Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 6
To the Wandering Village! This area has some very nice items: Nym sells a Protection from Magic scroll as well as a djinni lamp, the Avarine Decanter. If you free the djinni right off the bat, he gives you the Brazen Bands, bracers which grant +5 AC, making them by far the best bracers in the game. We also buy the Air Genesi [sic] Armor for Dipper to help with his poor Reflex saves (it gives +2). There's also a really nice mod-introduced bow for sale:
-2 AC on hit may not seem like much, since it doesn't even stack, but getting an extra chance to hit an enemy is a very underappreciated bonus. Attack bonuses/THAC0 have a much bigger impact on gameplay than people tend to think.
Since we're in a good spot and I don't want to take any chances with Limha the witch, I decide to level up everyone in the party, which notably puts Star and Asriel at level 15. Star can now cast Mass Invisibility, which is an area-effect Improved Invisibility effect for 10 rounds, and Asriel can now cast Aura of Vitality, which grants party-wide +4 to STR, DEX, and CON for 2 rounds per level (1 round per level in vanilla). Those are very excellent offensive and defensive buffs that will give us a solid edge in coming fights. Better still, Marco now has 4 attacks per round when hasted.
But the fight with Limha proves extremely uneventful. Without her arbitrary immunity to stun, it only takes one bad roll for her Fortitude save of 11 to fail against the 25 DC of Star's Icelance spell.
If she pre-buffed with MGOI or Seven Eyes (she's high enough level to cast either), or if she had better rolls, we'd have had a much harder fight.
I underestimate the Witch Lights and Death's Candles deeper in the Fell Wood. I'm accustomed to wiping them all out with Wail of the Banshee in solo runs, but the battle lasts much longer in normal mode, which gives the enemy a lot of time to zap the party.
By the time we slay the last Treant blocking our way to the next area, Star has hit level 16, gaining access to Great Shout.
Great Shout is really strong, but it's actually received a substantial nerf from the original game. In vanilla, Great Shout stuns the target for 1 round with no saving throw. A failed saving throw extends the duration. Without that nerf, Great Shout could be used to stun-lock pretty much anything, since semiOverhaul removes immunity to stun from certain bosses.
We have a nice set of options for this party--very diverse and pretty fun to use. We paralyze the Frost Spiders in the next area with Carrion Summons and bomb the Snow Trolls with Fireballs while Asriel tanks using Will o' Wisp form.
We bomb the Barbarian Warriors as well with Asriel's Fire Storm and Star's Cone of Cold (though the enemy has 20/- resistance to cold!), but there are a lot of fighters with a lot of HP out here, and they apply some heavy pressure when we fail to bring them down quickly.
Next up, dragons. They're tough, but they have no real tricks up their sleeves. Dipper continues to be a badass.
You probably haven't noticed, but Dipper is in slot 5. Why is our front-line fighter way at the back of the formation, while Star, our squishy sorcerer, is up at the front?
Well, this is a party of pairs. Dipper and Mabel, Asriel and Frisk, and Star and Marco. I have a rule that they always have to be next to their partner in the formation, even if it would be more efficient to split them up.
Anyway, I screw up Marco's leveling by giving him a level in fighter, forgetting that this permanently locks him out of gaining any further monk levels. He'll still be a strong character, but he won't be a very good monk.
By the way: in the barbarian area, there's a Frost Rose in the southeast corner of the map. If you bring it all the way back to Venla the Healer in the Wandering Village, she can make a potion out of it. The potion is really weak in vanilla, but semiOverhaul buffs it considerably.
Star tries out Great Shout, but by this time, I've further nerfed Great Shout by making the caster get stunned and deafened on a failed save. It's pretty safe to use, since the caster gets a +5 bonus and the stun only lasts one round, but mages and sorcerers have lousy Fortitude saves. Fortunately, in a party run, we can afford to disable one character if it also disables some of the enemies.
Fire Seeds help us burn down the jellies to the south. We proceed to the slavers up north, where Star's Confusion spell sends the enemy into disarray. Asriel follows up with a Fire Storm, blinding the duergar bolters.
Our tactics get turned against us in the fight with Harshom. We have good Will saves because so many party members are spellcasters, but there are always critical failures on saving throws in IWD2.
Our bard and our sorcerer are both disabled, but Mabel has Exaltation memorized, and Star is back to work the very next round. Asriel torches the enemy once again. He already nailed the enemy mages with Insect Plague, so we have little to worry about.
Unfortunately, the monk trials are bugged somehow. We can't activate any of the levers, which means it's impossible to proceed without killing the monks.
There is one other way, though. By packing a bunch of summons up against the locked door to the next area and then having Asriel switch to the gigantic Rhinoceros Beetle form, we can teleport him to the other side!
From there, all we have to do is give Asriel all of our containers and quest items, export the rest of the party, then import the party on the other side of the door!
But that would take a long time, so I just use CTRL-J. Next up, the Underdark!
I had to restart this fight twice due to my version of Ascension (v1.5 BETA), so I threw away the screenshots of those fights. - The first time was during the fight with The Five. Not sure who it was, but I think someone tried to activate a Chain Contingency and the game crashed because of it. - Imoen died in Slayer form the second time, which causes the bridges to the three pools to not appear. The pools can still be cleared using Dimension Door but Melissan and The Five will not appear after the third pool is cleared.
Before I leave the Pocket Plane, I put up a Chain Contingency (Spell Turning + PfMW + Spell Shield), buff myself with spells, and then use a charged Wish to haste my golems and refresh my spells. But I forgot to set Addy's AI mode after building her, which will later cost me her life. Here we go...
Not even two seconds in and all the demons are crowding around me. I manage to get Improved Alacrity off the ground and Dimension Door away from the group, then I try to gate in my planetar maid, but it wild surges and gets me a Minor Globe instead. The second try works.
Addy suffers a vorpal hit from the right-most Fallen Solar somehow and splits in half. Damn it! My golems are hit with Bodhi's cloud of bats too, which causes them to suffer double damage over time because they're hasted. Mitty II can't take this many repeated hits and crumbles. RIP, my dear.
This is going south pretty fast, so I gate in another planetar to take on the left-most Solar and summon a swarm of Mordy Swords, then I use a charged Wish and see what I can do. I take the option for double-length Time Stop and Improved Alacrity. I cast Shapechange and transform into the Iron Golem and eliminate the left-most Solar.
Irenicus' fatal flaw in this fight is that he starts with Mislead and spell protections but does not put up PfMW. I dispelled his SI: Divination and Spell Shield with a Spell Thrust and Pierce Shield earlier and the planetar dispelled his Improved Invis with True Sight, so I transform into the much faster Greater Wolfwere and tear him to shreds. I cull a succubus using illithid form. I try to do the same to the Marilith but its immune to intelligence modification, apparently.
With most of the enemies eliminated, the Fallen Solar on the right is soon killed and the rest of the adds are toast. Imoen comes back to her senses which allows us to properly progress.
The three pools aren't too much trouble. My golems and a pair of planetars are enough to clear them out, though I lose both of the normal Adamantite golems. Only Adam and one of Mitty's kids are still alive. At the last pool, I summon the Planetar Sentai Squad, an Improved Kitthix swarm, and buff even further. I protect both of my golems from magic energy and haste everyone, relying on the pool to refresh my spells.
Now its time to fight The Five. My first action is to use a charged scroll of Protection from Magic on Sendai, Abazigal, and Illasera. That should keep them from casting anything and dispel their existing buffs. Without using the Wand of Lightning, I would undoubtedly pick Abazigal first because he's a dangerous fighter/mage, as Krieg learned firsthand.
I have my dudes pick off Illasera first because her anti-magical arrows are very dangerous to me. This causes Melissan to come down to play.
Sendai uses her ring to join the fray, but I have my dudes kill her next because she gives Melissan considerable bonuses against magic while she's alive.
Melissan gates in a bunch of demons and another Fallen Solar. Gromnir is next because I can use Melissan's brief knockout to kill Abazigal.
But it doesn't last long enough for us to do so. I get too close to the Fallen Solar and it shoots me with an arrow, tearing down my spell protections. I back off and use Improved Alacrity to restore them. Abazigal goes down next.
The Fallen Solar teleport down to the lower-left pool and casts Creeping Doom at me while I'm in the middle of Improved Alacrity. I manage to get IA off in time and cast SI: Conjuration, restore my defenses, and top it off with a woven Red Fireshield.
I gate in a couple more planetars, summon another Mordy Sword swarm, use another charged wish for spell refreshing.
The demonic detritus has been mostly dealt with, so I single out Melissan and spam Lower Resistance on her, following up with Greater Malison and Unluck, though Unluck doesn't work. Nahal's Wildstrike is next and it takes.
The Fallen Solar tries to make an escape but we're in hot pursuit. This solar has no resistance to fire, which means its time for the Planetar Platoon to spam Fire Storm. That helps put an end to it.
There was another Fallen Solar down at the bottom, so I have my dudes kill it next because I can't have it dispelling my buffs from range.
Sarevok is next. He's just been wandering around for the whole fight and is easily the most harmless of them all. I'm hoping to use Melissan's downtime to surround her with my summons and beat her down.
Only Yaga-Shura and Melissan are left and I'm running low on the high-powered spells, so I wish for a refresher. Very soon after this, Yaga-Shura dies.
Melissan isn't down for long and she casts Sunray, which I find pretty unusual because there aren't any undead around. But this spell is lethal to Adam because the sunlight corrodes his adamantite body, reducing his physical damage resistances to 75% from 99%.
Now that all the Bhaalspawn are dead, Melissan is rendered mortal and she teleports to the other side of the throne, gating in demons and attempting a Time Stop. But I saw this coming since this is exactly how Krieg died. Not trusting my Staff to protect me (as it inexplicably fails to provide immunity to Time Stop every now and then), I cast Focus before her Time Stop reaches completion.
Melissan tries to chase me down during the Time Stop but she's too slow. I lower her magic resistance again while time is stopped. After time resumes, she fights Adam. I cast Improved Alacrity again and gate in some more planetars and use my second-to-last level 9 spell for a charged Wish, hoping to get another refresher.
I don't get the option and I don't get it on the second try either.
I try using 3 Chaotic Weaves to try to get it, but it still fails, though I manage to get everyone intoxicated. I need to keep the planetar pressure up. My dudes manage to kill all the glabrezus but my planetars get carved up. Adam finally falls and splits in half.
Melissan tries to soften me up with a Spellstrike, but I refreshed the Nahal's Wildstrike on her and it turns into a fruitless wild surge. I doubt it had any effect on me because I had Spell Trap/Turning/Shield up all at once.
Still out of level 9 spells, I back off and reach into my trove of scrolls. I've got 3 scrolls of Wish which ought to do it.
With my spells refreshed, Melissan teleports down near me and, under Improved Alacrity, I summon 3 planetars, lower her magic resistance and saves, and Breach her a couple of times so that the Planetars' Fire Storms will damage her. I throw in an Incendiary Cloud for good measure. With no reinforcements to depend on, Melissan finally yields.
Nukesalot chooses to become a planar power. Where he will go and what he will do are unknown, though it's been rumored by the odd sage that he's on the run from both Tymora and Beshaba after he was caught two-timing both of them at once.
Drunn is struggling to remember what happened a few days ago. He vaguely recalls heading to the coast and using a potion of clarity against sirines before moving on to investigate the cave of Black Alaric. Hoodie doesn't have any suitable weapons for the flesh golems inside but provides suitable encouragement "You'll be OK". For once, he is correct.
Bassilus may have a flock of followers but one spirit lion is more than a match for them.
Another spirit lion gets a bellyful of ankhegs.
Battle Horrors and basilisks fail to prevent us retrieving the Rashads Talon scimitar carelessly abandoned, or carefully secreted, on the roof of Durlags Tower.
Nashkel Mine holds few horrors for us, and we soon clear a path to the base of the mine.
Mulahey and his minions don't last long and it is the same story outside, only with lightning added.
We kill Nimbul before Rasaad can intervene, while Tranzig tries out his spells on a charmed Algernon.
We made our way to the bandit camp ready for the next session.
The session started with massacring a bunch of basilisks. Biff raged against Mutamin, though he died too quickly to have done much anyway. Kirian & co also failed to last long - Biff's high damage potential providing much of the explanation for that .
