar is now a level 8 Human Necromancer.
Lazramar, Human Necromancer, Final update Previous update found here
No! Even Ultimate Arcane Power could not save Lazramar in the end. But at least I learned something new about one of the improved SCS fights in the process... but we'll get to that.
As planned, the party breezed through Baldur's Gate. Nothing could stand up to them at this point, and Coran made continued good use of Darts of Stunning/Wounding. There were no real tactics anymore, just buff and charge.
So, following my standard modus operandi, the party went to clear Durlag's before dealing with the Iron Throne. We had previously gone through all the above ground floors and the entire level with the warders, save the warders themselves.
This is where the first mistake occured. We had plenty of summons available (6x Animate Dead), but I didn't want to head outside after the fight and try to rest until the gnoll ambushes would let us, but instead push deeper into the tower immediately. Nor did I want everyone to become fatigued after being Hasted. So, we went with a budget version of buffing and summoning: Only three Skeleton Warriors (two of which were summoned by L6/L6 Quayle, so they were the 3 HD version), and no Haste.
Alright, even without full buffing beforehand and too few summons, we should be able to wing it, being a reasonably high level party. Our tiny wall of summons is sent to where Pride pops, and Khalid/Jaheira go down and talk to Love. The warders spawn.
Khalid and Jaheira do a good job of killing Love quickly. Love gets off a Dire Charm (Khalid popped Greenstone Amulet), and a Slow, which unfortunately affects Jaheira, but the warder drops right after. 1 down, 3 to go.
Meanwhile, however, as both our frontliners are occupied, Branwen tries to hold off Fear in melee. The second mistake occurs here: I did not realize that Fear requires magical weapons to hit, so Coran spends 3-4 rounds plinking away with Fine arrows until I notice this and switch him to Arrows of Fire.
This is where everything falls to pieces. Fear regenerates (quite quickly too), so we're not really doing anything to him, and he's starting to hurt Branwen. Avarice has gone invisible and run off somewhere. But Pride... bloody Pride has finished cutting down our woefully inadequate summons and now heads straight for our weak backline consisting of Quayle, Lazraman and Coran.
Khalid and Jaheira intercept Pride and pull Fear off Branwen (Branwen casting Sanctuary to get some breathing room). And Khalid just gets DEVASTATED by Pride and Fear: Pride hits every single swing for 25 damage, and Fear isn't doing too poorly either. I'm trying desperately to kill off at least one of them with everything and anything I've got, while Khalid is forced to peel off to try and recover a little with the puny 9 HP healing potions we have. Pride turns his tender mercies on (slowed) Jaheira, who in turn has to take off running (slowly, being slowed). I guess Avarice was just waiting for his moment, since he promptly backstabs the greatly weakened Khalid for 16 damage. Which was just about enough to kill everyone's favourite coward.
So, things aren't looking too great. But we should be able to turn this around, surely? We HAVE to kill something to stand a chance though. All efforts are focused on bringing Fear down. He drops to Near Death, just as Pride kills off Jaheira (again, she was Slowed, and Pride is hasted, it was a foregone conclusion how that was going to play out).
And here... here comes the lesson. Fear turns around, and fires what I in my ignorance thought to be a projectile causing Fear on a failed save at Coran. This was incorrect. It actually Holds you on a failed save. And Coran, of course, fails his save. We're now down to Lazramar, Quayle and Branwen, all of whom have clouded auras. Pride moves up along with Fear and takes a big chunk out of Coran. The correct move here would've been to recognize defeat and either quaff an Invisibility potion (I had enough left for all three mobile party members), or have Quayle cast Invisibility 10' Radius to try and save us all, including Coran.
I of course make the incorrect move. Everyone keeps blasting Fear. But he just will not die. Instead, he fires another projectile. At Lazramar. Who fails his save and is Held.
Crappity crap crap. It is little comfort that Fear finally dies a few seconds after from stacking MAA damage. Pride finishes off Coran and goes after the held Lazraman. Lazraman has a full Stoneskin up. Quayle moves up and starts casting Invisibility 10' Radius, but he takes half a round to even get started due to clouding his aura uselessly killing off Fear. Half a round to wait, plus a casting time of 9. There are no other options: Quayle hasn't memorized the single target Invisibility and his innate ability is self only. Can Lazramar survive?
It's not even close. Pride even has time for an interrupting attack on Quayle after chopping Lazramar in twain before the game ends.
Pride goeth before the fall (literally, in this case). I'm certain a full cadre of summons and Haste would've allowed us to get through without any real difficulty. But in an effort to save some minor annoyance at rest-interrupting Gnolls, the run has ended. Curses!
The Fear thing was stupid in hindsight. I seem to recall having fallen prey to his Paralysis attack before, but I usually kill him off so quickly it's been a very long time since any party members actually got hit by it and failed their save. Time to figure out what to try next. I'll probably dial back heavily on the exposition of the BG1 part of the run: I'm sure it's not terribly interesting to have tactics explained in detail when those tactics, in 98% of the cases, amount to "Cast Web and use Wands of Fire".
For SoD's intro dungeon, I use my first Protection from Undead scroll. I weave fire elementals to help, but they get destroyed by the Shadowed Souls' HP transfer power. Mordy's Sword is not an option because of that, so I rely upon woven Incendiary Clouds instead. They are super effective, but my Flaming Fist backup gets incinerated because they wander into it while the cloud was still lingering. Korlasz and her group are defeated this way.
I weave more Incendiary Clouds in the Coldhearth dungeon, but I suffer a wild surge casting one of them, causing a cow to land on a pair of Mutated Crawlers sneaking up behind me, but a cow also slams into Brother Deepvein who was more than 100 feet away! This brings back painful memories of Spaz the Warlock's run but I resolve not to suffer the same fate!
I weave Spell Turning on myself and then cast Mislead to deal with the dwarves of Dumathoin. Greater Malison, Slow, and a scroll of Chaos incapacitate them. A wand of lightning finishes off Brother Deepvein. I venture further into the crypt and a Greater Shadow dies immediately upon my transition for some reason, giving me 3000 free XP and a level up.
Using more PfU scrolls, I burn the undead hordes with more Incendiary Clouds. I reach Coldhearth and give him the 5 keepers' amulets.
For the fight at the bridge across the Winding Water, I try my Spell Sequencer filled with Greater Malison + Slow + Grease, but it wild surges and causes Silence. I didn't even know that sequencers could wild surge...
With that over with, I help kill the Tsolak and get Takos' 3 heirlooms, but I discover something in the "random" encounter with orcs fighting the trolls.
I escape the trolls with a potion of invisibility, deciding to experiment with the two artifacts later, putting them in my bag of holding. Next is the temple of Bhaal taken over by Cyricists taken over by a Mind Flayer. I kill Morentherene with some throwing daggers.
In the fight with Ziatar, I summon a Greater Chaos Elemental but one of the mages casts Spook on me after I was debuffed by Greater Malison and I get panicked. I run out of the room and regain my composure shortly after arriving at the cages at the temple's entrance.
I return to the fight and strip the blue mage with a Spell Thrust then command the elemental to confuse the mage, which is successful. The elemental and I both concentrate on the mage and he falls, then we turn our attention to Ziatar. I cast Greater Malison on her and finish her off with a Wand of Lightning.
For the Neothelid fight, I drink a potion of clarity and cast Mislead, leaving my clone outside the doors. I summon a Mordy Sword to distract the swords the Neothelid summons, then lower its magic resistance a couple times. I debuff it with Greater Malison and resolve to end the fight in one shot. With Mislead active, I don't have to worry about killing myself by accident as I try to weave Finger of Death. The first few fizzle, but this one works!
Akanna and her Aerial Servants are dealt with. Taking on the Shadow Aspect solo on Insane is suicidal so I ignore it. Instead, I summon a Projected Image who casts Mislead and then Farsight so we can spy on Darskhelin's party. My image casts Dimension Door to teleport over there, then bombs them with a woven Incendiary Cloud, killing most of them. The only survivors are the katana-wielding fighter and a mage, plus the mind flayer himself.
I summon a Mordy Sword to deal with them. The sword destroys the Mind Flayer and the fighter while I deal with the mage.
With the way into Bridgefort secured, I pull my two artifacts out from my bag of holding. I combine the Circlet with the Cloak...
Combining the artifacts together makes them stronger, and in the case of the circlet, it offers an additional immunity to confusion. Poison Mist is the second power available to the combined artifacts, which is an AoE poison damage cloud with the possibility to poison opponents on a failed save vs. death. The artifacts can still change their form even while combined! Transforming equipment is my jam!!
In the crusader camp outside Bridgefort, I free Dorn for 6000 XP and then decide I want to just skip the siege of Bridgefort. I uncover enough fog of war to make the jump with a Dimension Door, then jump over the barrels placed on the bridge.
The cutscene on the bridge plays out normally and I put the dusty chicken in the well for free XP. Now in chapter 10, I take on the easiest sidequests because I can't stand the sidequest hell in the coalition camp. I jump over the crusader barrier with another woven Dimension Door and do stuff there.
In the Underground River area, I open the gate leading beneath Dragonspear with Knock, but it causes the crusaders guarding it to go hostile. I back off and go invisible, then jump over them again with a woven Dimension Door. In Dragonspear's basement, I use invisibility to free Daeros and poison the crusaders' food and water. In a safe corner, I weave another Dimension Door to hop across the locked fence.
I buff myself with Protection from Fire, Mislead, and weave Spell Turning, then take on the entirety of the basement's forces. I aggro them and then weave a couple of Incendiary Clouds near the fence, toasting everyone dumb enough to try to get through the plot-locked fence. The crusaders can't touch me and neither can Hephernaan or his toadies. Any reinforcements that teleport in are quickly roasted alive. It's wholesale slaughter! I level up and choose Horrid Wilting as my first level 8 spell.
Next is the necromancer cabal in Kanaglym. I cast Farsight and then summon a Mordy Sword and have it attack Kherriun. I follow up with an Oil of Burning and the ghost jar shatters, causing Halatathlaer to join the fight on my side. I exterminate the mage group next to Kherriun with Horrid Wilting. The dragon takes care of the rest.
With the barrel of Bwoosh placed, its time to leave and see if I can withstand the sieges of the coalition camp and Dragonspear. The trolls and ogres are killed using another Sequencer of Greater Malison + Slow + Grease, which might as well have kept them rooted to their spots. I follow up with another woven Incendiary Cloud.
For the mage group, Horrid Wilting dehydrates most of the mages, leaving them easy prey for the wizard slayers.
I ask Dosia to give me a rest, then weave another Sequencer with my usual combo. I unleash it upon the warrior priests and include a scroll of Chaos as well, rendering them utterly helpless.
Onto the fight with the strongest invaders, I cast Mislead and park my clone near the camp's bonfire. I debuff them with Greater Malison and follow up with Horrid Wilting, culling the weaker mooks and heavily damaging the named goons. Then I learn that Auziel the thief is unkillable. She won't die no matter how much damage she takes. Soon all the named goons are dead.
After the siege is over, I rest and recover Stoneskin and my Sequencer. At the Siege of Dragonspear, I cast Mislead and keep my clone outside the castle walls. I use my sequencer which affects most of the crusaders and follow up with Horrid Wilting, devastating their forces. The rest I clean up with Potions of Firebreath.
Ashatiel challenges me and I'm sure she's going to immediately declare it unfair, but she doesn't call me out for using invisibility because I was still under Mislead when she challenged me. I paralyze her with a wand of paralysis, then finish her off at my leisure with Darts of Biting.
Down to Hell we go. I thought I could just stroll past the devils with invisibility, but apparently Lemures can see through and dispel illusions. I use a wand of monster summoning to distract them for a round while I summon a Mordy Sword. The sword has its work cut out for it!
I would try to summon more competent help but I can't spend 3 rounds standing helplessly in mental combat. I summon a skeleton warrior back near the stairs while the devils hit Mordy's Sword. To help out, I use Wand of Lightning charges and eventually the devils are all defeated. I have to do this a second time with Thrix's goons.
Upon the elevator, I'm careful not to expend any spells and rely on scrolls and wands instead. I use a couple of monster summoning wand charges and a scroll of Melf's Meteors to deal with the devils. Once the long pause indicating the auto-save occurs, I buff with SI: Abjuration, Protection from Fire, and a potion of magic resistance, conferring 100% MR to myself.
At the top, I get Caelar to join me but let her AI control her. Here we go... I cast Chaos Shield and try to weave a Time Stop. It takes on the first try.
I run up behind Belhifet and cast Mirror Image on myself, then cancel into Chaotic Weave and try for Imprisonment. I have to cancel a few weaves because Imprisonment doesn't appear on the list, but it finally does after about 4 fruitless weaves. My first Imprisonment fizzles, so I try weaving it again. The second time also fails. I only have 1 round left in Time Stop, so I cast PfMW and then try to weave Imprisonment again. Just after Time Stop wears off, it takes! Thank you Ring of Wizardry!
With Belhifet imprisoned, the devils start teleporting away and Caelar and I free Aun Argent. I'm actually surprised Caelar is still alive.
I rolled up a wizard slayer recently for this challenge and have had 3 attempts with him. I've played in BG1 a lot with wizard slayers before and only need a small amount of luck to get through that. However, given I have yet to complete SoD with any of the characters used in this challenge despite multiple attempts, that's clearly more of an obstacle. I don't think an unreasonable amount of luck would be needed even for that though if I can avoid mistakes, so decided to have one more attempt at this character for now and document this one.
In Candlekeep I bought basic equipment, including a ninjato to work with my scimitar proficiency (the advantage of that is that it never breaks). After leaving there, Imoen, Xzar and Montaron thought that the fact their equipment is of no interest to me might save them for once - but were disappointed . Then it was on to shoot down Shoal and pick up a couple of levels.
HPs for the previous 3 wizard slayers were good, but the 15 gained for 2 levels this time was disappointing.
After calming Marl down, finding a book for Firebead and shooting Neera, I moved on down to Nashkel to get the ankheg armor. Shooting Oopah and Vitiare there put me close to another level and returning Mr Colquetle's amulet was enough to get that - again a disappointing roll with only another 8 HPs though.
A belt was retrieved from an ogre on the way to the FAI. There, I was prepared to nip into the temple to avoid Tarnesh's spells, but a guard finished him off before there was any need for that.
As I can't use magic belts, Unshey got his returned.
Further north some fishermen were killed in order to return a bowl to Tenya. The ankheg near to her was also attacked. With HPs being so low that was a slight threat, but the map edge was available if retreat had been required - which it wasn't.
Reputation was boosted by encounters with Ardrouine, then Charleston Nib. I left the idol undisturbed for the moment, but still got enough XP from the latter for another level - picking up a slightly better 11 HPs this time.
Brage gave me a lift back to Nashkel, where Oublek provided a further reputation increase. Shooting Greywolf and taking Samuel back to the FAI then pushed that on to 20. To get slightly better prices I also went through the Cloud Peaks to pick up the charisma tome.
On the way back to civilization I shot up a polar bear for a merchant just in case I find a use for some furry boots.
Encounters in the Cloud Peaks had included pinching some magic arrows off Sendai's archer friends and those were used to get some quick XP from the golems at High Hedge before talking to Thalantyr for the first time.
Some spiders, Mirianne, Karlat and Zhurlong all provided some easy XP at Beregost to push me up to level 6, with a very welcome further 15 HPs.
Chores in the town for now were finished by shooting Silke. Four straight hits meant 100% spell failure to shut down her spell-casting,
meaning it wasn't necessary to do any dodging (this is the unmodded game - SCS offers a greater challenge ). Purchases there included full plate and a +1 short bow. The other item bought for now was Buckley's Buckler from the FAI - it will be a while before I pick up the constitution tome, so that's handy to activate constitution regeneration.
Moving on to the basilisk area, I followed Korax round as he paralyzed the basilisks. He also dealt with Mutamin
before trying his luck with Kirian's party. He didn't last long there, but did help take Peter to near death. That tempted me to try and finish him off and, even after missing a shot, I didn't leave the area. Fortunately Peter chose not to follow when he held me here.
There was no mistake with the next shot
and Lindin was swiftly despatched as well. I left the area before tackling Kirian to give her a chance to get mirror image back - she was then hit 4 times before finishing another spell. Her death got me to level 7
and another good roll of 14 HPs got me back up to the theoretical average of 78 HPs (though that's still pretty poor by EE standards).
Before going to the Nashkel Mines I shot Bentan for his PfM scroll, then got caught stealing in Beregost. That set me up to get Bhaal LMD, but first Mulahey was in the way. There were no problems getting to him, but my placement was fractionally out in dragging him towards the entrance. I didn't want to get too close to that, as in that case coming back in after running away means you'll be blocked from leaving again by kobolds and skeletons (you can reset those by resting, but to do that safely with a wizard slayer means going all the way back to the top level of the mine). In this case though I wasn't quite close enough and Mulahey's supporters appeared blocking my exit. That led to me being hit by rigid thinking, but I'd already started attacking the cleric and he died before I decided to stop attacking.
The others needed criticals to hit me and only managed 2 HPs of damage between them.
Outside the mine I tried to drag Telka away from the other amazons, but all of them came together and I ran away. A trip back saw LMD come in handy to interrupt one spell as Zeela and Maneira died
and a further trip finished off the other two.
Nimbul chased me into a shop, where he did quite well to get one magic missile off - but that was no threat.
Tranzig doesn't have the same kind of protection against missiles and his spell-casting was shut down before he could try any attacking spells.
At the Bandit Camp Taurgosz got a couple of whacks in before expiring, while his bandits didn't even manage that. After resting, Britik and Raemon followed me out of the tent to their doom, while Venkt stayed inside to wait his turn.
Mulahey's boots ensured there was no danger in looting the tent (at least not to me).
With reputation still at 9, resting gave me a first Bhaal horror.
I went to sell some bandit scalps and realized I'd forgotten to activate Officer Vai - losing the opportunity for a bit of reputation there as well as unimportant cash. On to the Cloakwood where the first area was skipped. The second area is a potential problem for the wizard slayer due to the web traps. For the first of those it's necessary to check if there is a spider within sight range before activating it. The second trap problem is near the ettercaps. The first 4 of those can be pulled back without getting close to the trap, but the last one only appears when the trap is triggered if you're moving directly towards it. It is possible though to skirt that trap in order to get to the ettercap (I don't show the location of traps when playing, but have put it on this screenshot to show where you can go).
I wanted Spider's Bane for the free action, so pulled enemies out of the nest to deal with them in small groups.
There was no further action until the final Cloakwood area. Bhaal horrors were used there to split up Drasus & co. Drasus himself was hard to hit with arrows and put up a good fight once he'd recovered from horror, but eventually fell in time.
Inside the mine I did the minimum fighting necessary on the way down to find Davaeorn. The battle horrors were pulled back separately to the entrance to be meleed
and, after resting, Davaeorn was attacked. He was lucky to be able to get off both a lightning bolt and fireball before being shut down, but that was then his lot.
After going all the way out of the mine to rest and get a second Bhaal horror, Davaeorn's treasure was looted and the mine flooded.
In the City I picked up the dexterity tome and Balduran's Helm before returning Nester's dagger - getting to level 8 there with another 14 HPs taking me to the respectability of 97 (though still short of the 110, 113 and 101 of previous runs).
I had initially been thinking of getting reputation back to 20 before killing Drizzt - and then buying arrows of explosion to try and disrupt his charm spells. However, I decided instead to use a scroll of PfM on the grounds that my experience of SoD with the previous attempt suggests I will need fewer scrolls there than I originally thought. That intercepted his first charm attempt, but he saved the other until the scroll had worn off - when I successfully saved rather than using another scroll. A few hundred arrows later and Drizzt was down to a handful of HPs when he was killed by lightning.
