Diary of Xazutha After leaving Nashkel I headed southwards to the mine area where I was immediately accosted by yet another assassin. I landed a lucky blow and as a result now have a +1 axe. After finding a wand in a tree trunk, I headed east where I found a magical ring. Nearby I met Samuel and took him to the Friendly Arms Inn. As I left, I spoke to Joia and returned her ring that I had found. I then headed back to Beregost where I gave the Colquetle amulet back to the family. I then took a tome to Firebead thus becoming a hero. Upon entering what appeared to be an empty house, I was attacked by spiders which I killed. Just south of there I reunited Jumper with his owner before heading south where I reunited Albert with his dog.
EDIT Despite using 3 healing potions, Vax was too strong for me after using a potion of heroism as well as some healing potions. Perhaps I should have postponed the encounter until I reached level 3.
update; I collected the bits for a spell and had some armour made before crossing the bridge... grabbed a sword and attacked more peons to get into the caves.
We used one shot to open the store, Khalid grabbed his bag, we used the last two shots for a nice sword and the lich... now I have the most powerful item for my wild mage (and my 6 level spell) but I killed him before my traps fired so I need to avoid killing the dragon in my next round
I quickly ran the Opera through the early stages of a 20th run while keeping half an eye on some Federation Cup tennis. That split of attention proved fatal at the Lighthouse when I forgot the danger pre-laid traps can represent to your own side - Beggar being charmed by a sirine and triggering a couple of traps.
Trying again, things went pretty smoothly until everyone was up to level 5 or 6. At the Valley of the Tombs an invisible block was set up in the ghast tomb and the sorcerers started firing magic missiles over that. Unfortunately one of the ghasts proved to have a longer reach than expected - stretching well over the blockers to somehow get a hit in. The +4 damage from not having a melee weapon equipped enabled it to finish Skint off before Aspire could make her invisible.
Starting run 22, I was struggling to concentrate and one of the sorcerers was killed fairly early on by a critical from a wild dog travel ambush.
Once more unto the breach and I was lucky when I again forgot about some traps while battling sirines, but Pauper survived the damage after being charmed. Otherwise it was a pretty smooth run up to clearing the upper part of Durlag's Tower. I made the strategic error there though of trying to mix in a few minutes gaming in between pieces of work. When attacking the last few ghasts at the top of the Tower I sent in Hardup to act as an invisible blocker at one point - something he proved to be rather poor at as he wasn't invisible . No-one else was near enough to have a hope of saving him after he was paralyzed ...
I had thought the previous run would probably be the last for the moment, but decided to have one more go. That only lasted a few minutes though. Washout was in the process of setting traps for Elminster after having cleared the encounter spots to the south of that. After resting, Washout had just set a new trap when Aspire was one-shotted by a bandit. That was doubly unfortunate - both because the bandit had obviously regenerated on an encounter spot and then wandered away from that to find the party and because level 1 protection should have saved her (but this installation is based on the current retail version where that's still bugged).
Feeling unable to leave it at that I restarted for one more, one more go. Progress was generally smooth up to the Nashkel Mine, with the only close shave when Skint was taken down to 2 HP by a large hobgoblin ambush on the way there. After dealing with Mulahey though I got caught out by a couple of differences in behavior in this installation. Nimbul was stuck in webs and I could have used true sight to finish him off quickly. However, being held by a web appears to make neutrals hostile in SR and I decided to wait for Nimbul to show himself rather than risk a massacre of innocents. I thought he would do that by casting a spell and was ready to dodge to avoid that - but he chose to backstab instead and Aspire was just too short of HPs to survive that.
That was a better attempt though, so I'll leave the Opera for a while now.
Xazutha's sibling was killed by Zordral. Will try with yet another sibling shortly. Discovered why I am having so much difficulty, the amount of experience gained has dropped. Probably due to a mod. In Candlekeep he was badly hurt due to the better weapons I provided for the assassins. However, he survived those skirmishes to tell the tale. Another sibling, Yazutha by name then started out and reached the site of Gorion's death without injury.
It's been a month or so since I last posted progress and I had screenshots taken already, so I better write this down now before I forget what happened since last time. I have discovered the joy of being the one who plays micspam while on TF2 instead of being on the receiving end of it, and there was much playing of weeaboo music. Even made some friends doing it!
Before I left for Firkraag's dungeon, I tasked my apprentices with creating the Ring of Wizardry. After Firkraag's overwhelming defeat, I take the Cold Iron Chips from his body and create Perfect Iron MK I and Perfect Flesh MK IV. I rest after creating them and two of my apprentices spontaneously combust. At least I got the ring.
Onto the Temple Ruins. The planetar cleans house without much help from me, as usual. Thaxyll'ssillyia is put down with another magical barrage to lower his defenses and then kill him, finishing him off with a Chaotic Eruption.
I don't remember why exactly I casted a spell while back in Athkatla, but the Cowled Wizards have had enough of my crap and have sent their elites to put an end to me. Unfortunately for them, I'm way stronger than they could ever hope to be as I strip their protections one by one under Improved Alacrity and use Power Word Kill finishers. Shoon VII is gonna have to find another stooge to possess as I kill Zallanora with Chaotic Eruption.
With all the sidequests completed for now, I send Bodhi crawling back to Irenicus by having the Planetar attack her before she fully teleports in.
Before heading to Spellhold, I build Bone Golem MK I.
At Spellhold, I sacrifice 1 point of CON to the demon and then beat Irenicus.
On Saemon's boat, we gang up on him and kill him for 18k XP. The Sahuagin were surprisingly good at offense, killing Bone Golem MK I.
Then, in the Underdark, for freeing Bedlen Dagglefod's son from the device full of imprisoned souls, he gives us Grumbar's Defense +1.
I combine it with Istishia's Mind Shield, which itself is combined with Akadi's Cloak of Rapid Motion. This time, the combination increases the damage resistances offered by the cloak, circlet, and shield and increases the number of times that Primeval Outburst can be used per day.
However, the combined items now offer different Primeval Outburst powers (besides their defaults) depending on which form the artifact is currently in:
- Cloak (Poison Mist, Sandstorm, Corrosive Shards) - Circlet (Poison Mist, Mudslide, Corrosive Shards) - Shield (Sandstorm, Mudslide, Corrosive Shards) New powers: - Sandstorm: AoE cloud that lasts 1 turn: 2d8 piercing damage/round + blindness for 1 turn; save vs. spell for half and no blindness - Corrosive Shards: Single-target 2d8 crushing, acid, and cold + slow; save vs. spell at -2 for half and no slow - Mudslide: AoE cloud that lasts 1 turn: 2d8 crushing/round + slow for 1 turn; save vs. spell for half and no slow
Back on the surface, I build Perfect Clay MK II now that I finally have enough clay to build more golems with and I recruit all three helpers to assault Bodhi's den. All three die in the confrontation against Bodhi herself. I send in Perfect Iron and a planetar and keep myself and Perfect Clay MK II out of the fray, though I get hit with Bodhi's Cloud of Bats as I try to assist while the fight is raging.
After the bats wear off, I cast Improved Alacrity and restore my defenses. Bodhi manages to hit my with a CON-draining slap, so I cast PfMW and a charged Wish in response, then fire on all cylinders. Perfect Iron MK I has taken a considerable beating and then finally falls, splitting into two normal Iron Golems. The planetar gets the final hit on Bodhi.
Now its time for the Chosen of Cyric. The anti-magic wave before the fight has me a bit on edge. I have PfMW + Spell Shield + Spell Turning in a Chain Contingency upon enemy sighted. In hindsight, I should've put all of those in a Spell Trigger instead, as it takes an agonizing amount of time to fire by itself. I was almost finished casting Time Stop when it finally kicked in. I have my iron golems move up to reach Selina Shadowstorm and Kerith the Bleak in the back.
I cast Improved Alacrity and buff to hell, casting a charged Wish too, though all it gets me is Hardiness and Improved Haste. I cast Greater Malison and Horrid Wilting in such a way that their effects will resolve in the correct order when time resumes. With the two iron golems adjacent to Selina, they unleash their gas clouds, poisoning her. She's utterly disabled and dies to the poison.
I have the planetar cast Insect Plague on Grok because I know Venduris is lurking, just waiting for the right time to backstab me. This will let me keep an eye on his position even if I can't reveal him with divination attacks (which he is immune to). I plop down an Incendiary Cloud at my feet to soften up anyone foolish enough to get close to me and then disable Bodak Hangthorn with a Power Word Stun, who could dispel all of my stuff with his Arrows of Dispelling. The iron golem pair squish him.
Zaeron T'ane's mislead clone is destroyed by Perfect Clay MK II, but his real self is waiting patiently next to me, ready to attack when my PfMW wears off. I move the golems back to me. Kerith the Bleak has been suffering poison damage for the whole fight since he was near Selina when the golems released their gas clouds. He falls next.
I summon a swarm of Mordy Swords, then have the planetar cast Fire Storm near me, which superheats my iron golems, causing them to do extra fire damage on hit. Zaeron gets torched by the Incendiary Cloud and the Fire Storm. Perfect Clay's new target is Grok, who moves at lightning-fast speed due to double-strength Haste. The next to fall is Venduris who can't stand the constant and sustained beating provided by the planetar.
I try to disable Grok but he shrugs off all attempts with his good saving throws. So I just decide to kill him the old fashioned way with damage spells, finishing him off with Chaotic Eruption.
I make a fortune off selling Venduris' party's loot. Next up is Sulldanessellar. The two iron golems are destroyed by other golems. Nizi is taken care of by Perfect Clay MK II and the planetar without my help. I learn to construct Mithril Golems from the tome on his body.
I leave Sulldanessellar for a bit and construct Mitty the Perfect Mithril Golem MK I. She is very strong, tough, regenerates 1 HP/round, and only able to be hit by +4 weapons and better. Like Iron Golems, she can be superheated with high-level fire spells to inflict extra fire damage on hit.
All that's left is to fight Irenicus twice and win, then its onto ToB.
On the Tree of Life, the planetar gets disabled by a double Earthquake. My laziness also costs Perfect Clay MK II its life.
Johnny is bested through Improved Alacrity with a Chaotic Eruption finisher.
The two clay golems do not follow me down to Hell, though. For my Tear upgrades, I choose immunity to +1 weapons and less, then choose +2 saves and +10% MR twice each. -1 DEX, -2 HP, and -75k XP is a small price to pay.
Johnny starts off with a Time Stop, though I'm unaffected because of my trusty Staff of the Magi.
His first Time Stop doesn't amount to anything, but he casts another and starts lobbing anti-magic attacks at me. Spell Shield eats the Khelben's Warding Whip, but I get hit with a Spellstrike follow-up. Johnny gates in a Fallen Planetar before time resumes. After everything resolves, I cast PfMW to keep the Planetar from vorpalling me, then cast Improved Alacrity and restore my defenses. I imprison his Fallen Planetar because my planetar and Mitty are a little busy dealing with the demons, though I made it a point to kill the Balors first because of their no-save vorpal hits (15% chance).
Each time I Breach Johnny, he follows up with another PfMW the next round. I expend about 4 or so on him and my dudes have him on the ropes. I win soon after this.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 4
The attack on the first batch of enemies with a War Drum at hand goes poorly. One of the enemies makes it to the War Drum and begins summoning Goblin Worg Riders right on top of us. Dipper gets wounded when he accidentally enters combat with Power Attack 5 active instead of Expertise 5. As a single-classed fighter, he can easily tolerate the attack penalties of Power Attack and Expertise, giving him +5 damage or +5 AC whenever he wants (he can even switch mid-round without clouding his aura!).
We've got a lot of heavy pressure on the party, though, and Mabel has suffered a lot of damage from a trap on the bridge.
We finally get control of the situation with one or two Sleep spells and start clearing the way up north to the War Drum. Dipper runs ahead to kill the Orc Shaman who's been summoning Goblin Worg Riders. He splatters the orc with a greataxe and Power Attack cranked up to 5.
Two-handed weapons are much more useful in IWD2 than they are in the other games, as they get 1.5 times the normal Strength bonus. A character with 18 STR will get a +6 bonus to damage with a greatsword compared to a +4 bonus with a longsword.
The reason that greataxe could do so much damage, though, is mostly because axes, like hammers, arrows, spears, and halberds, deal triple damage on critical hits instead of double damage. Since you can increase the chance of getting a critical hit, but not the critical damage multiplier, these weapons scale much better than swords, dagger, flails, staffs, darts, bullets, and crossbow. Dipper has the mod-introduced Rabbit's Foot charm, which gives him an extra 5% chance at landing a critical hit, and Frisk's level 5 bard song, Tymora's Melody, gives the whole party an extra 5% chance.
Enemies seldom have luck effects active, but they don't actually need them. The enemy's superior numbers give them lots of chances to land critical hits, and enemy arrows deal triple damage on critical hits.
Notice the second attack roll just under the critical hit. Rolling a 20 always means you hit, but it doesn't mean you deal extra damage; you still need to roll another attack roll to deal critical damage. Luck also affects that roll.
Also notice the amazing +18 attack bonus on that orc. As a level 4 critter with 3 pips in bows and 16 DEX, it should have an attack bonus of 13, so I'm not sure where that extra +5 is coming from.
We're gaining XP at a remarkable rate, and I think it's because semiOverhaul rigs critters' challenge ratings to be closer to their level. It's a welcome change in a game where the XP gains from critters are often frustratingly small, especially in the late game.
We bump half the party up to level 6, granting Star access to the Fireball spell. I decide to keep Dipper (our fighter), Marco (our monk), and Frisk (our bard) at level 5, since they don't get quite as much benefit from higher levels as the other characters. This will let us bump up the levels of our spellcasters while our warriors remain stagnant.
Really, we don't need Dipper to hit any harder than he already does. He's already butchering the enemy with great ease.
The biggest fight of this area is with Trugnuk. We've got lots of archers, Goblin Worg Riders, and spellcasters to deal with in the northeast, plus a War Drum that will summon even more Goblin Worg Riders. Star begins throwing out Fireballs in addition to her Sleep spells, but once again, enemies start spawning on top of the party because we can't sneak everyone to the War Drum to stop it.
To my surprise, two Fireballs are not enough to wipe out all the enemies converging on Dipper. Worse yet, he fails a save against Hold Person, and Mabel casts Remove Paralysis just in time to save him from the final blow.
We send Dipper running while Mabel uses spontaneous casting to heal him as he scurries past her. Meanwhile, Asriel summons a Rainstorm to mess with the enemy spellcasters who have gathered in a convenient cluster.
We clean up the enemy fighters chasing Dipper and shift our attention to the spellcasters to the north. We haven't been applying enough pressure, and the enemy launches a devastating Unholy Blight spell.
But the enemy can't keep it up; too many of their allies have fallen. We zap the Goblin Shaman and shoot down Trugnuk himself.