After buying some potions of Mirrored Eyes we moved on to Durlag's Tower. The battle horrors provided a bit of competition, but no serious threat, while ghasts had little chance to penetrate Hunter's armor (and no chance to hold him even if they did). There was a bit of a trap delay before moving on to the roof, where a couple of potions provided protection for Hunter to lead the way against the basilisks.
The Bandit Camp was the next target. Biff tended to dash ahead as usual and picked up a fair number of bandit arrows as a result while forging a path to Taurgosz.
After healing up outside the tent, Biff's rage helped occupy Venkt's attention while Peer shot poison arrows from behind. Hunter then joined in to finish the job.
In the first Cloakwood area, Hunter decided he couldn't wait to get an improved sword from Aldeth Sashenstar and sided with Seniyad and the other druids. In the second area a group of ettercaps were pulled back from a web trap. The last one though is too far away to use that tactic safely and Hunter got stuck trying. Peer switched to call shot with acid arrows and Biff to rage attacks with throwing axes. That would probably have killed the attacking ettercap before it could inflict too much damage, but Hunter managed to break free from the web at the first opportunity anyway.
Shortly after, he led the way into Centeol's nest, where the enemies struggled to hit as they were cut down from behind.
At the mine, Hunter threw in a fireball which killed one of the mages. The other was hit with a poisoned arrow and failed to cast any aggressive spells.
The fighters then suffered the fate of so many others faced with an enraged dwarf swinging a sword taller than he is.
Inside the mine it didn't take long to get down to Davaeorn's level. After pulling back the battle horrors, Biff took a potion of magic blocking and charged down to Davaeorn. Somewhat surprisingly, the mage decided not to target Biff with his lightning bolt, but instead shot that at Peer through the wall - fortunately he missed as a high damage lightning hit in combination with trap damage could have been fatal there.
In the City the ogre mage was an early target. With Biff now wielding Spider's Bane and Hunter's natural immunity to hold, the supporting carrion crawlers were not much of a threat.
A few other little jobs were done, including emptying Ramazith's Tower, before the session finished with the poison quest. Earlier in the day Gate70 and I had done that in our latest MP run and failed to stop Lothander running away despite being surrounded by 5 summons and 2 characters. The chances of trapping him with just 3 characters therefore seemed slim, but we managed it to pick up another set of boots of speed .
Marek was then tracked down and chopped down before he could do anything.
Peer, Archer L7, 84 HPs, 158 kills Hunter, Undead Hunter L7, 86 HPs, 93 kills, deaths 0 Biff, Barbarian L7, 92 HPs, 179 kills, deaths 0 Biff put his sword to good use in that session and won't now be caught in the BG1 kills race.
The druidic duo were stood outside the Iron Throne headquarters without a plan. Who needs a plan when you have a potion of magic blocking. Drunn's armour class was enough to keep him relatively uninjured for the five round duration, by which time Hoodie had wreaked havoc on the mercenaries within.
Drizzt offered his services but we preferred to use his equipment instead. He managed to heal up a few times and dispelled Drunn's buffs, but a second lesser set of potions was too much for him to deal with.
We whipped through a return to Candlekeep, slightly quicker than usual as Drunn had bought one potion of Cloud Giant strength, and then used it fighting Drizzt. That meant the strength tome is still there for another lucky adventurer to find at a future date.
On returning to the city we kept Belt alive in the midst of insect plagues, totemic summons and carefully controlled nymphs. It was a coronation to remember, not least for the lack of actual coronation.
Down into the Thieves maze we went, Drunn throwing an oil of speed to Hoodie who subsequently remarked that this allowed him to keep pace with Drunn if only to see jellies and slimes vanquished rather than being able to help much. Hoodie used a Protection from Undead scroll on Drunn (who cannot read due to an intelligence of 4).
Hoodie then volunteered to protect Drunn from lightning. Drunn could have done this himself but that allowed him to use another spell, so he protected himself from fire and marched into traps surrounding two skeleton warriors. Fireballs erupted harmlessly and two lightning bolts fizzled repeatedly between the skeleton warriors, Drunn and the walls. One skeleton warrior collapsed from the lightning, as did Drunn.
Moral of the story. Check the spell cast successfully and the effect is active before assuming all is well. Grond0 and I both thought the spell had completed but on reflection there may have been some sort of multiplayer glitch or delay.
Regardless, the druids had their day and we've moved on. We were going to switch to IWD:EE but a technical glitch will delay that slightly so BG:EE party 156 are waiting in the wings.
I decided to play a bit more carefully after my previous difficulties, and while completing all the quests in the city of Baldur's Gate, I didn't lose a single party member as a result. I used summons whenever possible, even in situations where this normally wouldn't be a good option: Aetius would simply cast invisibility 10' radius, allowing my party to first get into a position allowing them to minimize any potential risks - just like in this battle here, against the ogre mages:
A similiar tactic and some wand charges and magic missles allowed the party to even deal with Degrodel's guardians without taking any damage or using any potions.
Soon, the was nothing left do do in the entire city - the Iron Throne HQ battle was also done via sneaking past with invisibility 10' radius first and taking on the enemy with summons and full buffs from behind. Back in Candlekeep, the party only had to make their way to the exit of the catacombs - no troubles here, I avoided some of the more unpleasant battles. Back in the city, while breaking into the Flaming Fist HQ, we encountered the first potentially deadly situation in quite a while: The cleric mercenaries started to cast three glyphs of warding against three very grouped up party members - in was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to split up everyone in time, and one glyph alone could kill one of the lower hp randomized characters, thanks to the double damage on insane difficulty. Three glyphs would propably result in a dead party. I decided to sacrifice five potions of absorption to negate any potential damage entirely (I still can buy more, though I will need some for Durlag's Tower - I hope I'll have enough):
Sadly, I also accidentally killed a "real" flaming first mercenary during this fight:
With the hit to my reputation and no rep-boosting quests remaining, all I could do was get back to 18 with temple bribes. Still, I should have enough money for everything I need.
After dealing with Cythandria and the assassins, it was time for the coronation. Once again, while I usually like to use some potions at this point, I was pretty sure summons and full buffs would be enough, and I was right:
By now, my party is finally starting to deal some okay physical damage, though going into melee combat is still pretty much out of the question. Sextus, for example, can still be easily killed in a single hit.
I used my summons to clear the ice island and talked to Mendas after buying some magical ammo to hunt down the werewolves. For some reason, I was unable to find the child in the shipwreck, thus leaving this quest unsolved. Because tight spaces and melee combat are always the worst option for this party, I simply decided to always lure the wolves in the wreck downstairs, into a waiting group of summons and ranged attackers. The greater wolfwere was killed via wand damage:
It was quite important for Ingeburg to hit level 10 here, as her spirit animals now hit with +6 claws, thus allowing them to actually hurt and kill Loup Garous! I have no one who would be any good at dealing with those foes otherwise (Sextus has *Bastard Sword, but he's a terrible melee fighter) - so the remainder of this quest was mostly a job for spirit lions.
Finally, I did finish clearing the upper levels of Durlag's Tower. The lower levels await.
Some more updates: I used all of the wisdom tomes on Sabellius, Ingeburg got the intelligence tome, and Swidhun permanently improved his strength. My level 4 spellpick for Aetius was, obviously, stoneskin.
We left Cloakwood to do some shopping, unfortunately we were attacked upon arrival at the Friendly Arms Inn, and being unprepared Tenya was killed. (Completely forgot about that ambush.
After raising her and buying fire protection we took on the dragon. At least Sirene did. There wasn't enough fire protection for all of us.
We then proceeded to the mines where web once again proved to be a real boon.
South of the Friendly Arms Inn, we killed Davenport et al. Web was again most useful. At the top of the mines, Tytus proved to be VERY dangerous. I've never met him before and if we hadn't been buffed, he would have prevailed. Again web was the spell that saved us.
I looked up Tytus with EE Keeper and discovered why he was so dangerous. Level 9 Fighter. Str 17 Dex 17 Con 17. Axes ***** Armour Full Plate +1. I presume that he is from a mod ?
EDIT
The mines themselves were straightforward, far easier than my usual set-up.
Hareishan's body and possessions couldn't be found, though I did see that she had been killed. I suspect that this was due to my use of ice storm. I had intended to install the modification that causes the dropping of items upon freezing, but suspect that didn't happen. Not a great loss.
Davaeorn ended up panicking whilst invisible. We didn't have any way of eliminating invisibility so we spent the time healing ourselves. When he eventually became visible, he used web which meant that only two of us could attack him.
He almost killed Imoen but was webbed himself just in time to save her.
We now have to decide where to go next. There are 3 main possibilities: Northern Tales of the Sword Coast Quests; That is tempting as I have never installed the mod before; Go to the Section HQ in Beregost, also tempting due to the loot and experience gained; or go to Baldur's Gate.
EDIT 2
The game actually decided for me what I needed to do next. We took Perwell to his mother at the Friendly Arms Inn and immediately I was accosted by Jet' Laya who gave me a new quest as she joined the party. The party having become top-heavy with Clerics, I decided to let Yeslik depart for the moment.
I like it when things happen like this. It makes role playing so much easier.
It looks as if I am the only one playing at the moment. Presumably everyone else has been on the beach enjoying this glorious sunshine. (That is, if mainland Europe is also enjoying these high temperatures)
Durlag's Tower went quite well. I did have to rest a few times, still being very reliant on my summons, but the battles themselves - very decent. My first completely clean kill of the dwarven warders without taking damage or getting hit by any spells as far as I can remember:
Nothing of note happened in the second or third level. The chessboard was solved via a double web sequencer, fireballs and some ranged attacks. As usual, I made sure to provide my party with full lightning immunity, in case I needed to move around:
For the demon knight, I went with full fire immunity instead (having gathered all green fire resistance scrolls and many potions). To make sure these potentially vital buffs (as a single fireball would've been enough to wipe out most of the party) stayed intact, Hjalmarr rushed in to absorb the expected dispel magic, additionally protected by rings of fire resistance before regaining his full fire immunity via a resistance potion. However, his magic resistance allowed him to ignore the fireball anyway, and his rage prevented any attempts at disabling him:
Thus, I returned to Ulgoth's Beard - travelling from Baldur's Gate under invisibility 10' radius, the safest way to avoid the initial ambush and the two deadly cult assassins.
Spirit lions proved to be quite good at dealing with the cult members, as most of them don't have access to magical weapons:
I lured the final cult group outside to avoid directly dealing with more assassins (can't survive any backstabs, except with ironskin/stoneskin active) before buffing for Aec'Letec. Quite a few potions were used, most importantly potions of fortitude and magic shielding to ensure everyone's survival and storm giant strength/heroism to improve the groups damage output dramatically. No trouble here:
I made my way to the undercity, had summons deal with the few remaining foes and used more potions buffs (this time mainly to increase ranged damge, so we're talking about several dexterity increasing potions, heroism and power) for Sarevok. When walking back after talking to Sarevok, Hjalmarr triggered a web trap by accident, and I had to equip the ring of free action to ensure his survival. Since Sarevok was still hasted at this point (and he would go on to be so during the entire battle, as I simply forgot to use my arrows of dispelling), the final boss managed to get in a hit, almost killing Hjallmar with an enormous 60 damage attack.
Luckily, the summons distracted Sarevok, allowing Hjalmarr to get to safety. Meanwhile, Semaj, who was the only one of Sarevok's allies to follow his boss into battle, was killed by the remaining party, and he only got to use his greater malison (which was now useless):
Thanks to the potion buffs, it was only a matter of a few very short seconds before Sarevok himself was done, as well:
SoD awaits (certainly the hardest part of the series for this type of run), but I might put this run on hold or at least slow down my speed of play by a lot: Deadfire is coming out tomorrow, and I can't wait to play it, having been a huge fan of the first PoE game (I went for seven straight playthroughs in a row back then, so if the sequel holds up, I might be busy for a while).
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 7
The Underdark! Basically, this whole area is just about fighting a massive horde of drider fighters, clerics, and mages. Star has difficulty stunning the fighters due to their strong Fortitude saves, but we can disrupt enemy cleric spells by taking advantage of their poor Reflex saves. Icelance and Chromatic Orb both give us short-lasting stunning spells with high save DC's due to Star's two pips in Spell Focus: Evocation.