I hadn't even realized it was raining, so hurriedly put Mulahey's boots on as a strike on me would have been fatal (as a result of being hit several times while kiting Drizzt). Losing the XP for him was slightly annoying, but his sword gives a major upgrade both offensively and defensively.
A quick tour of the realm saw various quests completed to push reputation back up to 20. I also beat up Jardak to get the Helm of Glory for even better shop prices before buying anything that might be useful.
The poison quest ended with shooting down Marek after dodging his initial confusion. That bow upgrade and the use of acid arrows helped shoot down all 6 sirines at the Lighthouse without any of them getting the chance to cast charms. The golems soon followed and the use of the constitution tome allowed me to get rid of Buckley's Buckler.
A quick visit to Durlag's Tower disposed of battle horrors and basilisks to make sure that I would level up immediately when transferring to SoD.
Back in Baldur's Gate I headed for the Iron Throne with the intention of splitting the enemies up on the stairs. I was probably paying too much attention to the radio and not enough to the game though and got caught out there . Diyab and Aasim stuck together during the movement over several floors, but their casting obviously got out of synchrony. On the bottom floor a roof beam meant I couldn't see how Diyab's casting was progressing and didn't take the precautionary principle of assuming he would cast as soon as possible. That meant that he cast a hold person spell just as I was turning to run from Aasim's spell ...
Alright, I'll give a pure arcane caster one more go.. this time, hopefully without dying due to wanting to save on resting one time.
Starting: In BG1EE. Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage (works like Core for BGEE in my experience), max HP on level up. 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. 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
Enter Aldain II, the brawnier, substantially less silver-tongued cousin of Aldain, also a Human Conjurer.
Aldain II enjoys whacking things over the head with a Quarterstaff (once he gets a proficiency in it, anyway...). Being a Conjurer, he has all the upsides of a Specialist mage and pretty much none of the drawbacks: Early on no Identify will strain our resources a little since we have to pay for it, but in the long run there's oodles of ways to have things identified, just as we'll have plenty of other casters that can handle Detect Invisibility (BG1EE)/True Sight (SoD/BG2EE). And those are really the only spells of consequence he can't cast. He will be going with a fairly standard but very powerful party: Jaheira and Khalid as frontliners, Kivan later replaced by Coran for archery and thieving, Imoen Thief 5 -> Mage 9 with 100 Detect Illusions, and trusty Branwen for all-around clerical needs.
Aldain II has placed + in Slings, and starts with the spells Find Familiar (memorized), Sleep (memorized) and Blindness. So basically he will not need to scribe anything new until he reaches L3, as these three (two really, as we only cast Find Familiar once) spells are all you need to make it through the early game.
Aldain II, Human Conjurer, BG1EE Update 1 BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4 SoD Updates: 1, 2
As alluded to in the epitaph of Lazramar, I'll keep things brief for this first update: Essentially, assume the tactics used boil down to Sleep/Entangle/Blindness/Command/Hold Person/Web/Wand of Fire/Necklace of Missiles.
Aldain II cleared Candlekeep, then picked up Imoen, Xzar and Montaron. Montaron fell fighting Tarnesh, Xzar survived and retired at the FAI. Khalid and Jaheira were picked up, Imoen snuck past the Ankhegs at the Farm to steal a Wand of Fire and escaped under the effect of Jaheira's Invisibility potion.
Once the party aquired Kivan, his bow along with liberal application of the Wand of Fire (and the occasional Command from Branwen) saw us through the early game in style: Most of the areas west of Nashkel and Beregost were cleared. There were a few mishaps: Khalid got too close to an Ogre Berserker at level 1 and dropped immediately, and later got Held and pummeled to bits by Bassilus at level 3, but otherwise no deaths.
We had our first and (amazingly) so far only close call when a level 1 Aldain II got tagged by a Hobgoblin Elite upon being a little careless with positioning when trying to Fireball said Hobgoblin Elite: The arrow took 9 of his 12 HP and poisoned him. It looked grim, since neither antidote, nor Slow Poison, nor even a regular CLW was on hand, but thankfully that particular poison works very slowly: Aldain II could outheal it using regular potions.
Mulahey took a single blast of Scorcher (ah, that wand) and was vanquished. Nimbul got a few hits in but had memorized no Confusion nor Emotion and so couldn't kill anyone off (I'm really glad he never seems to memorize Sleep.. that would be more or less guaranteed kills for him, given that my party is typically L3 when we face him). Tranzig did his usual irritating farce of hasting himself and running around, but accomplished nothing. The bandit camp was Webbed and Fireballed into oblivion. Taugosz quaffed a Potion of Free Action, and I was a little worried, but thankfully his awful save vs Spell meant two Commands brought him low.
Around here Imoen reached L5 Thief and thus 100 Detect Illusions, and so was dualed (I'd rather have her Detect Illusions back sooner than let her take another level of Thief... and this way she can spend her L6 Mage proficiency on something nicer than the Mage weapon selection). She spent a long time memorizing nothing but Identify on rest, since I'd been a bit cheap and only identified what we could really use. Yeah, I don't use stuff without identifying it first.
All of Cloakwood went without a hitch, and we got Coran to replace Kivan. Now having lots of Invisibility available, Aldain II simply tripped all the web traps (invisibly), making for a smooth ride. Drasus and his gang succumbed to a hellish combination of 3x Web, 3x Entangle, 2x Stinking Cloud and 1x Grease, followed by massed Fireballs. I'm taking no chances. Inside the mines, to my great dismay Cook got caught in the crossfire while we dealt with Hareishan's group, reducing our 14 reputation to 9 (that will hurt, especially since I don't donate my reputation up and have the 1/4 reputation increase SCS option active). But really, it mostly hurt because I feel bad for Cook... Natasha required only a single charge of our Wand of Summoning and a few of Branwen's skeletons to bring down.
So, big D. Imagine my surprise when everything went the way it's supposed to. Better, even. Using stealth, Invisibility and Sanctuary, everyone but Khalid took position to the south of D, where no guards spawn. Khalid activated the PfM-scroll, gulped some 8 potions, and engaged. Aldain II and Imoen assisted from outside D's sight by dropping a few Skull Traps/Fireballs, helping to clear the Battle Horrors faster. D futilely assailed Khalid with a plethora of Invocation spells, Khalid kept wailing on him. The first wave of guards spawned, D moved up to them, and rewarded their loyalty by Fireballing most of them to death (he was aiming for Khalid). And then D lost his Stoneskin and dropped in two hits. Nice.
Mines were flooded, and we made our way back out of Cloakwood. Before heading to Baldur's Gate, we made a giant sweep of everything we skipped so far on the Sword Coast: Helm of Defense, the Siren Coast, Vax and Zal etc... even Firewine Bridge. Some day I will get control over my desire to finish everything and just say "no" to Firewine Bridge. Massive spawns of incredibly irritating Kobold Commandos constantly ducking into corridors to break line of sight, lots of traps, and the payoff is essentially a scroll of Cloudkill. OK, Cloudkill is pretty nice, but still.
As we leave our party, they can be found in the Jovial Juggler in Beregost. All that remains is to clear out the Red Wizards, after which we will suck the great city of Baldur's Gate dry of treasure and experience. Finally, it will be time for the Warders of Durlag's Tower to know some payback... Aldain II is now a level 6 Human Conjurer, and should hit level 7 just in time to partake of the trove of higher-level scrolls available at Sorcerous Sundries (Notice the Quarterstaff proficiency! He's already knocked a Dire Wolf down a peg when it strayed too close).
Now in Amn, I Skip Chateau Irenicus and search the rubble for imported loot. Istishia's Mind Shield is in there and it's still combined with Akadi's Cloak of Rapid Motion. I put on the circlet and console in a Bag of Holding as usual. I've got tons of stuff to hoard this playthrough because I can build golems, store stuff to forge for Item Upgrades, and hold on to stuff to sell because Wild Surges can destroy 80% of your gold, so it is wise to only sell stuff when you want to buy something.
Now equipped with @Bubb's Extended Spell Menu, using Chaotic Weave will save my index finger much stamina because (almost) all the spells I can weave are readily available on-screen instead of needing to clickclickclickclickclick the arrow to get to the higher-level stuff. I highly recommend it for any mage-heavy playthroughs.
I deal with the circus pretty easily and the slaves at the Copper Coronet are freed. I summon some fire elementals in the sewer connecting the Coronet with the Slaver's Compound and they do all the heavy lifting. aTweaks' elemental summoning allows me to skip the mental combat and possibly get more than 1 elemental per cast. I get them to follow me into the slaver's compound where they kill all the guards while I watch.
Mae'Var tasks me with getting the Weathermistress's amulet, but its not nighttime yet. I go into the Temple District's sewers and see what trouble I can get into. I use a Wand of Lightning charged scroll of Summon Air Elemental, but most of them are killed by Gaius' Death Spell and the rest are killed by the party's weapons. They start advancing toward me, but a charged Potion of Firebreath puts them all down.
Mekrath is killed by a swarm of Mordy's Swords.
I send them into the Yuan-ti room of Mekrath's hideout but their duration expires halfway through the fight. The Yuan-ti mage comes out of hiding and I retreat down the stairs, but it follows me. I'm trying to run away so I can summon something else, but it tags me with Power Word, Stun. I used the Contingency scroll I found just a minute ago in Mekrath's library to hide and very fortunately the Yuan-ti mage didn't have any divination attacks to reveal me. The run could've easily been over right there if he did.
The stun wears off and I run away with an Oil of Speed while still Improved Invisible and then use Poison Mist from my circlet to finish off my would-be run-killer.
I decide to rest after this and it's nighttime now. I steal the Weathermistress's amulet and earn a level from it. My first HLA is the Planetar and my first level 9 spell is Time Stop. With the planetar now at my disposal, I sic it on the Pebblecrusher party in the Den of the Seven Vales. They are thoroughly destroyed with most KO'd from the planetar's Earthquake.
Mae'Var's questline comes to its conclusion and I call upon the Planetar once again. Needless to say it cleans house.
With all this loot in my bag of holding, I sell it and buy the Robe of Vecna and then move on to Watcher's Keep to buy a Wizard Staff. Unfortunately, only kitless Sorcerers and Dragon Disciples can activate wizard staves; Chaos Sorcerers cannot.
Now I decide that I want to get started building golems already. I'm pretty sure I can handle Watcher's Keep up to level 2. Yet again, I summon the planetar to do the hard work for me because the statues are pretty hardy and somewhat magic resistant.
For my next HLA, I choose Improved Alacrity. I gather the items necessary to open the portal to level 2 and the planetar once again comes out on top. It clears out level 2 for me as well, earning me another level. This time I choose Chaotic Eruption, which looks like the Chaos Sorcerer's version of Implosion except it can do more damage.
Before freeing the Chromatic Demon, I summon my first Simulacrum and I'm disappointed by how weak it is. I have it summon an underwhelming skeleton warrior and plan to just have it use Chaotic Weave during the fight to compensate. But the planetar has a better idea.
That's... something. With level 2 cleared, I can finally build golems. I picked up several golem building tomes just in level 2 alone and I build Perfect Clay MK I. It should be able to tank anything that doesn't do crushing damage. I'm going to be more cautious with it around mages because one wayward Horrid Wilting and its physical damage resistance will be history. Stone Golems suck.
Back in the temple district's sewers, I take on the Shade Lich and protect myself and Clay with a PfU scroll. I summon the planetar to deal with the lich, but the lich summons a Fallen Planetar in response, so I book it out the door and shut it on them. The Fallen Planetar gets a vorpal hit on my planetar. Damn.
Situations like this call for Project Image. I summon my clone and it uses a PfU scroll on itself, and then casts Farsight near the lich's sarcophagus. It casts Chaos Shield and then weaves a Dimension Door over there.
I have my image summon a second planetar, but the lich stops time and casts Imprisonment on it. Undeterred, my clone summons a third planetar, who also gets imprisoned. I am in mild disbelief that the lich has two castings of Imprisonment memorized. To counter this, my clone weaves Freedom and it takes on the first try, releasing both planetars.
One planetar is still affected by the lich's fear aura, so the brave one casts Remove Fear on the scared one, then both get to work destroying the lich. The lich backs off a bit and summons two Mordy Swords to help out. My clone casts Horrid Wilting to remove these pests and its duration expires immediately after the casting, killing the swords. I was about to head over there personally when one planetar scores a vorpal hit on the lich.
I'll take it! After this impressive display, I use EEKeeper to swap Simulacrum with Pierce Shield because I'm convinced that Simulacra are overrated for pure casters. They're far better suited to other classes that can equip Vhailor's Helm or use a Simulacrum scroll somehow.
Aldain II, Human Conjurer, BG1EE Update 2 BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4 SoD Updates: 1, 2
Continuing from where we left off, the Red Wizards were taken out. Skeletons were sent to soak up the initial brunt of enemy spells, followed by a Fireball (to clear the gaggle of summons the Red Wizards had conjured), and then an all out charge with lots of Darts of Wounding. No trouble.
Afterwards, Baldur's Gate was cleansed. The only thing we didn't bother with was stealing everything not nailed down, since after buying every potion of Magic Protection/Magic Shielding/Magic Blocking/Power/Storm Giant Strength etc that we wanted, we still had enough money to pick up the Robe of the Archmagi when next we swing by High Hedge. And there's nothing else we want or need to buy.
Most of the Gate was uneventful. Once again, Spiders (this time in the Sewers) proved the nastiest of the monster lot, what with the Web Tangle almost causing us to lose Jaheira (though a quick combination of 2x Scorcher from Wands of Fire and a Slow Poison from Branwen saved the day). Yeah, almost losing one of the tanks was as bad as it got. We're being very careful. And even though I've never made such frequent use of Wands of Fire before, we are only now starting to run out of charges on the first two we aquired.
One slight variation this run is that, due to our low reputation from accidentally exploding Cook, a few quests change. Ordulinian will not give you the Arkion and Nemphre quest if you have low reputation (unsure what the cutoff is, he still won't speak to us at 12 reputation). Nadarin gives you 500 gold and a pair of Boots of Stealth instead of 1800 gold for killing the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse. And, for once, we had low enough reputation that Cordyr gave us the quest to kill the sirines in exchange for a Haste scroll. Guess that's something.
Once all of the Gate had been pacified, we prepared thoroughly for the highlight of the session, the Iron Throne fight. This, just like the Davaeorn fight, went exceptionally smoothly. The entire party set up in the small room in the south end of the top floor. A charge of the Wand of Summoning was expended, and the unfortunate critters sent to dull the edge of the zealot's attack (mainly, to soak up the Confusion spells, as we have no real way to counter this for more than a single character at a time). Once that was done, we conjured a Nymph (Jaheira is finally L7 druid), three Skeleton Warriors, buffed a bit (PfE 10' Radius/Defensive Harmony/Bless/Chant/Haste/Remove Fear, Giant Strength potions for the fighters) and charged, with the summons taking the lead.
Our first action was a Greater Malison by Imoen, followed a split second after by Confusion from Aldain II. This proved exceptionally effective: The two Shennaras, as well as two of the casters (I forget which ones) were confused and thus easy targets.
Gardush came storming in, but couldn't do much. With only Zhalimar and two casters left, the enemy were quickly overcome (although Zhalimar got in some frightening hits for 30 odd damage courtesy of quaffing a Cloud Giant Strength potion).
Off to Candlekeep. I obsessed a bit about the Ogre Magi ambush, but it too went smoothly! The Ogres led with 2x Charm Person on Khalid (as opposed to Dire Charm), a Glitterdust which just didn't do much, and a Hold Person on Coran (slightly annoying). Thus Aldain and Imoen had time to get their MGoI up, and proceed to, with some assistance from Jaheira and Branwen, devastate the unfortunate ogres.
The party entered Candlekeep, killed the solitary Doppleganger posing as a priest, and headed straight for the inn. Where they can be found at the moment, preparing for the dread ascent of the central keep, and the disturbing realizations that lie therein... Aldain II is now a level 8 Human Conjurer.
Aldain II, Human Conjurer, BG1EE Update 3 BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4 SoD Updates: 1, 2
The party opts not to kill Rieltar and his friends, get framed for it anyway, and are sent off into the catacombs. Apart from Coran being reduced to 20 HP by a lightning trap (impatient elf...) everything goes just fine. Tired of solving every single encounter with Web and Fireball, we treat Prat and his cronies to an advancing wall of bony Skeleton Warrior death, along with a synchronized Greater Malison/Confusion courtesy of Imoen and Aldain II. All but Sakul fail their saves, and the outcome is never in doubt.
Since every single SCS mage in BG1EE apart from a few Bards and Enchanters buff with Shield, I've taken to memorize Burning Hands when dealing with them. It deals surprisingly good damage if they fail the save, even if they do save it still deals a little damage, and it totally ignores Shield. Chromatic Orb is also a decent choice.
After escaping the catacombs, it seems a good time for TotSC. We begin, as always with that horrid frozen speck, the Ice Dungeon. Must have that Stoneskin. This is what I enjoy about arcane casters, pure or multi-class: You get a double sense of progression. Your character keeps improving, AND you keep finding fun new scrolls! I love it.
So, Ice Dungeon. I figured I'd be clever. Khalid is buffed with Protection from Lightning, Death Ward, Protection from Fire, Protection from Cold, Resist Fire/Cold, Remove Fear and a charge of the Greenstone Amulet (basically rendering him immune to anything and everything the mages could do). Then a wave of Wand of Summoning fodder is sent ahead, themselves buffed with standard spells (Remove Fear/Chant/Bless etc). The hope was that Andris and friends would blow their Remove Magic spells on the fodder, thus leaving an all but invulnerable Khalid free to deal with the casters under his powerful protections.
Colour me impressed; the mages didn't bother dispelling the buffs on the fodder, but rather just started killing them. I guess they figured a Hobgoblin with some clerical buffs is.. still just a hobgoblin. Khalid rushes in, has most of his protections stripped, but somehow the Greenstone Amulet charge stays active, so I let him keep at it. Eventually, with the fodder duly absorbing some of the nastiness being tossed around, Beyn and Marcelus fall, prompting Andris to teleport out. Upon his return, we strip his defenses and lay into him. He gets a single Sunfire off (I saw an Invocation casting, but Khalid has 96 hitpoints, and Jaheira had 60% fire resistance at the time, so I correctly figured we could take it) which hurts our tanks a bit, but down he goes.
Cuchol goes down to massed ranged fire, not having buffed with Protection from Normal Missiles. Garan actually almost kills Imoen (he casts Fireball twice, then a third time from a scroll!), but she survives.
Tellan again bugs out and goes after the Winter Wolves instead of our Skeleton Warriors. I actually have the bonies kill the wolves (Tellan killstealing two of them) just so the gnome will put up a fight. He does, but now that we have the 5 HD version of undead, there's nothing he can do. Dezkiel doesn't even get a single spell off, he drops so fast. The scroll is OURS! And some cloak or other too. We are teleported back to the mainland.
Alright, that leaves us with a choice. Though it's not much of a choice: I intend to do Werewolf Island simply because of the Chain Mail +3, but I'd be much more comfortable doing so if we had a weapon that could hurt the Greater Werewolf suitable for Khalid. The Flametongue +1 fits the bill, and can be found in Durlag's Tower, so off we go.