As always, Trugnuk's Call Lightning spell can go off even after he croaks, but we keep the party in good enough shape that no one gets killed when the spell catches us off-guard.
The tunnels beneath the Horde Fortress are usually a bit of a slog, but they go much faster than I expected. Fireballs roast the lesser goblins and Dipper uses Haft Over Head, a returning throwing axe that deals crushing damage instead of slashing damage, to hunt down a fleeing shaman.
SemiOverhaul makes everything faster. But once again, the changes go both ways. The enemy also hits a lot harder, as Mokrul reminds us.
Later in the dungeon, Frisk fails to resolve a situation diplomatically. It seems that I have not been investing enough skill points in Diplomacy.
Feels bad, man.
Our higher spellcaster levels prove very productive. One of the spell changes I borrowed from Tactics was to give Spider Spawn to druids, which gives us a cool alternative to lower-level animal summoning spells.
Notice Dipper is charmed. Fighters still have weak Will saves in semiOverhaul.
Asriel's access to Creeping Doom form gives us some interesting situational tools. He's nearly immune to piercing damage when in Creeping Doom form and also has a large circle, which means he's a perfect tank to use against the local beetles while Dipper chops them up from a distance.
Gameplay has been satisfyingly complex lately. We've got Dipper alternating between ranged and melee attacks and changing up his use of Expertise and Power Attack, Mabel firing from afar and jumping in to heal the party, Star switching from disabling critters with Sleep to bombing them with Fireball, Marco firing crossbow bolts at range before rushing in to punch orcs in the face, Asriel reverting to Creeping Doom form to apply damage whenever his spells aren't need, and Frisk judiciously using their limited spell slots while fighting at range and making sure everyone is benefiting from their songs, all while our summons manage enemy pressure.
I really like how this is going. I'm especially fond of Dipper's contributions. Even with one-handed axes (like the one we pried from Torak's cold, dead hand!), Dipper can land critical hits over 50 damage. It's just plain fun.
The new spells are also fun to break out. How often does anyone use Ice Storm in vanilla, anyway?
Before proceeding to the top of the Horde Fortress and the massive fight awaiting us, I go back to Targos to better equip the party. Mabel takes Lightning Reflexes on her next level-up to improve her lousy Reflex saves, we get a mod-introduced Rhino Beetle Shield to make Dipper a little more sturdy, and we purchase Oswald's only Potion of Action Transference to slightly empower Star's sorcerer spells.
I've often talked up how tough the top of the Horde Fortress is. I haven't exaggerated; it's a really high-intensity fight. But this time, I don't have to deal with it in Heart of Fury mode as a solo character, which means a failed save against Icelance or Dispel Magic is no longer an instant game over. In fact, we're pretty well-equipped to handle the threats here: Star's Sleep spell can knock out the archers (making sure they don't expend their valuable Arrows of Fire attacking us), her Chromatic Orb can give the whole party automatic hits against the bigger targets for 1 round, and Asriel's Ice Storm can smash groups of enemies while Star is too busy disabling critters to contribute Fireballs.
Star has also recently learned her own Icelance spell, which I've come to appreciate after seeing how dangerous it is in the hands of the enemy. It stuns for 3 rounds on a failed Fortitude save, making it pretty much fatal for any enemy mage.
And for enemy clerics with stronger Fortitude saves, we have Chromatic Orb, which only stuns for 1 round but requires a Reflex save that clerics often struggle to make. Either way, Star's spells have very high save DCs; she has a Charisma well above 20 (Asriel knows Eagle's Splendor as a druid spell!) as well as two pips in Spell Focus: Evocation. She even pins down the juggernaut-like Old Orc inside the main building.
Guthma is harder to deal with. Star stuns both of the spellcasters behind him, but Guthma makes some very lucky Reflex saves when we try to save Marco and Dipper from Guthma's heavy poison damage.
It takes a few tries, but eventually we trap him, at which point we can switch gears to the spellcasters who rush in to flank us.
When Guthma escapes his prison, we manage to stun him with Chromatic Orb and bring down the massive bugbear.
Next up, the ice wall. Here's what the party looks like as they prepare to leave Targos for good. Our extensive level squatting would let us bump everyone up to level 9, but as long as we're still on top of the game, I see no reason to continue biding our time and letting the XP pile up.
Dipper has 40% of the party's kills, Asriel has 20%, and the rest is split among the rest of the party fairly evenly. Dipper's contribution is not surprising; he's very much optimized to be a damage dealer. Asriel isn't surprising, either; he has Rainstorm, Call Lightning, Ice Storm, and Creeping Doom form to deal damage. Marco's performance, though, is surprisingly weak by comparison; his stats aren't as well min-maxed and monks need levels to stay competitive. He's been an excellent tank, though, by virtue of his high DEX.
Ths is a strange game. Apart from the ambush when Gorion was killed, I haven't had a single injury. Went to the FAI first. Fought Tarnish who died from a single blow. Killed the hobgoblins with thowing axes except for one who I killed in melee. Headed for High Hedge and Beregost. Talked to Marl and headed south. Killed the ogrillon and continued south where more hobgoblins were killed with throwing axes. Met Lord Foreshadow and got the ring. Picked up ankheg armour in Nashkel where I turned down Greywolf's reward and spoke to Noober. Went to the mine area where I picked up the wand of frost before heading East. Picked up the ring of fire protection and took Samuel to the FAI. Gave Joia her ring and headed to Beregost. Gave the Colquetle amulet back to the family and took a tome to Firebead. Reputation now 18. Experience one point short of level 2.
Delivered a letter to Mirianne before heading to High Hedge where I killed some gnoll before heading south where I rescued a chicken from a wolf. Back to High Hedge. Killed a skeleton before entering the house. Mellicamp was restored. I've never had such good fortune. Unbelievable. Still no injuries. I'll have to be wary of complacency. Next Tonder was restored using Guril berries. I then headed southwards where I killed Zordral.
EDIT
Since my reputation is now 19, I decided to do some shopping. I sold some equipment that was surplus to requirements and bought a decent throwing axe and a decent battle axe. Hopefully I will not now be so reliant on luck.
I cleared the ankheg area of ankhegs before heading northwards where the ankheg there injured me. I knew it was too good to last.
I decided last night to have a go with @semiticgod's War Hulk class and added that to an otherwise unmodded installation of BGEE. Initially I was expecting the first run (or possibly several first runs ) to just assess the potential for the class. However, I was surprised at how easy it was to make progress and was a bit disappointed when Burl eventually got charmed on his way through hell to find Belhifet.
Essentially the kit is a super-powered fighter. The main drawback is that each time you take a hit you receive a penalty to AC and spell saving throw. Being hit can also lead to turning berserk if you fail a spell saving throw and thus being unable to run away as your final HPs disappear. However, there are not many fights where that's likely if you take care - penalties only last for 2 rounds, so it's easy enough to run around to get rid of them even during a fight. I also chose a dwarf for my Hulk in order to mitigate the vulnerability to spell saves.
Like a Cavalier the War Hulk is unable to use missile weapons, but can use throwing axes and daggers. While using those seems reasonable to me for a Cavalier, the basis for the War Hulk does feel very melee-focused - so I'm not allowing throwing weapons.
Starting again, Burl has: - avoided Imoen after leaving Candlekeep (I don't allow recruitment of NPCs in solo runs and couldn't avoid her joining at that point when Burl had no distance attacks). - travelled by day down to Nashkel to pick up the ankheg armor. Rested to get LMD. Returned to the Crossroads and used that to get equipment from Imoen, Xzar and Montaron. - at the basilisk area, followed Korax round as he dealt with the basilisks. Level-ups there produced 17, 18, 17 and 17 HPs as well as pushing strength up to 23. Korax's last duty was as a distraction to let Burl pull Lindin away on his own. As usual with tougher opponents, Burl moved around between attacks in order to avoid the 1 APR limit for the class being a disadvantage. Lindin's death provided him with a magical long sword to use.
- at the FAI, Burl dodged Tarnesh's horror, but was happy to take magic missile damage while working through mirror images.
He bought Buckley's Buckler there - as I don't allow the use of healing potions the regeneration that provides is handy. - a bit further north Burl returned a bowl to Tenya and received just the 15 HPs for his 6th level.
Burl did the main encounters in the Cloud Peak Mountains on the way to the Gnoll Stronghold. The charisma tome was one target there, though the main aim was to get the bracers of dexterity to reduce the chances of being hit (the War Hulk class penalises dexterity by 1 in addition to the loss of 1 for being a dwarf).
Burl also picked up the Chesley Crusher on the way - that can provide some extra damage against weaker enemies that need a critical to hit even when Burl is not using a shield.
Some easy reputation gains included beating up a few half-ogres for Bjornin to get a magical shield. A more difficult fight was with the Doomsayer who was getting much better rolls than Burl - but still not quite good enough.
Burl also took quite a bit of damage when he investigated the ankheg nest looking for a final reputation upgrade. The first 3 ankhegs all got criticals and each time he failed his saving throw against acid damage - that put him down below 50% HPs and he left the nest once he'd recovered Nathan's body.
After a bit of shopping Burl moved on to the Lighthouse where a potion of clarity allowed him to melee all the sirines - getting to level 7 as a result with 17 more HPs.
Inside the cave, the golems found it relatively difficult to hit him thanks to the girdle of crushing. He made use of that practice by pulling a couple more golems at High Hedge outside for disposal,
before talking to Thalantyr for the first time and buying the Horn of Kazgaroth (his high HPs means the damage from using that isn't too much of an issue).
After all that work to raise reputation, it didn't take long to trash it again - thanks to fatal encounters with Algernon (cloak), Dushai (ring) and Bentan (scroll). That seemed like a good time to push on with the main quest and work on that started after relieving Greywolf of his sword:
- after progressing smoothly through the Nashkel Mine a frontal assault on Mulahey finished him off before his supporters could arrive.
- the guards wore Nimbul down to make doubly sure that a single blow would kill him.
- a single blow sent Tranzig running, but he had hardly moved before a LMD killed him.
- at the Bandit Camp Taurgosz provided an armor upgrade. A bit of hopping in the doorway then isolated Venkt from the others to allow an easy kill.
- temple donations had pushed up reputation to get CLW as a second Bhaal power, but stealing in Beregost reduced it again to gain horror. - after running through the Cloakwood, Drasus was pulled back to the map edge, but failed to land a blow anyway.
The others were all scared by a single horror and the mages died before regaining control to leave Genthore helpless on his own. - after fighting through the mine, the battle horrors near Davaeorn were pulled back and meleed
before a potion of magic blocking was used to get through the traps and attack the mage. That worked well in the sense that the potion blocked all the spells that should have been dangerous. However, I'd been wearing the ring of free action constantly for a while, but had taken it off in order for boots of speed to chase down Davaeorn's teleports quicker - and realised that I hadn't put it back on just as his hold person spell cast.
Davaeorn himself probably wouldn't have been able to kill Burl during the period held, but the pair of ettercaps he summoned would have had no trouble at all. That therefore looked like curtains, but although Davaeorn's first attack was an automatic hit the ettercaps then had to roll to hit.
I realised that this was an aspect of the kit I hadn't seen before (in the previous run I was never affected by a spell).
There was no saving throw reported in the text, but I remember someone else posting that there was a bug associated with this aspect causing it to trigger when it shouldn't. In any case though, Burl was free and shortly afterwards Davaeorn went to pieces.
The XP for that also took Burl to level 8 with 19 more HPs. - after resting to get a second Bhaal horror, he flooded the mine and left.
@Grond0 Doing a War Hulk run too? It'll steamroll BG1 but you'll have to be careful in SoD against enemy hordes. The true test of patience begins in BG2 against mages that love to cast Stoneskin. You'll probably have to tank most of their spellbook before you can finally kill them with direct damage or land a Deathblow critical. Weapons with elemental damage should help a bit.
I'll be interested to see how you handle the Ascension boss fight. I tried it a few times after failing with Krieg. The demons that Melissan gates in (mainly the Mariliths) eventually become overwhelming as they constantly teleport to your position, severely impairing your mobility even with double-strength Haste as you wait for your next attack to come.
It's going to be rough without throwing weapons. @Flashburn had strong success in using throwing axes and throwing daggers to remove Stoneskins, since ranged attacks don't trigger the spell that sets a War Hulk's APR to 1. Improved Haste effects should let you achieve 4 APR using throwing daggers.
I don't think the run is realistic without using throwing weapons, but then, I didn't think it was realistic with them, either, until @Flashburn beat the majority of the saga with a solo War Hulk.
@Flashburn thanks for the tips. I very rarely play with modded kits, so there was clearly something about Krieg's run that piqued my interest . I agree mages are likely to be a bit of a pain in BG2, though Burl has been quite successful using horror against them in BG1.
@semiticgod I think everything up to ToB shouldn't be too difficult in theory. After that I'm not sure and I dare say I'll never find out . Wouldn't you be able in principle to get 6 APR with throwing daggers - I thought the War Hulk still benefited from level 7/13 APR additions.
Burl {2} - solo War Hulk (3rd and final update) Previous updates:
Before getting stuck into the City I thought there were a few bits of unresolved business around the realms. The first of those was returning to the basilisk area to use horror to disable and kill Kirian - grabbing the Golden Girdle there. Next Burl went to find Drizzt. As he's evil he can't use Twinkle, but the fire resistance of Icingdeath would potentially be handy. Initially he used several potions, but Drizzt dispelled those and Burl relied just on rage to hit after that with a potion of magic shielding to protect against charm.
Some temple donations and a few more quests soon put reputation back up to 20. There were no problems with work in the City - horror being used quite frequently to disable opponents such as Marek. Jardak's Helm of Glory, along with Algernon's Cloak, allowed Burl to get charisma up to 20 and he bought up everything he might need in the future. While doing that I remembered one more loose end and paid a visit to the Red Wizards. Denak proved pretty resistant to horror, but eventually succumbed and a slash / LMD combination provided Burl with the handy Ring of Energy.
Back in the City some stair hopping allowed the Iron Throne party to be dealt with pretty easily - Zhalimar being the last to go. That meant a trip to Candlekeep where Burl robbed the tombs, using DUHM to top up his strength for the strength tome (a half-orc at this stage would have strength of 24 and could do it even without DUHM). Prat's gang were fireballed and stymied by level-hopping, even though there wasn't really anything to gain there.
Returning to Baldur's Gate, Burl sought out Slythe - who made no impression on his armor. I hadn't bothered with the quest for Balduran's Cloak, but Krystin made that available soon enough with her cloudkill.
I was avoiding any active use of Algernon's Cloak in this run, so success at the Palace was heavily dependent on Burl's horrors. That was even more so when all 6 of the dopplegangers attacked Duke Belt from the start. Burl's first horror affected 2 of them, but Belt still died before Burl's second horror removed another one from the immediate action. Burl knew the 3 left would still go through Liia in no time, so he tried to kill them quickly by breaking out potions of firebreath even though that would annoy the Flaming Fist. The dopplegangers' good saves helped 2 of them survive the first potion and, while one of them lost morale, the last attacker finished off Liia before a second potion could trigger.
