I wonder if you die when protected from petrification. Just curious.
I agree it's worth testing, though I suspect it's a scripted death and spell protection wouldn't work. I'm pretty sure it's a non-standard trap - my memory is it works on enemies as well as you (making spells like confusion and horror even more lethal than usual ).
update Killed a vampire to help a halfling get his shield back then saved some statues and killed the bridge guards
we decided to push underground to help the dwarfs with their paint by numbers lich quest... mostly for the easy experience but a nice anti-lich item may just come in handy later
I had no idea that the Planar Prison Key actually serves a purpose. I simply never forgot to loot the Warden before going to free Haer'Dalis before. This time, I did forget. So, it turns out that if you enter the area where the prisoners are kept without having the key, you get turned to stone. This happened to Swidhun, ending my game at this point - well, at least this run did result in me learning something completely new to me: I had no idea it was even possible to die this way. Enuhal
I wonder if you die when protected from petrification. Just curious.
@Wise_Grimwald If it's a scripted death, then nothing helps. At the Duchal Palace in BG 1, it's like you can have 100% fire resistance, but yet if you say you don't have invitations you die by flamestrike, and your fire resistance does not save you, nor do your HP. I would definitely not count on PfP saving you in no-reload, should be tested in a non-no-reload context.
Short update on the human thief, Corthief XIII: Traveling with Jaheira, Mazzy, Minsc, Viconia, Aerie SETUP: BG 2 EE, no mods, Core rules at all times
We managed to save D'Arnise Keep. Most of it went according to plan. We were having trouble killing Torgal, so in desperation Mazzy summoned the genie from the lamp - the Genie immediately did a fireball which DID kill Torgal - it also had the unpleasant side effect of killing Aerie. Luckily, she was not chunked. So Jaheira brought Aerie back and we got her healed up. Next session need to sell and do some of the slum quests which are still waiting for us.
@Enuhal: Can you then go speak with Haer'dalis and escape the Planar Prison? I recall being able to immediately leave the prison simply by hopping over the trigger using Dimension Door.
If so, that gives no-reloaders an excellent way to nab Kundane and early Boots of Speed without having to deal with the Warden and his Improved Haste, Time Stop, and Summon Fallen Planetar spells.
You might not remember this little fella—the last time I posted about her was over a year ago, here. When I loaded the save, I found Sophie on Beregost. Nighttime. I check my inventory and see one of my bullets stacks only has 14. I should purchase some from the merchant here in Beregost. But oh, his shop is closed. Here the big brained man took the wrong choice: travel to the Beregost Temple of Lathander to sleep for free. This is an awfully bad habit I have, specially when you can sleep for free in Beregost ITSELF. So, I got ambushed by Ogres. Nothing special. But when one of them hit me, my armour broke. Blast it! I slept in the Temple and got back to Beregost, only to find a replacement for such armour was 1800 gold pieces. I didn't buy it. Another mistake.
So we travelled our way down to the Western Cloudpeaks. I had decided to go out get some money, but this is impossible without an armour, because Sophie's spellcasting skills are awful, since I've decided for her to only memorize Wild Magic spells. This proved in a rather amusing solution to an otherwise uneventful encounter that the posters in this thread might appreciate as of late:While luck was rather on our side here, it did run out for Sophie, exactly as the same time as the Chaos Shield did, resulting in a rather fatal situation...
I know that everyone here can assume what happened next, so I'm going to jump directly onto the presentation for my next character.I'm going to be playing with, hopefully, the following party: Valwen Imoen Minsc Quayle Jaheira
Aaaand for BG2: Valwen Imoen Minsc Aerie Jaheira Sarevok
I am picking my characters' class according to this post. Install's the same one since 2015, there should be a WeiDU.log around. If anyone's interested I'll link it later.
Caedmon couldn't save Mellicamp but could save the nearby vampire. He headed south and aquired some Ankheg armour plus a letter on the body of an ogrillon and the Colquetle amulet. He took them to their owners and by so doing gained a ring of protection. He found a ring of protection from fire and took Samuel to the FAI.
He returned Joia's ring and then started ankhef hunting. It was difficult at first but became easier after gaining level 3. He eventually gained level 5.