Above ground levels are cleared without a hitch. This time I didn't blow any potions of Magic Protection on dealing with Kirinhale; Khalid with a Greenstone Amulet charge and a few regular potions did the job just fine anyway.
The basement where you meet the scaredy-cat elven Thief as well as the level with the Warders (sans the Warders themselves) are also cleared easily. Alright, time for proper preparations. As you no doubt recall, the battle with the Warders was the site of the epic failure of Lazramar. Such a tragedy cannot be allowed to reoccur!
A rest later, we are ready. The plan is slightly different from the last time. Four Skeleton Warriors (all we can summon) will hold the line against Pride. They should fare better than the last time; there's one more now, and they are all the 5 HD version (last time we had two 3 HD and one 5 HD). Pride is a beast, but I expect it will take him an absolute minimum of four rounds to cut through the undead. More likely 5-6 rounds. This will be enough time.
Jaheira will start the battle by casting Zone of Sweet Air, dispersing Avarice's Cloudkill and allowing us to move as we wish. Khalid will be potion-buffed to the absolute hilt and sent after Love. Everyone else will straight up kill Fear before he has a chance to paralyze anyone. Once Fear drops, we will take down Love, Avarice and finally Pride.
The plan is put into motion. Every buff we can cast is cast. The Skeleton Warriors are sent west, where Pride spawns. The rest of the party takes position, and a seriously powered-up Khalid runs down to talk to Love. The Warders spawn, and the game is afoot!
The first round goes entirely in our favour. Fear, while having Magic Resistance (a fair bit of it too) fails to resist a charge from Branwen's Wand of Flamestrike, bringing him straight to Near Death. We follow up with our best magical ammunition and 2x Magic Missile from Imoen and Aldain II. Just enough of them get through to slay Fear. Huzzah! Also pictured: Jaheira about to finish Zone of Sweet air.
With Fear nothing but a bitter memory, and the Cloudkill cleared, we are free to engage Love at maximum capacity. She falls quickly to a combined assault (the icon on her is Physical Mirror, not Spell Turning, so it's fine to use Wands of Flamestrike, as you can tell).
We haven't lost a single Skeleton Warrior yet, and the enemy is down to two Warders. This is going better than expected. Avarice is driven from hiding by Imoen's Detect Illusions skill. Without his Invisibility, he is powerless before us.
All that remains is Pride. He too has a fair bit of Magic Resistance, but Imoen lands a Greater Malison, followed by a Doom from Jaheira. This allows us to, after three castings, land a Slow on him (and even an Insect Swarm, nice!). We wear him down even as our wall of Skeleton Warriors grows thin. Coran eventually slays the foul Warder. Take THAT, turnipNecromancer-hatin' scum!
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Victory is ours! The party gathers up the wardstone and heads back outside, where they can be found preparing for further descent into the ominous tower.
Aldain II remains a level 8 Human Conjurer, but those elusive 5th level spells draw ever nearer. As a bonus, please enjoy some footage of Aldain II laying down the blunt law for some skeletons. Whack!
The undead further below are cleared out by Clay and the planetar while Clay solos the beholders. The Unseeing Eye is put to sleep and Clay survives a Horrid Wilting from it without being converted into a Stone Golem somehow.
With the planetar at my disposal, I take on the guarded compound. Clay and I travel upstairs while invisible but Ketta reveals us. Clay jumps into the fray while I sneak inside the closest bedroom and park a Mislead clone there. Clay is taking a beating and gets stunned by Koshi's Celestial Fury, so I cast Improved Alacrity and start firing on all cylinders.
I'm mainly focusing on Sion. In order of spells cast: Planetar, a couple of Spell Thrusts to get rid of Sion's Spell Shield, Spellstrike, Power Word Stun. Now that Sion's out of the fight, I cast Greater Malison, Incendiary Cloud, Chaos Shield, and weave a Stun Symbol into the mob, but Clay has already been split in half. The new clay golems and the planetar beat down the stunned survivors.
I planned to rest but wondered if I could get a Wish Rest instead. I cast a charged Wish and it would appear that even wishes can wild surge!
At this point, I sell all the loot I collected and pay 30k for the Ring of Protection +2 and Amulet of Power, then sell some more loot to buy the Wizzard Hat to reduce my casting time even further for a total of -6 to spellcasting speed factor. I do the Harper Hold quest for Xzar and level up. One of the clay golems is killed by Lassal at the docks. The remaining clay golem kills the lich in the Bridge District because I used a PfU scroll on it.
I want to open the door to the Twisted Rune, so I have to cast knock on it, causing Cowled Wizards to appear. They take down my remaining clay golem.
I summon a planetar to cast Insect Swarm on them so they get mopped up. Inside the Twisted Rune's sanctum, I protect myself and another planetar from undead. Shangalar is killed from range with the Crimson Dart +3, so here comes everyone else to play.
Everyone bunches up onto the planetar. It takes down Vaxall first and then casts Insect Swarm to disable Layenne. A few hits from its sword dispels all her melee protections, so she gets chopped up. The Staff of the Magi is mine!
With the lich population of Athkatla nearly extinct, I take on Kangaxx. I buff with the staff's Spell Trap, Spell Turning, and put up a Spell Shield too. I summon my planetar again and protect both of us from undead. But Kangaxx's first action is to cast Remove Magic on himself since he can't see anyone, which dispels my planetar's PfU. Kangaxx buffs up and summons a Fallen Planetar.
I cast PfMW and kite it around, trying to get my planetar to kill it. But the fallen one gets a vorpal hit on the good one and casts Insect Swarm at me. I cast Chaos Shield and successfully weave a Blue Fireshield...which does not protect me even though it's supposed to.
Irritated, I retreat back up the stairs but the swarm wears off in just the next round. I head back down the stairs and summon a new planetar, then call the Improved Kitthix swarm. The evil planetar kills half of them until it gets unsummoned, so we concentrate on Kangaxx.
Now Kangaxx is in demilich mode. Shadow Door + SI: Divination + Spell Level Immunity 1-9 makes it impossible to detect him. But the planetar still can. I use a charged PfU scroll on myself and my summons. The planetar chases Kangaxx down for a while as he puts up PfMW acouple times. Eventually...
There's only 1 lich left in Akthkatla.
And then there were none. I return to Watcher's Keep and build Ice Golem MK I. He's got a temper on him. I also build Flesh Golem MK I.
Ice Golem MK I is slow, unwieldy, and not very tough because he dies in the next quest I undertake. Flesh Golem MK I is more resilient, but crushing damage still gets the better of him.
I build Perfect Stone MK I next. I don't have enough clay to build more clay golems.
Onto the Planar Sphere. Perfect Stone is holding up a bit better than I thought. When we reach Tolgerias and his pet wizard, things get a little hairy. I thought the planetar had it in the bag, but when Tolgerias spotted me, he buffed to hell and then put down a teleport field, sending it and Perfect Stone behind the ice wall door. To make matters worse, I suffered a wild surge that entangled me so I couldn't simply walk over and open it. No more Mr. Nice Chaos Sorcerer. I cast Improved Alacrity and meticulously strip away Tolgerias's defenses, finishing him off with a Power Word Stun with a Horrid Wilting chaser.
Still entangled and under aura cleansing, I Dimension Door over into the ice area and put down an Incendiary Cloud and Greater Malison, followed by a charged Wish with 2x area-wide Horrid Wiltings. All hostiles in the area are now dead. Outside in the abyss, the planetar carried me again but Perfect Stone MK I died without splitting in two.
With my mage stronghold established, I build Perfect Flesh MK II and Maggot Golem MK I and move on to the Planar Prison. The maggot golem dies from a single Flame Strike from a yuan-ti priest because its weak to fire.
Perfect Flesh MK II is killed by the yuan-ti horde over to the right side. The planetar once again carries me through the whole quest.
Back at my planar sphere, I have my students create a dagger and build Perfect Flesh MK III, who also has quite the temper. Next up is Firkraag's dungeon. The Ruhk Transmuter that presented a stiff challenge to Krieg is vorpal'd.
Instead of using a PfU scroll, I have a planetar do undead extermination in conjunction with Farsight.
Samia's party is wiped out and Perfect Flesh MK III gets incinerated without splitting.
I learn to construct Iron Golems. Now I just need chips of cold iron. Tazok is vorpal'd.
Conster is magically assassinated the same way as Tolgerias, except I followed up with a woven Power Word Kill. Firkraag suffers the same fate as his toady. Lower Resistance + Spell Thrust + Pierce Shield + Breach + Greater Malison + Unluck + Chaotic Eruption heavily damages him, with the Planetar getting a couple hits in to lower him to < 60 HP. I finish him off with Chaos Shield and a woven Power Word Kill.
It is immensely satisfying to have the good spells on hand with multiple uses. Being able to weave anything I would otherwise be missing out on due to being a Sorcerer makes me feel like a Swiss Army Mage! Bubb's Extended Spell Menu seriously, SERIOUSLY makes casting and weaving easier.
I'm currently in the middle of another solo HoF run of IWD2 with Tactics installed. I haven't been posting on it, since I've lost these IWD2 runs so many times already and I keep thinking I'm going to give it up eventually.
The single biggest threat is boredom over the lack of growth and the level crunch around Kuldahar and Dragon's Eye. The basic problem is that, to deal with early game hordes in a way that's not a soul-sucking chore, you really need at least 18 sorcerer levels to cast Wail of the Banshee. And once you hit sorcerer level 18, there's a very strong incentive to continue to level 20, which gives you maximum spell slots and an extra couple of level 9 spell picks. That's basically the peak of your power in terms of damage spells, summoning spells, and instant death options.
But the damage spells and summons can't keep up with late-game critters, and being able to deal lots of melee damage becomes more and more important. Gameplay dramatically slows down, and it doesn't help that the game doesn't get interesting again until the Severed Hand.
I cleared out the crypts, collected some fungus and made sure all the gear was correctly stored before going to bed, only to be rudely awaken... told to lead a new campaign.
p.s, I don't know who invited a drow along but not on my watch!
Well I had a little extra time this week so I thought why not give it another go. I didn't think I would honestly have enough time to do much but I managed to kill three sessions very quickly(I know I am talented) last night. I died to the infamous archer ambush. Then I pulled a bandit that had a spectacular opening critical on my mage.
I then started a no reload with a seducer who bit it when I missed my domination on carbos who managed a lucky critical hit as well(I had an excellent set of runs last night as you can see)
I restarted again after this, wanting to make some sort of progress. I started a seducer again using @semiticgod mod. I kept Imoen for my rogue since I have no detect traps on my seducer. We recruited Carl and Jurgen from the mansion using the seduce ability and killed shoal leveling Imoen and my seducer a level.
My LoB beastmaster is gone - alas. The no reload was taken a bit too far: I didnt make a save of the game and my autosave was overwritten by a test game... well given my eratic playing he would have been killed anyway.
BTW: @Pantalion : in some of your plays you pick up a str manual at the library in Durlags Tower. I remember doing that in days of old in a BWS, but dont know from which mod it came - do you know?
Time for a new guy. Mobile testing SoD had rekindled my love for the archers. I chalked up a new guy: a 19 dex elf with a longbow...
He has 2 pips in longbow & pips in longsword and flails as well. He is going for GM in longbow and has demonic/fell as racial enemy (planning for Big B in SoD - alongside Corwin).
The setup is insane with no extra damage and max HP at level up - no mods.
The start was uneventfull. My facepalm moment was when I realised that my exceptionel str was too low to break open the chest with the potion of clarity...
Dang it.
The easy Beregost quests and Shoal gave me enough XP for level 3. Third pip in longbows, kit bonusses meant my thaco was really picking up - or in this case down.
Buying a composite bow +1 and “finding” a pair of boots & bracers completed the outfit so far
A quick basilisk hunt catapulted Archy to level 6, another pip and kit bonusses...
Questing at the sword coast brought Archy to level 7 and 1/2 more attacks pr round. Next up the mine..
Before the mine a funny thing happened. I was about to pick up Neeras gem bag. I stealthed shot her to avoid Ekandor showing up. Neera was killed, but Ekandor showed up - not hostile. He didnt resist when he was shot down either (nor his guards). Picking up a stoneskin scroll risk free was kind of meh
I just lost my IWD2 solo HoF run to Saablic Tan. Apparently Saablic Tan's script in Tactics is either very poorly designed or very buggy: not only is he capable of casting spells at invisible targets without even seeing them (he literally won't even turn to look at you when he's casting a spell at you), and not only is he capable of casting spells at targets under the effects of Sanctuary (which blocks out some enemies who can see through normal invisibility); he can also cast spells even when under the effects of a Protection from Magic scroll and the 100% spell failure it imposes.
He force-casts Mordenkainen's Force Missiles at you, which throws 7 missiles at you. If you make your saving throw, each missile will only deal 5 damage, but if you fail it, it can deal 88 damage in one hit, which is what killed me.
Apparently the only way to stop him from casting it is to have Globe of Invulnerability active (or Antimagic Shell, but that's suicidal in that fight considering all the enemy fighters). The level 1 Shield spell apparently doesn't block Mordenkainen's Force Missiles in IWD2 (it did in the original IWD), so it's impossible to maintain true immunity without also preventing yourself from going invisible, since all forms of invisibility except for the dangerously-slow-casting and pricy Mass Invisibility spell are spell levels 1-4 (Sanctuary, Wands of Sanctuary, Invisibility, Invisibility Sphere, Improved Invisibility, and Potions of Invisibility).
Invisibility is important in the Saablic Tan fight. With two mages that cast Mordenkainen's Sword, Slayer Knights of Xvim that see through normal invisibility, high-level archers, several half-dragons, and numerous other enemies, the pressure on the player is absolutely enormous. Most of the enemies have attack bonuses of 50 to 60, but the two Red Mages have an attack bonus of 73 when using Mordenkainen's Sword. Even with a ludicrous AC of 76, I still couldn't maintain Mirror Image for more than a few seconds, and things wouldn't be that much better if I had Blink active for the 50% miss chance. You'd need an AC of more than 90 to tank the enemies to any reasonable degree. Without it, your only hope of slaying Saablic Tan is to spam Potions of Invisibility or Wand of Sanctuary charges and kite the enemy with arrows.
Even then, you still need to be able to survive a couple seconds of vulnerability as well as his Mordenkainen's Force Missiles spells. In order to maintain your HP, you'd need to use some healing options, which cloud your aura and prevent you from drinking a potion or using a wand. That means that once you (very quickly) run out of invisibility spells, you're going to have to survive 7 seconds of total vulnerability every time you need to heal yourself. The basic problem is that your spells will run out and you won't have Improved Alacrity to maintain your defenses once you're reduced to using scrolls and items to heal yourself.
If you have long-lasting Sanctuary spells, you might be able to just wait out the enemy mages' Mordenkainen's Sword spells, which means you could get by with an AC of 80 or so instead of 90+. But that would give Saablic Tan enough time to cast Mordenkainen's Force Missiles on you about 28 times.
Spell resistance alone won't do much good. He's a level 24 mage in normal mode, which makes him a level 30 mage in HoF mode (and possibly a level 36 mage considering I removed the level cap) and has two pips in Spell Penetration, which means he has a 20% chance of bypassing even the maximum SR of 50. You'd need to have at least +4 luck active to block it, and you can only maintain +3 luck at best without breaking invisibility. Now, having a 95% chance to block his Mordenkainen's Force Missiles would be great, but he casts them infinitely, so if you're going to adopt a low-pressure approach that relies on massive SR and Potions of Invisibility or Wand of Sanctuary charges, he's still going to have many, MANY rounds to hit you with Mordenkainen's Force Missiles, and that still requires maintaining 50 SR indefinitely, which many character builds simply cannot do.
I think the only realistic method might just be to use the standard powergaming option: play a Lawful Evil deep gnome Cleric of Bane/Monk/Illusionist (with a 30/1/7 split if you've raised the level cap to 40, or 21/1/8 if not). I calculate that a high-level deep gnome would be able to achieve 90 AC with the help of HoF AC bonuses and some mod items, which would be enough to force all enemies except for the mages to roll criticals to hit you. Then you could just grind Saablic Tan down while the rest of the enemies dealt damage only very gradually.
Alternatively, you could just get a high-level cleric to chain-cast Greater Shield of Lathander. With 5 castings and very good timing, you could effectively get 10 rounds of free action due to having 30- resistance to all forms of damage and +40 SR, reducing most enemy attacks to scratch damage. That would give you enough time to kill Saablic Tan with melee attacks, though you'd still need to buff a lot.
I suppose this confirms my previous suspicions: HoF mode for solo no-reload runs starts out much more friendly to sorcerers, but as time goes on, cleric levels become more and more important, to the extent that this one fight doesn't really seem reasonable for a sorcerer-based character to win. Saablic Tan is immune to all disablers, and with 30 AC and over 400 HP, you need to deal lots of melee damage to bring him down. If you don't nail him with a Protection from Magic scroll, you'd also need to deal with his numerous mage buffs.
Summons will not do much. I summoned a swarm of Gelugons and even they got crushed within a few rounds, along with the little demons they summon when they get injured. It might be different if you didn't install the "Moderate HP for HoF Summons" component of Tactics, but I don't think there are any summoning spells that would be able to hold off these enemies long enough for you to tackle Saablic Tan and company without sky-high AC and/or Greater Shield of Lathander.
A druid with the improved shapeshifting mod might be able to beat Saablic Tan with a blitzkrieg approach. The Elemental Half-Dragon shapeshift should be able to deal about 300 damage per round after nailing Saablic Tan with the Protection from Magic scroll, so you'd just need to survive for maybe 10 seconds to bring him down. Unfortunately, the Elemental Half-Dragon form has no AC to speak of, its SR won't stop any enemy spells, and while it's completely immune to the elements, it only has 16- physical damage resistance, which means this crowd might actually be able to overwhelm it unless you have mage levels for Mirror Image, Blink, and Improved Invisibility.
You could also stay alive with Heal, taking advantage of the short casting time in combination with Improved Alacrity, but you need 21 druid levels just to get a single casting of that Elemental Half-Dragon form, and every druid level you take after that to be able to re-cast it another time per day is a level you're taking away from other classes. Druids are offensive powerhouses with the right mods, but they're still missing some key defensive options unless they invest lightly in mage or sorcerer levels, or invest heavily in cleric levels.
So, sorcerer levels are probably not the way to go for a solo no-reload HoF IWD2 run with Tactics. They work great in the early game, but late game enemies have such high stats that even summoned Gelugons can't compete, and endgame bosses have so, so many immunities that Wail of the Banshee and Chaos simply become useless.
It's kind of amazing. You'd think sorcerers would be the ideal class for this kind of run--and for 90% of the game, they really are.
But once they reach the last 10% of the game, they completely hit a brick wall.
So update. I made Actual progress last night. No stray arrows, no random critical strike no misclicks. Also. I did this thing where I actually ran away from a fight.
Everyone is now around 4th level after doing some basilisk hunting last night and we sold some loot at High hedge and picked up Purdues sword and talked Marl down. Feels good to get some headway. Now I just have to figure out where to go from here. Thinking of saving up for wands and scrolls from high hedge.
Aldain II, Human Conjurer, BG1EE Update 4 BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4 SoD Updates: 1, 2
So, the party moves in to clear the remaining three underground levels of Durlag's Tower. The greatest annoyance/threat (depending on how you see it) on the third underground level is in my mind the Durlag dopplegangers. They hit like trucks and are very difficult to hit in return. So, this time, we prepared something like four Greater Malison, four Glitterdust, four Slow and more Doom than you can shake a stick at to handle it. It worked like a charm, too; even Durlag Trollkiller has difficulties getting much done after -10 to hit. Otherwise, the third level went smoothly.