Starting again soon after the end of the previous run Burl made fairly rapid progress through BG1. The main danger there was that I kept nodding off briefly, though the only time that could easily have been serious was while a phase spider was attacking in Candlekeep.
Back at the Palace Burl got lucky this time with 3 of the dopplegangers running from his initial horror and one of the others attacking him rather than the dukes. That made the fight a simple one and Belt and Liia were still both in robust health at the end.
After fighting through the maze, Burl ignored the Undercity party and went straight for the temple. LMD annoyed Sarevok and prompted Semaj to teleport out, but his spells made no impression on a first use of a PfM scroll. Burl swapped blows with Sarevok, but kept his own HPs up a bit by using a potion of regeneration. There was a slightly nasty moment when rage overtook Burl, but he would have been favorite to win even if he hadn't snapped out of that. He did though and one more blow to Sarevok after that did the trick.
I did a bit less work in BG1 this time, but even so Burl still transferred with 317k XP. Here's his record and inventory on arrival in the SoD prologue.
War Hulk L8, 146 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 302 kills
After the demise of my last run - the 75 no-raising challenge- in ToB I've been experimenting with a random challenge. My CN character - first effort was with the 'Card' kit but may also try others like Jesters- will decide his next course of action based on die rolls. I'm still working out the parameters but my first effort perished fairly on to bandit arrows while helping Kagain. It was quite weird as he insisted on travelling to several dangerous areas early on in the game. Look forward to experimenting further .
end of the line; I sent a skelly in with a swarm as my bouncing beddy then wiped out some more peons and showed a bird brain that Druids don't need to see their targets.
We entered the hells and I payed for forgetting to buff Khalid against mind magic... with his fireball arrows it didn't take long.
We had some fun with this pair, but (like nearly all our runs) a momentary mistake brought an end to it .
The session started at Watcher's Keep where we initially cleared the left side rooms. We didn't know farsight to check what was waiting in the middle, but in the event there were only mephits and they didn't last long. The top level was cleared and looted, though that cost Yowell a life when he failed to survive a Finger of Death trap (Shirley knew spell immunity, but wasn't 100% sure that would protect her). The golems died in a hail of MMMs and the statues then went largely the same way - though both Yowell and Shirley got hid hard when not noticing that stoneskins had been worn down.
Back in Athkatla we visited Aran Linvail to pick up his goodies before starting Mae'Var's tasks. An amulet was duly handed over before going to sort out Mae'Var. His spell trigger put up PfMW to block MMMs, but we nipped downstairs to wait that out before filling him full of holes. At that point Yowell was ready to leave, but Shirley couldn't resist grabbing the treasure lying around. She had no fire protection, but felt confident that the fireball trap guarding the wand of fire wouldn't kill her. She was right about that, but if asked if she was confident she would survive a second activation of the trap she would have said that was too risky. Unfortunately she was also right about that when a mis-click opened the container again ...
After killing all the ankheg near the farm, I sold the shells at Beregost and then bought the pfp scroll before heading for the basilisk area. On the way I killed a variety of wolves including vampyric ones.
In the basilisk area, I used necklace of missiles to weaken some assassins. To my surprise, they approached from a variety of directions. That didn't stop me from defeating them however.
Once they were dead I slept and then used the scroll to kill the basilisks and medusae.
When I thought that they were all dead I approached Mutamin only to find that there was still another medusa left. Fortunately Mutamin moved away with the result that I was able to kill the last medusa before fighting him. Once it was dead I used wizards' bane before attacking Mutamin who quickly succumbed to my attack. I then headed back to the mines where I killed Zargos Flitblade and Greywolf. After resting, I went in search of Bassilus and slew him. After recruiting Sirene and Tenya we fought Tristan and Isolde and slew them both. We then went to the lighthouse area where we barely survived. Indeed, I was forced to raise Tenya otherwise I would have lost her. I thought that the sirenes were going to get the better of us, but we survived. It was a stealthy pirate that killed Tenya. Sirene and I however prevailed. We then helped Charleston Nib before taking Brage to the temple.
What is surprising me is that I am surviving despite only getting 50% experience.
Burl scattered the initial group of enemies with a horror and pushed through to persuade Porios to surrender. Downstairs, he used fireballs to soften up the undead before leading them back for the Flaming Fist to finish off. Only one of the Fist survived him doing the same thing with the mercenaries just before Korlasz. She was protected against fire, but a couple of blasts from the Ring of Energy was enough to make her surrender.
In Baldur's Gate, Burl sold various pieces of jewelry, netting over 50k gold in the process. That was invested in scrolls and potions (most of which won't ever be used). He also grabbed the Spectacles of Spectacle and found some ruby wine for Irina - sorting out Korlasz again while doing that.
I didn't bother killing any of the NPCs for their equipment though.
On arrival at the camp, Burl immediately left in search of a vampire. He started the fight against Ikros and Isabella well by sending the paladin running in horror. The Ring of Energy then worked its magic on Ikros to save the vampire who had been paralyzed. Isabella survived being attacked while she was running, but once she stood still she didn't last long. The grateful vampire provided a nice regeneration ioun stone as a reward.
After looting some glasses of identification from a burned inn, Burl headed straight for the bridge he hid behind a tent there until Caelar arrived for a parley.
Moving on to the Troll Claw Woods, there was nothing of interest to Burl, so he just went straight through - expending a couple of fireballs against a group of hobgoblins on the way.
Travelling on to the Forest of Wyrms, Burl discovered a troll cave on the way. That's a good location for sling users, but not of any real benefit to him and he left it alone this time. Arriving at the Forest, wyverns, spiders and bugbears didn't detain him long and he moved into a dragon cave. As he's not using missile weapons, but wanted to see what he could make from a dragon skin, he attacked in melee. The dragon woke up too quickly for him to land a blow though and he retreated outside. A potion of invulnerability helped protect against fear before he turned to potions of firebreath. Burl soaked up some poison breaths and wing buffets while three firebreaths put Morentherene in trouble. An energy charge then finished off both the dragon and the greater wyvern remaining at that stage.
Attacking and retreating split bugbears up into small groups for easy disposal before Burl moved on into the temple proper. A potion of invulnerability allowed him to tank a couple of traps while chewing through all Ziatar's guards. With them all dead, Burl regenerated his HPs before tackling Ziatar. After swapping a few blows she tried to hide in sanctuary, but the Ring of Energy wasn't having any of that.
Another potion of invulnerability helped him fend off the Neothelid's spell attacks while meleeing it.
Just after that he found his biggest hit to date in any of his runs - getting close to 3 figures there (as the crawlers couldn't paralyze him and do limited melee damage, there was no danger associated with rage spiral against them).
He took a potion of regeneration so that invulnerability was still active when he attacked the Shadow Aspect - 2 hits were sufficient to deal with him.
The Fractal Blade is likely to be his most used weapon from this point (+3 weapon with speed factor of zero is very attractive for a character specializing in hit and run tactics).
A potion of stone form replaced invulnerability to fend off Darskhelin's attacks, while pulling him away from his companions.
The others were then similarly picked off one at a time. Akanna's aerial servants were also done individually, as they hit hard enough to have been dangerous if they had caused Burl to fall into a rage, before Akanna completed a good day's work at the Temple - Burl also earned his final SoD level at some point in those final fights.
War Hulk L10, 177 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 437 kills
At Boareskyr Bridge Burl couldn't resist attacking Vichand. If that fight is not concluded quickly it turns the whole camp hostile, but a whack from the Chesley Crusher followed up by a firebreath potion ensured Vichand never knew what hit him.
Inside the fort, Burl had his dragon scales made into a shield, but didn't bother with any other work after talking to Hess and Hillcarver. He fought the whole camp last time, but with no need of money or XP he just surrendered the place this time. At the bridge a couple of firebreath potions accounted for the guards before beating up the mage.
At the Coalition Camp, Burl sold various loot to Nazramu for high prices and picked up the Bwoosh and some poison. On the way to Dead Man's Pass he found an ambush area with some myconids. Beating them up gave him access to Spellbreaker for an alternative way to boost his spell saving throw. Last time I fought through this area, but this time I again took the quick and easy option - using the invisibility ring to sneak through.
After rescuing Skie at Dragonspear, Burl moved on to the Underground River. The Horn of Kazgaroth provided protection while he meleed a Myconid Elder to give him a first source of summons.
At the entrance there was the usual pulling away of guards in ones and twos with the Horn providing a bit of extra protection when attacking the mages - another benefit of the Fractal Blade against them is its ability to speed up combats by dispelling illusions.
Eventually the route was clear and Burl moved inside. An unprovoked attack and follow-up firebreath potion disposed of Strunk,
but otherwise he avoided combat on the way to convincing Turin to let him into the inner area. There, Burl poisoned the food and water, using invisibility to avoid any chance of being trapped. He had to show himself to trigger the conversation that would re-open the lift, but then ran away before he could be attacked.
The message to the other crusaders was though passed just in time to stop him before the exit, so he had to use another charge of the invisibility ring to make the blockers disperse and allow him to get out.
On the way back to the Coalition Camp he didn't bother fighting the Shadowy Figure. After another failed parley he prepared for a Crusader invasion: - myconids provided an initial distraction to allow firebreath to decimate the trolls and ogres.
- another lot of myconids and a firebreath helped the wizard slayers against the enemy mages.
- I tried to keep the same myconids for the next lot, but they disappeared just too quickly. However, that did mean there were no obstructions for Burl's last 2 firebreath potions and the few remaining opponents were soon finished off by the war mages.
- for the final lot, Burl just retreated as soon as the battle started and let Auziel kill them all.
At the siege of Dragonspear, Burl immediately went to find Ashatiel and start a single combat. A potion of magic shielding protected him against going into a rage spiral while he wore down Ashatiel's stoneskins.
Inside the castle Burl followed Caelar into hell. A potion of invulnerability provided protection while he dealt with Illaruel,
but to be safe that was renewed before tackling Thrix's summons (who charmed him to end his previous run).
Nothing untoward happened this time and Burl accepted a Helm from Thrix for answering his riddle.
Going up the elevator, Burl used 2 scrolls of fire protection and protection from poison, along with another invulnerability.
After the final fight he added mind focusing, regeneration, speed and power. He ran away from Caelar at the start of the fight with Belhifet in order to avoid being dispelled and killed the other starting demons. Caelar was almost dead by this time, but lasted just long enough to allow Burl to get one free attack on Belhifet - and he made full use of that with a critical hit. Supposedly that also stunned the devil, but he ignored that.
With his speedy attacks though, Burl could hit Belhifet pretty reliably without suffering any retaliation and Belhifet was down to badly wounded before he brought out a cornugon to lightning bolt Burl and cause his first damage of this fight. One green scroll reduced his vulnerability to lightning while he killed the cornugon.
It was then only a matter of time before Big B was cut down to dwarf size.
Burl quickly ran through the epilogue to complete the second part of his adventures.
War Hulk L10, 174 HPs, 565 kills
I initially tried to import Burl to BG2EE as an exported character, but the game classed him as a Grizzly Bear. While that had some attraction I decided to start again and do the import from a saved game this time - but the same thing happened. The War Hulk class could correctly be chosen for a newly generated character, but wasn't carrying over for Burl. Any ideas @semiticgod, or should I reconstitute the character by using the console or EEKeeper?
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 155 (from 154 where Grond0 means "before going to sort out Rayic Gethras" instead of "before going to sort out Mae'Var") Drunn (half-elf fighter / druid, Gate70); Hoodie (Human Totemic Druid, Grond0)
We've had a couple of shortish sessions, with no notes and a sparse trail of screenshots to go on. The very start of the game threw up a new one for us, with Drunn as the host unable to talk. That should only happen to clients if permissions are not granted. A moment or two later it resolved itself.
Anyway, we set about Candlekeep and Shoal before settling into quests. The many-bandit ambush almost caught Drunn out and he glugged a potion to avoid an early exit.
A random keypress on my part sent Marl hostile so he perished. Learning quickly from my mistake, I then did exactly the same to Hafiz. He wasn't such a pushover and Hoodie was raised at a temple.
Our second sessions saw us playing with a drowned cat before the rightful owner claimed it. We moved on to the gnoll fortress, somehow missing it after finding a magical tome.
After being run out of the carnival by too-friendly onlookers we headed to the rock garden where we felt more at home surrounded by enemies. Drunn realised he'd run out of throwing daggers AND broken his scimitar (forgot to say he bought a Ninjato initially and found he couldn't use it), so Hoodie handed over the magical dagger which must have been picked up from the guardhouse thanks to 18 charisma.
Mutamin put up a good fight, scaring and then killing a totemic snake but by that time his spells were unable to take care of us.
Fenix, Halfling Sniper, update 2 BG1 Intro BG1 end In SoD, high charisma allows Fenix to not fight Porios. Stealth gets him safely to Korlasz, and arrows of dispelling and detonation are enough to get a quick surrender.
Very few things are done in Baldur's Gate, though I recruit Minsc and Dynaheir as my tank/mage combo. Once out, I recruit Corwin, M'khiin, and Rasaad to fill out my party.
First major dungeon: the Coldhearth Lich. Strategy for the most part is M'khiin summons, Fenix pulls, Dynaheir fireballs from time to time. It all goes without a hitch for the most part - Minsc gets level drained, but a trip back to the camp for a lesser restoration and a rest keep us going. Until the lich itself. I don't know what my mods did, but the Secret Revealed didn't work against the lich, and he kept all his spellcasting. Maybe Spell Shield blocked it? Fortunately, a summoned Nymph took the Timestop assault on herself, but Rasaad is killed instantly by PW:Kill and M'khiin is stunned by PW:Stun while we wait out his PFMW. Arrow of Dispelling saves us, and we put him down the first time. Second time Wand of Summoning summons takes the Timestop, and we squeak by him without any losses. Third time, I try to use the Wand of Summoning again, and all I get is... nothing. A Save from Breath in the console from Dynaheir, and no summons. I have 0 idea of what happened, but the Wand of Summoning is officially non-functional this game. Rasaad this time eats the timestop while we get out of dodge.
Note Fenix' HP. I made a huge mistake and did not quaff a potion of power to protect vs PW:Stun, but fortunately it wasn't fatal. A Web/Stinking Cloud sequencer is struck in the small room, and almost everyone succumbs to it. Arrow of Dispelling into a ton of damage and hoping... He gets off a PfMW in the last second. But M'khiin's last shot was already midair, and PfMW doesn't stop attacks whose attack rolls already succeeded apparently...
Geez. I think I'm officially skipping this dungeon in SoD from now on. At the bridge, we manage to slaughter everyone before the time limit expires. Area damage is pretty neat.