One possible wild card is Imphraili, a transmuter who casts Flesh to Stone. That could mean instant death for pretty much anyone, but as luck would have it, she never gets a chance to get the spell off the ground. As a high-level druid, Asriel can cast Finger of Death as a level 8 spell, and Imphraili makes a low roll.
Imphraili's experiments, a trio of modified driders and one or two Flesh Golems, apply heavy pressure (the Celeridrider has 3 APR with a +25 attack bonus!) but ultimately crumple to Asriel's powerful summons: a Shambling Mound, a Rhinoceros Beetle, and a Wyvern.
Dipper has high enough Alchemy to concoct a poison that will instantly kill the Viciscamera, giving us a slight advantage in the incoming battle. We've still got a lot of driders to deal with, including multiple spellcasters who come in waves and cast both Icelance and Dispel Magic, either of which could prove fatal on a failed save. We take down a lot of them, but I'm concerned about maintaining our advantage over the course of a long fight. I send out Asriel to disable a bunch of driders with his new Tremor spell. In semiOverhaul, Tremor knocks the targets unconscious (even undead!) on a failed Reflex save (Fortitude save in the next update), and unlike in vanilla, that unconsciousness persists after getting hit, giving us 3 rounds of automatic hits. Unfortunately, it's not party-friendly, and even a high-level monk like Marco can roll a critical failure.
To my dismay, Mabel's Exaltation spell fails to wake Marco up. Tremor uses a different unconsciousness opcode than normal sleep spells, so Exaltation is useless. We bail him out with Frisk's Hold Monster spell and Star's Mass Invisibility spell.
Hold Monster doesn't last long with so many enemy clerics to cast Remove Paralysis or Dispel Magic, and more driders keep coming in, faster than we can fight them back. We focus on the thinner herd to the east while our Rhinoceros Beetle rapidly crumbles under heavy pressure in the west.
The beetle collapses and the enemy closes in. We frustrate their efforts with a Chaos spell and Star tries stunning some of the driders with Great Shout. In semiOverhaul, Great Shout offers a save, but the stun is much longer-lasting at 5 whole rounds, and as an Evocation spell, it benefits from Spell Focus.
No more waves come in, and the existing driders prove unable to break the party. Marco and Dipper have the damage output to bring them down.
I love hammers and axes. It's just so satisfying to see those critical hits.
Before we report to Malavon, we dispatch some drow backstabbers nearby. Star is high enough level that she can break through their spell resistance.
Due to some weird bug, Malavon doesn't recognize that we've completed our mission. We have to use the console to fix the problem. Basically, there are a few combinations of variables that should allow you to claim success, and one possibility was erroneously not present in his dialogue.
Star is now level 18 and can cast Disintegrate and Wail of the Banshee. A slice of calamari tries to get in our way, only for Dipper to slice it in half and Star to slay all its allies with a piercing scream.
We spread apart the party to decrease the number of people exposed to the mind flayers' Mind Blast spells, but no one ends up failing their Will saves. We rush the Elder Brain and splatter it in seconds; it has precious few defenses.
Only after it dies do its goons arrive at the scene. The golems are magic-immune, but the others don't last long with Star on the map. Even the dwarves can't resist her Wail of the Banshee without rolling a 20 on their save.
Next up, Mirabel and Majrash. With lots of Harpies and Earth Elementals and tons of buffs from Tactics, they can be extremely dangerous. We enter the area under invisibility, wipe out some elementals with Wail of the Banshee, and discover that the mages are immune to Hold Monster. Bosses have some arbitrary immunities in IWD2. They're even immune to stun, though the current update for semiOverhaul removes that.
Majrash goes down under heavy pressure, but Mirabel begins casting Disintegrate, and by wiggling around our party members and seeing which way Mirabel turns, I can tell that she's targeting Star. In the current update, semiOverhaul's Disintegrate does massive slashing damage instead of an instant death effect, but in this install, in this run, Disintegrate is still a permanent death on a failed save. Star's Seven Eyes spell has already lost its Eye of Fortitude, but we have a trick up our sleeve: we've recently found a buckler that can block the spell!
But because Star has Mordenkainen's Sword active, she can't equip any shields. In the end, the spell hits... but Star's 24 spell resistance blocks it entirely!
We slay Mirabel with the help of poison and bleeding wounds effects that bypass her Mirror Images. Dipper gets confused, so I hide Oswald and Maralie before Dipper gets a chance to take a swing at them.
I love Maralie's voice. She's just so ridiculously cute.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 8
We start out in Kuldahar surrounded by Wights and with our defenses lowered. Wights in IWD2 have a much weaker form of level drain than in BG2: the level drain only penalizes max HP by -5 and attack and damage rolls by -1, and the effect offers a Fortitude save to resist. However, that energy drain effect turns out to be largely meaningless, as it seems that Mabel, one of our lower-leveled party members, still has enough clerics level to blast them with Turn Undead. We also have the Hammer of Lucerne, a polearm with a disruption effect.
For everything that isn't undead, we have Wail of the Banshee. This party is really productive and efficient in semiOverhaul.
We trade over 200,000 gold in magical items, slightly buffing our stats while emptying out our Bags of Holding. Notable loot includes the Every God Ring, nerfed to +5 Wisdom in semiOverhaul. While we're in Kuldahar Valley, we do a quest that I've gotten accustomed to skipping: pacifying the spirit of Mother Egenia.
Next, we need to clear the Yuan-ti out of the Temple of Sseth in Chult, easily accessible from a cool swirling blue portal thingy in the middle of Kuldahar. Asriel torches them, Star freezes them, and Marco bops them on their noggins.
Ojaiha, the high priest, goes down quickly without his allies to support him. We proceed to his chamber, where the Coiled Cabal mages teleport in en masse. Asriel knocks them all out (along with himself) using Tremor, allowing the rest of the party to sweep in, reveal the mages with Invisibility Purge, and stomp them while they're down.
Finally, the Viper's Fang Assassins come out to play. Star blasts the leader, Ashra, with Great Shout, stunning her for several rounds.
We pin her down from afar with missile weapons, axe the remaining snake people, and then bash in Jezrael's head, breaking the strength of the Yuan-ti temple.
Among lots of lesser loot, we get a Ring of Greater Regeneration, which is buffed to 1 HP per 2 seconds (ten times as fast as in vanilla!) and a modified version of the Black Adder bastard sword, which has a chance of summoning a viper with every hit.
This gives us an unreliable but theoretically unlimited source of summoned critters, as you can hit your own vipers to try to summon more of them.
Finally, we summon Chahopek, the black dragon guardian of the temple. Chahopek has 300 HP, sky-high damage resistance (in the latest update of semiOverhaul, 700 HP and much lower damage resistance), and powerful attacks. We want to keep Chahopek focused on attacking Dipper, our best fighter, and we want to keep Dipper alive as long as possible. To do this, we first wall out Chahopek by summoning a Rhinoceros Beetle (notable for having the biggest circle in the game) on the staircase, covering it with an Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (thus creating a massive invincible wall), and then having Dipper start chopping up the lizard.
With a ludicrous AC of 64, Dipper is untouchable.
But then the dragon teleports to the party, and suddenly Dipper is stranded behind the same Rhinoceros Beetle we hoped to use to trap the dragon.
Realistically, our only hope is to use Marco's powerful archery skills to shoot down the dragon from afar. But the dragon chases him. Marco's arrows are useless at close range.
But to my surprise, Chahopek cannot reach him--our Shambling Mound's Entangle effect has snared the dragon!
With Chahopek entangled, we can have Marco shoot it down from afar while Asriel zaps it. The dragon falls!
We rest and return to Kuldahar, where many waves of orogs, harpies, and yuan-ti fighters, archers, clerics, and mages await us. First is Cedra, a high-level mage with lots of strong defenses, including a Mirror Image and Fire Shield that negates Dipper's attacks even as it lashes out at him.
Mabel fails a save against Chaos. Frisk cures it with a book from the Black Raven Monastery that casts Exaltation, only to get confused themselves shortly after. Mabel can cast Exaltation without that book, however, and both our cleric and our bard are back in order.
We break through Cedra's Mirror Images, but her Fire Shield deals lots of damage to the party in the process. We bring her down at heavy cost. Notice Asriel taking extra damage from the Fire Shield--he is vulnerable to elemental damage when in Creeping Doom form, but has been buffed with Protection from Fire specifically to mitigate the damage.
In Tactics, the game ends if Iselore dies, which means we need to heal him occasionally and even seal him in a Tortoise Shell or Resilient Sphere spell if he's under heavy pressure. We focus on the enemy clerics first, as they're easier to kill, before proceeding to the mages.
The enemy comes in waves from either side, so we save up our resources so we can deploy them later. Star wipes out a patch of critters with Wail of the Banshee, and Mabel's spontaneous casting gives us easy access to Healing Circle.
We keep up the pressure and make sure that we engage the enemy before they ever get close to Iselore. With lots of summons on the map and our buffs still intact, we have the numbers to overpower the enemy.
Well a new hope has made some progress in my semi-random challenge. Called, a half-elf thief using the Card kit has made it to level 5 presently accompanied by Verr'sza, Kivan, Imoen, Branwen, and Valerie. I say presently accompanied as still under the 'fluence of my no resurrection run I'm imposing a rest period on NPCs who get gravely injured. So far much wandering around has occured while Called decided if he was nice or nasty, in particular a nasty incident resulted in a civil war in Nashkel. Called gave a slightly surly reply while being quizzed about a misdelivered wyvern's egg, resulting in one faction of the Amnish guard supporting him and another opposing him, incidentally resulting in the death of a random Hare Krishna monk by the roadside. It took a while to get our rep back up to non-despised levels but regardless any visits to Nashkel will have to be done while invisible in future.... Called's character has been developing so I've not randomised all the decisions but he sure does like to wander...
After Jet 'Laya joined us we went in search of her sister. However things did not go well and Tenya was hurt by undead thus losing levels. She was the only one who could cast minor restoration so we had to temporarily give up the search and go to a temple.
I decided that we needed more exprience before restarting the search and therefore we took on the Section HQ in Beregost. This was going well, but jet was killed and we had to sneak out to raise her.
We are now about to re-enter in the hopes of having more comprehensive victories in future.
Sadly Yazuth will be going no further as there is so much stutter that the game is unplayable.
EDIT
Not quite unplayable, but saves take over 20 seconds and I think that it will get worse as the game progresses. Too many mods I think. I believe that it is DSoSC that is the problem as things were OK untill Jet 'Laya joined the party.
A quick update as to what happened before I abandoned the game. One of the section mages being invisible was able to wipe out Tenya and Jet Laya and badly hurt the other members also. However they survived and they were able to get the dead members raised. The problem appears to involve the world map which has turned black.
I have once again lost a solo no-reload IWD2 HoF run. I had a deep gnome sorcerer/bard this time focusing heavily on Enchantment spells and disablers. Mass Dominate and Control Undead allowed us to turn whole herds of enemies against each other. It was a very successful run.
Just like the last one, it ended at Saablic Tan. I approached this fight under the assumption that a single Mass Dominate spell on the first round would be able to charm most of the enemies, allowing me to vanish and let them fight it out until they were weak enough for me to survive the pressure. I did the math in Excel and found that I could expect half of the enemies to fail their saves against Mass Dominate.
But it seems that several of them had completely undocumented immunities to charm, and not all of the archers failed their saves. The missile damage ate through my Mirror Images, allowing damage to come through, and then the hitstun from the damage held me in place and allowed the Slayer Knights of Xvim to deal even more damage. In the end, there was simply nothing that could be done. Enchantment spells simply will not win that fight.
It seems that my own mod's changes, and the level 40 mod, are what ultimately did me in. My sorcerer was sitting at a comfortable AC of 60, which in the unmodded game would force a 40% miss rate on the strongest attackers and maybe an 85% miss rate on the archers (for their first attacks, anyway; the 2nd-5th attacks per round are less accurate in IWD2). That would have allowed me to survive many rounds by relying on my strong AC, and maybe I could have pulled some tricks to come out on top.
But semiOverhaul strengthens fighters, both on the player's side and on the enemy's side, and the level 40 mod appears to have given the enemy an even bigger boost. The net result? Every enemy gets roughly +10 to hit and damage. The pressure was simply too much.