Fourth level too went swimmingly. The Greater Wyverns killed off all the charmed heroes, we cleared the Skeleton Archers using Fireballs to conserve their lovely arrows, and an invisible Imoen helped Khalid and Coran kill Ashirukurus by dispelling their frequent Invisibility.
I ran into the usual bug where you don't get teleported, but this just affords you breathing space to buff a bit. Which the party did, prodigiously. Of particular importance was getting everyone up to 100% electrical resistance to allow unfettered movement across the chessboard. Same old tactic as every time.. massive initial bombardment followed by mopping up any stragglers.
The fifth level was so uneventful I have not a single screenshot. Greater Ghouls can hurt a bit when in numbers, but with Free Action all they can really do is shave off hitpoints, and we're perfectly capable of replenishing those. The level cleared and Burning Earth +1 aquired, we as always bugger off and leave the Demon Knight alone.
We're almost to the endgame. But first, it's Chain Mail +3 time. We sneak into Baldur's Gate, grab the Sea Charts, and sail off for parts unknown.
Clearing the outside of Balduran's Ship is no trouble. Inside, the first level proves a slight headache (multitudes of enemies that don't always go after the closest party member), as Imoen catches a bite from a Vampiric Wolf and is Held. Thankfully, she just had time to finish casting Mirror Image beforehand, and so weathers the storm while we clear out the lesser wolves chomping at her.
As always, Karoug is much less trouble than his attendant mage. Even with invisible Imoen dispelling her illusions (only Khalid, Jaheira and Coran are allowed to directly engage), it takes 5-6 rounds and a few potions of Magic Blocking/Magic Shielding to bring her down. But down she goes, and once she does, Karoug's fate is sealed. Timing a barrage of spell damage once Khalid lands a good hit spells his end (the miserable mage managed to tag Jaheira with Emotion, but thankfully Karoug didn't go after her).
We return to Kaishas, fight our way out of the village and down to the vessel, talk Kaishas out of fighting us (SCS introduced dialogue), and sail off into the sunset.
Alright, all of that was just to get our hands on the Chain Mail +3, so let's go after it! Khalid and Jaheira are sent into Mendas' house along with invisible Imoen to dispel Mendas' illusions (he starts off quite a high-level mage). Keeping Mendas interrupted is not a huge problem, and we have anti-magic potions available if he gets a spell off. What turns out to be a bigger headache is that flunky of his wearing our beloved chainmail! Said flunky downs a Potion of Magic Shielding followed by Potion of Storm Giant Strength, and proceeds to demolish our poor fighters. Khalid finally manages to hurt Mendas enough to cause flunky and master both to transform into Loup Garou, at which point I feel confident to bring the rest of the party in to help out with wands/spells, but damn, the flunky dealt some serious damage with that regular morningstar of his... Still, our objective was achieved, and Aldain II pockets the Chain Mail +3.
Alright, time for the end game. We move into Baldur's Gate. Cythandria is hopelessly outmatched and beaten into submission, along with her two Stone Golems. Slythe and Krystin succumb to a Greater Malison/Chaos combo, allowing us to drop them at our leisure.
We rest up at the Blushing Mermaid and head for the palace. Here we also use tried and true tactics. No less than five Skeleton Warriors, every single useful clerical/mage buff (Bless/Chant/Haste/PfE10'/Defensive Harmony/Strength of One etc), some defenses for Aldain II and Imoen, and we're off, the skeletons taking the lead to position themselves between Belt and the dopplegangers. As always, the key is just killing the Doppleganger Mage as soon as possible. You've got two dukes, it's fine if one dies, and you can cast Invisibility on Liia to keep her alive, but if one of your party gets confused and attacks a Flaming Fist, it's over. We expend a few wand charges and the good ammunition to make sure the Doppleganger Mage never gets more than a Mirror Image off, spell-wise.
Alright, no confused party members, and both dukes lived. Huzzah! Belt teleports us off, we navigate the maze successfully, and roast the Iron Throne mercenaries mercilessly.
I forget myself and a Boots of Speed-wearing Coran ends up talking to Tamoko. He lacks the charisma to convince her otherwise and we are forced to kill her (really don't like doing that). So, time for the final showdown. We rest once to heal up, Aldain II sets up a new Minor Spell Sequencer (2x Acid Arrow), then we rest again to get our final spell picks. Most of these don't matter that much, as we will be relying on potions for buffs and wands for dealing damage/summoning meatshields, but 5x Animate Dead, 1x Haste, 1x PfE10', 1x Defensive Harmony is standard (initial defensively buffed meatwall to hold off Sarevok for a bit, and Skeleton Warriors are much more sturdy than the crud you get from the Wand of Summoning). Thus prepared, we enter the temple.
Upon inspection of our inventory, I realize we are somehow sitting on no less than four Scrolls of Protection from Magic. I could make do with one such scroll in a pinch, but I'm not complaining. Khalid, Jaheira and Coran each get a scroll, along with the same potions: 1x Potion of Storm Giant Strength, 1x Potion of Power, 1x Potion of Invulnerability (for the slight AC boost), 1x Oil of Speed, 1x Potion of Heroism, 2x Potions of Mind Focusing. While they're activating their PfM-scrolls and gulping potions, the other half of the party chugs down a Potion of Defense each, summons and buffs our Skeleton Warriors, and finally turn invisible (they'll only make themselves known once none but Sarevok remains to deal with). Game on!
Our three fighters run up, with the five Skeleton Warriors going after Sarevok. Coran tags Sarevok with a single Arrow of Dispelling to remove his Haste. After a round, everyone teleports in. Khalid, Jaheira and Coran all converge on Diarmid. He leads with a PfM-scroll (that won't help you now, Diarmid), and has enough time to quaff a single healing potion, but understandably can't stand up to our trio. The Skeleton Warrior that spawns in his place is swiftly dispatched. Straight after, Tazok is killed (dropping even faster than Diarmid), and his reborn Skeleton Warrior form is also put down.
Next comes a bit of annoyance, in that Semaj for some reason keeps going invisible every few rounds, even though he's neither quaffing a potion nor actually casting Invisibility. Still, enough Arrows of Dispelling later he finally runs out of Stoneskins and falls.
Detect Illusions doesn't seem to work against enemies that start a fight invisible, and hence Imoen cannot reveal Angelo (who refuses to show himself since all the enemies he can see are magic immune). Thankfully, we have half a dozen scrolls of Detect Invisibility: A casting and some Arrows of Dispelling later, the final acolyte of Sarevok meets his end.
On his own, Sarevok is completely hopeless. I ponder having Aldain II quaff an Oil of Speed and slowly sling-shot the big dumb brute to death, but opt for efficiency instead. Content to whiff at the endless summoned fodder we conjure up, a slowed Sarevok is eventually brought to a much deserved fate.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! The grim would-be God of Murder lies slain, and all good citizens of the Sword Coast rejoice! The Siege of Dragonspear beckons... Aldain II is now a level 9 Human Conjurer, here depicted before embarking on the epic battle against his half-brother.
After resting up for a few weeks I thought it was time for the monks to continue their journey. They cleared the surface of Bloodbark Grove without problems - a basilisk there never knowing what hit it.
They also cleansed a vampire's crypt, though even using a potion to get strength 25 they were unable to open either of the chests there.
Moving on to the Underground River they started exploring the surface. That resulted in another death when I didn't realise I'd encountered an orc shaman and his call lightning picked out Spectre just before she could finish laying on hands to cure missile damage taken.
While back at the Camp to get her raised, the monks handed in a disease cure to Dosia in return for Martyr's Morningstar (which they can't use).
Returning to the Underground River the shaman once more called down lightning, but this time failed to kill anyone and died himself instead.
A group of ankhegs was stunned into submission
and some druids freed from clinging vines before the monks moved onto the entrance to the underground. The continuous animal summons produced by the druids was a helpful distraction as they sorted out the mages and archers. With all the guards dead the monks did a sneak attack on Julann to kill her, before hiding again to do a mass attack on Rigah.
Underground the monks explored a cave with various shadows, leading to a couple of them being drained by wraiths. They had some restoration scrolls, but opted to return to camp for healing from Mizhena. Back again they tracked down the dark druid, Ferrusk, and persuaded him to hand over an ankheg amulet before stunning him when he objected to them planting a seed.
A bit further on they resorted to wands for the first time for a while when Wraith was web tangled by a gargantuan spider.
I spent a bit of time trying to find a cure for some soldiers affected by slime sickness and eventually went back to them to see if they offerered any clues to where the cure would be - only to find I apparently had already got the requisite healing potion from somewhere .
Fighting a group of myconids looked like it might cause a problem when all 6 of the monks were confused at one point.
However, they triumphed without any losses in the end. A bit further on they found Strunk full of his own importance - that confidence lasted all of half a second.
Placing the Bwoosh and recovering a club for a ghost ettin seemed to leave only a ghost dragon in the lower part of the area. It told the monks they couldn't pass, which appeared to be a challenge. However, as soon as they started to attack the dragon told them they could go through. Inside, they found a number of dark magicians, but they didn't last long against fireballs and wand strikes.
Back-up undead also fell quickly.
Further along the tunnels the monks came across some drow that I've not encountered before. They were looking for some children and were not pleased to find the monks had already let them go. I tried to fight them by nipping in and out under stealth, but a Drow Blademaster was too quick to retreat away from and did a lot of damage before being taken down.
I didn't want to rest, so tried to take a more cautious approach against the remaining enemies. That was complicated by their ability to see through stealth, but they all went down one by one in the end.
I was intending to talk my way past Turin Brassbreaker, but chose the wrong dialogue option. Quickly retreating, the monks fought the crusaders in ones or twos until the door was left unguarded.
After going up in the lift Wraith went to do some poisoning while the others tried to hold off the guards.
That seemed successful when Hephernaan turned up to have a conversation (re-opening the lift for use), but before they could get away a Crusader Sergeant demonstrated once again for poor old Spectre the problem monks have with criticals.
The monks then made a run for it and should have got out easily enough. However, I couldn't be bothered to take the time to do safe pathfinding and one of them was delayed at a pinchpoint as a result. That eventually proved costly as Spirit was taken down by missile fire just before she reached the exit.
The battered party made their way back to the Coalition Camp and stitched themselves together ready to attend a parley.
For the fight at the Camp the dwarves joined in against the trolls - not that there was much for them to do after a full volley of fireballs.
The next 2 waves were a similar story before the monks hung back and let the Coalition forces take the brunt of the final attack.
At Dragonspear Castle Chimera immediately went to arrange a single combat with Ashatiel. A magic shielding potion protected him while he used wand blasts to do most of the damage - those have the advantage they can be used through sanctuary to prevent opponents healing.
Inside the Castle they found the hell portal and took the opportunity to rest on the other side of that. Everyone used potions of clarity and defense before working through various devils. With Wraith tanking with AC of -12 and the others all using +2 ammunition the monks made rapid progress to find Thrix and answered his riddle to get a +3 long sword.
Wraith used a potion of regeneration to top her HPs up while going up the lift. The first couple of encounters were no problem, but Chimera had to handle the final lot all by himself when everyone else was affected by fear.
The last of them recovered during the cut-scene with Belhifet and I expected they would have a chance to take a potion when the game restarted - but no, everyone but Chimera started running again before they could take any action!
Caelar and Chimera kept Belhifet busy though while the other monks gradually recovered - taking potions of magic shielding as they did so to make sure they were not affected again. A mixture of potions and scrolls also protected everyone from fire before they concentrated on damaging Belhifet or any summons he produced. Caelar eventually died with Belhifet at near death, but one last critical was enough to finish off the devil as well.
The epilogue saw Chimera framed for murdering Skie before making a pretty pointless jail break. I forgot to pick up any equipment before doing that, which means no pantaloons to take forward into BG2 .
The party imported into Irenicus' dungeon had been quite close to level 10 and while finishing off the first floor of the dungeon in the elemental plane everyone was able to level up.
The only problem with the second floor was they failed to kill Ulvaryl. None of them had a weapon that could hurt her, but they formed a cage around her to give the assassin a chance to attack unopposed. She ran out of spells and MMMs after getting the vampire to badly wounded though and Chimera's vampiric touch only took her to near death and persuaded her to run away.
Emerging from the tunnel they ducked into the circus tent. Restoring that to order only took a few moments, though that still provided enough time for the werewolves to land some hefty blows.
Next they installed a change of management at the Copper Coronet.
Then they cleaned up the sewers before ducking in and out of the slaver HQ to split the enemy forces up.
Buying a sword of flame at vast expense allowed them to kill the trolls there, while the mages were stunned to see them.
Next up they went to the Graveyard. The tombs were cleared pretty easily - the Crypt King putting up the hardest struggle.
Underground, Chimera had Bhaal horror ready to disperse some spiders, but Pai'Na didn't get a chance to summon any.
The vampyre could have been a major problem with only the Blade of Roses (bought to get charisma to 20) and Namarra able to hit it, but a successful web tangle from Kitthix allowed the monks to get it to near death before it got free and Chimera finished it off before it could get away.
Wraith - L10, 81 HPs, 44 kills (+465 in BG1), 1 death Spectre - L10, 77 HPs, 37 kills (+403 in BG1), 4 deaths Phantom - L10, 76 HPs, 36 kills (+349 in BG1), 1 death Spook - L10, 76 HPs, 34 kills (+342 in BG1), 3 deaths Spirit - L10, 78 HPs, 44 kills (+329 in BG1), 3 deaths Chimera - L10, 72 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 47 kills (+570 in BG1)
Comments
There were 134 days on the game clock by the time I finished bg1 (with Ajantis, Yeslick, Kivan, Imoen and Quayle). Coran got chunked by Slythe. Unfortunately, Khalid and Jaheira left permanently during chapter four when I removed them from the party at the Friendly Arm Inn. Imoen got killed twice and Khalid once before this time but at least I could resurrect these NPCs.
I was more efficient in bg2, finishing the saga with the game clock at about 79 or 80 days I think. I haven't checked the save game. I had Keldorn, Anomen, Nalia, Imoen and Jaheira in my party. From memory, the only one who died in Bg2 was Nalia (once, by a Lavok Horrid Wilting). I reckon Keldorn was the MVP of bg2. He was using Foebane +5 and had an AC of -12 with Shuruppak's Plate Armor, Darksteel Shield and Gauntlets of Dexterity. Items such as the Amulet of Spell Warding also meant he had saves vs spell at 1 with Foebane before quaffing any potions. Life draining Greater Whirlwinds with him were awesome. His Dispel and True Sight was probably life saving too (e.g. in the Portal Maze vs the Alufiends/Seccubi).
If there was anymore interest I could add stuff or answer questions. By the way, I got lucky with Siege of Dragonspear (which I am still in the middle of my first playthrough for having played the rest of the saga before I picked up siege). Refer to my previous comment if interested.
Ormaline (halfelf Cleric-Ranger) made it as far as the FAI where a magic missile volley cut her down!
Introducing Puk Candlekeep (elf Stalker)... started by backstabbing a mage at the FAI and is currently killing bandits
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Alright! We have a full party to play with, and lots of things left unattended to. After raiding the Sorcerous Sundries for scrolls and scribing said scrolls, I opt to do one thing in Baldur's Gate before clearing the wilderness areas we've so far left alone: Namely, grabbing the Ogre Strength Gauntlets for Khalid.
Finally I do not have to juggle how many healing potions he carries to keep him from being encumbered.
This is another place where you need to exercise a little care with a mage protagonist. Desreta begins the fight by quaffing an Invisibility potion, and can (and will) deliver some pretty hefty backstabs given a chance. Lazramar is of course prepared for such shenanigans: A Detect Invisibility swifty reveals her, followed by a double Hold Person, one of which sticks.
Without her companion, Vay-Ya stands little chance, especially since she fails her save against Command (and with Quayle + Branwen in the party, we have a lot of those available).
Next, we clear Ankhegs (prodigious amounts of Sleep and Command make it trivial, but by now we could just brute-force it without any trouble) and the Wolves at the Beregost Temple (Web and some Skull Traps/Holy Smite). Jaheira gets the Ankheg Plate Mail, and I am considering keeping her in that rather than Full Plate Mail; the AC difference is somewhat neglible and this way I do not have to always worry about her becoming encumbered.
The Basilisks of course get a visit. Korax obediently stuns Mutamin, and then stays Dire Charmed just long enough to finish off every single Basilisk on the map with the help of two Skeleton Warriors (I had 2x PfP memorized as backup if necessary). Also interesting is that Quayle's innate Invisibility power does not have the listed duration; it ran out after what I estimate to be 2 ingame hours (could be more, could be less, but certainly not the 12 hours it says in the description). Good to keep in mind I suppose.
I of course provoke Kirian and friends into a fight. Usually I err on the side of caution with Web, but for some reason I didn't memorize it this time. Instead I just healed up my somewhat battered Skeleton Warriors (yep.. you can heal them), sent them in, and everyone just charged. Works fine, as Kirian is really too low level to be any threat, much like their cleric.
Next up was Durlag's. Not all of it, of course! But the upper floors and the second underground level with Fear, Love, Pride and Avarice.
The Battle Horrors and Doom Guards are handled via Scorcher from Wand of Fire, a Wand of Missiles and some scrolls of LMD (they don't have tremendous amounts of hitpoints).
Most of the above ground levels are simple enough; just Ghasts. I had Khalid quaff a Potion of Freedom as they paralyze on hit, but really, you can get by without it. The Basilisks on the balcony are handled by Khalid and Coran under PfP.
There are two noteworthy fights above ground: The Ghost Mage and Kirinhale.
The Ghost Mage is handled via summoned Skeleton Warriors. Unfortunately, this time said Ghost opts to precast Fire Shield: Red instead of Fire Shield: Blue, meaning the first Skeleton Warrior beats himself to death on the shield, even though resisting and/or being immune to everything else the Ghost throws at him.
At which point the bloody Ghost starts wandering toward the party, for some reason ignoring the Skeleton Warrior I sent at him. Quick, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!
Phew. I was mildly worried (he was casting some Invocation when he died), but we managed to put him down before he did any harm.
Kirinhale is handled by Khalid (assisted by 2x Potion of Magic Protection for 100% Magic Resistance, Fire Giant Strength, Heroism and Haste), with everyone else either Invisible thanks to Quayle, or Sanctuaried.
Kirinhale lasts a little longer than usual and has time to Teleport twice, but ultimately cannot do anything against Khalid. The Staff Spear +2 is ours, going to Jaheira.
Finally we clear out the second underground level (apart from the dwarf warders). The only noteworthy thing that happens is that a Greater Doppleganger drops a scroll of Invisibility 10' Radius. Those who followed the exploits of my conjurer Aldain knows how incredibly useful this spell is in BG2EE with SCS, and now Lazramar cannot scribe it. Sob!
Otherwise we just soldier on. Everything down here is pure melee, and no status effects apart from Poison from a few Phase Spiders. We gather all the loot and retreat back above ground.
Alright, time for a big sweep to tie up all loose ends. We start with the Helm of Defense. Quayle is ordered to pucker up and take one for the team, but to my great amusement, Shoal refuses to speak with him!
Poor Quayle... Coran does the deed instead, the woefully outmatched Droth is slain, and we have our helm (we of course talk to Arkand, clear the ogres and get the Magic Protection potion from the Surgeon while in the area).
Next, the Siren Coast. I actually remember to memorize a few Sleep, which makes battling the Hobgoblin horde much less of an exercise in patience.