We adventure, spiders, wyverns, nothing difficult until Morenthene. I have a couple throwing daggers, and Fenix has the best THAC0 with them after Shadow Magic - Shadow Door use. His save vs breath is -2, so should be safe, especially with his +1 luck bonus. But we're not lucky, and Morenthene awakes before we even get in sight range.
I have Resist Fear this time, so Minsc is actually useful this time around. Morenthene's relatively low HP are taken out by essentially two archers, and her one poisonous breath didn't do nearly enough to knock us down. It did only 16 or so damage on a successful save, when I recall it doing something like 60 damage on a successful save in the past. Dunno what happened with my install.
Dual Web, two rings of Free Action, Spider Bane allow a quick execution of Ziatar before we continue further in. Potion of Clarity gives Minsc safety vs the Neothelid, and shamanic animals takes the sting away from the Aerial Servants. We acquire the Fractal Blade at the expense of two rests: the STR drain lasts like 10 hours for some reason. And Ice Storm and Cloudkill in a small room kills most of the Illithid's crew before they even engage us.
So here I quit for the day, and when I tried to load the save, instant crash. I try multiple saves, and everything from before the recruitment crashes the game instantly. I end up transferring the save to a multiplayer save, and played it from multiplayer, and it's working from there. I do have to actually think about going into inventory, though, since it doesn't pause the game in multiplayer.
Anyhow, at Bridgefort, we get level drained, we kill a guard, we get the scroll, we kill a couple wights from a dishonest priest, Rasaad gets level drained, and we surrender the fort. The mage battle is ended with Bolts of Biting stopping any summoning attempts, and Web locks down most of the Crusader.
In the wilderness, there was this funny fight where the Moose decided it no longer wanted to be the prey.
Also in the wilderness, both Minsc and Rasaad get stunned by a Bombadier Beetler, and a wandering shambling mound can't be stopped before killing both. A rest later to get another use of Recall Spirit, and we're good to go.
We rescue Skie diplomatically, get the Corwin stutter bug which I only figured out after 20 minutes or so, resolve the stutter bug by console and travel both, and get back to the underground river entrance. My install is... interesting. Or interestingly corrupted. That's 3 of the dwarven questgiver just sitting there. I have no idea.
Underground river: we refused to poison the supplies, but we kill the dark druid, release some Drow children to the surface, and stop an undead summoning ritual, and break a jar.
6 Pro. Acid scrolls later, and I get revenge for my last loss. They don't even USE their breath weapons this time...
The drow warparty dislike hearing that we let the younglings to the surface, and attack the crusade. After a few rounds of battle and more Drow spawning (?) we collectively high tail it to the lift to face Hephernaan. I... made a couple mistakes in buffing. I had enough potions of Clarity, I just didn't use them here. Fenix and Rasaad are instantly confused, Corwin fortunately escaping it and helping Fenix to get out using an Arrow of Dispelling. Dynaheir walked way too forward earlier, and can't Breach Hephernaan in time. Rasaad dies to the 3rd Unholy Blight. Fenix dispels the Improved Invisibility, I'm still waiting out the Physical Mirror I'm... 80% sure is still there. The Stone Golems fall before Minsc does, and a test shot from M'khiin reveals that Physical Mirror is definitely down. The takedown from an Archer and Sniper is simple from there.
Invisibility 10" Radius is used to get us out safely, and it's back to the camp for us. All three of the battles are dealt with with ample uses of fire. Potions of explosion, wand of fire, arrows of detonation make for some very easy pickings.
The battle for Dragonspear castle is just one huge fight that I can't keep track of. Corwin almost dies after being Feared and poisoned, but Fenix is fast enough with his Delay Poison to keep her alive. The battle between Fenix and Caelar's second in command is swift and painful, and we progress to the 9 hells. We've no need to any additional weapons, so we tell the doorkeeper to stuff it and keep going forwards. Preparation: 6 potions of Fire Resistance, 6 scrolls of the same, potions of Clarity for Minsc, and Corwin and a potion of Magic Shielding and Power for Fenix. We have 40 +3 bolts, 20 +3 arrows, the +3 2H sword for Minsc, and Rasaad's going to take down the lesser demons for the most part. Hephernaan falls a lot more quickly this time.
Belhifet's not much longer for the world either, or for hell, as the case might be.
We get the Hero ending, and I'm currently waiting for my BG2 install to work and hopefully not die in a fire like my SoD installation.
@Grond0: I'm guessing that the War Hulk in your install is the only mod-introduced fighter kit, and I'm guessing that you have separate installs for BG1 and BG2 (no EET). I think this means that, in BG1, the War Hulk would be the 5th (or maybe 6th, counting the Barbarian). However, BG2 also has the Grizzly Bear kit, and since that came before the mod-introduced War Hulk kit, it's also coded as the 5th fighter kit.
Or maybe the War Hulk is the only mod-introduced kit of any kind in your BG1 install, so it's coded as the 51st kit or whatever. This would put it at the bottom of every kit-based .2da table. But in BG2, the Grizzly Bear would be the 51st, and the War Hulk is the 52nd. Thus, when you import the character into BG2, the character is listed as having the 51st kit, which in BG2 is the Grizzly Bear kit instead of War Hulk.
In the past, I've completely re-created characters that encountered this problem, but I think you can fix it just by switching the kit via EEKeeper.
Diary of Yazutha We proceeded into the Nashkel mines and defeated the Dark Horizon assassins before leaving to sell and buy the necklace of missiles. A fleeing thief drew us into combat with more kobolds than intended, but we didn't have a major problem with them. These battles ended up with us getting better armour. We will ask Aerie to identify our other aquisitions.
I initially tried to import Burl to BG2EE as an exported character, but the game classed him as a Grizzly Bear. While that had some attraction I decided to start again and do the import from a saved game this time - but the same thing happened. The War Hulk class could correctly be chosen for a newly generated character, but wasn't carrying over for Burl. Any ideas @semiticgod, or should I reconstitute the character by using the console or EEKeeper?
This happened to me too when I exported over to BG2EE. All you have to do is open EEKeeper and change the kit to War Hulk and that should fix it.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 5
I decide to bump up Asriel to level 9, allowing him to choose a new feat: Treant form, a nerfed variant of the Tactics form. He has terrible DEX in Treant form, but he has a massive 15/- resistance to physical damage, making him nearly invincible against anything that doesn't hit hard (or deal fire damage).
Shortly after, I bump up Mabel to level 9 and Frisk and Star to level 10, giving us access to the Siren's Yearning and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. The Siren's Yearning stuns for one round (unstun on damage) on a failed Will save at DC 10 (buffed to DC 15 in the most recent version of semiOverhaul) and imposes a cumulative -1 penalty to Will saves for 10 rounds. More importantly, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful will give every Neutral Good member of the party (including Dipper!) an extra attack per round, on top of +2 to hit, damage, and saving throws. Unlike the IWD version, it imposes no fatigue penalty but also only lasts 5 rounds.
We nab the Necklace of Missiles and Bardic Horn of Valhalla from Beodaewn before attacking him. He also has 15/- resistance to all of our weapons, but he doesn't have the Reflex saves to resist Star's Chromatic Orb spells, allowing us to stun-lock him.
Against the Aurilite Druids of Andora, we summon some critters to handle Odea Winterthaw while the party deals with the others. Notice our Mountain Bears tearing up her black bears.
Marco and Dipper are under heavy pressure, but Mabel can use spontaneous casting to cast Healing Circle. Spontaneous casting in IWD2 ignores aura; you can begin casting a healing spell at any time (or an Inflict Wounds spell, if your cleric is evil).
In the vanilla game, spontaneous casting only lets you cast four healing spells, Cure Light/Moderate/Serious/Critical Wounds. If you try to use spontaneous casting on a level 5 or higher spell slot, you'll just get the level 4 Cure Critical Wounds spell. In semiOverhaul, spontaneous casting scales better: level 5 spells become Healing Circle, level 6 spells become Heal (which now has a casting speed of 5 instead of 1!), level 7 spells become Greater Restoration (which now heals 5d8+25 HP), and level 8 and 9 spells become Mass Heal. This makes clerics much better healers than in the vanilla game. Evil clerics don't benefit nearly as much, but they do get the ability to turn level 8 spells into Fire Storm and level 9 spells into Gate.
The primary threat of this fight is Illium Ar'Ghrenoir, who illegally gets the ability to attack multiple times per round using a crossbow. His attack bonus is an incredible +22...
...but right before he's about to kill Dipper, Frisk lands a Hold Monster spell on Illium, neutralizing the biggest threat.
The rest of the fight proves uneventful. Dipper nails a druid with Haft Over Head, Star stuns a ranger with Icelance, and Frisk paralyzes the remainder.
But I underestimate the Barbarian Warriors in the next area. See, Barbarian Rage grants immunity to certain disablers in semiOverhaul, like in BG2, which means they're immune to spells like Sleep. And since they use axes, they deal triple damage on critical hits, which is very bad news for Dipper, whom we've failed to level up and whose HP is therefore fairly low.
They almost kill Asriel, too, until he switches to Treant form and attains 15/- physical damage resistance. Fortunately, we manage to avoid any further butchery and put down the enemy without incident. Star tests out her new Lance of Disruption spell on a couple of Boneguards, who take extra damage from crushing weapons.
The local Remorhazes have massive damage output, but just like in the unmodded game, they have weak Reflex saves and little defense against Chromatic Orb.
Chromatic Orb is much more useful in the ice temple in semiOverhaul, at least with Tactics installed. The clerics here all buff with Freedom of Movement, but stun effects go right through that.
It's a nice change, because normally these clerics are a pain to deal with. They're basically immune to normal disablers and instant death effects, and if you don't deal with them quickly, they'll summon lots of undead. It's very difficult to disrupt their spells, too, but apparently not impossible.
Lord Rengar is very dangerous and hard to kill, with lots of immunities. But immunity to stun is much rarer in semiOverhaul, paving the way for a Chromatic Orb.
Warriors get better Reflex saves in semiOverhaul, but Spell Focus: Evocation makes Chromatic Orb very difficult to resist, and even if it only lasts a single round, it can still be spammed.
Next up, Sherincal. Sherry has strong defenses and extremely powerful melee attacks, and comes bolstered by a pair of necromancers, a few clerics near the back, and several heavy-hitting fighter types, not to mention the golem that flanks you early in the fight. We confuse the fighters using an introductory Chaos spell (Barbarian Rage does not grant immunity to confusion!) and shut down the necromancers using Insect Plague. To my surprise, our wyverns are actually very effective against the half-dragon.
Dipper and Sherry trade blows. Dipper is stronger, but Sherry is sturdier.
We finish off Sherry with a lucky Chromatic Orb and break down the Crystal Golem with crushing weapons. Frisk and Dipper both fail saves against Hold Person when we engage the priests in the back, but without any remaining enemy fighters to pounce on them, they survive.
The Ice Golem Champions inside the temple itself are extremely dangerous. They have stun effects on hit, and some bad saving throws can get you stun-locked and killed in moments. Even Stoneskin doesn't save Marco.
Wyvern Call turns out to be pretty powerful. The wyverns have good stats, and for some reason their natural weapon does a ridiculous 1d20 base damage.
I bump up Star to level 12, giving the whole party access to Mass Haste, and sell off tens of thousands of gold's worth of ammunition in order to purchase some permanent stat-boosting potions from Oswald. We rush Lysara with a full suite of buffs and Dipper absolutely destroys her.
On the way out, Frisk gets silenced, and we discover that Vocalize does not allow bards to sing songs.
Even though we have a level 12 sorcerer, the party as a whole is underleveled for this area, and I think semiOverhaul has slightly increased the challenge rating for the local critters. Every Aurilite Frosttouch gives us 1200 XP when he or she dies. Just a few fights later, Star gets another level up.
We now have the Necklace of Missiles, which in semiOverhaul can be used 3 times per day instead of having a limited set of charges. I prefer per-day items because they encourage the player to use them regularly instead of saving them up for big fights, where you can burn 10 charges and stomp everything. This makes the necklace a little more user-friendly.
Things are going very well. But then something very strange happens. One of the enemy necromancers fires off a Circle of Death spell. In the vanilla game, Circle of Death is an instant death spell that only works on critters below a certain level, but in semiOverhaul, this spell works just like Power Word: Kill, except it offers a saving throw.
And apparently, Circle of Death kills the target permanently.
We have just lost our only cleric. We can re-create her as a level 1 character, but until she hits level 9, no one in the party can cast Raise Dead.
My typical rule for these situations is that I can only import in a copy of a permanently killed character if I've exported them earlier. I never exported Mabel's character file, so I have to re-make her from scratch. As a level 1 character, she'll be hiding under invisibility for the foreseeable future.
We'll get more XP per critter for a while, but we've still lost like 70,000 XP, which is a LOT in IWD2, where an endgame character will only have 150,000 XP. We plow through the rest of the level, coasting on our still-impressive offensive powers, but we run into another necromancer, and when we fail to disrupt his spell against the odds, we lose another character to Circle of Death.
We have now lost Frisk and Dipper, and both will have to start over at level 1 with zero HP. We have just lost HALF of the XP we've gathered over the entire game so far, and now half the party is at level 1. Two Circle of Death spells robbed us of over 200,000 XP, about 25% of the XP we could expect to collect over the course of a normal game.
The current version of semiOverhaul, though, removes permanent death effects from the game. All deaths are reversible in semiOverhaul, even petrification.
Having Dipper at low levels isn't so bad; he'll be back in business by level 5. Frisk's death is a more significant loss, as it will take a long time before they re-learn the Siren's Yearning or the Song of Kaudies (which gives a party-wide Blink effect in semiOverhaul). They also had some very useful bard spells. Mabel is the biggest loss; her high-level cleric spells were a major boon to the party.
There's not much left in the Ice Temple. Asriel deals with the Battle Square fights using Rhinoceros Beetle form.
The last major challenge is Oria, a mage who comes bolstered by a pack of Winter Wolves and a gang of clerics who flank you from a nearby room. We bomb the wolves with the Necklace of Missiles and hold off the clerics with summons. Marco stays close to Oria, as his excellent saving throws (courtesy of his many monk levels) will let him resist her spells.
SemiOverhaul nerfs Mirror Image and Shield, so mages aren't as sturdy as they normally are in Tactics. Once the clerics go down, we pile up on Oria, who quickly reverts to ethereal form. Once we join her at the Battle Square, the fight is over--Oria is completely unbuffed when she's in ethereal form.
We sell off the last of our excess ammunition and bump the party's gold supply up to 120,000. We have nothing to buy at the moment, but when we reach the Underdark, we'll need the extra gold to buy some important items.
The party has been dealt a heavy blow by those two Circle of Death spells and the permanent deaths that sent Dipper, Mabel, and Frisk back to level 1. The party will now depend heavily on Star, Marco, and Asriel for its survival.