I've done the math and it looks like there is a character who could realistically tackle Saablic Tan, in Heart of Fury Mode, with Tactics4IWD2 and semiOverhaul installed: a Deep Gnome Dreadmaster of Bane(24)/Monk(1)/Fighter(4)/Illusionist(11), a level 40 monstrosity of a character that would have to be taken through both normal mode and HoF mode with an AC that could reach 95 at highest, or maybe upwards of 100 with Tenser's Transformation. It would basically just erect a fortress of buffs, cast Aegis to block Dispel Magic spells, and then chop everything up with Black Blade of Disaster conjured via scroll and Maximized Attacks to deal over 50 damage per hit.
But I just can't get into a cleric of Bane. The concept just doesn't seem right. And while you could do a similar thing with a different kind of cleric and still win, other cleric kits don't get Mass Dominate, the only spell that would make the first 90% of the game bearable after playing it so many times.
It might also be possible to win the fight using some other means, like using certain mod items or late-game items that could only come from importing a character, but I was working with a character that started out fresh in HoF at level 1, and I didn't have all the store mods installed. Using Tactics' HoF mode bonuses would also be a huge game-changer.
I banked the entire concept for this run on the assumption that Mass Dominate could succeed where Wail of the Banshee failed, because enemy Will saves are so much worse than their Fortitude saves (and charming an enemy is much more productive than killing it). But with several important enemies being immune for mysterious reasons, it's just not a workable solution.
It's a horrible bottleneck. The only three solutions I can see are things I just don't want to do:
1. Playing a heavily min-maxed cleric, probably an evil one 2. Using some crazy mod items to break the game 3. Importing a stronger character from a solo normal mode run 4. Installing the HoF player buffs component from Tactics
After a brief flirtation with IWD we started a new BGEE run yesterday. My inquisitor had a strong aversion to spending money and struggled to make progress in the early stages while adventuring naked and using non-proficient weapons. However, we managed to finish the session on arrival at Nashkel - somewhat battered and bruised, but in good spirits. Gate70's summary up to that point was "we could have died getting there if we hadn't done it 150 times before."
Today's session should have been much easier given the ankheg armor was there for the taking, but there was an unfortunate start when Quis somehow managed to take an oil of speed as the starting position was loading. That potion was wasted, but wasn't missed as the duo tracked down Arghain to get Quis a proper weapon.
Then it was time to head north and see what ankhegs were made of. The first 3 of those proved to be made of sticky green ichor, but the 4th one took its responsibility as the guardian of a treasure horde seriously and hit Quis twice to take him down to a dangerously low 11 HPs. I thought I had paused the game immediately after the second of those hits and we had a quick tactical discussion about the best thing to do next. That proved to be a waste of time though as another hit followed the instant the game was unpaused ...
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 157 - update 1 Rae (lawful evil female half-elf dragon disciple, Gate70) Needle (chaotic good male half elf fighter / mage)
Rae has opted to use a sling, while Needle goes for shortbow and shortsword. An imp familiar settles down into Rae's backpack and we are off.
Ever the optimists, we set out from Candlekeep. Some murderous assassins hunted us down though and the woods proved to be deadly for Gorion (and Imoen, and Xzar, and Montaron).
Everyone would be expecting us to go pick on Shoal the nereid so instead we de-girdled an ogre and headed up to the Friendly Arm inn. From there Rae manages not to remember her steps so flips through her inventory and journal as a reminder.
Shoal would have been next followed by a brief wertle for Arcand the Mad, and then a trip into Beregost for a drink with Marl and to swap books with Firebead. Rae makes a rare item purchase, a sling +1 being among the few items we bother with nowadays as it is competitively priced.
Greywolf talks (and then walks) his way out of combat (we must do more here to investigate the options as the tried and tested dialogue choice we autopilot through no longer works for us).
Caldo and Krumm are cut down to size and a drowned cat revived as we move towards the gnoll fortress and north in search of some warmer footwear. With those things done the journal shows we helped Albert and Rufie relocate to warmer climes.
The Trio worked through the City, picking up all the equipment they wanted, before heading for the Iron Throne. Hunter used a scroll of magic protection to tank there, while the others picked enemies off round the edges - resulting in a comfortable enough victory.
Returning to Candlekeep, giant strength potions were used to loot the tombs. Hunter did manage to trip the lightning trap there (during a session in which he seemed to be regularly holding a sword up to the sky and saying he didn't believe in gods), but not much damage was done.
Prat hit Hunter twice with lightning bolts to do rather more damage, but not enough to prove fatal.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Slythe was just shot from distance with a dispelling arrow as we had no interest in Krystin's equipment.
At the palace we agreed that we'd just try and kill the dopplegangers quickly, rather than aim to dispel them. Faced with 3 potion-enhanced fighters, the dopplegangers were still able to kill Liia pretty smartly, but didn't last long enough to do much damage to Belt.
Going through the maze, Hunter once more felt a little tickle from a lightning trap on the way to the Undercity. The party there were hit with some detonation arrows, though did manage to give a reasonable account of themselves.
Keen to push up towards a final BG1 level, Hunter decided to take advantage of the scroll of undead protection used in the maze to kill some more skeleton warriors. The first of those duly fell, but the second started fighting back despite the scroll still being active. That led to Hunter and Biff both being badly injured before Peer finished the skeletons off - thanks to them being unable to see through his scroll protection.
Inside the temple Peer shot Sarevok from distance with a dispelling arrow before sneaking back towards him to encourage him to make his opening talk. If things had gone well that would have meant Semaj teleporting out on this own before Sarevok was tackled. However, Peer hadn't used a scroll of magic protection or potion of magic shielding (or indeed put his ring of free action on) and got stuck as a web triggered. Though in the shadows he would soon have appeared for Sarevok to jump on, so Biff moved closer to the dais around the right hand side of the web/stinking cloud area to distract Sarevok. Getting that close to the dais though resulted in Angelo and Tazok also becoming active and Angelo spotted Peer - fortunately though Peer broke free of the web and was able to retreat before Angelo got to him. Biff took quite a bit of damage in keeping Sarevok and Tazok occupied while Hunter and Peer finished off Semaj and Angelo. It didn't take long after that to shoot down Tazok before Sarevok became the final one to fall.
There was just time in the session to get the characters imported into BG2 and find themselves in a sticky dungeon situation.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 157 - update 1 2 Rae (lawful evil female half-elf dragon disciple 7, Gate70) Needle (chaotic good male half elf fighter 6 / mage 5)
Another couple of mini sessions are done, no notes again and a handful of screenshots to go on.
Silke is an easy blind target, but Needle is almost caught out when Rae sends Garrick hostile.
We went to pick on Sil and her friends, then headed into and out of a flesh golem cave at pace. Maybe we'll come back when we're better equipped to pick on them.
Instead we go in search of basilisks. All goes well, but Kirian and her crew get as good a chance as it gets to kill Rae when she walks into stinking clouds instead of casting a spell. Only one enemy is on his feet for a few seconds, but the cloud does it's job and Needle gets to finish all four enemies off.
With that area clear we head out to Durlags Tower.
A quick tour of the roof, and we leave with a magical tome and a chunk of xp.
The second mini session has us hunting down ankhegs. Rae failed to get the first one to sleep but the rest all succumbed and she kept some Melf's Minute Meteor's in reserve together with Magic Missiles. No need though, Needle chipping and chopping the hapless monsters apart.
We reached Ulgoth's Beard and realised our reputation was mid-league so set about getting ourselves known. Needle had a fit of hysterics as Rae made a start by telling Mr Colquetle his family deserved to die and dropped reputation by 1. He suggested we sort out half-ogres for Bjornin and Rae agreed - but ended up near Captain Brage. We returned him to Nashkel after taking care of the Doomsayer.
Seeing another post about a LoB party run I thought perhaps I should have a go at one of those. I've played LoB a lot, but mostly solo in an SCS installation and this will be an unmodded game, using a custom party. That includes: Dragon disciple (Legacy). For solo I prefer the basic sorcerer, but fewer spells isn't much of a handicap in a party, so the resistances and higher HPs of this kit seem attractive. Dwarf fighter/cleric (Testament) Halfling fighter/thief (Bequest) Gnome fighter/illusionist (Endowment) Dwarf berserker (Will) Dwarf dwarven defender (Heritage)
You might notice the party is somewhat lacking in stature. That's primarily because I very rarely use defensive buffs, so the shorty saving throw bonus becomes very helpful. I don't use buffs much solo either, but do dodge a lot then and it's much more difficult and time-consuming to do that with a party, so I expect them to just stand and fight most of the time.
My initial impression is that they should be able to steamroller their way through most of the game, but we'll see . I tend to tire of party play much quicker than solo anyway, so if progress does prove to be slower than I anticipate I'll probably not want to persevere.
After leaving Candlekeep the first port of call was Beregost - where Algernon was relieved of his cloak at the cost of some reputation. The next target for the group was Drizzt's scimitars. He's currently bugged in LoB and doesn't fight back - thus making him an easy source of 12k XP once gnolls have knocked him unconscious.
Heading north to find the belt ogre, Testament was one-shotted by a gibberling creeping up on him unnoticed.
Continuing onwards, the ankheg near Tenya managed a hit, but Will survived it with the help of his rage
and the party travelled on to Ulgoth's Beard. Dushai was killed there, pushing reputation down to 3, which makes visiting towns hazardous.
Several reputation quests in the wilderness improved reputation a bit before coming back to Beregost. At the temple there the sirines were charmed and pulled outside, to be savaged by dogs before being finished off.
That provided everyone with the opportunity to level up for the first time.
At Firewine Bridge, Bentan was charmed in order to get his scroll without losing more reputation. Fighting through some kobolds there though, Will was hit twice in succession by criticals as he tried to withdraw and he slumped to the floor. As I normally only allow levelling in parties when everyone can do it at once, I tend not to fight while someone is dead. However, rather than run the gauntlet of more kobolds the others did go to shoot down Meilum for his bracers
being going back to Beregost temple to raise Will.
Reputation took a knock back down again in Beregost when the party killed Firebead after getting his scroll case.
In order for Legacy to learn Bhaal CLW he therefore donated 800 gold to the temple to get 4 reputation increases to top up a couple more quests.
In Nashkel Will dug up the ankheg armor - that's a major upgrade from the splint he's been wearing, which will help his tanking ability. Shortly after that though there was a third death when the party failed to interrupt any of Zordral's spells. Heritage did well there to soak up 3 acid arrows (any one of which in LoB lasts so long that it would have killed anyone targeted).
The session started with Greywolf being blinded. He was the first of a number of victims to go that way while clearing the Cloud Peak Mountains. Gorion's belt meant that there was no need to use blind against the winter wolf that allowed everyone to take another level.
By now most of the party had magical melee weapons, but Heritage was still short of a hammer - Bassilus supplied that after being doomed and blinded.
Melicamp was picked up in that area, but before trying (and failing) to restore him Bequest used some +1 arrows taken from Sendai's friends to shoot the High Hedge golems. That proved a costly endeavor halfway through when a movement click failed to take and the golem smashed Bequest to the floor.
While passing through Beregost the party decided to take on Silke. In this installation she could be safely blinded while neutral, but I played it fair against her. She was already in trouble though after her opening spell was disrupted and blindness sealed her fate.
Reputation continued to rise up slowly with the defeat of Bjornin's half-ogres - that also provided Will with a +1 shield to further improve his tanking ability. He put that to the test in the ankheg nest and passed with flying colors - none of the ankhegs managing to touch him, though one did successfully spit at Heritage on the way round.
Outside the nest it's more difficult to get into melee range before an ankheg can attack and Will was put into danger against the final ankheg in the area - surviving at least a couple of attacks before Heritage arrived and the ankheg was blinded.
On their way to Durlag's Tower the party were ambushed by a basilisk. To be safe there you really need to move every character individually as a lot of bumping occurs if you use group moves. I didn't play safe though and the basilisk focused its gaze just before Heritage got out of range.
I had no remedy for that at the time, so had to go to the temple to buy a scroll before travelling the same route a number of times until coming across a weather-beaten statue.
Heritage was in trouble again at Durlag's Tower when a mis-click (my fault this time) put him in harm's way against a battle horror.