The first group of Sirines are handled by Web + ranged fire (with a few Detect Invisibility prepared in case one of them gets free and goes invisible, but none do). For the second group, no less than four Skeleton Warriors are buffed and sent ahead. And yes, that's a MGoI around Lazramar. The Sirines actually recognize he's thereby immune to their Dire Charms and try to kiss the skeletons to death instead of casting anything. That didn't work out too well for them.
As expected, the pirate cave poses zero difficulty. Coran with Arrows of Fire and Lazramar helping out with Melf's Minute Meteors means no Flesh Golem lives to reach us, and the Constitution tome goes to Lazramar (so he can later give up a point of Constitution in Spellhold).
We conclude by saving the (never seen) boy from the worg pack.
Lazramar is now a level 7 Human Necromancer; unfortunately his L4 spellbook is somewhat lackluster, containing only Fire Shield: Red and Minor Globe of Invulnerability. This will very soon change: Divinations reveal a scroll of Ultimate Arcane Power (tm) located on a frozen island. A visit would seem to be in order...
If Lazramar makes it as far as SoD, I'll exercise more care against anything that has a status effect on hit. Probably bombing it to bits before it gets close enough to become a threat... we'll have Skull Trap and Cloudkill available by the bucketload by then.
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2I arrive at Candlekeep. First order of business is to buy the XP scrolls there and then kill Koveras. I lower his magic resistance, cast Greater Malison on him, then stun him with the Wand of Paralysis. The only damage type that Koveras is not immune to is poison, so I stab him with the Dagger of Venom to help drain his health. But I realize he's got a lot of HP and my debuffs on him won't last forever. I try the Wand of Polymorphing and it works on the second try. In this squirrelified state, Koveras can now be damaged normally. +15k XP get!
In Candlekeep's Catacombs, I use a Minor Globe scroll to ward off the traps guarding both stat tomes. A lot of traps in BG1 can be no-selled this way, including most traps in Durlag's Tower. I weave a Greater Fire Elemental to my side, who is most instrumental in clearing these areas.
I get my fire elemental to follow me across areas, so he helps me kill the greater doppelganger and his goons and he destroys Prat's group almost by himself.
Once out of the catacombs, I spend the last of the XP scrolls but they aren't enough to redeem a level with. Onto Durlag's Tower, I pick up the third WIS tome.
In the dungeon's first level, I weave a Greater Earth Elemental to help. It kills the Greater Doppelgangers in the library room, which gives me enough XP for my next level. For my first 7th level spell, I choose Mordy's Sword. Project Image was tempting, but I needed a reliable summon more because getting through two luck gates to summon an elemental (the wild surge then the mental combat) is a chore.
The rest of this floor is cleared out by using assorted summons. For the four guardians, I decide to gate in a glabrezu. Surely it would be enough to kill them.
Only Fear is left standing, but since the wardstone to unlock the next floor was dropped, I pick it up and venture forth into the next level, ignoring Fear. While weaving Shades to fight the Greater Doppelganger in Fuernebol's archery range, I get a neat wild surge. They all get killed by it anyway so I finish it off with a frost wand.
The rest of the level goes smoothly with assistance from a Greater Chaos Elemental. On the 3rd level, I notice something different. The Air Aspect has dropped a cloak... I'll have to identify it later since my lore isn't good enough and I don't carry Identify scrolls with me since I have Tweaks Anthology installed before the Chaos Sorcerer kit.
Now it's time for the chess game. I weave Protection from Lightning on myself, then cast Mislead and park my clone in a corner. I cast Greater Malison which affects the entire enemy force.
I follow up with a Chaos scroll and it sends most of them into disarray. A couple of the knights venture out and discover my clone, becoming Queens by reaching my side of the board. I didn't have time to weave a summon and couldn't risk weaving a damage spell, so I decided to use the board's lightning traps against them. I dance all over the board and lightning's shooting out everywhere, killing my opponents. I spot the King and guide the lightning over to him, which fries him and wins me the match.
The 4th level goes as planned and I reach the Demon Knight's sanctum. I buff with SI: Abjuration and Spell Turning to avoid his Remove Magic and Power Word, Stun spells respectively.
I weave Shades to swamp the demon knight in summons while I weave a Greater Fire Elemental afterward, but it decides not to help me. I go invisible, reposition myself, and weave a Greater Chaos Elemental instead. This one decides to help and valiantly fights the pair. It gets beaten up pretty badly when I weave Monster Summoning VI, and those summons aren't any help either. The demon knight tears through my summons and I weave Monster Summoning VII. A fire salamander and carrion crawler finish it off.
After leaving Durlag's Tower, I have the mysterious cloak identified. Apparently it can be combined with other Chaos Sorcerer artifacts...
Kristin and Slythe are dealt with and I attend Sarevok's coronation. I summon a skeleton warrior, accidentally wild surge in a friendly Chaos Elemental, and summon a platoon of gnolls with the Monster Summoning Wand. I haste all of us and seed the crowd of nobles with my summons. Once they turn, I cast Improved Invisibility on Liia and then use a Spell Sequencer of Greater Malison + Grease + Slow to prevent the mirrorkin from moving too much. They chip away at the gnoll platoon so I use another wand charge for reinforcements. Soon the doppelgangers are all killed.
Sarevok's guardian party is crushed so now its time to deal with the big man himself. I cast SI: Abjuration to prevent Semaj from dispelling my buffs. I summon my Mordy Sword where Semaj teleports to to keep him occupied, then cast Mislead and park my clone in the bottom left corner.
I cast Greater Malison on Sarevok and consider weaving Incendiary Cloud to roast him, Tazok, and Angelo. But I decide to only kill Sarevok. I cast Unluck on Sarevok, putting his saving throw penalty at -5. I expend the Wand of Polymorphing's 3 remaining charges and it takes on the last one! Sarevok dies instantly!
BG1 Complete!
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 14Previous update found here
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This was a session of tying up loose ends, and attaining the Holy Grail of BG1 spells.
First: The party finishes cleansing every nook and cranny of the sword coast.
Every area around Nashkel that we skipped early on is revisited, though we really need neither the loot nor the paltry experience at this point. Sendai, Vax and Zal, assorted Xvarts, even Narcillicus.. they all fall, by little more than brute force.
Our triumphant return to Cloakwood is marred by proof that yes, I am incapable of understanding that there are web traps there. I take my revenge at being humiliated thus by roasting Centeol and her pets (Free Action/Protection from Fire on both Khalid and Jaheira).
Urg, Firewine Bridge. It's there. We have to clear it. It goes fairly smoothly for once; Lazramar catches an arrow at some point, but we're past the point where a single critical spells the doom of anyone.
Quayle has most of the arrogance burned out of him, as Lendarn happily uses the scrolls he's carrying to help kill the Skeleton Warriors arrayed against him (sadly, he fails the save against his own Stinking Cloud and goes down in short order).
The SCS-introduced Wolf of Ulcaster actually requires a modicum of preparation. It has four area-of-effect Howls: One dispels, one causes Fear, a third reduces saving throws, and the fourth (triggered when it's at low hitpoints) spawns a handful of Ghouls. It also causes Hold on hit (Free Action counters it), and as long as the wolf lives, there will be periodic Dread Wolf spawns coming to reinforce it. We simply keep several Remove Fear on hand, summon a few Skeleton Warriors to hold off the reinforcements, and hit the Wolf with every fire spell we've got. It goes down without much trouble.
The last bastion of ne'er-do-wells on the Sword Coast is the Red Wizard area. We clear the spiders (having realized my limitations, I just let an invisible Quayle move ahead of the party and trigger every web trap), and then prepare for the wizards. Overprepare, it seems, as they fold almost immediately.
See that poison damage Denak is taking? I put Coran's last pip in darts, giving us someone reasonably competent to use all those Darts of Wounding and Stunning. It's actually working out rather well.
These little side excursions are all well and good, but that Stoneskin scroll... I can wait no longer!
The party prepares as best it can, and are whisked away to the Ice Island.
Though we are capable (with Quayle and Branwen we have exactly five L3 cleric spell slots) to summon a full complement of Skeleton Warriors, I opt for Wands of Summoning to blunt the razor-sharp edge of Andris' and friends spell arsenal. It works rather well, and as usual, they split up. Marcelus wanders into the party and drops in no time flat from a concentrated barrage, Beyn blundered off somewhere to the south, and after a little while, Andris also finds the party. We wail on him (he has nothing powerful left to cast), and he teleports away. After a few rounds, we see him activate his second Contingency (the first being the teleport). We spent these rounds buffing as well as we could in preparation. Andris teleports back in, and it's on!
We could've certainly done better. Andris is buffed to the hilt when he shows back up, and we have trouble hurting him. The party scatters as best as possible under the circumstances, but Andris still tags Jaheira and Coran with a Sunfire (both had Protection from Fire from a potion up.. I had a feeling Andris would go with Sunfire when he didn't turn toward any character while casting an Invocation).
Back at it, and Andris lets loose a Lightning Bolt at an unprotected Khalid (he exchanged Boots of Grounding for Boots of Speed back at the Cloakwood Mine). Thankfully, it only deals some 22ish damage, and doesn't bounce. Finally, the dread wizard falls, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
The rest of the dungeon goes smoothly (nothing is remotely as dangerous as Andris). We run into Beyn in a side corridor, and he has just enough time for a Melf's Acid Arrow before dropping.
Also, I couldn't be bothered with tanking Garan's Confusion spells, so I just bombarded him. There truly is always a number of Fireballs against which there can be no defense.
Finally, Cuchol doesn't buff with Protection from Normal Missiles, and so is treated to Darts of Stunning (he did not much care for them).
Alright, we're almost through, just Tellan and Dezkiel left.
Tellan unwittingly helps us by having the weirdest script ever. You can talk him into helping you escape (though by the time you meet him there's only 3 Winter Wolves and Dezkiel standing in your way), but he'll only agree to throw darts at your enemies, conserving his spells in case you turn on him.
Funny thing is, even if you provoke him into fighting you instead, if there's no enemy in sight, he'll seek out the nearest Winter Wolf and start wailing on it. In fact, he'll keep trying to kill the Winter Wolves to the exclusion of anything else, even renewing his defenses or attacking the Skeleton Warriors slowly carving their way through his Stoneskin. Silly gnome.
We'd have been fine even if his script hadn't bugged out, but still..
Alright! DEZKIEL! I've come for the
scrollcloak!Yes! YES! POWER! UNLIMITED POOOOOOWER!
Ahem.
We teleport back to the mainland. I opt to do a few small quests in Baldur's Gate to finish off the session.
The mages in Sorcerous Sundries are webbed and fireballed (we just fought an island of mages in mostly stand-up fashion, I think we've earned this), and relieved of their Spider Spawn scroll.
We also solve the Thieves Guild quest the non-violent way (it feels wrong to just kill the three mages; heck, the whole quest basically feels wrong, but what don't you do for a little bit of XP and a Tome of Dexterity).
Or as non-violent as it gets, as Resaar still tries to kill you.
Finally, we free the nymph and rub Ramazith's nose in it. Ramazith seems to be a Necromancer in SCS, and so (sorry Lazramar) is quite weak given that he lacks proper defenses due to not having L6 spells.
A few Darts of Wounding from Coran is all it takes.
With a mighty Intelligence of 19, Lazramar raids the Sorcerous sundries for Potions of Genius and every single scroll he has not yet scribed. And scribe them he does.
As we leave our party, they can be found in the Elfsong Tavern, preparing to sweep through the city of Baldur's Gate, leaving no quest nor villain undisturbed.
Lazramar is now a level 8 Human Necromancer.
After failing my last run with not enough Chaotic Commands to go around, I felt it necessary to remedy that.
Previous update found here
No! Even Ultimate Arcane Power could not save Lazramar in the end. But at least I learned something new about one of the improved SCS fights in the process... but we'll get to that.
As planned, the party breezed through Baldur's Gate. Nothing could stand up to them at this point, and Coran made continued good use of Darts of Stunning/Wounding. There were no real tactics anymore, just buff and charge.
So, following my standard modus operandi, the party went to clear Durlag's before dealing with the Iron Throne. We had previously gone through all the above ground floors and the entire level with the warders, save the warders themselves.
This is where the first mistake occured. We had plenty of summons available (6x Animate Dead), but I didn't want to head outside after the fight and try to rest until the gnoll ambushes would let us, but instead push deeper into the tower immediately. Nor did I want everyone to become fatigued after being Hasted. So, we went with a budget version of buffing and summoning: Only three Skeleton Warriors (two of which were summoned by L6/L6 Quayle, so they were the 3 HD version), and no Haste.
Alright, even without full buffing beforehand and too few summons, we should be able to wing it, being a reasonably high level party. Our tiny wall of summons is sent to where Pride pops, and Khalid/Jaheira go down and talk to Love. The warders spawn.
Khalid and Jaheira do a good job of killing Love quickly. Love gets off a Dire Charm (Khalid popped Greenstone Amulet), and a Slow, which unfortunately affects Jaheira, but the warder drops right after. 1 down, 3 to go.
Meanwhile, however, as both our frontliners are occupied, Branwen tries to hold off Fear in melee. The second mistake occurs here: I did not realize that Fear requires magical weapons to hit, so Coran spends 3-4 rounds plinking away with Fine arrows until I notice this and switch him to Arrows of Fire.
This is where everything falls to pieces. Fear regenerates (quite quickly too), so we're not really doing anything to him, and he's starting to hurt Branwen. Avarice has gone invisible and run off somewhere.
But Pride... bloody Pride has finished cutting down our woefully inadequate summons and now heads straight for our weak backline consisting of Quayle, Lazraman and Coran.
Khalid and Jaheira intercept Pride and pull Fear off Branwen (Branwen casting Sanctuary to get some breathing room). And Khalid just gets DEVASTATED by Pride and Fear: Pride hits every single swing for 25 damage, and Fear isn't doing too poorly either. I'm trying desperately to kill off at least one of them with everything and anything I've got, while Khalid is forced to peel off to try and recover a little with the puny 9 HP healing potions we have. Pride turns his tender mercies on (slowed) Jaheira, who in turn has to take off running (slowly, being slowed).
I guess Avarice was just waiting for his moment, since he promptly backstabs the greatly weakened Khalid for 16 damage. Which was just about enough to kill everyone's favourite coward.
So, things aren't looking too great. But we should be able to turn this around, surely? We HAVE to kill something to stand a chance though. All efforts are focused on bringing Fear down. He drops to Near Death, just as Pride kills off Jaheira (again, she was Slowed, and Pride is hasted, it was a foregone conclusion how that was going to play out).
And here... here comes the lesson. Fear turns around, and fires what I in my ignorance thought to be a projectile causing Fear on a failed save at Coran. This was incorrect. It actually Holds you on a failed save.
And Coran, of course, fails his save. We're now down to Lazramar, Quayle and Branwen, all of whom have clouded auras.
Pride moves up along with Fear and takes a big chunk out of Coran.
The correct move here would've been to recognize defeat and either quaff an Invisibility potion (I had enough left for all three mobile party members), or have Quayle cast Invisibility 10' Radius to try and save us all, including Coran.
I of course make the incorrect move. Everyone keeps blasting Fear. But he just will not die.
Instead, he fires another projectile. At Lazramar. Who fails his save and is Held.
Crappity crap crap. It is little comfort that Fear finally dies a few seconds after from stacking MAA damage. Pride finishes off Coran and goes after the held Lazraman. Lazraman has a full Stoneskin up.
Quayle moves up and starts casting Invisibility 10' Radius, but he takes half a round to even get started due to clouding his aura uselessly killing off Fear.
Half a round to wait, plus a casting time of 9. There are no other options: Quayle hasn't memorized the single target Invisibility and his innate ability is self only. Can Lazramar survive?
It's not even close. Pride even has time for an interrupting attack on Quayle after chopping Lazramar in twain before the game ends.
Pride goeth before the fall (literally, in this case). I'm certain a full cadre of summons and Haste would've allowed us to get through without any real difficulty. But in an effort to save some minor annoyance at rest-interrupting Gnolls, the run has ended. Curses!
The Fear thing was stupid in hindsight. I seem to recall having fallen prey to his Paralysis attack before, but I usually kill him off so quickly it's been a very long time since any party members actually got hit by it and failed their save.
Time to figure out what to try next. I'll probably dial back heavily on the exposition of the BG1 part of the run: I'm sure it's not terribly interesting to have tactics explained in detail when those tactics, in 98% of the cases, amount to "Cast Web and use Wands of Fire".
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2, 3For SoD's intro dungeon, I use my first Protection from Undead scroll. I weave fire elementals to help, but they get destroyed by the Shadowed Souls' HP transfer power. Mordy's Sword is not an option because of that, so I rely upon woven Incendiary Clouds instead. They are super effective, but my Flaming Fist backup gets incinerated because they wander into it while the cloud was still lingering. Korlasz and her group are defeated this way.
I weave more Incendiary Clouds in the Coldhearth dungeon, but I suffer a wild surge casting one of them, causing a cow to land on a pair of Mutated Crawlers sneaking up behind me, but a cow also slams into Brother Deepvein who was more than 100 feet away! This brings back painful memories of Spaz the Warlock's run but I resolve not to suffer the same fate!
I weave Spell Turning on myself and then cast Mislead to deal with the dwarves of Dumathoin. Greater Malison, Slow, and a scroll of Chaos incapacitate them. A wand of lightning finishes off Brother Deepvein. I venture further into the crypt and a Greater Shadow dies immediately upon my transition for some reason, giving me 3000 free XP and a level up.
Using more PfU scrolls, I burn the undead hordes with more Incendiary Clouds. I reach Coldhearth and give him the 5 keepers' amulets.
For the fight at the bridge across the Winding Water, I try my Spell Sequencer filled with Greater Malison + Slow + Grease, but it wild surges and causes Silence. I didn't even know that sequencers could wild surge...
With that over with, I help kill the Tsolak and get Takos' 3 heirlooms, but I discover something in the "random" encounter with orcs fighting the trolls.
I escape the trolls with a potion of invisibility, deciding to experiment with the two artifacts later, putting them in my bag of holding. Next is the temple of Bhaal taken over by Cyricists taken over by a Mind Flayer. I kill Morentherene with some throwing daggers.
In the fight with Ziatar, I summon a Greater Chaos Elemental but one of the mages casts Spook on me after I was debuffed by Greater Malison and I get panicked. I run out of the room and regain my composure shortly after arriving at the cages at the temple's entrance.
I return to the fight and strip the blue mage with a Spell Thrust then command the elemental to confuse the mage, which is successful. The elemental and I both concentrate on the mage and he falls, then we turn our attention to Ziatar. I cast Greater Malison on her and finish her off with a Wand of Lightning.
For the Neothelid fight, I drink a potion of clarity and cast Mislead, leaving my clone outside the doors. I summon a Mordy Sword to distract the swords the Neothelid summons, then lower its magic resistance a couple times. I debuff it with Greater Malison and resolve to end the fight in one shot. With Mislead active, I don't have to worry about killing myself by accident as I try to weave Finger of Death. The first few fizzle, but this one works!
Akanna and her Aerial Servants are dealt with. Taking on the Shadow Aspect solo on Insane is suicidal so I ignore it. Instead, I summon a Projected Image who casts Mislead and then Farsight so we can spy on Darskhelin's party. My image casts Dimension Door to teleport over there, then bombs them with a woven Incendiary Cloud, killing most of them. The only survivors are the katana-wielding fighter and a mage, plus the mind flayer himself.
I summon a Mordy Sword to deal with them. The sword destroys the Mind Flayer and the fighter while I deal with the mage.