Marco, our monk, is at level 5, but can jump up to level 14 if we need him to.
Star and Asriel, our sorcerer and druid, are at level 12 and 11, and are just inches away from level 15.
Frisk, our bard, is at level 5 and has just re-learned Tymora's Loop.
Dipper, our fighter, is at level 5 and has regained all of his previous power--but no longer has the bonus XP that would let him jump up another 9 levels.
Mabel, our cleric, can jump up to level 6, but we're keeping her at level 1 because her spells will be little help until she gets back to level 9.
Overall, the party is a lot weaker than it should be. But the party's lower average level will give us more XP from kills in the future, which means Asriel and Star will be able to reach higher levels than they otherwise could. We should be able to learn Wail of the Banshee long before the endgame, and we might even get Asriel access to black dragon form, the strongest shapeshift in semiOverhaul, at level 21. That will definitely smooth things out later in the game.
Importing Burl into BG2 saw him arrive as a Grizzly Bear rather than a War Hulk. I used EEKeeper to change the kit, but that change didn't sort things out immediately. The War Hulk kit was now active, but the abilities and restrictions of the Grizzly Bear were also being applied, e.g. Burl couldn't use any armor or wear a helmet. However, he ploughed onwards regardless in the hope that the changes would get resolved when he gained a level.
He used a +1 dagger in the dungeon - even though non-proficient, the higher speed factor meant he took less damage that way. Horror sorted out the more dangerous opponents, such as the mephits in the elemental plane and he cleared everything in the dungeon.
He had access to the Grizzly Bear's animal rage, but didn't try and use that.
The inability of the bear to wear things like rings, necklaces and belts handicapped Burl's carrying capacity a bit, but he still invested a couple of thousand on temple donations on exit. At the circus I was aware of the danger of allowing the illusionary werewolves to hit (potentially triggering a rage spiral), so kept away from them as much as possible while going to deal with Kalah.
That still left Burl about 40k XP short of a level as he headed for the Copper Coronet. He worked through the guards there easily enough - the Beastmaster finding himself horrified to be shut in a cage with a wild animal (and the leopard wasn't too happy about it either ).
Releasing a couple of child prisoners allowed Burl to level up, but unfortunately that still didn't fix the kit.
I experimented further with changing kits and classes through EEKeeper, but without being able to get rid of the Grizzly Bear restrictions and abilities. Any further thoughts on that @semiticgod or @flashburn?
Edit: I decided to just recreate the character and then use MP to insert it into the saved game. He's hopefully ready now to start making some proper progress.
Edit 2: or perhaps not. The kit is not now restricting attacks to 1 APR. I'm feeling minded to call a halt to this run now as there's far too much reloading and mucking about with it for my taste.
Our latest Trio run got properly underway at the weekend. As usual we started with Shoal, but then stayed in the area to run the ogre clan around as well - everyone picking up a level as a result.
Biff then used his rage to prevent the sirines charming him. Unfortunately that didn't stop them feebleminding him, so we had to hang around for a while until the effect wore off. Another level was the reward for our patience.
In Beregost a smash and grab raid at the blacksmith's provided Hunter with a magical bastard sword and he'd soon got an armor upgrade as well thanks to a visit to Nashkel. Keen to get into the equipment act, Biff led the way to find Arghain and pick up his own sword upgrade.
Even though we were still pretty low-level, with 3 fighter-types we decided we could manage the Nashkel Mines. Traps and the odd kobold arrow meant HPs were pretty low by the time we got to Mulahey's cave, but resting there healed us up before attacking.
The cleric managed to confuse Hunter at the start of the battle, but his quality armor kept him safe while the opponents were being finished off.
Outside the mine, Biff raged and drew the attention of the amazons while we attacked - that led to another lot of low HPs for him, but he survived.
After shooting down Nimbul a few tasks were done in Beregost before learning the location of the Bandit Camp from the brave, but deluded Tranzig.
Rather than go straight there though, we ransacked the ankheg nest
before returning south to cruise through the Cloud Peak Mountains.
Meilum handed over his bracers before there was more fun with sirines - this time Hunter acting as the tank with the help of a potion of clarity.
A potion of absorption for him also meant the golems were even more exposed than they would have been just with an archer shooting at them.
After buying a scroll of PfP we travelled to the basilisk area before saving. With a bit of luck I might even remember to make use of the scroll next time before charging into battle with the basilisks.
Comments
After leaving Nashkel I headed southwards to the mine area where I was immediately accosted by yet another assassin. I landed a lucky blow and as a result now have a +1 axe.
After finding a wand in a tree trunk, I headed east where I found a magical ring. Nearby I met Samuel and took him to the Friendly Arms Inn.
As I left, I spoke to Joia and returned her ring that I had found. I then headed back to Beregost where I gave the Colquetle amulet back to the family.
I then took a tome to Firebead thus becoming a hero.
Upon entering what appeared to be an empty house, I was attacked by spiders which I killed.
EDIT
Perhaps I should have postponed the encounter until I reached level 3.
Despite using 3 healing potions, Vax was too strong for me after using a potion of heroism as well as some healing potions.
I collected the bits for a spell and had some armour made before crossing the bridge... grabbed a sword and attacked more peons to get into the caves.
We used one shot to open the store, Khalid grabbed his bag, we used the last two shots for a nice sword and the lich... now I have the most powerful item for my wild mage (and my 6 level spell) but I killed him before my traps fired so I need to avoid killing the dragon in my next round
Previous run
I quickly ran the Opera through the early stages of a 20th run while keeping half an eye on some Federation Cup tennis. That split of attention proved fatal at the Lighthouse when I forgot the danger pre-laid traps can represent to your own side - Beggar being charmed by a sirine and triggering a couple of traps.
Trying again, things went pretty smoothly until everyone was up to level 5 or 6. At the Valley of the Tombs an invisible block was set up in the ghast tomb and the sorcerers started firing magic missiles over that. Unfortunately one of the ghasts proved to have a longer reach than expected - stretching well over the blockers to somehow get a hit in. The +4 damage from not having a melee weapon equipped enabled it to finish Skint off before Aspire could make her invisible.
Starting run 22, I was struggling to concentrate and one of the sorcerers was killed fairly early on by a critical from a wild dog travel ambush.
Once more unto the breach and I was lucky when I again forgot about some traps while battling sirines, but Pauper survived the damage after being charmed. Otherwise it was a pretty smooth run up to clearing the upper part of Durlag's Tower. I made the strategic error there though of trying to mix in a few minutes gaming in between pieces of work. When attacking the last few ghasts at the top of the Tower I sent in Hardup to act as an invisible blocker at one point - something he proved to be rather poor at as he wasn't invisible
I had thought the previous run would probably be the last for the moment, but decided to have one more go. That only lasted a few minutes though. Washout was in the process of setting traps for Elminster after having cleared the encounter spots to the south of that. After resting, Washout had just set a new trap when Aspire was one-shotted by a bandit. That was doubly unfortunate - both because the bandit had obviously regenerated on an encounter spot and then wandered away from that to find the party and because level 1 protection should have saved her (but this installation is based on the current retail version where that's still bugged).
Feeling unable to leave it at that I restarted for one more, one more go. Progress was generally smooth up to the Nashkel Mine, with the only close shave when Skint was taken down to 2 HP by a large hobgoblin ambush on the way there. After dealing with Mulahey though I got caught out by a couple of differences in behavior in this installation. Nimbul was stuck in webs and I could have used true sight to finish him off quickly. However, being held by a web appears to make neutrals hostile in SR and I decided to wait for Nimbul to show himself rather than risk a massacre of innocents. I thought he would do that by casting a spell and was ready to dodge to avoid that - but he chose to backstab instead and Aspire was just too short of HPs to survive that.
That was a better attempt though, so I'll leave the Opera for a while now.
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2, 3SoD: 1, 2
BG2: 1, 2
It's been a month or so since I last posted progress and I had screenshots taken already, so I better write this down now before I forget what happened since last time. I have discovered the joy of being the one who plays micspam while on TF2 instead of being on the receiving end of it, and there was much playing of weeaboo music. Even made some friends doing it!
Before I left for Firkraag's dungeon, I tasked my apprentices with creating the Ring of Wizardry. After Firkraag's overwhelming defeat, I take the Cold Iron Chips from his body and create Perfect Iron MK I and Perfect Flesh MK IV. I rest after creating them and two of my apprentices spontaneously combust. At least I got the ring.
Onto the Temple Ruins. The planetar cleans house without much help from me, as usual. Thaxyll'ssillyia is put down with another magical barrage to lower his defenses and then kill him, finishing him off with a Chaotic Eruption.
I don't remember why exactly I casted a spell while back in Athkatla, but the Cowled Wizards have had enough of my crap and have sent their elites to put an end to me. Unfortunately for them, I'm way stronger than they could ever hope to be as I strip their protections one by one under Improved Alacrity and use Power Word Kill finishers. Shoon VII is gonna have to find another stooge to possess as I kill Zallanora with Chaotic Eruption.
With all the sidequests completed for now, I send Bodhi crawling back to Irenicus by having the Planetar attack her before she fully teleports in.
Before heading to Spellhold, I build Bone Golem MK I.
At Spellhold, I sacrifice 1 point of CON to the demon and then beat Irenicus.
On Saemon's boat, we gang up on him and kill him for 18k XP. The Sahuagin were surprisingly good at offense, killing Bone Golem MK I.
Then, in the Underdark, for freeing Bedlen Dagglefod's son from the device full of imprisoned souls, he gives us Grumbar's Defense +1.
I combine it with Istishia's Mind Shield, which itself is combined with Akadi's Cloak of Rapid Motion. This time, the combination increases the damage resistances offered by the cloak, circlet, and shield and increases the number of times that Primeval Outburst can be used per day.
However, the combined items now offer different Primeval Outburst powers (besides their defaults) depending on which form the artifact is currently in:
- Circlet (Poison Mist, Mudslide, Corrosive Shards)
- Shield (Sandstorm, Mudslide, Corrosive Shards)
New powers:
- Sandstorm: AoE cloud that lasts 1 turn: 2d8 piercing damage/round + blindness for 1 turn; save vs. spell for half and no blindness
- Corrosive Shards: Single-target 2d8 crushing, acid, and cold + slow; save vs. spell at -2 for half and no slow
- Mudslide: AoE cloud that lasts 1 turn: 2d8 crushing/round + slow for 1 turn; save vs. spell for half and no slow
Back on the surface, I build Perfect Clay MK II now that I finally have enough clay to build more golems with and I recruit all three helpers to assault Bodhi's den. All three die in the confrontation against Bodhi herself. I send in Perfect Iron and a planetar and keep myself and Perfect Clay MK II out of the fray, though I get hit with Bodhi's Cloud of Bats as I try to assist while the fight is raging.
After the bats wear off, I cast Improved Alacrity and restore my defenses. Bodhi manages to hit my with a CON-draining slap, so I cast PfMW and a charged Wish in response, then fire on all cylinders. Perfect Iron MK I has taken a considerable beating and then finally falls, splitting into two normal Iron Golems. The planetar gets the final hit on Bodhi.
Now its time for the Chosen of Cyric. The anti-magic wave before the fight has me a bit on edge. I have PfMW + Spell Shield + Spell Turning in a Chain Contingency upon enemy sighted. In hindsight, I should've put all of those in a Spell Trigger instead, as it takes an agonizing amount of time to fire by itself. I was almost finished casting Time Stop when it finally kicked in. I have my iron golems move up to reach Selina Shadowstorm and Kerith the Bleak in the back.
I cast Improved Alacrity and buff to hell, casting a charged Wish too, though all it gets me is Hardiness and Improved Haste. I cast Greater Malison and Horrid Wilting in such a way that their effects will resolve in the correct order when time resumes. With the two iron golems adjacent to Selina, they unleash their gas clouds, poisoning her. She's utterly disabled and dies to the poison.
I have the planetar cast Insect Plague on Grok because I know Venduris is lurking, just waiting for the right time to backstab me. This will let me keep an eye on his position even if I can't reveal him with divination attacks (which he is immune to). I plop down an Incendiary Cloud at my feet to soften up anyone foolish enough to get close to me and then disable Bodak Hangthorn with a Power Word Stun, who could dispel all of my stuff with his Arrows of Dispelling. The iron golem pair squish him.
Zaeron T'ane's mislead clone is destroyed by Perfect Clay MK II, but his real self is waiting patiently next to me, ready to attack when my PfMW wears off. I move the golems back to me. Kerith the Bleak has been suffering poison damage for the whole fight since he was near Selina when the golems released their gas clouds. He falls next.
I summon a swarm of Mordy Swords, then have the planetar cast Fire Storm near me, which superheats my iron golems, causing them to do extra fire damage on hit. Zaeron gets torched by the Incendiary Cloud and the Fire Storm. Perfect Clay's new target is Grok, who moves at lightning-fast speed due to double-strength Haste. The next to fall is Venduris who can't stand the constant and sustained beating provided by the planetar.
I try to disable Grok but he shrugs off all attempts with his good saving throws. So I just decide to kill him the old fashioned way with damage spells, finishing him off with Chaotic Eruption.
I make a fortune off selling Venduris' party's loot. Next up is Sulldanessellar. The two iron golems are destroyed by other golems. Nizi is taken care of by Perfect Clay MK II and the planetar without my help. I learn to construct Mithril Golems from the tome on his body.
I leave Sulldanessellar for a bit and construct Mitty the Perfect Mithril Golem MK I. She is very strong, tough, regenerates 1 HP/round, and only able to be hit by +4 weapons and better. Like Iron Golems, she can be superheated with high-level fire spells to inflict extra fire damage on hit.
All that's left is to fight Irenicus twice and win, then its onto ToB.
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 45
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2, 3SoD: 1, 2
BG2: 1, 2, 3
On the Tree of Life, the planetar gets disabled by a double Earthquake. My laziness also costs Perfect Clay MK II its life.
Johnny is bested through Improved Alacrity with a Chaotic Eruption finisher.
The two clay golems do not follow me down to Hell, though. For my Tear upgrades, I choose immunity to +1 weapons and less, then choose +2 saves and +10% MR twice each. -1 DEX, -2 HP, and -75k XP is a small price to pay.
Johnny starts off with a Time Stop, though I'm unaffected because of my trusty Staff of the Magi.
His first Time Stop doesn't amount to anything, but he casts another and starts lobbing anti-magic attacks at me. Spell Shield eats the Khelben's Warding Whip, but I get hit with a Spellstrike follow-up. Johnny gates in a Fallen Planetar before time resumes. After everything resolves, I cast PfMW to keep the Planetar from vorpalling me, then cast Improved Alacrity and restore my defenses. I imprison his Fallen Planetar because my planetar and Mitty are a little busy dealing with the demons, though I made it a point to kill the Balors first because of their no-save vorpal hits (15% chance).