After returning from the temple the remaining battle horror on the path was dealt with without further trouble. The one on the wall was dragged to the end where it's possible to safely attack it with a 2-handed weapon - to speed things up though it was still blinded to take advantage of the 4 penalty to AC that causes.
The doom guard was dragged inside the tower and blinded and its death meant just a couple more ghasts allowed everyone to level up again.
Legacy now knew invisibility and could have used that to block ghasts for easy kills, but nearly all of them were just shot down instead. There was plenty more XP on offer on the roof - Endowment having splashed out to buy a PfP scroll after failing to find one on her travels. While in the mood for basilisks, more of those were hunted in Mutamin's area before tackling the mage himself. Unfortunately none of his spells were interrupted by a general attack and Will died of the lingering acid arrow damage well after Mutamin went down (resting or travel does not stop that damage in the way it does for poison).
Blindness helped against Kirian's party, but she still managed to cause trouble with her own acid arrows. Bequest was fatally injured,
but Testament found enough cure spells to keep himself alive after being hit once.
Moving on to the sirine area, Will's rage lasted comfortably long enough to shoot down the groups of 3 sirines. The first 2 golems were shot with cheap magical arrows, but with those running short Will successfully tanked the final golem with the help of the girdle of bluntness.
With another level not too far off, the doomsayer and revenant were both blinded to provide contributions.
Narcillicus offered up a pair of mustard jellies for Will to tank, before a web allowed automatic hits on the mage. After being tagged by arrows of biting taken from sirines, Narcillicus failed to cast a spell and his death provided a further level all round.
Comments
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 6
To the Wandering Village! This area has some very nice items: Nym sells a Protection from Magic scroll as well as a djinni lamp, the Avarine Decanter. If you free the djinni right off the bat, he gives you the Brazen Bands, bracers which grant +5 AC, making them by far the best bracers in the game. We also buy the Air Genesi [sic] Armor for Dipper to help with his poor Reflex saves (it gives +2). There's also a really nice mod-introduced bow for sale:-2 AC on hit may not seem like much, since it doesn't even stack, but getting an extra chance to hit an enemy is a very underappreciated bonus. Attack bonuses/THAC0 have a much bigger impact on gameplay than people tend to think.
Since we're in a good spot and I don't want to take any chances with Limha the witch, I decide to level up everyone in the party, which notably puts Star and Asriel at level 15. Star can now cast Mass Invisibility, which is an area-effect Improved Invisibility effect for 10 rounds, and Asriel can now cast Aura of Vitality, which grants party-wide +4 to STR, DEX, and CON for 2 rounds per level (1 round per level in vanilla). Those are very excellent offensive and defensive buffs that will give us a solid edge in coming fights. Better still, Marco now has 4 attacks per round when hasted.
But the fight with Limha proves extremely uneventful. Without her arbitrary immunity to stun, it only takes one bad roll for her Fortitude save of 11 to fail against the 25 DC of Star's Icelance spell.
If she pre-buffed with MGOI or Seven Eyes (she's high enough level to cast either), or if she had better rolls, we'd have had a much harder fight.
I underestimate the Witch Lights and Death's Candles deeper in the Fell Wood. I'm accustomed to wiping them all out with Wail of the Banshee in solo runs, but the battle lasts much longer in normal mode, which gives the enemy a lot of time to zap the party.
By the time we slay the last Treant blocking our way to the next area, Star has hit level 16, gaining access to Great Shout.
Great Shout is really strong, but it's actually received a substantial nerf from the original game. In vanilla, Great Shout stuns the target for 1 round with no saving throw. A failed saving throw extends the duration. Without that nerf, Great Shout could be used to stun-lock pretty much anything, since semiOverhaul removes immunity to stun from certain bosses.
We have a nice set of options for this party--very diverse and pretty fun to use. We paralyze the Frost Spiders in the next area with Carrion Summons and bomb the Snow Trolls with Fireballs while Asriel tanks using Will o' Wisp form.
We bomb the Barbarian Warriors as well with Asriel's Fire Storm and Star's Cone of Cold (though the enemy has 20/- resistance to cold!), but there are a lot of fighters with a lot of HP out here, and they apply some heavy pressure when we fail to bring them down quickly.
Next up, dragons. They're tough, but they have no real tricks up their sleeves. Dipper continues to be a badass.
You probably haven't noticed, but Dipper is in slot 5. Why is our front-line fighter way at the back of the formation, while Star, our squishy sorcerer, is up at the front?
Well, this is a party of pairs. Dipper and Mabel, Asriel and Frisk, and Star and Marco. I have a rule that they always have to be next to their partner in the formation, even if it would be more efficient to split them up.
Anyway, I screw up Marco's leveling by giving him a level in fighter, forgetting that this permanently locks him out of gaining any further monk levels. He'll still be a strong character, but he won't be a very good monk.
By the way: in the barbarian area, there's a Frost Rose in the southeast corner of the map. If you bring it all the way back to Venla the Healer in the Wandering Village, she can make a potion out of it. The potion is really weak in vanilla, but semiOverhaul buffs it considerably.
Star tries out Great Shout, but by this time, I've further nerfed Great Shout by making the caster get stunned and deafened on a failed save. It's pretty safe to use, since the caster gets a +5 bonus and the stun only lasts one round, but mages and sorcerers have lousy Fortitude saves. Fortunately, in a party run, we can afford to disable one character if it also disables some of the enemies.
Fire Seeds help us burn down the jellies to the south. We proceed to the slavers up north, where Star's Confusion spell sends the enemy into disarray. Asriel follows up with a Fire Storm, blinding the duergar bolters.
Our tactics get turned against us in the fight with Harshom. We have good Will saves because so many party members are spellcasters, but there are always critical failures on saving throws in IWD2.
Our bard and our sorcerer are both disabled, but Mabel has Exaltation memorized, and Star is back to work the very next round. Asriel torches the enemy once again. He already nailed the enemy mages with Insect Plague, so we have little to worry about.
Unfortunately, the monk trials are bugged somehow. We can't activate any of the levers, which means it's impossible to proceed without killing the monks.
There is one other way, though. By packing a bunch of summons up against the locked door to the next area and then having Asriel switch to the gigantic Rhinoceros Beetle form, we can teleport him to the other side!
From there, all we have to do is give Asriel all of our containers and quest items, export the rest of the party, then import the party on the other side of the door!
But that would take a long time, so I just use CTRL-J. Next up, the Underdark!
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer
BG1: 1, 2, 3SoD: 1, 2
BG2: 1, 2, 3, 4
ToB: 1, 2, 3, 4
I had to restart this fight twice due to my version of Ascension (v1.5 BETA), so I threw away the screenshots of those fights.
- The first time was during the fight with The Five. Not sure who it was, but I think someone tried to activate a Chain Contingency and the game crashed because of it.
- Imoen died in Slayer form the second time, which causes the bridges to the three pools to not appear. The pools can still be cleared using Dimension Door but Melissan and The Five will not appear after the third pool is cleared.
Before I leave the Pocket Plane, I put up a Chain Contingency (Spell Turning + PfMW + Spell Shield), buff myself with spells, and then use a charged Wish to haste my golems and refresh my spells. But I forgot to set Addy's AI mode after building her, which will later cost me her life. Here we go...
Not even two seconds in and all the demons are crowding around me. I manage to get Improved Alacrity off the ground and Dimension Door away from the group, then I try to gate in my planetar maid, but it wild surges and gets me a Minor Globe instead. The second try works.
Addy suffers a vorpal hit from the right-most Fallen Solar somehow and splits in half. Damn it! My golems are hit with Bodhi's cloud of bats too, which causes them to suffer double damage over time because they're hasted. Mitty II can't take this many repeated hits and crumbles. RIP, my dear.
This is going south pretty fast, so I gate in another planetar to take on the left-most Solar and summon a swarm of Mordy Swords, then I use a charged Wish and see what I can do. I take the option for double-length Time Stop and Improved Alacrity. I cast Shapechange and transform into the Iron Golem and eliminate the left-most Solar.
Irenicus' fatal flaw in this fight is that he starts with Mislead and spell protections but does not put up PfMW. I dispelled his SI: Divination and Spell Shield with a Spell Thrust and Pierce Shield earlier and the planetar dispelled his Improved Invis with True Sight, so I transform into the much faster Greater Wolfwere and tear him to shreds. I cull a succubus using illithid form. I try to do the same to the Marilith but its immune to intelligence modification, apparently.
With most of the enemies eliminated, the Fallen Solar on the right is soon killed and the rest of the adds are toast. Imoen comes back to her senses which allows us to properly progress.
The three pools aren't too much trouble. My golems and a pair of planetars are enough to clear them out, though I lose both of the normal Adamantite golems. Only Adam and one of Mitty's kids are still alive. At the last pool, I summon the Planetar Sentai Squad, an Improved Kitthix swarm, and buff even further. I protect both of my golems from magic energy and haste everyone, relying on the pool to refresh my spells.
Now its time to fight The Five. My first action is to use a charged scroll of Protection from Magic on Sendai, Abazigal, and Illasera. That should keep them from casting anything and dispel their existing buffs. Without using the Wand of Lightning, I would undoubtedly pick Abazigal first because he's a dangerous fighter/mage, as Krieg learned firsthand.
I have my dudes pick off Illasera first because her anti-magical arrows are very dangerous to me. This causes Melissan to come down to play.
Sendai uses her ring to join the fray, but I have my dudes kill her next because she gives Melissan considerable bonuses against magic while she's alive.
Melissan gates in a bunch of demons and another Fallen Solar. Gromnir is next because I can use Melissan's brief knockout to kill Abazigal.
But it doesn't last long enough for us to do so. I get too close to the Fallen Solar and it shoots me with an arrow, tearing down my spell protections. I back off and use Improved Alacrity to restore them. Abazigal goes down next.
The Fallen Solar teleport down to the lower-left pool and casts Creeping Doom at me while I'm in the middle of Improved Alacrity. I manage to get IA off in time and cast SI: Conjuration, restore my defenses, and top it off with a woven Red Fireshield.
I gate in a couple more planetars, summon another Mordy Sword swarm, use another charged wish for spell refreshing.
The demonic detritus has been mostly dealt with, so I single out Melissan and spam Lower Resistance on her, following up with Greater Malison and Unluck, though Unluck doesn't work. Nahal's Wildstrike is next and it takes.
The Fallen Solar tries to make an escape but we're in hot pursuit. This solar has no resistance to fire, which means its time for the Planetar Platoon to spam Fire Storm. That helps put an end to it.
There was another Fallen Solar down at the bottom, so I have my dudes kill it next because I can't have it dispelling my buffs from range.
Sarevok is next. He's just been wandering around for the whole fight and is easily the most harmless of them all. I'm hoping to use Melissan's downtime to surround her with my summons and beat her down.
Only Yaga-Shura and Melissan are left and I'm running low on the high-powered spells, so I wish for a refresher. Very soon after this, Yaga-Shura dies.
Melissan isn't down for long and she casts Sunray, which I find pretty unusual because there aren't any undead around. But this spell is lethal to Adam because the sunlight corrodes his adamantite body, reducing his physical damage resistances to 75% from 99%.
Now that all the Bhaalspawn are dead, Melissan is rendered mortal and she teleports to the other side of the throne, gating in demons and attempting a Time Stop. But I saw this coming since this is exactly how Krieg died. Not trusting my Staff to protect me (as it inexplicably fails to provide immunity to Time Stop every now and then), I cast Focus before her Time Stop reaches completion.
Melissan tries to chase me down during the Time Stop but she's too slow. I lower her magic resistance again while time is stopped. After time resumes, she fights Adam. I cast Improved Alacrity again and gate in some more planetars and use my second-to-last level 9 spell for a charged Wish, hoping to get another refresher.
I don't get the option and I don't get it on the second try either.
I try using 3 Chaotic Weaves to try to get it, but it still fails, though I manage to get everyone intoxicated. I need to keep the planetar pressure up. My dudes manage to kill all the glabrezus but my planetars get carved up. Adam finally falls and splits in half.
Melissan tries to soften me up with a Spellstrike, but I refreshed the Nahal's Wildstrike on her and it turns into a fruitless wild surge. I doubt it had any effect on me because I had Spell Trap/Turning/Shield up all at once.
Still out of level 9 spells, I back off and reach into my trove of scrolls. I've got 3 scrolls of Wish which ought to do it.