EDIT
After doing some shopping for a pfp scroll and a necklace of missiles he now intends to hunt some Basilisks. Montaron helped him aquire a cloak, some scrolls and some potions, but most important a better hammer as his unenchanted ones were forever breaking. Montaron stayed behind at Ulgoth's beard.
@semiticgod Indeed, that is possible - if you have dimension door or protection from petrification, you could run all the way to the exit right away if you wish - or, as you said, get what you need and skip the Warden if he doesn't have anything your character wants.
Edit: Further testing shows that this is propably just an ordinary flesh to stone spell - SI:Alteration works as well, green scrolls (as expected) do the trick - so any solo character (except wizard slayers I guess) could potentially do this. Basically, anything that would protect you from dying to flesh to stone should prevent you from dying there (though don't quote me on that, I only tested a couple of things, not every single thing). Edit 2: You can even skip the Warden if your saves are decent enough. You will propably have to make two saves against stone to flesh, before you can get all the way out of this place, but if you have negative saves, you shouldn't even need any protection (though I always like additional safety).
Everything was rather uneventful since I've been cautious; very cautious. Cautious choosing my path to Beregost, cautious stealing Algernon's cloak, cautious backstabbing Karlat to death (it's very easy to kill him doing this unless he rans away (he has a rather low morale score), because every time you exit after stabbing him, he will face the exit again. Besides, he'll never hit you, since he has an axe, which is a rather slow weapon. This makes backstabbing him and going out of the building an ideal tactic to deal with him. If he leaves, just cast Blindness and pelt him to death), and very cautious killing the spiders.
On our way to Nashkel we had the chance to prescence one of the most important occurrence in a hundred years (or not?): Ogrillon wrestling.
With this fabulous new sport, you will be able to spectate the most spectaluar fights this side of Cormyr, and enjoy your newely found safety from Ogrillon assailants to the fullest! We also used Tiax's Ghast to kill Silke (thanks, NPC moving component from SCS, thanks), and we gave Firebead Elvenhair his book. This amounted in a level-up for Imoen.
So we travelled. We travelled down south. It was completely uneventful, as I avoided every single spawn point down our way to Nashkel, where we recruited Minsc, and found the infamous armour of missile attraction, which Imoen identified for the hefty sum of 500gp. How? you might wonder, well, I will tell you how. Pick up an item then drop it over your character. Boom! If it was cursed, now it's also identified. We were lucky for some reason we could sell that piece of trash for 1250gp, otherwise we would have been in a rather dire economical situation.
We barely visited the Carnival, where we recruited Quayle, and headed to the Gnoll Fortress to "rescue" Dynahair so that Minsc wouldn't complain about it at a later date. What did this amount to? No, I didn't lose this fast, wrong! It amounted to more sweaty purebred Ogrillon action!
I must congratulate this Algernon man on my way back. Dynahair was "rescued" by Imoen, who used hide in shadows (thanks to her level up and level1npcs, it's incredibly high) to get there, and abused of the lack of vision inside the pits to get back (I ended up luring the last two Elite and Slasher Gnolls, but we killed them without trouble. Saving Dynahair gave both Valwen and Imoen a level.
On our way to the FAI, I got ambushed by a Vampiric Wolf. Suddendly, an Ogre Mage decided to join the party. Before I could gather my party to be able to even keep venturing, the Ogre Mage casted Sleep. Valwen was unaffected—as expected of an Elf to be honest, 90% resistance isn't a joke—and Quayle somehow saved against it (shorty save boni aren't a joke either???), but both Imoen and Minsc got downed. Directly after the Sleep, I hesitated and wasted a round, the Ogre Mage cast Glitterdust. I turned Quayle invisible, but if I had done the same with my main character, who tanked an MM and was left at 2hp, the others would have died, so I just had her drink a healing potion and knifed Minsc's sleazy butt off the ground (knifed: yes. Always keep a melee weapon on. Doesn't matter if you will actually use it. It's for protection against the unarmed/ranged weapons penalties in close combat). Then I gave Minsc a dart, cause he was the only one that didn't have any debuffs on him, to wake Imoen and finally escape. Total resources used: 1 healing potion, 1 dart. Total characters saved: 4.
After this, we made our way to the Friendly Arm Inn, there, we didn't meet Khalid and Jaheira. We just slept and cleared the first group of Tasloi in the Cloakwood Lodge area. Then we charmed a couple of guards and using Quayle's incredible magiks, we took down Tarnesh without suffering more than 5 points of damage on Minsc, and I'm not even sure from what attack, but it was definitely a mistake from my part since Tarnesh was blind, so that shouldn't have happened. We recruited Jaheira, did some business with the owner of the Inn and I'm off to sleep see you folks tomorrow.