Each time I Breach Johnny, he follows up with another PfMW the next round. I expend about 4 or so on him and my dudes have him on the ropes. I win soon after this.
Shadows of Amn Complete!
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 45Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 4
The attack on the first batch of enemies with a War Drum at hand goes poorly. One of the enemies makes it to the War Drum and begins summoning Goblin Worg Riders right on top of us. Dipper gets wounded when he accidentally enters combat with Power Attack 5 active instead of Expertise 5. As a single-classed fighter, he can easily tolerate the attack penalties of Power Attack and Expertise, giving him +5 damage or +5 AC whenever he wants (he can even switch mid-round without clouding his aura!).We've got a lot of heavy pressure on the party, though, and Mabel has suffered a lot of damage from a trap on the bridge.
We finally get control of the situation with one or two Sleep spells and start clearing the way up north to the War Drum. Dipper runs ahead to kill the Orc Shaman who's been summoning Goblin Worg Riders. He splatters the orc with a greataxe and Power Attack cranked up to 5.
Two-handed weapons are much more useful in IWD2 than they are in the other games, as they get 1.5 times the normal Strength bonus. A character with 18 STR will get a +6 bonus to damage with a greatsword compared to a +4 bonus with a longsword.
The reason that greataxe could do so much damage, though, is mostly because axes, like hammers, arrows, spears, and halberds, deal triple damage on critical hits instead of double damage. Since you can increase the chance of getting a critical hit, but not the critical damage multiplier, these weapons scale much better than swords, dagger, flails, staffs, darts, bullets, and crossbow. Dipper has the mod-introduced Rabbit's Foot charm, which gives him an extra 5% chance at landing a critical hit, and Frisk's level 5 bard song, Tymora's Melody, gives the whole party an extra 5% chance.
Enemies seldom have luck effects active, but they don't actually need them. The enemy's superior numbers give them lots of chances to land critical hits, and enemy arrows deal triple damage on critical hits.
Notice the second attack roll just under the critical hit. Rolling a 20 always means you hit, but it doesn't mean you deal extra damage; you still need to roll another attack roll to deal critical damage. Luck also affects that roll.
Also notice the amazing +18 attack bonus on that orc. As a level 4 critter with 3 pips in bows and 16 DEX, it should have an attack bonus of 13, so I'm not sure where that extra +5 is coming from.
We're gaining XP at a remarkable rate, and I think it's because semiOverhaul rigs critters' challenge ratings to be closer to their level. It's a welcome change in a game where the XP gains from critters are often frustratingly small, especially in the late game.
We bump half the party up to level 6, granting Star access to the Fireball spell. I decide to keep Dipper (our fighter), Marco (our monk), and Frisk (our bard) at level 5, since they don't get quite as much benefit from higher levels as the other characters. This will let us bump up the levels of our spellcasters while our warriors remain stagnant.
Really, we don't need Dipper to hit any harder than he already does. He's already butchering the enemy with great ease.
The biggest fight of this area is with Trugnuk. We've got lots of archers, Goblin Worg Riders, and spellcasters to deal with in the northeast, plus a War Drum that will summon even more Goblin Worg Riders. Star begins throwing out Fireballs in addition to her Sleep spells, but once again, enemies start spawning on top of the party because we can't sneak everyone to the War Drum to stop it.
To my surprise, two Fireballs are not enough to wipe out all the enemies converging on Dipper. Worse yet, he fails a save against Hold Person, and Mabel casts Remove Paralysis just in time to save him from the final blow.
We send Dipper running while Mabel uses spontaneous casting to heal him as he scurries past her. Meanwhile, Asriel summons a Rainstorm to mess with the enemy spellcasters who have gathered in a convenient cluster.
We clean up the enemy fighters chasing Dipper and shift our attention to the spellcasters to the north. We haven't been applying enough pressure, and the enemy launches a devastating Unholy Blight spell.
But the enemy can't keep it up; too many of their allies have fallen. We zap the Goblin Shaman and shoot down Trugnuk himself.
As always, Trugnuk's Call Lightning spell can go off even after he croaks, but we keep the party in good enough shape that no one gets killed when the spell catches us off-guard.
The tunnels beneath the Horde Fortress are usually a bit of a slog, but they go much faster than I expected. Fireballs roast the lesser goblins and Dipper uses Haft Over Head, a returning throwing axe that deals crushing damage instead of slashing damage, to hunt down a fleeing shaman.
SemiOverhaul makes everything faster. But once again, the changes go both ways. The enemy also hits a lot harder, as Mokrul reminds us.
Later in the dungeon, Frisk fails to resolve a situation diplomatically. It seems that I have not been investing enough skill points in Diplomacy.
Feels bad, man.
Our higher spellcaster levels prove very productive. One of the spell changes I borrowed from Tactics was to give Spider Spawn to druids, which gives us a cool alternative to lower-level animal summoning spells.
Notice Dipper is charmed. Fighters still have weak Will saves in semiOverhaul.
Asriel's access to Creeping Doom form gives us some interesting situational tools. He's nearly immune to piercing damage when in Creeping Doom form and also has a large circle, which means he's a perfect tank to use against the local beetles while Dipper chops them up from a distance.
Gameplay has been satisfyingly complex lately. We've got Dipper alternating between ranged and melee attacks and changing up his use of Expertise and Power Attack, Mabel firing from afar and jumping in to heal the party, Star switching from disabling critters with Sleep to bombing them with Fireball, Marco firing crossbow bolts at range before rushing in to punch orcs in the face, Asriel reverting to Creeping Doom form to apply damage whenever his spells aren't need, and Frisk judiciously using their limited spell slots while fighting at range and making sure everyone is benefiting from their songs, all while our summons manage enemy pressure.
I really like how this is going. I'm especially fond of Dipper's contributions. Even with one-handed axes (like the one we pried from Torak's cold, dead hand!), Dipper can land critical hits over 50 damage. It's just plain fun.
The new spells are also fun to break out. How often does anyone use Ice Storm in vanilla, anyway?
Before proceeding to the top of the Horde Fortress and the massive fight awaiting us, I go back to Targos to better equip the party. Mabel takes Lightning Reflexes on her next level-up to improve her lousy Reflex saves, we get a mod-introduced Rhino Beetle Shield to make Dipper a little more sturdy, and we purchase Oswald's only Potion of Action Transference to slightly empower Star's sorcerer spells.
I've often talked up how tough the top of the Horde Fortress is. I haven't exaggerated; it's a really high-intensity fight. But this time, I don't have to deal with it in Heart of Fury mode as a solo character, which means a failed save against Icelance or Dispel Magic is no longer an instant game over. In fact, we're pretty well-equipped to handle the threats here: Star's Sleep spell can knock out the archers (making sure they don't expend their valuable Arrows of Fire attacking us), her Chromatic Orb can give the whole party automatic hits against the bigger targets for 1 round, and Asriel's Ice Storm can smash groups of enemies while Star is too busy disabling critters to contribute Fireballs.
Star has also recently learned her own Icelance spell, which I've come to appreciate after seeing how dangerous it is in the hands of the enemy. It stuns for 3 rounds on a failed Fortitude save, making it pretty much fatal for any enemy mage.
And for enemy clerics with stronger Fortitude saves, we have Chromatic Orb, which only stuns for 1 round but requires a Reflex save that clerics often struggle to make. Either way, Star's spells have very high save DCs; she has a Charisma well above 20 (Asriel knows Eagle's Splendor as a druid spell!) as well as two pips in Spell Focus: Evocation. She even pins down the juggernaut-like Old Orc inside the main building.
Guthma is harder to deal with. Star stuns both of the spellcasters behind him, but Guthma makes some very lucky Reflex saves when we try to save Marco and Dipper from Guthma's heavy poison damage.
It takes a few tries, but eventually we trap him, at which point we can switch gears to the spellcasters who rush in to flank us.
When Guthma escapes his prison, we manage to stun him with Chromatic Orb and bring down the massive bugbear.
Next up, the ice wall. Here's what the party looks like as they prepare to leave Targos for good. Our extensive level squatting would let us bump everyone up to level 9, but as long as we're still on top of the game, I see no reason to continue biding our time and letting the XP pile up.
Dipper has 40% of the party's kills, Asriel has 20%, and the rest is split among the rest of the party fairly evenly. Dipper's contribution is not surprising; he's very much optimized to be a damage dealer. Asriel isn't surprising, either; he has Rainstorm, Call Lightning, Ice Storm, and Creeping Doom form to deal damage. Marco's performance, though, is surprisingly weak by comparison; his stats aren't as well min-maxed and monks need levels to stay competitive. He's been an excellent tank, though, by virtue of his high DEX.
Headed for High Hedge and Beregost. Talked to Marl and headed south. Killed the ogrillon and continued south where more hobgoblins were killed with throwing axes.
Met Lord Foreshadow and got the ring. Picked up ankheg armour in Nashkel where I turned down Greywolf's reward and spoke to Noober. Went to the mine area where I picked up the wand of frost before heading East. Picked up the ring of fire protection and took Samuel to the FAI.
Gave Joia her ring and headed to Beregost. Gave the Colquetle amulet back to the family and took a tome to Firebead.
Reputation now 18. Experience one point short of level 2.
Delivered a letter to Mirianne before heading to High Hedge where I killed some gnoll before heading south where I rescued a chicken from a wolf. Back to High Hedge. Killed a skeleton before entering the house. Mellicamp was restored.
I've never had such good fortune. Unbelievable. Still no injuries.
I'll have to be wary of complacency.
Next Tonder was restored using Guril berries.
I then headed southwards where I killed Zordral.
EDIT
Since my reputation is now 19, I decided to do some shopping. I sold some equipment that was surplus to requirements and bought a decent throwing axe and a decent battle axe.Hopefully I will not now be so reliant on luck.
I cleared the ankheg area of ankhegs before heading northwards where the ankheg there injured me.
I knew it was too good to last.
I decided last night to have a go with @semiticgod's War Hulk class and added that to an otherwise unmodded installation of BGEE. Initially I was expecting the first run (or possibly several first runs
Essentially the kit is a super-powered fighter. The main drawback is that each time you take a hit you receive a penalty to AC and spell saving throw. Being hit can also lead to turning berserk if you fail a spell saving throw and thus being unable to run away as your final HPs disappear. However, there are not many fights where that's likely if you take care - penalties only last for 2 rounds, so it's easy enough to run around to get rid of them even during a fight. I also chose a dwarf for my Hulk in order to mitigate the vulnerability to spell saves.
Like a Cavalier the War Hulk is unable to use missile weapons, but can use throwing axes and daggers. While using those seems reasonable to me for a Cavalier, the basis for the War Hulk does feel very melee-focused - so I'm not allowing throwing weapons.
Starting again, Burl has:
- avoided Imoen after leaving Candlekeep (I don't allow recruitment of NPCs in solo runs and couldn't avoid her joining at that point when Burl had no distance attacks).
- travelled by day down to Nashkel to pick up the ankheg armor. Rested to get LMD. Returned to the Crossroads and used that to get equipment from Imoen, Xzar and Montaron.
- at the basilisk area, followed Korax round as he dealt with the basilisks. Level-ups there produced 17, 18, 17 and 17 HPs as well as pushing strength up to 23. Korax's last duty was as a distraction to let Burl pull Lindin away on his own. As usual with tougher opponents, Burl moved around between attacks in order to avoid the 1 APR limit for the class being a disadvantage. Lindin's death provided him with a magical long sword to use.
- a bit further north Burl returned a bowl to Tenya and received just the 15 HPs for his 6th level.
War Hulk L6, 105 HPs, 24 kills
Previous updates:
Burl did the main encounters in the Cloud Peak Mountains on the way to the Gnoll Stronghold. The charisma tome was one target there, though the main aim was to get the bracers of dexterity to reduce the chances of being hit (the War Hulk class penalises dexterity by 1 in addition to the loss of 1 for being a dwarf).
Some easy reputation gains included beating up a few half-ogres for Bjornin to get a magical shield. A more difficult fight was with the Doomsayer who was getting much better rolls than Burl - but still not quite good enough.
After a bit of shopping Burl moved on to the Lighthouse where a potion of clarity allowed him to melee all the sirines - getting to level 7 as a result with 17 more HPs.
After all that work to raise reputation, it didn't take long to trash it again - thanks to fatal encounters with Algernon (cloak), Dushai (ring) and Bentan (scroll). That seemed like a good time to push on with the main quest and work on that started after relieving Greywolf of his sword:
- after running through the Cloakwood, Drasus was pulled back to the map edge, but failed to land a blow anyway.
- after fighting through the mine, the battle horrors near Davaeorn were pulled back and meleed
- after resting to get a second Bhaal horror, he flooded the mine and left.
War Hulk L8, 141 HPs, 234 kills
Doing a War Hulk run too? It'll steamroll BG1 but you'll have to be careful in SoD against enemy hordes. The true test of patience begins in BG2 against mages that love to cast Stoneskin. You'll probably have to tank most of their spellbook before you can finally kill them with direct damage or land a Deathblow critical. Weapons with elemental damage should help a bit.
I'll be interested to see how you handle the Ascension boss fight. I tried it a few times after failing with Krieg. The demons that Melissan gates in (mainly the Mariliths) eventually become overwhelming as they constantly teleport to your position, severely impairing your mobility even with double-strength Haste as you wait for your next attack to come.
I don't think the run is realistic without using throwing weapons, but then, I didn't think it was realistic with them, either, until @Flashburn beat the majority of the saga with a solo War Hulk.
@semiticgod I think everything up to ToB shouldn't be too difficult in theory. After that I'm not sure and I dare say I'll never find out
Burl {2} - solo War Hulk (3rd and final update)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975234/#Comment_975234
Before getting stuck into the City I thought there were a few bits of unresolved business around the realms. The first of those was returning to the basilisk area to use horror to disable and kill Kirian - grabbing the Golden Girdle there. Next Burl went to find Drizzt. As he's evil he can't use Twinkle, but the fire resistance of Icingdeath would potentially be handy. Initially he used several potions, but Drizzt dispelled those and Burl relied just on rage to hit after that with a potion of magic shielding to protect against charm.
Some temple donations and a few more quests soon put reputation back up to 20. There were no problems with work in the City - horror being used quite frequently to disable opponents such as Marek. Jardak's Helm of Glory, along with Algernon's Cloak, allowed Burl to get charisma up to 20 and he bought up everything he might need in the future. While doing that I remembered one more loose end and paid a visit to the Red Wizards. Denak proved pretty resistant to horror, but eventually succumbed and a slash / LMD combination provided Burl with the handy Ring of Energy.
Back in the City some stair hopping allowed the Iron Throne party to be dealt with pretty easily - Zhalimar being the last to go. That meant a trip to Candlekeep where Burl robbed the tombs, using DUHM to top up his strength for the strength tome (a half-orc at this stage would have strength of 24 and could do it even without DUHM). Prat's gang were fireballed and stymied by level-hopping, even though there wasn't really anything to gain there.