With my spells refreshed, Melissan teleports down near me and, under Improved Alacrity, I summon 3 planetars, lower her magic resistance and saves, and Breach her a couple of times so that the Planetars' Fire Storms will damage her. I throw in an Incendiary Cloud for good measure. With no reinforcements to depend on, Melissan finally yields.
Nukesalot chooses to become a planar power. Where he will go and what he will do are unknown, though it's been rumored by the odd sage that he's on the run from both Tymora and Beshaba after he was caught two-timing both of them at once.
Nukesalot - Chaos Sorcerer 50
Balthazar - Monk 30
Drunn (half-elf fighter / druid, Gate70); Hoodie (Human Totemic Druid, Grond0)
Drunn is struggling to remember what happened a few days ago. He vaguely recalls heading to the coast and using a potion of clarity against sirines before moving on to investigate the cave of Black Alaric. Hoodie doesn't have any suitable weapons for the flesh golems inside but provides suitable encouragement "You'll be OK". For once, he is correct.
You need this for the Hall of Heroes, right?
Nukesalot the Chaos Sorcerer : @Flashburn
Full Tetrology Run
Notable mods: SCS v30 (only in BG2; long-duration mage/priest prebuffs only, no Tactics challenges except Original Tactics Improved Bodhi), BP Ascension v1.5 BETA; Chaos Sorcerer v2.4, Golem Construction v5.3, More Style for Mages v1.54, Item Upgrade, aTweaks, Rogue Rebalancing, Tweaks Anthology
Difficulty: Insane (extra damage disabled)
Special: Solo Run
Start (March 2018)
Finish (May 2018)
Grond0: Peer, Elf Archer. Chaotic Good
Corey_Russell: Hunter, Human Undead Hunter. Lawful Good
Gate70: Biff, Dwarf Barbarian. Neutral Evil
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975701/#Comment_975701
The session started with massacring a bunch of basilisks. Biff raged against Mutamin, though he died too quickly to have done much anyway. Kirian & co also failed to last long - Biff's high damage potential providing much of the explanation for that
After buying some potions of Mirrored Eyes we moved on to Durlag's Tower. The battle horrors provided a bit of competition, but no serious threat, while ghasts had little chance to penetrate Hunter's armor (and no chance to hold him even if they did). There was a bit of a trap delay before moving on to the roof, where a couple of potions provided protection for Hunter to lead the way against the basilisks.
The Bandit Camp was the next target. Biff tended to dash ahead as usual and picked up a fair number of bandit arrows as a result while forging a path to Taurgosz.
In the first Cloakwood area, Hunter decided he couldn't wait to get an improved sword from Aldeth Sashenstar and sided with Seniyad and the other druids. In the second area a group of ettercaps were pulled back from a web trap. The last one though is too far away to use that tactic safely and Hunter got stuck trying. Peer switched to call shot with acid arrows and Biff to rage attacks with throwing axes. That would probably have killed the attacking ettercap before it could inflict too much damage, but Hunter managed to break free from the web at the first opportunity anyway.
At the mine, Hunter threw in a fireball which killed one of the mages. The other was hit with a poisoned arrow and failed to cast any aggressive spells.
In the City the ogre mage was an early target. With Biff now wielding Spider's Bane and Hunter's natural immunity to hold, the supporting carrion crawlers were not much of a threat.
Peer, Archer L7, 84 HPs, 158 kills
Hunter, Undead Hunter L7, 86 HPs, 93 kills, deaths 0
Biff, Barbarian L7, 92 HPs, 179 kills, deaths 0
Biff put his sword to good use in that session and won't now be caught in the BG1 kills race.
Diary of Yazuth
Upon arriving at the bandit camp we had some tough battles.First against Tazok;
Then against Dark Horizon Assassins;
Upon going to Cloakwood, Sirene was held and as a result ALMOST died. However she survived.
Drunn (half-elf fighter / druid, Gate70); Hoodie (Human Totemic Druid, Grond0)
The druidic duo were stood outside the Iron Throne headquarters without a plan. Who needs a plan when you have a potion of magic blocking. Drunn's armour class was enough to keep him relatively uninjured for the five round duration, by which time Hoodie had wreaked havoc on the mercenaries within.
On returning to the city we kept Belt alive in the midst of insect plagues, totemic summons and carefully controlled nymphs. It was a coronation to remember, not least for the lack of actual coronation.
Down into the Thieves maze we went, Drunn throwing an oil of speed to Hoodie who subsequently remarked that this allowed him to keep pace with Drunn if only to see jellies and slimes vanquished rather than being able to help much. Hoodie used a Protection from Undead scroll on Drunn (who cannot read due to an intelligence of 4).
Hoodie then volunteered to protect Drunn from lightning. Drunn could have done this himself but that allowed him to use another spell, so he protected himself from fire and marched into traps surrounding two skeleton warriors. Fireballs erupted harmlessly and two lightning bolts fizzled repeatedly between the skeleton warriors, Drunn and the walls. One skeleton warrior collapsed from the lightning, as did Drunn.
Moral of the story. Check the spell cast successfully and the effect is active before assuming all is well. Grond0 and I both thought the spell had completed but on reflection there may have been some sort of multiplayer glitch or delay.
The Meatgrinder Challenge - Second update
Previous updates:
I decided to play a bit more carefully after my previous difficulties, and while completing all the quests in the city of Baldur's Gate, I didn't lose a single party member as a result. I used summons whenever possible, even in situations where this normally wouldn't be a good option: Aetius would simply cast invisibility 10' radius, allowing my party to first get into a position allowing them to minimize any potential risks - just like in this battle here, against the ogre mages:
A similiar tactic and some wand charges and magic missles allowed the party to even deal with Degrodel's guardians without taking any damage or using any potions.
Soon, the was nothing left do do in the entire city - the Iron Throne HQ battle was also done via sneaking past with invisibility 10' radius first and taking on the enemy with summons and full buffs from behind. Back in Candlekeep, the party only had to make their way to the exit of the catacombs - no troubles here, I avoided some of the more unpleasant battles. Back in the city, while breaking into the Flaming Fist HQ, we encountered the first potentially deadly situation in quite a while: The cleric mercenaries started to cast three glyphs of warding against three very grouped up party members - in was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to split up everyone in time, and one glyph alone could kill one of the lower hp randomized characters, thanks to the double damage on insane difficulty. Three glyphs would propably result in a dead party. I decided to sacrifice five potions of absorption to negate any potential damage entirely (I still can buy more, though I will need some for Durlag's Tower - I hope I'll have enough):
Sadly, I also accidentally killed a "real" flaming first mercenary during this fight:
With the hit to my reputation and no rep-boosting quests remaining, all I could do was get back to 18 with temple bribes. Still, I should have enough money for everything I need.
After dealing with Cythandria and the assassins, it was time for the coronation. Once again, while I usually like to use some potions at this point, I was pretty sure summons and full buffs would be enough, and I was right:
By now, my party is finally starting to deal some okay physical damage, though going into melee combat is still pretty much out of the question. Sextus, for example, can still be easily killed in a single hit.
I used my summons to clear the ice island and talked to Mendas after buying some magical ammo to hunt down the werewolves. For some reason, I was unable to find the child in the shipwreck, thus leaving this quest unsolved. Because tight spaces and melee combat are always the worst option for this party, I simply decided to always lure the wolves in the wreck downstairs, into a waiting group of summons and ranged attackers. The greater wolfwere was killed via wand damage:
It was quite important for Ingeburg to hit level 10 here, as her spirit animals now hit with +6 claws, thus allowing them to actually hurt and kill Loup Garous! I have no one who would be any good at dealing with those foes otherwise (Sextus has *Bastard Sword, but he's a terrible melee fighter) - so the remainder of this quest was mostly a job for spirit lions.
Finally, I did finish clearing the upper levels of Durlag's Tower. The lower levels await.
Some more updates: I used all of the wisdom tomes on Sabellius, Ingeburg got the intelligence tome, and Swidhun permanently improved his strength. My level 4 spellpick for Aetius was, obviously, stoneskin.
Enuhal
Diary of Yazuth
We left Cloakwood to do some shopping, unfortunately we were attacked upon arrival at the Friendly Arms Inn, and being unprepared Tenya was killed. (Completely forgot about that ambush.After raising her and buying fire protection we took on the dragon. At least Sirene did. There wasn't enough fire protection for all of us.
We then proceeded to the mines where web once again proved to be a real boon.
South of the Friendly Arms Inn, we killed Davenport et al. Web was again most useful.
At the top of the mines, Tytus proved to be VERY dangerous. I've never met him before and if we hadn't been buffed, he would have prevailed. Again web was the spell that saved us.
I looked up Tytus with EE Keeper and discovered why he was so dangerous. Level 9 Fighter. Str 17 Dex 17 Con 17. Axes ***** Armour Full Plate +1. I presume that he is from a mod ?
EDIT
The mines themselves were straightforward, far easier than my usual set-up.Hareishan's body and possessions couldn't be found, though I did see that she had been killed. I suspect that this was due to my use of ice storm. I had intended to install the modification that causes the dropping of items upon freezing, but suspect that didn't happen. Not a great loss.
Davaeorn ended up panicking whilst invisible. We didn't have any way of eliminating invisibility so we spent the time healing ourselves. When he eventually became visible, he used web which meant that only two of us could attack him.
He almost killed Imoen but was webbed himself just in time to save her.
We now have to decide where to go next. There are 3 main possibilities: Northern Tales of the Sword Coast Quests; That is tempting as I have never installed the mod before; Go to the Section HQ in Beregost, also tempting due to the loot and experience gained; or go to Baldur's Gate.
EDIT 2
The game actually decided for me what I needed to do next.We took Perwell to his mother at the Friendly Arms Inn and immediately I was accosted by Jet' Laya who gave me a new quest as she joined the party. The party having become top-heavy with Clerics, I decided to let Yeslik depart for the moment.
I like it when things happen like this. It makes role playing so much easier.
It looks as if I am the only one playing at the moment. Presumably everyone else has been on the beach enjoying this glorious sunshine. (That is, if mainland Europe is also enjoying these high temperatures)
Previous updates:
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/977200/#Comment_977200
Durlag's Tower went quite well. I did have to rest a few times, still being very reliant on my summons, but the battles themselves - very decent. My first completely clean kill of the dwarven warders without taking damage or getting hit by any spells as far as I can remember:
Nothing of note happened in the second or third level. The chessboard was solved via a double web sequencer, fireballs and some ranged attacks. As usual, I made sure to provide my party with full lightning immunity, in case I needed to move around:
For the demon knight, I went with full fire immunity instead (having gathered all green fire resistance scrolls and many potions). To make sure these potentially vital buffs (as a single fireball would've been enough to wipe out most of the party) stayed intact, Hjalmarr rushed in to absorb the expected dispel magic, additionally protected by rings of fire resistance before regaining his full fire immunity via a resistance potion. However, his magic resistance allowed him to ignore the fireball anyway, and his rage prevented any attempts at disabling him:
Thus, I returned to Ulgoth's Beard - travelling from Baldur's Gate under invisibility 10' radius, the safest way to avoid the initial ambush and the two deadly cult assassins.
Spirit lions proved to be quite good at dealing with the cult members, as most of them don't have access to magical weapons:
I lured the final cult group outside to avoid directly dealing with more assassins (can't survive any backstabs, except with ironskin/stoneskin active) before buffing for Aec'Letec. Quite a few potions were used, most importantly potions of fortitude and magic shielding to ensure everyone's survival and storm giant strength/heroism to improve the groups damage output dramatically. No trouble here:
I made my way to the undercity, had summons deal with the few remaining foes and used more potions buffs (this time mainly to increase ranged damge, so we're talking about several dexterity increasing potions, heroism and power) for Sarevok. When walking back after talking to Sarevok, Hjalmarr triggered a web trap by accident, and I had to equip the ring of free action to ensure his survival. Since Sarevok was still hasted at this point (and he would go on to be so during the entire battle, as I simply forgot to use my arrows of dispelling), the final boss managed to get in a hit, almost killing Hjallmar with an enormous 60 damage attack.