With the way into Bridgefort secured, I pull my two artifacts out from my bag of holding. I combine the Circlet with the Cloak...
Combining the artifacts together makes them stronger, and in the case of the circlet, it offers an additional immunity to confusion. Poison Mist is the second power available to the combined artifacts, which is an AoE poison damage cloud with the possibility to poison opponents on a failed save vs. death. The artifacts can still change their form even while combined! Transforming equipment is my jam!!
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 15
I sent my brother to hell with a ice cold backstab and now find myself in a tomb with my raised companions and our gear on the stone floor?
Onwards!
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
Fun with Dimension Door!
BG1: 1, 2, 3SoD: 1
In the crusader camp outside Bridgefort, I free Dorn for 6000 XP and then decide I want to just skip the siege of Bridgefort. I uncover enough fog of war to make the jump with a Dimension Door, then jump over the barrels placed on the bridge.
The cutscene on the bridge plays out normally and I put the dusty chicken in the well for free XP. Now in chapter 10, I take on the easiest sidequests because I can't stand the sidequest hell in the coalition camp. I jump over the crusader barrier with another woven Dimension Door and do stuff there.
In the Underground River area, I open the gate leading beneath Dragonspear with Knock, but it causes the crusaders guarding it to go hostile. I back off and go invisible, then jump over them again with a woven Dimension Door. In Dragonspear's basement, I use invisibility to free Daeros and poison the crusaders' food and water. In a safe corner, I weave another Dimension Door to hop across the locked fence.
I buff myself with Protection from Fire, Mislead, and weave Spell Turning, then take on the entirety of the basement's forces. I aggro them and then weave a couple of Incendiary Clouds near the fence, toasting everyone dumb enough to try to get through the plot-locked fence. The crusaders can't touch me and neither can Hephernaan or his toadies. Any reinforcements that teleport in are quickly roasted alive. It's wholesale slaughter! I level up and choose Horrid Wilting as my first level 8 spell.
Next is the necromancer cabal in Kanaglym. I cast Farsight and then summon a Mordy Sword and have it attack Kherriun. I follow up with an Oil of Burning and the ghost jar shatters, causing Halatathlaer to join the fight on my side. I exterminate the mage group next to Kherriun with Horrid Wilting. The dragon takes care of the rest.
With the barrel of Bwoosh placed, its time to leave and see if I can withstand the sieges of the coalition camp and Dragonspear. The trolls and ogres are killed using another Sequencer of Greater Malison + Slow + Grease, which might as well have kept them rooted to their spots. I follow up with another woven Incendiary Cloud.
For the mage group, Horrid Wilting dehydrates most of the mages, leaving them easy prey for the wizard slayers.
I ask Dosia to give me a rest, then weave another Sequencer with my usual combo. I unleash it upon the warrior priests and include a scroll of Chaos as well, rendering them utterly helpless.
Onto the fight with the strongest invaders, I cast Mislead and park my clone near the camp's bonfire. I debuff them with Greater Malison and follow up with Horrid Wilting, culling the weaker mooks and heavily damaging the named goons. Then I learn that Auziel the thief is unkillable. She won't die no matter how much damage she takes. Soon all the named goons are dead.
After the siege is over, I rest and recover Stoneskin and my Sequencer. At the Siege of Dragonspear, I cast Mislead and keep my clone outside the castle walls. I use my sequencer which affects most of the crusaders and follow up with Horrid Wilting, devastating their forces. The rest I clean up with Potions of Firebreath.
Ashatiel challenges me and I'm sure she's going to immediately declare it unfair, but she doesn't call me out for using invisibility because I was still under Mislead when she challenged me. I paralyze her with a wand of paralysis, then finish her off at my leisure with Darts of Biting.
Down to Hell we go. I thought I could just stroll past the devils with invisibility, but apparently Lemures can see through and dispel illusions. I use a wand of monster summoning to distract them for a round while I summon a Mordy Sword. The sword has its work cut out for it!
I would try to summon more competent help but I can't spend 3 rounds standing helplessly in mental combat. I summon a skeleton warrior back near the stairs while the devils hit Mordy's Sword. To help out, I use Wand of Lightning charges and eventually the devils are all defeated. I have to do this a second time with Thrix's goons.
Upon the elevator, I'm careful not to expend any spells and rely on scrolls and wands instead. I use a couple of monster summoning wand charges and a scroll of Melf's Meteors to deal with the devils. Once the long pause indicating the auto-save occurs, I buff with SI: Abjuration, Protection from Fire, and a potion of magic resistance, conferring 100% MR to myself.
At the top, I get Caelar to join me but let her AI control her. Here we go... I cast Chaos Shield and try to weave a Time Stop. It takes on the first try.
I run up behind Belhifet and cast Mirror Image on myself, then cancel into Chaotic Weave and try for Imprisonment. I have to cancel a few weaves because Imprisonment doesn't appear on the list, but it finally does after about 4 fruitless weaves. My first Imprisonment fizzles, so I try weaving it again. The second time also fails. I only have 1 round left in Time Stop, so I cast PfMW and then try to weave Imprisonment again. Just after Time Stop wears off, it takes! Thank you Ring of Wizardry!
With Belhifet imprisoned, the devils start teleporting away and Caelar and I free Aun Argent. I'm actually surprised Caelar is still alive.
SoD Complete!
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 16Caelar Argent - Fighter 15
I rolled up a wizard slayer recently for this challenge and have had 3 attempts with him. I've played in BG1 a lot with wizard slayers before and only need a small amount of luck to get through that. However, given I have yet to complete SoD with any of the characters used in this challenge despite multiple attempts, that's clearly more of an obstacle. I don't think an unreasonable amount of luck would be needed even for that though if I can avoid mistakes, so decided to have one more attempt at this character for now and document this one.
In Candlekeep I bought basic equipment, including a ninjato to work with my scimitar proficiency (the advantage of that is that it never breaks). After leaving there, Imoen, Xzar and Montaron thought that the fact their equipment is of no interest to me might save them for once - but were disappointed
After calming Marl down, finding a book for Firebead and shooting Neera, I moved on down to Nashkel to get the ankheg armor. Shooting Oopah and Vitiare there put me close to another level and returning Mr Colquetle's amulet was enough to get that - again a disappointing roll with only another 8 HPs though.
A belt was retrieved from an ogre on the way to the FAI. There, I was prepared to nip into the temple to avoid Tarnesh's spells, but a guard finished him off before there was any need for that.
Further north some fishermen were killed in order to return a bowl to Tenya. The ankheg near to her was also attacked. With HPs being so low that was a slight threat, but the map edge was available if retreat had been required - which it wasn't.
Reputation was boosted by encounters with Ardrouine, then Charleston Nib. I left the idol undisturbed for the moment, but still got enough XP from the latter for another level - picking up a slightly better 11 HPs this time.
Brage gave me a lift back to Nashkel, where Oublek provided a further reputation increase. Shooting Greywolf and taking Samuel back to the FAI then pushed that on to 20. To get slightly better prices I also went through the Cloud Peaks to pick up the charisma tome.
Encounters in the Cloud Peaks had included pinching some magic arrows off Sendai's archer friends and those were used to get some quick XP from the golems at High Hedge before talking to Thalantyr for the first time.
Some spiders, Mirianne, Karlat and Zhurlong all provided some easy XP at Beregost to push me up to level 6, with a very welcome further 15 HPs.
Previous updates:
Moving on to the basilisk area, I followed Korax round as he paralyzed the basilisks. He also dealt with Mutamin
Before going to the Nashkel Mines I shot Bentan for his PfM scroll, then got caught stealing in Beregost. That set me up to get Bhaal LMD, but first Mulahey was in the way. There were no problems getting to him, but my placement was fractionally out in dragging him towards the entrance. I didn't want to get too close to that, as in that case coming back in after running away means you'll be blocked from leaving again by kobolds and skeletons (you can reset those by resting, but to do that safely with a wizard slayer means going all the way back to the top level of the mine). In this case though I wasn't quite close enough and Mulahey's supporters appeared blocking my exit. That led to me being hit by rigid thinking, but I'd already started attacking the cleric and he died before I decided to stop attacking.
Outside the mine I tried to drag Telka away from the other amazons, but all of them came together and I ran away. A trip back saw LMD come in handy to interrupt one spell as Zeela and Maneira died
Nimbul chased me into a shop, where he did quite well to get one magic missile off - but that was no threat.
At the Bandit Camp Taurgosz got a couple of whacks in before expiring, while his bandits didn't even manage that. After resting, Britik and Raemon followed me out of the tent to their doom, while Venkt stayed inside to wait his turn.
I went to sell some bandit scalps and realized I'd forgotten to activate Officer Vai - losing the opportunity for a bit of reputation there as well as unimportant cash. On to the Cloakwood where the first area was skipped. The second area is a potential problem for the wizard slayer due to the web traps. For the first of those it's necessary to check if there is a spider within sight range before activating it. The second trap problem is near the ettercaps. The first 4 of those can be pulled back without getting close to the trap, but the last one only appears when the trap is triggered if you're moving directly towards it. It is possible though to skirt that trap in order to get to the ettercap (I don't show the location of traps when playing, but have put it on this screenshot to show where you can go).
There was no further action until the final Cloakwood area. Bhaal horrors were used there to split up Drasus & co. Drasus himself was hard to hit with arrows and put up a good fight once he'd recovered from horror, but eventually fell in time.
In the City I picked up the dexterity tome and Balduran's Helm before returning Nester's dagger - getting to level 8 there with another 14 HPs taking me to the respectability of 97 (though still short of the 110, 113 and 101 of previous runs).
I had initially been thinking of getting reputation back to 20 before killing Drizzt - and then buying arrows of explosion to try and disrupt his charm spells. However, I decided instead to use a scroll of PfM on the grounds that my experience of SoD with the previous attempt suggests I will need fewer scrolls there than I originally thought. That intercepted his first charm attempt, but he saved the other until the scroll had worn off - when I successfully saved rather than using another scroll. A few hundred arrows later and Drizzt was down to a handful of HPs when he was killed by lightning.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/966836/#Comment_966836
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/966905/#Comment_966905
A quick tour of the realm saw various quests completed to push reputation back up to 20. I also beat up Jardak to get the Helm of Glory for even better shop prices before buying anything that might be useful.
The poison quest ended with shooting down Marek after dodging his initial confusion. That bow upgrade and the use of acid arrows helped shoot down all 6 sirines at the Lighthouse without any of them getting the chance to cast charms. The golems soon followed and the use of the constitution tome allowed me to get rid of Buckley's Buckler.
A quick visit to Durlag's Tower disposed of battle horrors and basilisks to make sure that I would level up immediately when transferring to SoD.
Back in Baldur's Gate I headed for the Iron Throne with the intention of splitting the enemies up on the stairs. I was probably paying too much attention to the radio and not enough to the game though and got caught out there
Starting: In BG1EE.
Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage (works like Core for BGEE in my experience), max HP on level up.
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.
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
Enter Aldain II, the brawnier, substantially less silver-tongued cousin of Aldain, also a Human Conjurer.
Aldain II enjoys whacking things over the head with a Quarterstaff (once he gets a proficiency in it, anyway...). Being a Conjurer, he has all the upsides of a Specialist mage and pretty much none of the drawbacks: Early on no Identify will strain our resources a little since we have to pay for it, but in the long run there's oodles of ways to have things identified, just as we'll have plenty of other casters that can handle Detect Invisibility (BG1EE)/True Sight (SoD/BG2EE). And those are really the only spells of consequence he can't cast.
He will be going with a fairly standard but very powerful party: Jaheira and Khalid as frontliners, Kivan later replaced by Coran for archery and thieving, Imoen Thief 5 -> Mage 9 with 100 Detect Illusions, and trusty Branwen for all-around clerical needs.
Aldain II has placed + in Slings, and starts with the spells Find Familiar (memorized), Sleep (memorized) and Blindness. So basically he will not need to scribe anything new until he reaches L3, as these three (two really, as we only cast Find Familiar once) spells are all you need to make it through the early game.
Aldain II, Human Conjurer, BG1EE Update 1
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
SoD Updates: 1, 2
As alluded to in the epitaph of Lazramar, I'll keep things brief for this first update: Essentially, assume the tactics used boil down to Sleep/Entangle/Blindness/Command/Hold Person/Web/Wand of Fire/Necklace of Missiles.
Aldain II cleared Candlekeep, then picked up Imoen, Xzar and Montaron. Montaron fell fighting Tarnesh, Xzar survived and retired at the FAI. Khalid and Jaheira were picked up, Imoen snuck past the Ankhegs at the Farm to steal a Wand of Fire and escaped under the effect of Jaheira's Invisibility potion.
Once the party aquired Kivan, his bow along with liberal application of the Wand of Fire (and the occasional Command from Branwen) saw us through the early game in style: Most of the areas west of Nashkel and Beregost were cleared.
There were a few mishaps: Khalid got too close to an Ogre Berserker at level 1 and dropped immediately, and later got Held and pummeled to bits by Bassilus at level 3, but otherwise no deaths.
We had our first and (amazingly) so far only close call when a level 1 Aldain II got tagged by a Hobgoblin Elite upon being a little careless with positioning when trying to Fireball said Hobgoblin Elite: The arrow took 9 of his 12 HP and poisoned him. It looked grim, since neither antidote, nor Slow Poison, nor even a regular CLW was on hand, but thankfully that particular poison works very slowly: Aldain II could outheal it using regular potions.
Mulahey took a single blast of Scorcher (ah, that wand) and was vanquished.
Nimbul got a few hits in but had memorized no Confusion nor Emotion and so couldn't kill anyone off (I'm really glad he never seems to memorize Sleep.. that would be more or less guaranteed kills for him, given that my party is typically L3 when we face him).
Tranzig did his usual irritating farce of hasting himself and running around, but accomplished nothing.
The bandit camp was Webbed and Fireballed into oblivion. Taugosz quaffed a Potion of Free Action, and I was a little worried, but thankfully his awful save vs Spell meant two Commands brought him low.
Around here Imoen reached L5 Thief and thus 100 Detect Illusions, and so was dualed (I'd rather have her Detect Illusions back sooner than let her take another level of Thief... and this way she can spend her L6 Mage proficiency on something nicer than the Mage weapon selection). She spent a long time memorizing nothing but Identify on rest, since I'd been a bit cheap and only identified what we could really use.
Yeah, I don't use stuff without identifying it first.
All of Cloakwood went without a hitch, and we got Coran to replace Kivan. Now having lots of Invisibility available, Aldain II simply tripped all the web traps (invisibly), making for a smooth ride.
Drasus and his gang succumbed to a hellish combination of 3x Web, 3x Entangle, 2x Stinking Cloud and 1x Grease, followed by massed Fireballs. I'm taking no chances.
Inside the mines, to my great dismay Cook got caught in the crossfire while we dealt with Hareishan's group, reducing our 14 reputation to 9 (that will hurt, especially since I don't donate my reputation up and have the 1/4 reputation increase SCS option active). But really, it mostly hurt because I feel bad for Cook...
Natasha required only a single charge of our Wand of Summoning and a few of Branwen's skeletons to bring down.
So, big D. Imagine my surprise when everything went the way it's supposed to. Better, even.
Using stealth, Invisibility and Sanctuary, everyone but Khalid took position to the south of D, where no guards spawn. Khalid activated the PfM-scroll, gulped some 8 potions, and engaged. Aldain II and Imoen assisted from outside D's sight by dropping a few Skull Traps/Fireballs, helping to clear the Battle Horrors faster.
D futilely assailed Khalid with a plethora of Invocation spells, Khalid kept wailing on him. The first wave of guards spawned, D moved up to them, and rewarded their loyalty by Fireballing most of them to death (he was aiming for Khalid). And then D lost his Stoneskin and dropped in two hits. Nice.
Mines were flooded, and we made our way back out of Cloakwood. Before heading to Baldur's Gate, we made a giant sweep of everything we skipped so far on the Sword Coast: Helm of Defense, the Siren Coast, Vax and Zal etc... even Firewine Bridge. Some day I will get control over my desire to finish everything and just say "no" to Firewine Bridge. Massive spawns of incredibly irritating Kobold Commandos constantly ducking into corridors to break line of sight, lots of traps, and the payoff is essentially a scroll of Cloudkill. OK, Cloudkill is pretty nice, but still.
As we leave our party, they can be found in the Jovial Juggler in Beregost. All that remains is to clear out the Red Wizards, after which we will suck the great city of Baldur's Gate dry of treasure and experience.
Finally, it will be time for the Warders of Durlag's Tower to know some payback...
Aldain II is now a level 6 Human Conjurer, and should hit level 7 just in time to partake of the trove of higher-level scrolls available at Sorcerous Sundries (Notice the Quarterstaff proficiency! He's already knocked a Dire Wolf down a peg when it strayed too close).
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2, 3SoD: 1, 2
Now in Amn, I Skip Chateau Irenicus and search the rubble for imported loot. Istishia's Mind Shield is in there and it's still combined with Akadi's Cloak of Rapid Motion. I put on the circlet and console in a Bag of Holding as usual. I've got tons of stuff to hoard this playthrough because I can build golems, store stuff to forge for Item Upgrades, and hold on to stuff to sell because Wild Surges can destroy 80% of your gold, so it is wise to only sell stuff when you want to buy something.
Now equipped with @Bubb's Extended Spell Menu, using Chaotic Weave will save my index finger much stamina because (almost) all the spells I can weave are readily available on-screen instead of needing to clickclickclickclickclick the arrow to get to the higher-level stuff. I highly recommend it for any mage-heavy playthroughs.
I deal with the circus pretty easily and the slaves at the Copper Coronet are freed. I summon some fire elementals in the sewer connecting the Coronet with the Slaver's Compound and they do all the heavy lifting. aTweaks' elemental summoning allows me to skip the mental combat and possibly get more than 1 elemental per cast. I get them to follow me into the slaver's compound where they kill all the guards while I watch.
Mae'Var tasks me with getting the Weathermistress's amulet, but its not nighttime yet. I go into the Temple District's sewers and see what trouble I can get into. I use a Wand of Lightning charged scroll of Summon Air Elemental, but most of them are killed by Gaius' Death Spell and the rest are killed by the party's weapons. They start advancing toward me, but a charged Potion of Firebreath puts them all down.
Mekrath is killed by a swarm of Mordy's Swords.
I send them into the Yuan-ti room of Mekrath's hideout but their duration expires halfway through the fight. The Yuan-ti mage comes out of hiding and I retreat down the stairs, but it follows me. I'm trying to run away so I can summon something else, but it tags me with Power Word, Stun. I used the Contingency scroll I found just a minute ago in Mekrath's library to hide and very fortunately the Yuan-ti mage didn't have any divination attacks to reveal me. The run could've easily been over right there if he did.
The stun wears off and I run away with an Oil of Speed while still Improved Invisible and then use Poison Mist from my circlet to finish off my would-be run-killer.
I decide to rest after this and it's nighttime now. I steal the Weathermistress's amulet and earn a level from it. My first HLA is the Planetar and my first level 9 spell is Time Stop. With the planetar now at my disposal, I sic it on the Pebblecrusher party in the Den of the Seven Vales. They are thoroughly destroyed with most KO'd from the planetar's Earthquake.
Mae'Var's questline comes to its conclusion and I call upon the Planetar once again. Needless to say it cleans house.
With all this loot in my bag of holding, I sell it and buy the Robe of Vecna and then move on to Watcher's Keep to buy a Wizard Staff. Unfortunately, only kitless Sorcerers and Dragon Disciples can activate wizard staves; Chaos Sorcerers cannot.