Returning to Baldur's Gate, Burl sought out Slythe - who made no impression on his armor. I hadn't bothered with the quest for Balduran's Cloak, but Krystin made that available soon enough with her cloudkill.
I was avoiding any active use of Algernon's Cloak in this run, so success at the Palace was heavily dependent on Burl's horrors. That was even more so when all 6 of the dopplegangers attacked Duke Belt from the start. Burl's first horror affected 2 of them, but Belt still died before Burl's second horror removed another one from the immediate action. Burl knew the 3 left would still go through Liia in no time, so he tried to kill them quickly by breaking out potions of firebreath even though that would annoy the Flaming Fist. The dopplegangers' good saves helped 2 of them survive the first potion and, while one of them lost morale, the last attacker finished off Liia before a second potion could trigger.
Previous run
Starting again soon after the end of the previous run Burl made fairly rapid progress through BG1. The main danger there was that I kept nodding off briefly, though the only time that could easily have been serious was while a phase spider was attacking in Candlekeep.
Back at the Palace Burl got lucky this time with 3 of the dopplegangers running from his initial horror and one of the others attacking him rather than the dukes. That made the fight a simple one and Belt and Liia were still both in robust health at the end.
After fighting through the maze, Burl ignored the Undercity party and went straight for the temple. LMD annoyed Sarevok and prompted Semaj to teleport out, but his spells made no impression on a first use of a PfM scroll. Burl swapped blows with Sarevok, but kept his own HPs up a bit by using a potion of regeneration. There was a slightly nasty moment when rage overtook Burl, but he would have been favorite to win even if he hadn't snapped out of that. He did though and one more blow to Sarevok after that did the trick.
I did a bit less work in BG1 this time, but even so Burl still transferred with 317k XP. Here's his record and inventory on arrival in the SoD prologue.
War Hulk L8, 146 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 302 kills
I sent a skelly in with a swarm as my bouncing beddy then wiped out some more peons and showed a bird brain that Druids don't need to see their targets.
We entered the hells and I payed for forgetting to buff Khalid against mind magic... with his fireball arrows it didn't take long.
Shirley (elf sorcerer, Grond0); Yowell (Human skald, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/973601/#Comment_973601
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/973919/#Comment_973919
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/974144/#Comment_974144
We had some fun with this pair, but (like nearly all our runs) a momentary mistake brought an end to it
The session started at Watcher's Keep where we initially cleared the left side rooms. We didn't know farsight to check what was waiting in the middle, but in the event there were only mephits and they didn't last long. The top level was cleared and looted, though that cost Yowell a life when he failed to survive a Finger of Death trap (Shirley knew spell immunity, but wasn't 100% sure that would protect her). The golems died in a hail of MMMs and the statues then went largely the same way - though both Yowell and Shirley got hid hard when not noticing that stoneskins had been worn down.
Back in Athkatla we visited Aran Linvail to pick up his goodies before starting Mae'Var's tasks. An amulet was duly handed over before going to sort out Mae'Var. His spell trigger put up PfMW to block MMMs, but we nipped downstairs to wait that out before filling him full of holes. At that point Yowell was ready to leave, but Shirley couldn't resist grabbing the treasure lying around. She had no fire protection, but felt confident that the fireball trap guarding the wand of fire wouldn't kill her. She was right about that, but if asked if she was confident she would survive a second activation of the trap she would have said that was too risky. Unfortunately she was also right about that when a mis-click opened the container again ...
Diary of Yazutha
After killing all the ankheg near the farm, I sold the shells at Beregost and then bought the pfp scroll before heading for the basilisk area. On the way I killed a variety of wolves including vampyric ones.In the basilisk area, I used necklace of missiles to weaken some assassins. To my surprise, they approached from a variety of directions. That didn't stop me from defeating them however.
Once they were dead I slept and then used the scroll to kill the basilisks and medusae.
When I thought that they were all dead I approached Mutamin only to find that there was still another medusa left. Fortunately Mutamin moved away with the result that I was able to kill the last medusa before fighting him. Once it was dead I used wizards' bane before attacking Mutamin who quickly succumbed to my attack.
I then headed back to the mines where I killed Zargos Flitblade and Greywolf.
After resting, I went in search of Bassilus and slew him.
After recruiting Sirene and Tenya we fought Tristan and Isolde and slew them both.
We then went to the lighthouse area where we barely survived. Indeed, I was forced to raise Tenya otherwise I would have lost her.
I thought that the sirenes were going to get the better of us, but we survived.
It was a stealthy pirate that killed Tenya.
Sirene and I however prevailed.
We then helped Charleston Nib before taking Brage to the temple.
What is surprising me is that I am surviving despite only getting 50% experience.
Previous updates:
Burl scattered the initial group of enemies with a horror and pushed through to persuade Porios to surrender. Downstairs, he used fireballs to soften up the undead before leading them back for the Flaming Fist to finish off. Only one of the Fist survived him doing the same thing with the mercenaries just before Korlasz. She was protected against fire, but a couple of blasts from the Ring of Energy was enough to make her surrender.
In Baldur's Gate, Burl sold various pieces of jewelry, netting over 50k gold in the process. That was invested in scrolls and potions (most of which won't ever be used). He also grabbed the Spectacles of Spectacle and found some ruby wine for Irina - sorting out Korlasz again while doing that.
On arrival at the camp, Burl immediately left in search of a vampire. He started the fight against Ikros and Isabella well by sending the paladin running in horror. The Ring of Energy then worked its magic on Ikros to save the vampire who had been paralyzed. Isabella survived being attacked while she was running, but once she stood still she didn't last long. The grateful vampire provided a nice regeneration ioun stone as a reward.
After looting some glasses of identification from a burned inn, Burl headed straight for the bridge he hid behind a tent there until Caelar arrived for a parley.
Travelling on to the Forest of Wyrms, Burl discovered a troll cave on the way. That's a good location for sling users, but not of any real benefit to him and he left it alone this time. Arriving at the Forest, wyverns, spiders and bugbears didn't detain him long and he moved into a dragon cave. As he's not using missile weapons, but wanted to see what he could make from a dragon skin, he attacked in melee. The dragon woke up too quickly for him to land a blow though and he retreated outside. A potion of invulnerability helped protect against fear before he turned to potions of firebreath. Burl soaked up some poison breaths and wing buffets while three firebreaths put Morentherene in trouble. An energy charge then finished off both the dragon and the greater wyvern remaining at that stage.
Attacking and retreating split bugbears up into small groups for easy disposal before Burl moved on into the temple proper. A potion of invulnerability allowed him to tank a couple of traps while chewing through all Ziatar's guards. With them all dead, Burl regenerated his HPs before tackling Ziatar. After swapping a few blows she tried to hide in sanctuary, but the Ring of Energy wasn't having any of that.
Another potion of invulnerability helped him fend off the Neothelid's spell attacks while meleeing it.
A potion of stone form replaced invulnerability to fend off Darskhelin's attacks, while pulling him away from his companions.
War Hulk L10, 177 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 437 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975532/#Comment_975532
At Boareskyr Bridge Burl couldn't resist attacking Vichand. If that fight is not concluded quickly it turns the whole camp hostile, but a whack from the Chesley Crusher followed up by a firebreath potion ensured Vichand never knew what hit him.
At the Coalition Camp, Burl sold various loot to Nazramu for high prices and picked up the Bwoosh and some poison. On the way to Dead Man's Pass he found an ambush area with some myconids. Beating them up gave him access to Spellbreaker for an alternative way to boost his spell saving throw. Last time I fought through this area, but this time I again took the quick and easy option - using the invisibility ring to sneak through.
After rescuing Skie at Dragonspear, Burl moved on to the Underground River. The Horn of Kazgaroth provided protection while he meleed a Myconid Elder to give him a first source of summons.
Eventually the route was clear and Burl moved inside. An unprovoked attack and follow-up firebreath potion disposed of Strunk,
On the way back to the Coalition Camp he didn't bother fighting the Shadowy Figure. After another failed parley he prepared for a Crusader invasion:
- myconids provided an initial distraction to allow firebreath to decimate the trolls and ogres.
At the siege of Dragonspear, Burl immediately went to find Ashatiel and start a single combat. A potion of magic shielding protected him against going into a rage spiral while he wore down Ashatiel's stoneskins.
Going up the elevator, Burl used 2 scrolls of fire protection and protection from poison, along with another invulnerability.
Burl quickly ran through the epilogue to complete the second part of his adventures.
War Hulk L10, 174 HPs, 565 kills
I initially tried to import Burl to BG2EE as an exported character, but the game classed him as a Grizzly Bear. While that had some attraction I decided to start again and do the import from a saved game this time - but the same thing happened. The War Hulk class could correctly be chosen for a newly generated character, but wasn't carrying over for Burl. Any ideas @semiticgod, or should I reconstitute the character by using the console or EEKeeper?
Drunn (half-elf fighter / druid, Gate70); Hoodie (Human Totemic Druid, Grond0)
We've had a couple of shortish sessions, with no notes and a sparse trail of screenshots to go on. The very start of the game threw up a new one for us, with Drunn as the host unable to talk. That should only happen to clients if permissions are not granted. A moment or two later it resolved itself.
A random keypress on my part sent Marl hostile so he perished. Learning quickly from my mistake, I then did exactly the same to Hafiz. He wasn't such a pushover and Hoodie was raised at a temple.
After being run out of the carnival by too-friendly onlookers we headed to the rock garden where we felt more at home surrounded by enemies. Drunn realised he'd run out of throwing daggers AND broken his scimitar (forgot to say he bought a Ninjato initially and found he couldn't use it), so Hoodie handed over the magical dagger which must have been picked up from the guardhouse thanks to 18 charisma.
Mutamin put up a good fight, scaring and then killing a totemic snake but by that time his spells were unable to take care of us.
BG1 Intro
BG1 end
In SoD, high charisma allows Fenix to not fight Porios. Stealth gets him safely to Korlasz, and arrows of dispelling and detonation are enough to get a quick surrender.
Very few things are done in Baldur's Gate, though I recruit Minsc and Dynaheir as my tank/mage combo. Once out, I recruit Corwin, M'khiin, and Rasaad to fill out my party.
First major dungeon: the Coldhearth Lich. Strategy for the most part is M'khiin summons, Fenix pulls, Dynaheir fireballs from time to time. It all goes without a hitch for the most part - Minsc gets level drained, but a trip back to the camp for a lesser restoration and a rest keep us going. Until the lich itself. I don't know what my mods did, but the Secret Revealed didn't work against the lich, and he kept all his spellcasting. Maybe Spell Shield blocked it? Fortunately, a summoned Nymph took the Timestop assault on herself, but Rasaad is killed instantly by PW:Kill and M'khiin is stunned by PW:Stun while we wait out his PFMW. Arrow of Dispelling saves us, and we put him down the first time. Second time Wand of Summoning summons takes the Timestop, and we squeak by him without any losses. Third time, I try to use the Wand of Summoning again, and all I get is... nothing. A Save from Breath in the console from Dynaheir, and no summons. I have 0 idea of what happened, but the Wand of Summoning is officially non-functional this game. Rasaad this time eats the timestop while we get out of dodge.
Note Fenix' HP. I made a huge mistake and did not quaff a potion of power to protect vs PW:Stun, but fortunately it wasn't fatal. A Web/Stinking Cloud sequencer is struck in the small room, and almost everyone succumbs to it. Arrow of Dispelling into a ton of damage and hoping... He gets off a PfMW in the last second. But M'khiin's last shot was already midair, and PfMW doesn't stop attacks whose attack rolls already succeeded apparently...
Geez. I think I'm officially skipping this dungeon in SoD from now on. At the bridge, we manage to slaughter everyone before the time limit expires. Area damage is pretty neat.
We adventure, spiders, wyverns, nothing difficult until Morenthene. I have a couple throwing daggers, and Fenix has the best THAC0 with them after Shadow Magic - Shadow Door use. His save vs breath is -2, so should be safe, especially with his +1 luck bonus. But we're not lucky, and Morenthene awakes before we even get in sight range.
I have Resist Fear this time, so Minsc is actually useful this time around. Morenthene's relatively low HP are taken out by essentially two archers, and her one poisonous breath didn't do nearly enough to knock us down. It did only 16 or so damage on a successful save, when I recall it doing something like 60 damage on a successful save in the past. Dunno what happened with my install.
Dual Web, two rings of Free Action, Spider Bane allow a quick execution of Ziatar before we continue further in. Potion of Clarity gives Minsc safety vs the Neothelid, and shamanic animals takes the sting away from the Aerial Servants. We acquire the Fractal Blade at the expense of two rests: the STR drain lasts like 10 hours for some reason. And Ice Storm and Cloudkill in a small room kills most of the Illithid's crew before they even engage us.
So here I quit for the day, and when I tried to load the save, instant crash. I try multiple saves, and everything from before the recruitment crashes the game instantly. I end up transferring the save to a multiplayer save, and played it from multiplayer, and it's working from there. I do have to actually think about going into inventory, though, since it doesn't pause the game in multiplayer.
Anyhow, at Bridgefort, we get level drained, we kill a guard, we get the scroll, we kill a couple wights from a dishonest priest, Rasaad gets level drained, and we surrender the fort. The mage battle is ended with Bolts of Biting stopping any summoning attempts, and Web locks down most of the Crusader.
In the wilderness, there was this funny fight where the Moose decided it no longer wanted to be the prey.
Also in the wilderness, both Minsc and Rasaad get stunned by a Bombadier Beetler, and a wandering shambling mound can't be stopped before killing both. A rest later to get another use of Recall Spirit, and we're good to go.
We rescue Skie diplomatically, get the Corwin stutter bug which I only figured out after 20 minutes or so, resolve the stutter bug by console and travel both, and get back to the underground river entrance. My install is... interesting. Or interestingly corrupted. That's 3 of the dwarven questgiver just sitting there. I have no idea.
Underground river: we refused to poison the supplies, but we kill the dark druid, release some Drow children to the surface, and stop an undead summoning ritual, and break a jar.
6 Pro. Acid scrolls later, and I get revenge for my last loss. They don't even USE their breath weapons this time...
The drow warparty dislike hearing that we let the younglings to the surface, and attack the crusade. After a few rounds of battle and more Drow spawning (?) we collectively high tail it to the lift to face Hephernaan. I... made a couple mistakes in buffing. I had enough potions of Clarity, I just didn't use them here. Fenix and Rasaad are instantly confused, Corwin fortunately escaping it and helping Fenix to get out using an Arrow of Dispelling. Dynaheir walked way too forward earlier, and can't Breach Hephernaan in time. Rasaad dies to the 3rd Unholy Blight. Fenix dispels the Improved Invisibility, I'm still waiting out the Physical Mirror I'm... 80% sure is still there. The Stone Golems fall before Minsc does, and a test shot from M'khiin reveals that Physical Mirror is definitely down. The takedown from an Archer and Sniper is simple from there.