Luckily, the summons distracted Sarevok, allowing Hjalmarr to get to safety. Meanwhile, Semaj, who was the only one of Sarevok's allies to follow his boss into battle, was killed by the remaining party, and he only got to use his greater malison (which was now useless):
Thanks to the potion buffs, it was only a matter of a few very short seconds before Sarevok himself was done, as well:
SoD awaits (certainly the hardest part of the series for this type of run), but I might put this run on hold or at least slow down my speed of play by a lot: Deadfire is coming out tomorrow, and I can't wait to play it, having been a huge fan of the first PoE game (I went for seven straight playthroughs in a row back then, so if the sequel holds up, I might be busy for a while).
Enuhal
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 7
The Underdark! Basically, this whole area is just about fighting a massive horde of drider fighters, clerics, and mages. Star has difficulty stunning the fighters due to their strong Fortitude saves, but we can disrupt enemy cleric spells by taking advantage of their poor Reflex saves. Icelance and Chromatic Orb both give us short-lasting stunning spells with high save DC's due to Star's two pips in Spell Focus: Evocation.One possible wild card is Imphraili, a transmuter who casts Flesh to Stone. That could mean instant death for pretty much anyone, but as luck would have it, she never gets a chance to get the spell off the ground. As a high-level druid, Asriel can cast Finger of Death as a level 8 spell, and Imphraili makes a low roll.
Imphraili's experiments, a trio of modified driders and one or two Flesh Golems, apply heavy pressure (the Celeridrider has 3 APR with a +25 attack bonus!) but ultimately crumple to Asriel's powerful summons: a Shambling Mound, a Rhinoceros Beetle, and a Wyvern.
Dipper has high enough Alchemy to concoct a poison that will instantly kill the Viciscamera, giving us a slight advantage in the incoming battle. We've still got a lot of driders to deal with, including multiple spellcasters who come in waves and cast both Icelance and Dispel Magic, either of which could prove fatal on a failed save. We take down a lot of them, but I'm concerned about maintaining our advantage over the course of a long fight. I send out Asriel to disable a bunch of driders with his new Tremor spell. In semiOverhaul, Tremor knocks the targets unconscious (even undead!) on a failed Reflex save (Fortitude save in the next update), and unlike in vanilla, that unconsciousness persists after getting hit, giving us 3 rounds of automatic hits. Unfortunately, it's not party-friendly, and even a high-level monk like Marco can roll a critical failure.
To my dismay, Mabel's Exaltation spell fails to wake Marco up. Tremor uses a different unconsciousness opcode than normal sleep spells, so Exaltation is useless. We bail him out with Frisk's Hold Monster spell and Star's Mass Invisibility spell.
Hold Monster doesn't last long with so many enemy clerics to cast Remove Paralysis or Dispel Magic, and more driders keep coming in, faster than we can fight them back. We focus on the thinner herd to the east while our Rhinoceros Beetle rapidly crumbles under heavy pressure in the west.
The beetle collapses and the enemy closes in. We frustrate their efforts with a Chaos spell and Star tries stunning some of the driders with Great Shout. In semiOverhaul, Great Shout offers a save, but the stun is much longer-lasting at 5 whole rounds, and as an Evocation spell, it benefits from Spell Focus.
No more waves come in, and the existing driders prove unable to break the party. Marco and Dipper have the damage output to bring them down.
I love hammers and axes. It's just so satisfying to see those critical hits.
Before we report to Malavon, we dispatch some drow backstabbers nearby. Star is high enough level that she can break through their spell resistance.
Due to some weird bug, Malavon doesn't recognize that we've completed our mission. We have to use the console to fix the problem. Basically, there are a few combinations of variables that should allow you to claim success, and one possibility was erroneously not present in his dialogue.
Star is now level 18 and can cast Disintegrate and Wail of the Banshee. A slice of calamari tries to get in our way, only for Dipper to slice it in half and Star to slay all its allies with a piercing scream.
We spread apart the party to decrease the number of people exposed to the mind flayers' Mind Blast spells, but no one ends up failing their Will saves. We rush the Elder Brain and splatter it in seconds; it has precious few defenses.
Only after it dies do its goons arrive at the scene. The golems are magic-immune, but the others don't last long with Star on the map. Even the dwarves can't resist her Wail of the Banshee without rolling a 20 on their save.
Next up, Mirabel and Majrash. With lots of Harpies and Earth Elementals and tons of buffs from Tactics, they can be extremely dangerous. We enter the area under invisibility, wipe out some elementals with Wail of the Banshee, and discover that the mages are immune to Hold Monster. Bosses have some arbitrary immunities in IWD2. They're even immune to stun, though the current update for semiOverhaul removes that.
Majrash goes down under heavy pressure, but Mirabel begins casting Disintegrate, and by wiggling around our party members and seeing which way Mirabel turns, I can tell that she's targeting Star. In the current update, semiOverhaul's Disintegrate does massive slashing damage instead of an instant death effect, but in this install, in this run, Disintegrate is still a permanent death on a failed save. Star's Seven Eyes spell has already lost its Eye of Fortitude, but we have a trick up our sleeve: we've recently found a buckler that can block the spell!
But because Star has Mordenkainen's Sword active, she can't equip any shields. In the end, the spell hits... but Star's 24 spell resistance blocks it entirely!
We slay Mirabel with the help of poison and bleeding wounds effects that bypass her Mirror Images. Dipper gets confused, so I hide Oswald and Maralie before Dipper gets a chance to take a swing at them.
I love Maralie's voice. She's just so ridiculously cute.
Next up, Kuldahar!
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 8
We start out in Kuldahar surrounded by Wights and with our defenses lowered. Wights in IWD2 have a much weaker form of level drain than in BG2: the level drain only penalizes max HP by -5 and attack and damage rolls by -1, and the effect offers a Fortitude save to resist. However, that energy drain effect turns out to be largely meaningless, as it seems that Mabel, one of our lower-leveled party members, still has enough clerics level to blast them with Turn Undead. We also have the Hammer of Lucerne, a polearm with a disruption effect.For everything that isn't undead, we have Wail of the Banshee. This party is really productive and efficient in semiOverhaul.
We trade over 200,000 gold in magical items, slightly buffing our stats while emptying out our Bags of Holding. Notable loot includes the Every God Ring, nerfed to +5 Wisdom in semiOverhaul. While we're in Kuldahar Valley, we do a quest that I've gotten accustomed to skipping: pacifying the spirit of Mother Egenia.
Next, we need to clear the Yuan-ti out of the Temple of Sseth in Chult, easily accessible from a cool swirling blue portal thingy in the middle of Kuldahar. Asriel torches them, Star freezes them, and Marco bops them on their noggins.
Ojaiha, the high priest, goes down quickly without his allies to support him. We proceed to his chamber, where the Coiled Cabal mages teleport in en masse. Asriel knocks them all out (along with himself) using Tremor, allowing the rest of the party to sweep in, reveal the mages with Invisibility Purge, and stomp them while they're down.
Finally, the Viper's Fang Assassins come out to play. Star blasts the leader, Ashra, with Great Shout, stunning her for several rounds.
We pin her down from afar with missile weapons, axe the remaining snake people, and then bash in Jezrael's head, breaking the strength of the Yuan-ti temple.
Among lots of lesser loot, we get a Ring of Greater Regeneration, which is buffed to 1 HP per 2 seconds (ten times as fast as in vanilla!) and a modified version of the Black Adder bastard sword, which has a chance of summoning a viper with every hit.
This gives us an unreliable but theoretically unlimited source of summoned critters, as you can hit your own vipers to try to summon more of them.
Finally, we summon Chahopek, the black dragon guardian of the temple. Chahopek has 300 HP, sky-high damage resistance (in the latest update of semiOverhaul, 700 HP and much lower damage resistance), and powerful attacks. We want to keep Chahopek focused on attacking Dipper, our best fighter, and we want to keep Dipper alive as long as possible. To do this, we first wall out Chahopek by summoning a Rhinoceros Beetle (notable for having the biggest circle in the game) on the staircase, covering it with an Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (thus creating a massive invincible wall), and then having Dipper start chopping up the lizard.
With a ludicrous AC of 64, Dipper is untouchable.
But then the dragon teleports to the party, and suddenly Dipper is stranded behind the same Rhinoceros Beetle we hoped to use to trap the dragon.
Realistically, our only hope is to use Marco's powerful archery skills to shoot down the dragon from afar. But the dragon chases him. Marco's arrows are useless at close range.
But to my surprise, Chahopek cannot reach him--our Shambling Mound's Entangle effect has snared the dragon!
With Chahopek entangled, we can have Marco shoot it down from afar while Asriel zaps it. The dragon falls!
We rest and return to Kuldahar, where many waves of orogs, harpies, and yuan-ti fighters, archers, clerics, and mages await us. First is Cedra, a high-level mage with lots of strong defenses, including a Mirror Image and Fire Shield that negates Dipper's attacks even as it lashes out at him.
Mabel fails a save against Chaos. Frisk cures it with a book from the Black Raven Monastery that casts Exaltation, only to get confused themselves shortly after. Mabel can cast Exaltation without that book, however, and both our cleric and our bard are back in order.
We break through Cedra's Mirror Images, but her Fire Shield deals lots of damage to the party in the process. We bring her down at heavy cost. Notice Asriel taking extra damage from the Fire Shield--he is vulnerable to elemental damage when in Creeping Doom form, but has been buffed with Protection from Fire specifically to mitigate the damage.
In Tactics, the game ends if Iselore dies, which means we need to heal him occasionally and even seal him in a Tortoise Shell or Resilient Sphere spell if he's under heavy pressure. We focus on the enemy clerics first, as they're easier to kill, before proceeding to the mages.
The enemy comes in waves from either side, so we save up our resources so we can deploy them later. Star wipes out a patch of critters with Wail of the Banshee, and Mabel's spontaneous casting gives us easy access to Healing Circle.
We keep up the pressure and make sure that we engage the enemy before they ever get close to Iselore. With lots of summons on the map and our buffs still intact, we have the numbers to overpower the enemy.
Next up, Dragon's Eye.
Diary of Yazuth
After Jet 'Laya joined us we went in search of her sister. However things did not go well and Tenya was hurt by undead thus losing levels. She was the only one who could cast minor restoration so we had to temporarily give up the search and go to a temple.I decided that we needed more exprience before restarting the search and therefore we took on the Section HQ in Beregost. This was going well, but jet was killed and we had to sneak out to raise her.
We are now about to re-enter in the hopes of having more comprehensive victories in future.
EDIT
Not quite unplayable, but saves take over 20 seconds and I think that it will get worse as the game progresses.Too many mods I think. I believe that it is DSoSC that is the problem as things were OK untill Jet 'Laya joined the party.
A quick update as to what happened before I abandoned the game.
One of the section mages being invisible was able to wipe out Tenya and Jet Laya and badly hurt the other members also. However they survived and they were able to get the dead members raised. The problem appears to involve the world map which has turned black.
Just like the last one, it ended at Saablic Tan. I approached this fight under the assumption that a single Mass Dominate spell on the first round would be able to charm most of the enemies, allowing me to vanish and let them fight it out until they were weak enough for me to survive the pressure. I did the math in Excel and found that I could expect half of the enemies to fail their saves against Mass Dominate.
But it seems that several of them had completely undocumented immunities to charm, and not all of the archers failed their saves. The missile damage ate through my Mirror Images, allowing damage to come through, and then the hitstun from the damage held me in place and allowed the Slayer Knights of Xvim to deal even more damage. In the end, there was simply nothing that could be done. Enchantment spells simply will not win that fight.
It seems that my own mod's changes, and the level 40 mod, are what ultimately did me in. My sorcerer was sitting at a comfortable AC of 60, which in the unmodded game would force a 40% miss rate on the strongest attackers and maybe an 85% miss rate on the archers (for their first attacks, anyway; the 2nd-5th attacks per round are less accurate in IWD2). That would have allowed me to survive many rounds by relying on my strong AC, and maybe I could have pulled some tricks to come out on top.
But semiOverhaul strengthens fighters, both on the player's side and on the enemy's side, and the level 40 mod appears to have given the enemy an even bigger boost. The net result? Every enemy gets roughly +10 to hit and damage. The pressure was simply too much.