Now I decide that I want to get started building golems already. I'm pretty sure I can handle Watcher's Keep up to level 2. Yet again, I summon the planetar to do the hard work for me because the statues are pretty hardy and somewhat magic resistant.
For my next HLA, I choose Improved Alacrity. I gather the items necessary to open the portal to level 2 and the planetar once again comes out on top. It clears out level 2 for me as well, earning me another level. This time I choose Chaotic Eruption, which looks like the Chaos Sorcerer's version of Implosion except it can do more damage.
Before freeing the Chromatic Demon, I summon my first Simulacrum and I'm disappointed by how weak it is. I have it summon an underwhelming skeleton warrior and plan to just have it use Chaotic Weave during the fight to compensate. But the planetar has a better idea.
That's... something. With level 2 cleared, I can finally build golems. I picked up several golem building tomes just in level 2 alone and I build Perfect Clay MK I. It should be able to tank anything that doesn't do crushing damage. I'm going to be more cautious with it around mages because one wayward Horrid Wilting and its physical damage resistance will be history. Stone Golems suck.
Back in the temple district's sewers, I take on the Shade Lich and protect myself and Clay with a PfU scroll. I summon the planetar to deal with the lich, but the lich summons a Fallen Planetar in response, so I book it out the door and shut it on them. The Fallen Planetar gets a vorpal hit on my planetar. Damn.
Situations like this call for Project Image. I summon my clone and it uses a PfU scroll on itself, and then casts Farsight near the lich's sarcophagus. It casts Chaos Shield and then weaves a Dimension Door over there.
I have my image summon a second planetar, but the lich stops time and casts Imprisonment on it. Undeterred, my clone summons a third planetar, who also gets imprisoned. I am in mild disbelief that the lich has two castings of Imprisonment memorized. To counter this, my clone weaves Freedom and it takes on the first try, releasing both planetars.
One planetar is still affected by the lich's fear aura, so the brave one casts Remove Fear on the scared one, then both get to work destroying the lich. The lich backs off a bit and summons two Mordy Swords to help out. My clone casts Horrid Wilting to remove these pests and its duration expires immediately after the casting, killing the swords. I was about to head over there personally when one planetar scores a vorpal hit on the lich.
I'll take it! After this impressive display, I use EEKeeper to swap Simulacrum with Pierce Shield because I'm convinced that Simulacra are overrated for pure casters. They're far better suited to other classes that can equip Vhailor's Helm or use a Simulacrum scroll somehow.
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 20
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
SoD Updates: 1, 2
Continuing from where we left off, the Red Wizards were taken out. Skeletons were sent to soak up the initial brunt of enemy spells, followed by a Fireball (to clear the gaggle of summons the Red Wizards had conjured), and then an all out charge with lots of Darts of Wounding. No trouble.
Afterwards, Baldur's Gate was cleansed. The only thing we didn't bother with was stealing everything not nailed down, since after buying every potion of Magic Protection/Magic Shielding/Magic Blocking/Power/Storm Giant Strength etc that we wanted, we still had enough money to pick up the Robe of the Archmagi when next we swing by High Hedge. And there's nothing else we want or need to buy.
Most of the Gate was uneventful. Once again, Spiders (this time in the Sewers) proved the nastiest of the monster lot, what with the Web Tangle almost causing us to lose Jaheira (though a quick combination of 2x Scorcher from Wands of Fire and a Slow Poison from Branwen saved the day).
Yeah, almost losing one of the tanks was as bad as it got. We're being very careful.
And even though I've never made such frequent use of Wands of Fire before, we are only now starting to run out of charges on the first two we aquired.
One slight variation this run is that, due to our low reputation from accidentally exploding Cook, a few quests change. Ordulinian will not give you the Arkion and Nemphre quest if you have low reputation (unsure what the cutoff is, he still won't speak to us at 12 reputation).
Nadarin gives you 500 gold and a pair of Boots of Stealth instead of 1800 gold for killing the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse.
And, for once, we had low enough reputation that Cordyr gave us the quest to kill the sirines in exchange for a Haste scroll. Guess that's something.
Once all of the Gate had been pacified, we prepared thoroughly for the highlight of the session, the Iron Throne fight. This, just like the Davaeorn fight, went exceptionally smoothly.
The entire party set up in the small room in the south end of the top floor. A charge of the Wand of Summoning was expended, and the unfortunate critters sent to dull the edge of the zealot's attack (mainly, to soak up the Confusion spells, as we have no real way to counter this for more than a single character at a time). Once that was done, we conjured a Nymph (Jaheira is finally L7 druid), three Skeleton Warriors, buffed a bit (PfE 10' Radius/Defensive Harmony/Bless/Chant/Haste/Remove Fear, Giant Strength potions for the fighters) and charged, with the summons taking the lead.
Our first action was a Greater Malison by Imoen, followed a split second after by Confusion from Aldain II.
This proved exceptionally effective: The two Shennaras, as well as two of the casters (I forget which ones) were confused and thus easy targets.
Gardush came storming in, but couldn't do much. With only Zhalimar and two casters left, the enemy were quickly overcome (although Zhalimar got in some frightening hits for 30 odd damage courtesy of quaffing a Cloud Giant Strength potion).
Off to Candlekeep. I obsessed a bit about the Ogre Magi ambush, but it too went smoothly! The Ogres led with 2x Charm Person on Khalid (as opposed to Dire Charm), a Glitterdust which just didn't do much, and a Hold Person on Coran (slightly annoying). Thus Aldain and Imoen had time to get their MGoI up, and proceed to, with some assistance from Jaheira and Branwen, devastate the unfortunate ogres.
The party entered Candlekeep, killed the solitary Doppleganger posing as a priest, and headed straight for the inn. Where they can be found at the moment, preparing for the dread ascent of the central keep, and the disturbing realizations that lie therein...
Aldain II is now a level 8 Human Conjurer.
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
SoD Updates: 1, 2
The party opts not to kill Rieltar and his friends, get framed for it anyway, and are sent off into the catacombs.
Apart from Coran being reduced to 20 HP by a lightning trap (impatient elf...) everything goes just fine.
Tired of solving every single encounter with Web and Fireball, we treat Prat and his cronies to an advancing wall of bony Skeleton Warrior death, along with a synchronized Greater Malison/Confusion courtesy of Imoen and Aldain II. All but Sakul fail their saves, and the outcome is never in doubt.
Since every single SCS mage in BG1EE apart from a few Bards and Enchanters buff with Shield, I've taken to memorize Burning Hands when dealing with them. It deals surprisingly good damage if they fail the save, even if they do save it still deals a little damage, and it totally ignores Shield. Chromatic Orb is also a decent choice.
After escaping the catacombs, it seems a good time for TotSC. We begin, as always with that horrid frozen speck, the Ice Dungeon. Must have that Stoneskin.
This is what I enjoy about arcane casters, pure or multi-class: You get a double sense of progression. Your character keeps improving, AND you keep finding fun new scrolls! I love it.
So, Ice Dungeon. I figured I'd be clever. Khalid is buffed with Protection from Lightning, Death Ward, Protection from Fire, Protection from Cold, Resist Fire/Cold, Remove Fear and a charge of the Greenstone Amulet (basically rendering him immune to anything and everything the mages could do).
Then a wave of Wand of Summoning fodder is sent ahead, themselves buffed with standard spells (Remove Fear/Chant/Bless etc). The hope was that Andris and friends would blow their Remove Magic spells on the fodder, thus leaving an all but invulnerable Khalid free to deal with the casters under his powerful protections.
Colour me impressed; the mages didn't bother dispelling the buffs on the fodder, but rather just started killing them. I guess they figured a Hobgoblin with some clerical buffs is.. still just a hobgoblin.
Khalid rushes in, has most of his protections stripped, but somehow the Greenstone Amulet charge stays active, so I let him keep at it. Eventually, with the fodder duly absorbing some of the nastiness being tossed around, Beyn and Marcelus fall, prompting Andris to teleport out.
Upon his return, we strip his defenses and lay into him. He gets a single Sunfire off (I saw an Invocation casting, but Khalid has 96 hitpoints, and Jaheira had 60% fire resistance at the time, so I correctly figured we could take it) which hurts our tanks a bit, but down he goes.
Cuchol goes down to massed ranged fire, not having buffed with Protection from Normal Missiles.
Garan actually almost kills Imoen (he casts Fireball twice, then a third time from a scroll!), but she survives.
Tellan again bugs out and goes after the Winter Wolves instead of our Skeleton Warriors. I actually have the bonies kill the wolves (Tellan killstealing two of them) just so the gnome will put up a fight.
He does, but now that we have the 5 HD version of undead, there's nothing he can do.
Dezkiel doesn't even get a single spell off, he drops so fast. The scroll is OURS! And some cloak or other too. We are teleported back to the mainland.
Alright, that leaves us with a choice. Though it's not much of a choice: I intend to do Werewolf Island simply because of the Chain Mail +3, but I'd be much more comfortable doing so if we had a weapon that could hurt the Greater Werewolf suitable for Khalid. The Flametongue +1 fits the bill, and can be found in Durlag's Tower, so off we go.
Above ground levels are cleared without a hitch. This time I didn't blow any potions of Magic Protection on dealing with Kirinhale; Khalid with a Greenstone Amulet charge and a few regular potions did the job just fine anyway.
The basement where you meet the scaredy-cat elven Thief as well as the level with the Warders (sans the Warders themselves) are also cleared easily. Alright, time for proper preparations.
As you no doubt recall, the battle with the Warders was the site of the epic failure of Lazramar.
Such a tragedy cannot be allowed to reoccur!
A rest later, we are ready. The plan is slightly different from the last time.
Four Skeleton Warriors (all we can summon) will hold the line against Pride. They should fare better than the last time; there's one more now, and they are all the 5 HD version (last time we had two 3 HD and one 5 HD). Pride is a beast, but I expect it will take him an absolute minimum of four rounds to cut through the undead. More likely 5-6 rounds. This will be enough time.
Jaheira will start the battle by casting Zone of Sweet Air, dispersing Avarice's Cloudkill and allowing us to move as we wish. Khalid will be potion-buffed to the absolute hilt and sent after Love. Everyone else will straight up kill Fear before he has a chance to paralyze anyone.
Once Fear drops, we will take down Love, Avarice and finally Pride.
The plan is put into motion. Every buff we can cast is cast. The Skeleton Warriors are sent west, where Pride spawns. The rest of the party takes position, and a seriously powered-up Khalid runs down to talk to Love.
The Warders spawn, and the game is afoot!
The first round goes entirely in our favour. Fear, while having Magic Resistance (a fair bit of it too) fails to resist a charge from Branwen's Wand of Flamestrike, bringing him straight to Near Death. We follow up with our best magical ammunition and 2x Magic Missile from Imoen and Aldain II. Just enough of them get through to slay Fear. Huzzah!
Also pictured: Jaheira about to finish Zone of Sweet air.
With Fear nothing but a bitter memory, and the Cloudkill cleared, we are free to engage Love at maximum capacity. She falls quickly to a combined assault (the icon on her is Physical Mirror, not Spell Turning, so it's fine to use Wands of Flamestrike, as you can tell).
We haven't lost a single Skeleton Warrior yet, and the enemy is down to two Warders. This is going better than expected.
Avarice is driven from hiding by Imoen's Detect Illusions skill. Without his Invisibility, he is powerless before us.
All that remains is Pride. He too has a fair bit of Magic Resistance, but Imoen lands a Greater Malison, followed by a Doom from Jaheira. This allows us to, after three castings, land a Slow on him (and even an Insect Swarm, nice!). We wear him down even as our wall of Skeleton Warriors grows thin. Coran eventually slays the foul Warder. Take THAT,
turnipNecromancer-hatin' scum!Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Victory is ours! The party gathers up the wardstone and heads back outside, where they can be found preparing for further descent into the ominous tower.
Aldain II remains a level 8 Human Conjurer, but those elusive 5th level spells draw ever nearer.
As a bonus, please enjoy some footage of Aldain II laying down the blunt law for some skeletons.
Whack!
Smack!
Whackitysmackwhack!
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2, 3SoD: 1, 2
BG2: 1
The undead further below are cleared out by Clay and the planetar while Clay solos the beholders. The Unseeing Eye is put to sleep and Clay survives a Horrid Wilting from it without being converted into a Stone Golem somehow.
With the planetar at my disposal, I take on the guarded compound. Clay and I travel upstairs while invisible but Ketta reveals us. Clay jumps into the fray while I sneak inside the closest bedroom and park a Mislead clone there. Clay is taking a beating and gets stunned by Koshi's Celestial Fury, so I cast Improved Alacrity and start firing on all cylinders.
I'm mainly focusing on Sion. In order of spells cast: Planetar, a couple of Spell Thrusts to get rid of Sion's Spell Shield, Spellstrike, Power Word Stun. Now that Sion's out of the fight, I cast Greater Malison, Incendiary Cloud, Chaos Shield, and weave a Stun Symbol into the mob, but Clay has already been split in half. The new clay golems and the planetar beat down the stunned survivors.
I planned to rest but wondered if I could get a Wish Rest instead. I cast a charged Wish and it would appear that even wishes can wild surge!
At this point, I sell all the loot I collected and pay 30k for the Ring of Protection +2 and Amulet of Power, then sell some more loot to buy the Wizzard Hat to reduce my casting time even further for a total of -6 to spellcasting speed factor. I do the Harper Hold quest for Xzar and level up. One of the clay golems is killed by Lassal at the docks. The remaining clay golem kills the lich in the Bridge District because I used a PfU scroll on it.
I want to open the door to the Twisted Rune, so I have to cast knock on it, causing Cowled Wizards to appear. They take down my remaining clay golem.
I summon a planetar to cast Insect Swarm on them so they get mopped up. Inside the Twisted Rune's sanctum, I protect myself and another planetar from undead. Shangalar is killed from range with the Crimson Dart +3, so here comes everyone else to play.
Everyone bunches up onto the planetar. It takes down Vaxall first and then casts Insect Swarm to disable Layenne. A few hits from its sword dispels all her melee protections, so she gets chopped up. The Staff of the Magi is mine!
With the lich population of Athkatla nearly extinct, I take on Kangaxx. I buff with the staff's Spell Trap, Spell Turning, and put up a Spell Shield too. I summon my planetar again and protect both of us from undead. But Kangaxx's first action is to cast Remove Magic on himself since he can't see anyone, which dispels my planetar's PfU. Kangaxx buffs up and summons a Fallen Planetar.
I cast PfMW and kite it around, trying to get my planetar to kill it. But the fallen one gets a vorpal hit on the good one and casts Insect Swarm at me. I cast Chaos Shield and successfully weave a Blue Fireshield...which does not protect me even though it's supposed to.
Irritated, I retreat back up the stairs but the swarm wears off in just the next round. I head back down the stairs and summon a new planetar, then call the Improved Kitthix swarm. The evil planetar kills half of them until it gets unsummoned, so we concentrate on Kangaxx.
Now Kangaxx is in demilich mode. Shadow Door + SI: Divination + Spell Level Immunity 1-9 makes it impossible to detect him. But the planetar still can. I use a charged PfU scroll on myself and my summons. The planetar chases Kangaxx down for a while as he puts up PfMW acouple times. Eventually...
There's only 1 lich left in Akthkatla.
And then there were none. I return to Watcher's Keep and build Ice Golem MK I. He's got a temper on him. I also build Flesh Golem MK I.
Ice Golem MK I is slow, unwieldy, and not very tough because he dies in the next quest I undertake. Flesh Golem MK I is more resilient, but crushing damage still gets the better of him.
I build Perfect Stone MK I next. I don't have enough clay to build more clay golems.
Onto the Planar Sphere. Perfect Stone is holding up a bit better than I thought. When we reach Tolgerias and his pet wizard, things get a little hairy. I thought the planetar had it in the bag, but when Tolgerias spotted me, he buffed to hell and then put down a teleport field, sending it and Perfect Stone behind the ice wall door. To make matters worse, I suffered a wild surge that entangled me so I couldn't simply walk over and open it. No more Mr. Nice Chaos Sorcerer. I cast Improved Alacrity and meticulously strip away Tolgerias's defenses, finishing him off with a Power Word Stun with a Horrid Wilting chaser.
Still entangled and under aura cleansing, I Dimension Door over into the ice area and put down an Incendiary Cloud and Greater Malison, followed by a charged Wish with 2x area-wide Horrid Wiltings. All hostiles in the area are now dead. Outside in the abyss, the planetar carried me again but Perfect Stone MK I died without splitting in two.
With my mage stronghold established, I build Perfect Flesh MK II and Maggot Golem MK I and move on to the Planar Prison. The maggot golem dies from a single Flame Strike from a yuan-ti priest because its weak to fire.
Perfect Flesh MK II is killed by the yuan-ti horde over to the right side. The planetar once again carries me through the whole quest.
Back at my planar sphere, I have my students create a dagger and build Perfect Flesh MK III, who also has quite the temper. Next up is Firkraag's dungeon. The Ruhk Transmuter that presented a stiff challenge to Krieg is vorpal'd.
Instead of using a PfU scroll, I have a planetar do undead extermination in conjunction with Farsight.
Samia's party is wiped out and Perfect Flesh MK III gets incinerated without splitting.
I learn to construct Iron Golems. Now I just need chips of cold iron. Tazok is vorpal'd.
Conster is magically assassinated the same way as Tolgerias, except I followed up with a woven Power Word Kill. Firkraag suffers the same fate as his toady. Lower Resistance + Spell Thrust + Pierce Shield + Breach + Greater Malison + Unluck + Chaotic Eruption heavily damages him, with the Planetar getting a couple hits in to lower him to < 60 HP. I finish him off with Chaos Shield and a woven Power Word Kill.
It is immensely satisfying to have the good spells on hand with multiple uses. Being able to weave anything I would otherwise be missing out on due to being a Sorcerer makes me feel like a Swiss Army Mage! Bubb's Extended Spell Menu seriously, SERIOUSLY makes casting and weaving easier.
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 30
The single biggest threat is boredom over the lack of growth and the level crunch around Kuldahar and Dragon's Eye. The basic problem is that, to deal with early game hordes in a way that's not a soul-sucking chore, you really need at least 18 sorcerer levels to cast Wail of the Banshee. And once you hit sorcerer level 18, there's a very strong incentive to continue to level 20, which gives you maximum spell slots and an extra couple of level 9 spell picks. That's basically the peak of your power in terms of damage spells, summoning spells, and instant death options.
But the damage spells and summons can't keep up with late-game critters, and being able to deal lots of melee damage becomes more and more important. Gameplay dramatically slows down, and it doesn't help that the game doesn't get interesting again until the Severed Hand.
p.s, I don't know who invited a drow along but not on my watch!
I then started a no reload with a seducer who bit it when I missed my domination on carbos who managed a lucky critical hit as well(I had an excellent set of runs last night as you can see)
I restarted again after this, wanting to make some sort of progress. I started a seducer again using @semiticgod mod. I kept Imoen for my rogue since I have no detect traps on my seducer. We recruited Carl and Jurgen from the mansion using the seduce ability and killed shoal leveling Imoen and my seducer a level.
Archy 93 - a new deadshot in town
My LoB beastmaster is gone - alas. The no reload was taken a bit too far: I didnt make a save of the game and my autosave was overwritten by a test game... well given my eratic playing he would have been killed anyway.BTW: @Pantalion : in some of your plays you pick up a str manual at the library in Durlags Tower. I remember doing that in days of old in a BWS, but dont know from which mod it came - do you know?