Invisibility 10" Radius is used to get us out safely, and it's back to the camp for us. All three of the battles are dealt with with ample uses of fire. Potions of explosion, wand of fire, arrows of detonation make for some very easy pickings.
The battle for Dragonspear castle is just one huge fight that I can't keep track of. Corwin almost dies after being Feared and poisoned, but Fenix is fast enough with his Delay Poison to keep her alive. The battle between Fenix and Caelar's second in command is swift and painful, and we progress to the 9 hells. We've no need to any additional weapons, so we tell the doorkeeper to stuff it and keep going forwards.
Preparation: 6 potions of Fire Resistance, 6 scrolls of the same, potions of Clarity for Minsc, and Corwin and a potion of Magic Shielding and Power for Fenix. We have 40 +3 bolts, 20 +3 arrows, the +3 2H sword for Minsc, and Rasaad's going to take down the lesser demons for the most part. Hephernaan falls a lot more quickly this time.
Belhifet's not much longer for the world either, or for hell, as the case might be.
We get the Hero ending, and I'm currently waiting for my BG2 install to work and hopefully not die in a fire like my SoD installation.
Or maybe the War Hulk is the only mod-introduced kit of any kind in your BG1 install, so it's coded as the 51st kit or whatever. This would put it at the bottom of every kit-based .2da table. But in BG2, the Grizzly Bear would be the 51st, and the War Hulk is the 52nd. Thus, when you import the character into BG2, the character is listed as having the 51st kit, which in BG2 is the Grizzly Bear kit instead of War Hulk.
In the past, I've completely re-created characters that encountered this problem, but I think you can fix it just by switching the kit via EEKeeper.
We proceeded into the Nashkel mines and defeated the Dark Horizon assassins before leaving to sell and buy the necklace of missiles. A fleeing thief drew us into combat with more kobolds than intended, but we didn't have a major problem with them. These battles ended up with us getting better armour. We will ask Aerie to identify our other aquisitions.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 5
I decide to bump up Asriel to level 9, allowing him to choose a new feat: Treant form, a nerfed variant of the Tactics form. He has terrible DEX in Treant form, but he has a massive 15/- resistance to physical damage, making him nearly invincible against anything that doesn't hit hard (or deal fire damage).Shortly after, I bump up Mabel to level 9 and Frisk and Star to level 10, giving us access to the Siren's Yearning and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. The Siren's Yearning stuns for one round (unstun on damage) on a failed Will save at DC 10 (buffed to DC 15 in the most recent version of semiOverhaul) and imposes a cumulative -1 penalty to Will saves for 10 rounds. More importantly, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful will give every Neutral Good member of the party (including Dipper!) an extra attack per round, on top of +2 to hit, damage, and saving throws. Unlike the IWD version, it imposes no fatigue penalty but also only lasts 5 rounds.
We nab the Necklace of Missiles and Bardic Horn of Valhalla from Beodaewn before attacking him. He also has 15/- resistance to all of our weapons, but he doesn't have the Reflex saves to resist Star's Chromatic Orb spells, allowing us to stun-lock him.
Against the Aurilite Druids of Andora, we summon some critters to handle Odea Winterthaw while the party deals with the others. Notice our Mountain Bears tearing up her black bears.
Marco and Dipper are under heavy pressure, but Mabel can use spontaneous casting to cast Healing Circle. Spontaneous casting in IWD2 ignores aura; you can begin casting a healing spell at any time (or an Inflict Wounds spell, if your cleric is evil).
In the vanilla game, spontaneous casting only lets you cast four healing spells, Cure Light/Moderate/Serious/Critical Wounds. If you try to use spontaneous casting on a level 5 or higher spell slot, you'll just get the level 4 Cure Critical Wounds spell. In semiOverhaul, spontaneous casting scales better: level 5 spells become Healing Circle, level 6 spells become Heal (which now has a casting speed of 5 instead of 1!), level 7 spells become Greater Restoration (which now heals 5d8+25 HP), and level 8 and 9 spells become Mass Heal. This makes clerics much better healers than in the vanilla game. Evil clerics don't benefit nearly as much, but they do get the ability to turn level 8 spells into Fire Storm and level 9 spells into Gate.
The primary threat of this fight is Illium Ar'Ghrenoir, who illegally gets the ability to attack multiple times per round using a crossbow. His attack bonus is an incredible +22...
...but right before he's about to kill Dipper, Frisk lands a Hold Monster spell on Illium, neutralizing the biggest threat.
The rest of the fight proves uneventful. Dipper nails a druid with Haft Over Head, Star stuns a ranger with Icelance, and Frisk paralyzes the remainder.
But I underestimate the Barbarian Warriors in the next area. See, Barbarian Rage grants immunity to certain disablers in semiOverhaul, like in BG2, which means they're immune to spells like Sleep. And since they use axes, they deal triple damage on critical hits, which is very bad news for Dipper, whom we've failed to level up and whose HP is therefore fairly low.
They almost kill Asriel, too, until he switches to Treant form and attains 15/- physical damage resistance. Fortunately, we manage to avoid any further butchery and put down the enemy without incident. Star tests out her new Lance of Disruption spell on a couple of Boneguards, who take extra damage from crushing weapons.
The local Remorhazes have massive damage output, but just like in the unmodded game, they have weak Reflex saves and little defense against Chromatic Orb.
Chromatic Orb is much more useful in the ice temple in semiOverhaul, at least with Tactics installed. The clerics here all buff with Freedom of Movement, but stun effects go right through that.
It's a nice change, because normally these clerics are a pain to deal with. They're basically immune to normal disablers and instant death effects, and if you don't deal with them quickly, they'll summon lots of undead. It's very difficult to disrupt their spells, too, but apparently not impossible.
Lord Rengar is very dangerous and hard to kill, with lots of immunities. But immunity to stun is much rarer in semiOverhaul, paving the way for a Chromatic Orb.
Warriors get better Reflex saves in semiOverhaul, but Spell Focus: Evocation makes Chromatic Orb very difficult to resist, and even if it only lasts a single round, it can still be spammed.
Next up, Sherincal. Sherry has strong defenses and extremely powerful melee attacks, and comes bolstered by a pair of necromancers, a few clerics near the back, and several heavy-hitting fighter types, not to mention the golem that flanks you early in the fight. We confuse the fighters using an introductory Chaos spell (Barbarian Rage does not grant immunity to confusion!) and shut down the necromancers using Insect Plague. To my surprise, our wyverns are actually very effective against the half-dragon.
Dipper and Sherry trade blows. Dipper is stronger, but Sherry is sturdier.
We finish off Sherry with a lucky Chromatic Orb and break down the Crystal Golem with crushing weapons. Frisk and Dipper both fail saves against Hold Person when we engage the priests in the back, but without any remaining enemy fighters to pounce on them, they survive.
The Ice Golem Champions inside the temple itself are extremely dangerous. They have stun effects on hit, and some bad saving throws can get you stun-locked and killed in moments. Even Stoneskin doesn't save Marco.
Wyvern Call turns out to be pretty powerful. The wyverns have good stats, and for some reason their natural weapon does a ridiculous 1d20 base damage.
I bump up Star to level 12, giving the whole party access to Mass Haste, and sell off tens of thousands of gold's worth of ammunition in order to purchase some permanent stat-boosting potions from Oswald. We rush Lysara with a full suite of buffs and Dipper absolutely destroys her.
On the way out, Frisk gets silenced, and we discover that Vocalize does not allow bards to sing songs.
Even though we have a level 12 sorcerer, the party as a whole is underleveled for this area, and I think semiOverhaul has slightly increased the challenge rating for the local critters. Every Aurilite Frosttouch gives us 1200 XP when he or she dies. Just a few fights later, Star gets another level up.
We now have the Necklace of Missiles, which in semiOverhaul can be used 3 times per day instead of having a limited set of charges. I prefer per-day items because they encourage the player to use them regularly instead of saving them up for big fights, where you can burn 10 charges and stomp everything. This makes the necklace a little more user-friendly.
Things are going very well. But then something very strange happens. One of the enemy necromancers fires off a Circle of Death spell. In the vanilla game, Circle of Death is an instant death spell that only works on critters below a certain level, but in semiOverhaul, this spell works just like Power Word: Kill, except it offers a saving throw.
And apparently, Circle of Death kills the target permanently.
We have just lost our only cleric. We can re-create her as a level 1 character, but until she hits level 9, no one in the party can cast Raise Dead.
My typical rule for these situations is that I can only import in a copy of a permanently killed character if I've exported them earlier. I never exported Mabel's character file, so I have to re-make her from scratch. As a level 1 character, she'll be hiding under invisibility for the foreseeable future.
We'll get more XP per critter for a while, but we've still lost like 70,000 XP, which is a LOT in IWD2, where an endgame character will only have 150,000 XP. We plow through the rest of the level, coasting on our still-impressive offensive powers, but we run into another necromancer, and when we fail to disrupt his spell against the odds, we lose another character to Circle of Death.
We have now lost Frisk and Dipper, and both will have to start over at level 1 with zero HP. We have just lost HALF of the XP we've gathered over the entire game so far, and now half the party is at level 1. Two Circle of Death spells robbed us of over 200,000 XP, about 25% of the XP we could expect to collect over the course of a normal game.
The current version of semiOverhaul, though, removes permanent death effects from the game. All deaths are reversible in semiOverhaul, even petrification.
Having Dipper at low levels isn't so bad; he'll be back in business by level 5. Frisk's death is a more significant loss, as it will take a long time before they re-learn the Siren's Yearning or the Song of Kaudies (which gives a party-wide Blink effect in semiOverhaul). They also had some very useful bard spells. Mabel is the biggest loss; her high-level cleric spells were a major boon to the party.
There's not much left in the Ice Temple. Asriel deals with the Battle Square fights using Rhinoceros Beetle form.
The last major challenge is Oria, a mage who comes bolstered by a pack of Winter Wolves and a gang of clerics who flank you from a nearby room. We bomb the wolves with the Necklace of Missiles and hold off the clerics with summons. Marco stays close to Oria, as his excellent saving throws (courtesy of his many monk levels) will let him resist her spells.
SemiOverhaul nerfs Mirror Image and Shield, so mages aren't as sturdy as they normally are in Tactics. Once the clerics go down, we pile up on Oria, who quickly reverts to ethereal form. Once we join her at the Battle Square, the fight is over--Oria is completely unbuffed when she's in ethereal form.
We sell off the last of our excess ammunition and bump the party's gold supply up to 120,000. We have nothing to buy at the moment, but when we reach the Underdark, we'll need the extra gold to buy some important items.
The party has been dealt a heavy blow by those two Circle of Death spells and the permanent deaths that sent Dipper, Mabel, and Frisk back to level 1. The party will now depend heavily on Star, Marco, and Asriel for its survival.
Marco, our monk, is at level 5, but can jump up to level 14 if we need him to.
Star and Asriel, our sorcerer and druid, are at level 12 and 11, and are just inches away from level 15.
Frisk, our bard, is at level 5 and has just re-learned Tymora's Loop.
Dipper, our fighter, is at level 5 and has regained all of his previous power--but no longer has the bonus XP that would let him jump up another 9 levels.
Mabel, our cleric, can jump up to level 6, but we're keeping her at level 1 because her spells will be little help until she gets back to level 9.
Overall, the party is a lot weaker than it should be. But the party's lower average level will give us more XP from kills in the future, which means Asriel and Star will be able to reach higher levels than they otherwise could. We should be able to learn Wail of the Banshee long before the endgame, and we might even get Asriel access to black dragon form, the strongest shapeshift in semiOverhaul, at level 21. That will definitely smooth things out later in the game.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975532/#Comment_975532
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975563/#Comment_975563
Importing Burl into BG2 saw him arrive as a Grizzly Bear rather than a War Hulk. I used EEKeeper to change the kit, but that change didn't sort things out immediately. The War Hulk kit was now active, but the abilities and restrictions of the Grizzly Bear were also being applied, e.g. Burl couldn't use any armor or wear a helmet. However, he ploughed onwards regardless in the hope that the changes would get resolved when he gained a level.
He used a +1 dagger in the dungeon - even though non-proficient, the higher speed factor meant he took less damage that way. Horror sorted out the more dangerous opponents, such as the mephits in the elemental plane and he cleared everything in the dungeon.
The inability of the bear to wear things like rings, necklaces and belts handicapped Burl's carrying capacity a bit, but he still invested a couple of thousand on temple donations on exit. At the circus I was aware of the danger of allowing the illusionary werewolves to hit (potentially triggering a rage spiral), so kept away from them as much as possible while going to deal with Kalah.
That still left Burl about 40k XP short of a level as he headed for the Copper Coronet. He worked through the guards there easily enough - the Beastmaster finding himself horrified to be shut in a cage with a wild animal (and the leopard wasn't too happy about it either
I experimented further with changing kits and classes through EEKeeper, but without being able to get rid of the Grizzly Bear restrictions and abilities. Any further thoughts on that @semiticgod or @flashburn?
Edit: I decided to just recreate the character and then use MP to insert it into the saved game. He's hopefully ready now to start making some proper progress.
Edit 2: or perhaps not. The kit is not now restricting attacks to 1 APR. I'm feeling minded to call a halt to this run now as there's far too much reloading and mucking about with it for my taste.
Grond0: Peer, Elf Archer. Chaotic Good
Corey_Russell: Hunter, Human Undead Hunter. Lawful Good
Gate70: Biff, Dwarf Barbarian. Neutral Evil
Previous updates:
Our latest Trio run got properly underway at the weekend. As usual we started with Shoal, but then stayed in the area to run the ogre clan around as well - everyone picking up a level as a result.
In Beregost a smash and grab raid at the blacksmith's provided Hunter with a magical bastard sword and he'd soon got an armor upgrade as well thanks to a visit to Nashkel. Keen to get into the equipment act, Biff led the way to find Arghain and pick up his own sword upgrade.
Even though we were still pretty low-level, with 3 fighter-types we decided we could manage the Nashkel Mines. Traps and the odd kobold arrow meant HPs were pretty low by the time we got to Mulahey's cave, but resting there healed us up before attacking.
After shooting down Nimbul a few tasks were done in Beregost before learning the location of the Bandit Camp from the brave, but deluded Tranzig.
Meilum handed over his bracers before there was more fun with sirines - this time Hunter acting as the tank with the help of a potion of clarity.
After buying a scroll of PfP we travelled to the basilisk area before saving. With a bit of luck I might even remember to make use of the scroll next time before charging into battle with the basilisks.
Peer, Archer L5, 61 HPs, 105 kills
Hunter, Undead Hunter L5, 55 HPs, 56 kills, deaths 0
Biff, Barbarian L5, 68 HPs, 93 kills, deaths 0