Jaheira is a Fighter/Shapeshifter, has two proficiency points on both Clubs and Two-weapon style, to dual wield the lesser werewolf token (from SCS) and a club.
Minsc is a Ranger, he has one on Maces, two on bastard swords, threee on two-weapon style.
Valwen is a Wild Mage, has one on darts. I made her summon a Familiar so she has a substantial amount of hit points for a Mage without any Constitution bonuses.
Imoen's the same as in vanilla, except all of her initial thieving skills points went into hide in shadows and move silently, her first level's went into pickpocketing and her second level's into finding traps and opening locks.
Quayle has one in slings, another one in sword and shield style (I think this is wrong, since he shouldn't be able to get a point in there. I'm going to fix this tomorrow and making him use staves or anything else I doubt he will actually ever make use of).
Called did some of the Northern Tales content, dispatching sirenes, Salamanders, and pyromanaical orc mages. Near the end of the last session however the front girls Branwen & Safana (oddly the ones with low hp as well...) were caught by hold spells and knocked out of commision. As a result Faldorn (Avenger) & Shar-Teel will likely be dropping in say the dice.
Called's character has settled down to being a flashy hero by day, while raiding houses at night. Imoen half helps with this like in Candlekeep, while Kivan turns a blind eye and Khalid hasn't had the nerve to call him on his excuses. After all hadn't Called dispatched the entire thieves guild rather than do the guildmaster's bidding? Called just can't stand being part of a hierarchy y'see, and he really doesn't like Paladins either. Guess because they can see he ain't as shining white as his public relations agent Safana had been saying .
Corthief XIII the human thief update: Traveling with: Jaheira, Mazzy, Minsc, Viconia, Aerie SETUP: BG 2 EE, no mods, Core Rules at all times
Party made a lot of progress: We freed Hendak - much to Viconia's displeasure
Some hostiles in the Copper Coronet sewers were cleared out, giving Minsc a nice sword. We encounter one of the funniest quotes an NPC says here as well.
Some slavers in a moored ship were cleared out. Mostly not too bad, except Aerie got killed by Captain Haegan.
We finally helped Mazzy against the Shade Lord - success! We also took down Thaxxy, though were pretty cowardly about it, using 7 snares.
We had to help Mazzy with Pala, but we successfully brought Barl the servant of the mistress of poison to justice.
The ladies (Viconia, Aerie, Jaheira) are doing a lot of bickering with each other, but I haven't been forced to make a choice yet.
*Sigh*. Just as I had begun to enjoy all that mod content and deal with Called's craziness the uncertainty of life strikes in the form of unknown content. Note to all mod-makers out there, super fireball wards on the entrance without any warning are not cool . Ironically enough Called might well have survived if my mod loadout had functioned properly. Imoen did somehow despite being at ground zero... I also blame Tiax who shortly beforehand had decided to abscond with a number of magical items due to high rep despite the relevant Tweaks component being installed. Ah well, perhaps it was his way of telling me to embrace my inner Blackguard. That'll be the next run as I turn from chaos to evil... assuming I can stomach it .
Edit: Oh, any opinions on the suitability of the 2.5 beta for no-reloads? Assuming the mods install...
@Mantis37 No reason not to use the beta for no-reloads. The only problem is that it doesn't work with SoD currently, which (iirc) might force you to have two installations at the same time or change installations mid-run, if you want to include SoD into your run.
Corthief XIII the human thief update Traveling with: Jaheira, Minsc, (Mazzy), Viconia, Arie, (Yoshimo), Imoen SETUP: BG 2 EE, no mods, Core Rules at all times
The party has made a lot of progress and made a number of group changes. I'll start with the bad news 1st. Just after we saw Mook get killed we got hit with the dreaded Sansuki ambush. It was a mess - Mazzy got level drained and chunked!
We did prevail, though barely. We were almost ready to do the main quest. We are leaving 4 main quests for Imoen - Unseeing Eye, Planare Sphere and Prison, and Firkraag. But we wanted to do Watcher's Keep for the ammo belt and also get better anti-undead equipment.