Time for a new guy. Mobile testing SoD had rekindled my love for the archers. I chalked up a new guy: a 19 dex elf with a longbow...
He has 2 pips in longbow & pips in longsword and flails as well. He is going for GM in longbow and has demonic/fell as racial enemy (planning for Big B in SoD - alongside Corwin).
The setup is insane with no extra damage and max HP at level up - no mods.
The start was uneventfull. My facepalm moment was when I realised that my exceptionel str was too low to break open the chest with the potion of clarity...
Dang it.
The easy Beregost quests and Shoal gave me enough XP for level 3. Third pip in longbows, kit bonusses meant my thaco was really picking up
Buying a composite bow +1 and “finding” a pair of boots & bracers completed the outfit so far
A quick basilisk hunt catapulted Archy to level 6, another pip and kit bonusses...
Questing at the sword coast brought Archy to level 7 and 1/2 more attacks pr round. Next up the mine..
Before the mine a funny thing happened. I was about to pick up Neeras gem bag. I stealthed shot her to avoid Ekandor showing up. Neera was killed, but Ekandor showed up - not hostile. He didnt resist when he was shot down either (nor his guards). Picking up a stoneskin scroll risk free was kind of meh
He force-casts Mordenkainen's Force Missiles at you, which throws 7 missiles at you. If you make your saving throw, each missile will only deal 5 damage, but if you fail it, it can deal 88 damage in one hit, which is what killed me.
Apparently the only way to stop him from casting it is to have Globe of Invulnerability active (or Antimagic Shell, but that's suicidal in that fight considering all the enemy fighters). The level 1 Shield spell apparently doesn't block Mordenkainen's Force Missiles in IWD2 (it did in the original IWD), so it's impossible to maintain true immunity without also preventing yourself from going invisible, since all forms of invisibility except for the dangerously-slow-casting and pricy Mass Invisibility spell are spell levels 1-4 (Sanctuary, Wands of Sanctuary, Invisibility, Invisibility Sphere, Improved Invisibility, and Potions of Invisibility).
Invisibility is important in the Saablic Tan fight. With two mages that cast Mordenkainen's Sword, Slayer Knights of Xvim that see through normal invisibility, high-level archers, several half-dragons, and numerous other enemies, the pressure on the player is absolutely enormous. Most of the enemies have attack bonuses of 50 to 60, but the two Red Mages have an attack bonus of 73 when using Mordenkainen's Sword. Even with a ludicrous AC of 76, I still couldn't maintain Mirror Image for more than a few seconds, and things wouldn't be that much better if I had Blink active for the 50% miss chance. You'd need an AC of more than 90 to tank the enemies to any reasonable degree. Without it, your only hope of slaying Saablic Tan is to spam Potions of Invisibility or Wand of Sanctuary charges and kite the enemy with arrows.
Even then, you still need to be able to survive a couple seconds of vulnerability as well as his Mordenkainen's Force Missiles spells. In order to maintain your HP, you'd need to use some healing options, which cloud your aura and prevent you from drinking a potion or using a wand. That means that once you (very quickly) run out of invisibility spells, you're going to have to survive 7 seconds of total vulnerability every time you need to heal yourself. The basic problem is that your spells will run out and you won't have Improved Alacrity to maintain your defenses once you're reduced to using scrolls and items to heal yourself.
If you have long-lasting Sanctuary spells, you might be able to just wait out the enemy mages' Mordenkainen's Sword spells, which means you could get by with an AC of 80 or so instead of 90+. But that would give Saablic Tan enough time to cast Mordenkainen's Force Missiles on you about 28 times.
Spell resistance alone won't do much good. He's a level 24 mage in normal mode, which makes him a level 30 mage in HoF mode (and possibly a level 36 mage considering I removed the level cap) and has two pips in Spell Penetration, which means he has a 20% chance of bypassing even the maximum SR of 50. You'd need to have at least +4 luck active to block it, and you can only maintain +3 luck at best without breaking invisibility. Now, having a 95% chance to block his Mordenkainen's Force Missiles would be great, but he casts them infinitely, so if you're going to adopt a low-pressure approach that relies on massive SR and Potions of Invisibility or Wand of Sanctuary charges, he's still going to have many, MANY rounds to hit you with Mordenkainen's Force Missiles, and that still requires maintaining 50 SR indefinitely, which many character builds simply cannot do.
I think the only realistic method might just be to use the standard powergaming option: play a Lawful Evil deep gnome Cleric of Bane/Monk/Illusionist (with a 30/1/7 split if you've raised the level cap to 40, or 21/1/8 if not). I calculate that a high-level deep gnome would be able to achieve 90 AC with the help of HoF AC bonuses and some mod items, which would be enough to force all enemies except for the mages to roll criticals to hit you. Then you could just grind Saablic Tan down while the rest of the enemies dealt damage only very gradually.
Alternatively, you could just get a high-level cleric to chain-cast Greater Shield of Lathander. With 5 castings and very good timing, you could effectively get 10 rounds of free action due to having 30- resistance to all forms of damage and +40 SR, reducing most enemy attacks to scratch damage. That would give you enough time to kill Saablic Tan with melee attacks, though you'd still need to buff a lot.
I suppose this confirms my previous suspicions: HoF mode for solo no-reload runs starts out much more friendly to sorcerers, but as time goes on, cleric levels become more and more important, to the extent that this one fight doesn't really seem reasonable for a sorcerer-based character to win. Saablic Tan is immune to all disablers, and with 30 AC and over 400 HP, you need to deal lots of melee damage to bring him down. If you don't nail him with a Protection from Magic scroll, you'd also need to deal with his numerous mage buffs.
Summons will not do much. I summoned a swarm of Gelugons and even they got crushed within a few rounds, along with the little demons they summon when they get injured. It might be different if you didn't install the "Moderate HP for HoF Summons" component of Tactics, but I don't think there are any summoning spells that would be able to hold off these enemies long enough for you to tackle Saablic Tan and company without sky-high AC and/or Greater Shield of Lathander.
A druid with the improved shapeshifting mod might be able to beat Saablic Tan with a blitzkrieg approach. The Elemental Half-Dragon shapeshift should be able to deal about 300 damage per round after nailing Saablic Tan with the Protection from Magic scroll, so you'd just need to survive for maybe 10 seconds to bring him down. Unfortunately, the Elemental Half-Dragon form has no AC to speak of, its SR won't stop any enemy spells, and while it's completely immune to the elements, it only has 16- physical damage resistance, which means this crowd might actually be able to overwhelm it unless you have mage levels for Mirror Image, Blink, and Improved Invisibility.
You could also stay alive with Heal, taking advantage of the short casting time in combination with Improved Alacrity, but you need 21 druid levels just to get a single casting of that Elemental Half-Dragon form, and every druid level you take after that to be able to re-cast it another time per day is a level you're taking away from other classes. Druids are offensive powerhouses with the right mods, but they're still missing some key defensive options unless they invest lightly in mage or sorcerer levels, or invest heavily in cleric levels.
So, sorcerer levels are probably not the way to go for a solo no-reload HoF IWD2 run with Tactics. They work great in the early game, but late game enemies have such high stats that even summoned Gelugons can't compete, and endgame bosses have so, so many immunities that Wail of the Banshee and Chaos simply become useless.
It's kind of amazing. You'd think sorcerers would be the ideal class for this kind of run--and for 90% of the game, they really are.
But once they reach the last 10% of the game, they completely hit a brick wall.
I'm going Druid next
Everyone is now around 4th level after doing some basilisk hunting last night and we sold some loot at High hedge and picked up Purdues sword and talked Marl down. Feels good to get some headway. Now I just have to figure out where to go from here. Thinking of saving up for wands and scrolls from high hedge.
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
SoD Updates: 1, 2
So, the party moves in to clear the remaining three underground levels of Durlag's Tower.
The greatest annoyance/threat (depending on how you see it) on the third underground level is in my mind the Durlag dopplegangers. They hit like trucks and are very difficult to hit in return.
So, this time, we prepared something like four Greater Malison, four Glitterdust, four Slow and more Doom than you can shake a stick at to handle it. It worked like a charm, too; even Durlag Trollkiller has difficulties getting much done after -10 to hit. Otherwise, the third level went smoothly.
Fourth level too went swimmingly. The Greater Wyverns killed off all the charmed heroes, we cleared the Skeleton Archers using Fireballs to conserve their lovely arrows, and an invisible Imoen helped Khalid and Coran kill Ashirukurus by dispelling their frequent Invisibility.
I ran into the usual bug where you don't get teleported, but this just affords you breathing space to buff a bit. Which the party did, prodigiously. Of particular importance was getting everyone up to 100% electrical resistance to allow unfettered movement across the chessboard. Same old tactic as every time.. massive initial bombardment followed by mopping up any stragglers.
The fifth level was so uneventful I have not a single screenshot. Greater Ghouls can hurt a bit when in numbers, but with Free Action all they can really do is shave off hitpoints, and we're perfectly capable of replenishing those. The level cleared and Burning Earth +1 aquired, we as always bugger off and leave the Demon Knight alone.
We're almost to the endgame. But first, it's Chain Mail +3 time.
We sneak into Baldur's Gate, grab the Sea Charts, and sail off for parts unknown.
Clearing the outside of Balduran's Ship is no trouble. Inside, the first level proves a slight headache (multitudes of enemies that don't always go after the closest party member), as Imoen catches a bite from a Vampiric Wolf and is Held. Thankfully, she just had time to finish casting Mirror Image beforehand, and so weathers the storm while we clear out the lesser wolves chomping at her.
As always, Karoug is much less trouble than his attendant mage. Even with invisible Imoen dispelling her illusions (only Khalid, Jaheira and Coran are allowed to directly engage), it takes 5-6 rounds and a few potions of Magic Blocking/Magic Shielding to bring her down. But down she goes, and once she does, Karoug's fate is sealed. Timing a barrage of spell damage once Khalid lands a good hit spells his end (the miserable mage managed to tag Jaheira with Emotion, but thankfully Karoug didn't go after her).
We return to Kaishas, fight our way out of the village and down to the vessel, talk Kaishas out of fighting us (SCS introduced dialogue), and sail off into the sunset.
Alright, all of that was just to get our hands on the Chain Mail +3, so let's go after it!
Khalid and Jaheira are sent into Mendas' house along with invisible Imoen to dispel Mendas' illusions (he starts off quite a high-level mage).
Keeping Mendas interrupted is not a huge problem, and we have anti-magic potions available if he gets a spell off. What turns out to be a bigger headache is that flunky of his wearing our beloved chainmail!
Said flunky downs a Potion of Magic Shielding followed by Potion of Storm Giant Strength, and proceeds to demolish our poor fighters.
Khalid finally manages to hurt Mendas enough to cause flunky and master both to transform into Loup Garou, at which point I feel confident to bring the rest of the party in to help out with wands/spells, but damn, the flunky dealt some serious damage with that regular morningstar of his... Still, our objective was achieved, and Aldain II pockets the Chain Mail +3.
Alright, time for the end game.
We move into Baldur's Gate. Cythandria is hopelessly outmatched and beaten into submission, along with her two Stone Golems.
Slythe and Krystin succumb to a Greater Malison/Chaos combo, allowing us to drop them at our leisure.
We rest up at the Blushing Mermaid and head for the palace.
Here we also use tried and true tactics. No less than five Skeleton Warriors, every single useful clerical/mage buff (Bless/Chant/Haste/PfE10'/Defensive Harmony/Strength of One etc), some defenses for Aldain II and Imoen, and we're off, the skeletons taking the lead to position themselves between Belt and the dopplegangers.
As always, the key is just killing the Doppleganger Mage as soon as possible. You've got two dukes, it's fine if one dies, and you can cast Invisibility on Liia to keep her alive, but if one of your party gets confused and attacks a Flaming Fist, it's over. We expend a few wand charges and the good ammunition to make sure the Doppleganger Mage never gets more than a Mirror Image off, spell-wise.
Alright, no confused party members, and both dukes lived. Huzzah!
Belt teleports us off, we navigate the maze successfully, and roast the Iron Throne mercenaries mercilessly.
I forget myself and a Boots of Speed-wearing Coran ends up talking to Tamoko. He lacks the charisma to convince her otherwise and we are forced to kill her (really don't like doing that).
So, time for the final showdown. We rest once to heal up, Aldain II sets up a new Minor Spell Sequencer (2x Acid Arrow), then we rest again to get our final spell picks.
Most of these don't matter that much, as we will be relying on potions for buffs and wands for dealing damage/summoning meatshields, but 5x Animate Dead, 1x Haste, 1x PfE10', 1x Defensive Harmony is standard (initial defensively buffed meatwall to hold off Sarevok for a bit, and Skeleton Warriors are much more sturdy than the crud you get from the Wand of Summoning).
Thus prepared, we enter the temple.
Upon inspection of our inventory, I realize we are somehow sitting on no less than four Scrolls of Protection from Magic. I could make do with one such scroll in a pinch, but I'm not complaining.
Khalid, Jaheira and Coran each get a scroll, along with the same potions:
1x Potion of Storm Giant Strength, 1x Potion of Power, 1x Potion of Invulnerability (for the slight AC boost), 1x Oil of Speed, 1x Potion of Heroism, 2x Potions of Mind Focusing.
While they're activating their PfM-scrolls and gulping potions, the other half of the party chugs down a Potion of Defense each, summons and buffs our Skeleton Warriors, and finally turn invisible (they'll only make themselves known once none but Sarevok remains to deal with). Game on!
Our three fighters run up, with the five Skeleton Warriors going after Sarevok.
Coran tags Sarevok with a single Arrow of Dispelling to remove his Haste.
After a round, everyone teleports in. Khalid, Jaheira and Coran all converge on Diarmid. He leads with a PfM-scroll (that won't help you now, Diarmid), and has enough time to quaff a single healing potion, but understandably can't stand up to our trio. The Skeleton Warrior that spawns in his place is swiftly dispatched. Straight after, Tazok is killed (dropping even faster than Diarmid), and his reborn Skeleton Warrior form is also put down.
Next comes a bit of annoyance, in that Semaj for some reason keeps going invisible every few rounds, even though he's neither quaffing a potion nor actually casting Invisibility. Still, enough Arrows of Dispelling later he finally runs out of Stoneskins and falls.
Detect Illusions doesn't seem to work against enemies that start a fight invisible, and hence Imoen cannot reveal Angelo (who refuses to show himself since all the enemies he can see are magic immune).
Thankfully, we have half a dozen scrolls of Detect Invisibility: A casting and some Arrows of Dispelling later, the final acolyte of Sarevok meets his end.
On his own, Sarevok is completely hopeless. I ponder having Aldain II quaff an Oil of Speed and slowly sling-shot the big dumb brute to death, but opt for efficiency instead.
Content to whiff at the endless summoned fodder we conjure up, a slowed Sarevok is eventually brought to a much deserved fate.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! The grim would-be God of Murder lies slain, and all good citizens of the Sword Coast rejoice! The Siege of Dragonspear beckons...
Aldain II is now a level 9 Human Conjurer, here depicted before embarking on the epic battle against his half-brother.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954289/#Comment_954289
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954338/#Comment_954338
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954617/#Comment_954617
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/960637/#Comment_960637
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/960902/#Comment_960902
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/961191/#Comment_961191
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/961890/#Comment_961890
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/962353/#Comment_962353
After resting up for a few weeks I thought it was time for the monks to continue their journey. They cleared the surface of Bloodbark Grove without problems - a basilisk there never knowing what hit it.
Moving on to the Underground River they started exploring the surface. That resulted in another death when I didn't realise I'd encountered an orc shaman and his call lightning picked out Spectre just before she could finish laying on hands to cure missile damage taken.
Returning to the Underground River the shaman once more called down lightning, but this time failed to kill anyone and died himself instead.
Underground the monks explored a cave with various shadows, leading to a couple of them being drained by wraiths. They had some restoration scrolls, but opted to return to camp for healing from Mizhena. Back again they tracked down the dark druid, Ferrusk, and persuaded him to hand over an ankheg amulet before stunning him when he objected to them planting a seed.
Fighting a group of myconids looked like it might cause a problem when all 6 of the monks were confused at one point.
Placing the Bwoosh and recovering a club for a ghost ettin seemed to leave only a ghost dragon in the lower part of the area. It told the monks they couldn't pass, which appeared to be a challenge. However, as soon as they started to attack the dragon told them they could go through. Inside, they found a number of dark magicians, but they didn't last long against fireballs and wand strikes.
Further along the tunnels the monks came across some drow that I've not encountered before. They were looking for some children and were not pleased to find the monks had already let them go. I tried to fight them by nipping in and out under stealth, but a Drow Blademaster was too quick to retreat away from and did a lot of damage before being taken down.
I was intending to talk my way past Turin Brassbreaker, but chose the wrong dialogue option. Quickly retreating, the monks fought the crusaders in ones or twos until the door was left unguarded.
The battered party made their way back to the Coalition Camp and stitched themselves together ready to attend a parley.
Wraith - L9, 89 HPs (incl. 10 from ring), 455 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L9, 75 HPs, 396 kills, 4 deaths
Phantom - L9, 74 HPs, 340 kills, 1 death
Spook - L9, 74 HPs, 330 kills, 3 deaths
Spirit - L9, 76 HPs, 319 kills, 3 deaths
Chimera - L9, 74 HPs (incl. 10 from bracers), 547 kills
Previous updates:
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954338/#Comment_954338
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/954617/#Comment_954617
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/960637/#Comment_960637
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/960902/#Comment_960902
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/961191/#Comment_961191
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/961890/#Comment_961890
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/962353/#Comment_962353
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/968392/#Comment_968392
For the fight at the Camp the dwarves joined in against the trolls - not that there was much for them to do after a full volley of fireballs.
At Dragonspear Castle Chimera immediately went to arrange a single combat with Ashatiel. A magic shielding potion protected him while he used wand blasts to do most of the damage - those have the advantage they can be used through sanctuary to prevent opponents healing.
Inside the Castle they found the hell portal and took the opportunity to rest on the other side of that. Everyone used potions of clarity and defense before working through various devils. With Wraith tanking with AC of -12 and the others all using +2 ammunition the monks made rapid progress to find Thrix and answered his riddle to get a +3 long sword.
Wraith used a potion of regeneration to top her HPs up while going up the lift. The first couple of encounters were no problem, but Chimera had to handle the final lot all by himself when everyone else was affected by fear.
The epilogue saw Chimera framed for murdering Skie before making a pretty pointless jail break. I forgot to pick up any equipment before doing that, which means no pantaloons to take forward into BG2
The party imported into Irenicus' dungeon had been quite close to level 10 and while finishing off the first floor of the dungeon in the elemental plane everyone was able to level up.
Emerging from the tunnel they ducked into the circus tent. Restoring that to order only took a few moments, though that still provided enough time for the werewolves to land some hefty blows.
Next they installed a change of management at the Copper Coronet.
Next up they went to the Graveyard. The tombs were cleared pretty easily - the Crypt King putting up the hardest struggle.
Wraith - L10, 81 HPs, 44 kills (+465 in BG1), 1 death
Spectre - L10, 77 HPs, 37 kills (+403 in BG1), 4 deaths
Phantom - L10, 76 HPs, 36 kills (+349 in BG1), 1 death
Spook - L10, 76 HPs, 34 kills (+342 in BG1), 3 deaths
Spirit - L10, 78 HPs, 44 kills (+329 in BG1), 3 deaths
Chimera - L10, 72 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 47 kills (+570 in BG1)