I've done the math and it looks like there is a character who could realistically tackle Saablic Tan, in Heart of Fury Mode, with Tactics4IWD2 and semiOverhaul installed: a Deep Gnome Dreadmaster of Bane(24)/Monk(1)/Fighter(4)/Illusionist(11), a level 40 monstrosity of a character that would have to be taken through both normal mode and HoF mode with an AC that could reach 95 at highest, or maybe upwards of 100 with Tenser's Transformation. It would basically just erect a fortress of buffs, cast Aegis to block Dispel Magic spells, and then chop everything up with Black Blade of Disaster conjured via scroll and Maximized Attacks to deal over 50 damage per hit.
But I just can't get into a cleric of Bane. The concept just doesn't seem right. And while you could do a similar thing with a different kind of cleric and still win, other cleric kits don't get Mass Dominate, the only spell that would make the first 90% of the game bearable after playing it so many times.
It might also be possible to win the fight using some other means, like using certain mod items or late-game items that could only come from importing a character, but I was working with a character that started out fresh in HoF at level 1, and I didn't have all the store mods installed. Using Tactics' HoF mode bonuses would also be a huge game-changer.
I banked the entire concept for this run on the assumption that Mass Dominate could succeed where Wail of the Banshee failed, because enemy Will saves are so much worse than their Fortitude saves (and charming an enemy is much more productive than killing it). But with several important enemies being immune for mysterious reasons, it's just not a workable solution.
It's a horrible bottleneck. The only three solutions I can see are things I just don't want to do:
1. Playing a heavily min-maxed cleric, probably an evil one
2. Using some crazy mod items to break the game
3. Importing a stronger character from a solo normal mode run
4. Installing the HoF player buffs component from Tactics
Quis (human inquisitor, Grond0); Toare (Half-elf transmuter, Gate70)
After a brief flirtation with IWD we started a new BGEE run yesterday. My inquisitor had a strong aversion to spending money and struggled to make progress in the early stages while adventuring naked and using non-proficient weapons. However, we managed to finish the session on arrival at Nashkel - somewhat battered and bruised, but in good spirits. Gate70's summary up to that point was "we could have died getting there if we hadn't done it 150 times before."
Today's session should have been much easier given the ankheg armor was there for the taking, but there was an unfortunate start when Quis somehow managed to take an oil of speed as the starting position was loading. That potion was wasted, but wasn't missed as the duo tracked down Arghain to get Quis a proper weapon.
Then it was time to head north and see what ankhegs were made of. The first 3 of those proved to be made of sticky green ichor, but the 4th one took its responsibility as the guardian of a treasure horde seriously and hit Quis twice to take him down to a dangerously low 11 HPs. I thought I had paused the game immediately after the second of those hits and we had a quick tactical discussion about the best thing to do next. That proved to be a waste of time though as another hit followed the instant the game was unpaused ...
Rae (lawful evil female half-elf dragon disciple, Gate70)
Needle (chaotic good male half elf fighter / mage)
Rae has opted to use a sling, while Needle goes for shortbow and shortsword. An imp familiar settles down into Rae's backpack and we are off.
Ever the optimists, we set out from Candlekeep. Some murderous assassins hunted us down though and the woods proved to be deadly for Gorion (and Imoen, and Xzar, and Montaron).
Everyone would be expecting us to go pick on Shoal the nereid so instead we de-girdled an ogre and headed up to the Friendly Arm inn. From there Rae manages not to remember her steps so flips through her inventory and journal as a reminder.
Shoal would have been next followed by a brief wertle for Arcand the Mad, and then a trip into Beregost for a drink with Marl and to swap books with Firebead. Rae makes a rare item purchase, a sling +1 being among the few items we bother with nowadays as it is competitively priced.
Greywolf talks (and then walks) his way out of combat (we must do more here to investigate the options as the tried and tested dialogue choice we autopilot through no longer works for us).
Grond0: Peer, Elf Archer. Chaotic Good
Corey_Russell: Hunter, Human Undead Hunter. Lawful Good
Gate70: Biff, Dwarf Barbarian. Neutral Evil
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975701/#Comment_975701
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/977126/#Comment_977126
The Trio worked through the City, picking up all the equipment they wanted, before heading for the Iron Throne. Hunter used a scroll of magic protection to tank there, while the others picked enemies off round the edges - resulting in a comfortable enough victory.
Returning to Candlekeep, giant strength potions were used to loot the tombs. Hunter did manage to trip the lightning trap there (during a session in which he seemed to be regularly holding a sword up to the sky and saying he didn't believe in gods), but not much damage was done.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Slythe was just shot from distance with a dispelling arrow as we had no interest in Krystin's equipment.
Going through the maze, Hunter once more felt a little tickle from a lightning trap on the way to the Undercity. The party there were hit with some detonation arrows, though did manage to give a reasonable account of themselves.
Inside the temple Peer shot Sarevok from distance with a dispelling arrow before sneaking back towards him to encourage him to make his opening talk. If things had gone well that would have meant Semaj teleporting out on this own before Sarevok was tackled. However, Peer hadn't used a scroll of magic protection or potion of magic shielding (or indeed put his ring of free action on) and got stuck as a web triggered. Though in the shadows he would soon have appeared for Sarevok to jump on, so Biff moved closer to the dais around the right hand side of the web/stinking cloud area to distract Sarevok. Getting that close to the dais though resulted in Angelo and Tazok also becoming active and Angelo spotted Peer - fortunately though Peer broke free of the web and was able to retreat before Angelo got to him. Biff took quite a bit of damage in keeping Sarevok and Tazok occupied while Hunter and Peer finished off Semaj and Angelo. It didn't take long after that to shoot down Tazok before Sarevok became the final one to fall.
There was just time in the session to get the characters imported into BG2 and find themselves in a sticky dungeon situation.
Peer, Archer L8, 96 HPs, 0 kills (188 in BG1)
Hunter, Undead Hunter L8, 95 HPs, 2 kills (119 in BG1), deaths 0
Biff, Barbarian L8, 108 HPs, 1 kill (210 in BG1), deaths 0
Rae (lawful evil female half-elf dragon disciple 7, Gate70)
Needle (chaotic good male half elf fighter 6 / mage 5)
Another couple of mini sessions are done, no notes again and a handful of screenshots to go on.
Silke is an easy blind target, but Needle is almost caught out when Rae sends Garrick hostile.
Instead we go in search of basilisks. All goes well, but Kirian and her crew get as good a chance as it gets to kill Rae when she walks into stinking clouds instead of casting a spell. Only one enemy is on his feet for a few seconds, but the cloud does it's job and Needle gets to finish all four enemies off.
The second mini session has us hunting down ankhegs. Rae failed to get the first one to sleep but the rest all succumbed and she kept some Melf's Minute Meteor's in reserve together with Magic Missiles. No need though, Needle chipping and chopping the hapless monsters apart.
We reached Ulgoth's Beard and realised our reputation was mid-league so set about getting ourselves known. Needle had a fit of hysterics as Rae made a start by telling Mr Colquetle his family deserved to die and dropped reputation by 1. He suggested we sort out half-ogres for Bjornin and Rae agreed - but ended up near Captain Brage. We returned him to Nashkel after taking care of the Doomsayer.
Seeing another post about a LoB party run I thought perhaps I should have a go at one of those. I've played LoB a lot, but mostly solo in an SCS installation and this will be an unmodded game, using a custom party. That includes:
Dragon disciple (Legacy). For solo I prefer the basic sorcerer, but fewer spells isn't much of a handicap in a party, so the resistances and higher HPs of this kit seem attractive.
Dwarf fighter/cleric (Testament)
Halfling fighter/thief (Bequest)
Gnome fighter/illusionist (Endowment)
Dwarf berserker (Will)
Dwarf dwarven defender (Heritage)
You might notice the party is somewhat lacking in stature. That's primarily because I very rarely use defensive buffs, so the shorty saving throw bonus becomes very helpful. I don't use buffs much solo either, but do dodge a lot then and it's much more difficult and time-consuming to do that with a party, so I expect them to just stand and fight most of the time.
My initial impression is that they should be able to steamroller their way through most of the game, but we'll see
Previous updates:
After leaving Candlekeep the first port of call was Beregost - where Algernon was relieved of his cloak at the cost of some reputation. The next target for the group was Drizzt's scimitars. He's currently bugged in LoB and doesn't fight back - thus making him an easy source of 12k XP once gnolls have knocked him unconscious.
Heading north to find the belt ogre, Testament was one-shotted by a gibberling creeping up on him unnoticed.
Several reputation quests in the wilderness improved reputation a bit before coming back to Beregost. At the temple there the sirines were charmed and pulled outside, to be savaged by dogs before being finished off.
At Firewine Bridge, Bentan was charmed in order to get his scroll without losing more reputation. Fighting through some kobolds there though, Will was hit twice in succession by criticals as he tried to withdraw and he slumped to the floor. As I normally only allow levelling in parties when everyone can do it at once, I tend not to fight while someone is dead. However, rather than run the gauntlet of more kobolds the others did go to shoot down Meilum for his bracers
Reputation took a knock back down again in Beregost when the party killed Firebead after getting his scroll case.
In Nashkel Will dug up the ankheg armor - that's a major upgrade from the splint he's been wearing, which will help his tanking ability. Shortly after that though there was a third death when the party failed to interrupt any of Zordral's spells. Heritage did well there to soak up 3 acid arrows (any one of which in LoB lasts so long that it would have killed anyone targeted).
Will, Berserker L3, 41 HPs, 27 kills, 1 death
Heritage, Dwarven Defender L3, 43 HPs, 22 kills, 1 death
Bequest, Fighter L2 / Thief L2, 20 HPs, 10 kills, 0 deaths
Legacy, Dragon Disciple L2, 15 HPs, 10 kills
Endowment, Fighter L2 / Illusionist L1, 17 HPs, 21 kills, 0 deaths
Testament, Fighter L2 / Cleric L2, 26 HPs, 12 kills, 1 death
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/980494/#Comment_980494
The session started with Greywolf being blinded. He was the first of a number of victims to go that way while clearing the Cloud Peak Mountains. Gorion's belt meant that there was no need to use blind against the winter wolf that allowed everyone to take another level.
By now most of the party had magical melee weapons, but Heritage was still short of a hammer - Bassilus supplied that after being doomed and blinded.
While passing through Beregost the party decided to take on Silke. In this installation she could be safely blinded while neutral, but I played it fair against her. She was already in trouble though after her opening spell was disrupted and blindness sealed her fate.
Reputation continued to rise up slowly with the defeat of Bjornin's half-ogres - that also provided Will with a +1 shield to further improve his tanking ability. He put that to the test in the ankheg nest and passed with flying colors - none of the ankhegs managing to touch him, though one did successfully spit at Heritage on the way round.
On their way to Durlag's Tower the party were ambushed by a basilisk. To be safe there you really need to move every character individually as a lot of bumping occurs if you use group moves. I didn't play safe though and the basilisk focused its gaze just before Heritage got out of range.
Heritage was in trouble again at Durlag's Tower when a mis-click (my fault this time) put him in harm's way against a battle horror.
Legacy now knew invisibility and could have used that to block ghasts for easy kills, but nearly all of them were just shot down instead. There was plenty more XP on offer on the roof - Endowment having splashed out to buy a PfP scroll after failing to find one on her travels. While in the mood for basilisks, more of those were hunted in Mutamin's area before tackling the mage himself. Unfortunately none of his spells were interrupted by a general attack and Will died of the lingering acid arrow damage well after Mutamin went down (resting or travel does not stop that damage in the way it does for poison).
Blindness helped against Kirian's party, but she still managed to cause trouble with her own acid arrows. Bequest was fatally injured,
Moving on to the sirine area, Will's rage lasted comfortably long enough to shoot down the groups of 3 sirines. The first 2 golems were shot with cheap magical arrows, but with those running short Will successfully tanked the final golem with the help of the girdle of bluntness.
With another level not too far off, the doomsayer and revenant were both blinded to provide contributions.
Will, Berserker L6, 71 HPs, 81 kills, 2 deaths
Heritage, Dwarven Defender L6, 84 HPs, 55 kills, 2 deaths
Bequest, Fighter L5 / Thief L5, 47 HPs, 44 kills, 2 deaths
Legacy, Dragon Disciple L5, 29 HPs, 22 kills
Endowment, Fighter L5 / Illusionist L4, 44 HPs, 57 kills, 0 deaths
Testament, Fighter L5 / Cleric L5, 58 HPs, 46 kills, 1 death