To that end, Minsc used a protection from undead scroll to get the Daystar. We also did the Sir Sarles quest to get the Illithium. Then we did just enough of Bodhi's Lair to get the mace of disruption, then forged the upgrade.
We then felt confident enough to take on Watcher's Keep. Ended up being a cakewalk, as we didn't get the dreaded vampiric wraiths. Also, Corthief's snares were devastating to the statues. So all in all, a good run here. We only did the 1st level.
We then bought 12 potions of genius. Two Imoen will use to memorize spells we are carrying. The rest we will use in the Illithid lair. One kind of good thing about Mazzy being chunked is now we have a spot for Imoen - I always feel bad about leaving her behind. We recruited Yoshimo before departing for Brynnlaw - might as well, turning in his heart to an Illmater temple is worth 200k experience.
We got a scare when meeting the vampires on the docks - Minsc went berserk (on his own) and took Corthief XIII down to 1/4 health! Corthief XIII ran for his life, with the women trying to heal me. Luckily Minsc found a new target, Yoshimo and Yoshimo was killed. Better him than me as they say.
We defeated Perth the Adept. EE Perth is much more powerful, even fully buffed Minsc could not defeat him and also Chaotic Commands failed to prevent a maze. Must be an EE change. The party had to come in and assist.
I was a little worried about Corthief XIII fighting Bhaal, but fortunately his snares were enough to give him the victory. The 1st two levels of Spellhold have been cleared, we saved our session just before exiting the 2nd level.
The Trio have made a bit more progress with just the odd hiccup on the way.
The session started with going to the Temple area in search of a necklace for Mae'Var. As we arrived during daytime, while the priestess at the temple of Talos was awake, we descended into the sewers to spend a bit of time there. Biff showed no mercy to the rakshasa in an initial encounter.
Mekrath's protection from normal weapons was then about as effective against this party as you would expect . Mekrath's yuan-ti mage guardian did manage to confuse Peer, but under assault from the others he couldn't take advantage.
Emerging from the lair Peer tried to dodge out of the way of some attacking goblins and managed to activate Tarnor's gang
- they didn't cause too much trouble in the following fight, although Hunter did complain that he had run out of healing potions while holding enemies still for Peer to shoot up from behind .
Mae'Var's remaining tasks didn't take long after Rayic Gethras soaked up a poison arrow and Mae'Var himself was pretty much a walkover.
Somewhere around there we also rescued Renfeld and looted the Harper building.
Next we had a trip to the de'Arnise hold. Peer got some easy kills there with arrows of fire before the others inherited weapons that could kill trolls. TorGal fancied his chances when he noticed Peer sneaking up on him in the shadows - unfortunately for him he didn't notice the reception committee waiting in the next room.
Moving on to Trademeet, Biff had decided he wanted to live more dangerously. He showed himself while unprotected to a couple of genies and then had to settle for an observation role for the remainder of that battle until Peer could dig out the Ring of Earth Control to restore him.
In the Druid Grove he also soaked up quite a bit of damage while battling enemies, but survived to watch Cernd demonstrate what a good cage fighter he is.
Peer, Archer L10, 111 HPs, 203 kills (188 in BG1) Hunter, Undead Hunter L10, 127 HPs (inc. 10 from bracers, 5 from helm), 74 kills (119 in BG1), deaths 0 Biff, Barbarian L11, 128 HPs, 146 kills (210 in BG1), deaths 0
Well, even the auto-save didn't have the Wardstone either. So looks like in my install, I can never take Sameon's "ship". So I went to the Underdark Portal. The Underdark excursion was very short - we encountered the Drow War Party and they tore us to shreds. RIP Corthief XIII. Not sure what's next. Feel like playing paladins though.
Jeanluc the Inquisitor Update 1 Traveling with: Sarah (Undead Hunter), Heather (Cavalier), April (Undead Hunter), Forrest (Paladin), Imoen (thief) SETUP: BG 1 EE, no mods RESTRICTIONS: 1) Core rules at all times 2) Only paladins and thieves are allowed to join the party. Multi-classed thieves or dual classed thieves are OK.
Jeanluc the Inquisitor is joining the no-reload challenge, here is his character sheet:
And if interested, here are his MP groupmates:
We've made it out of Candlekeep, collected Gorion's things, picked up the diamond. We did detect evil on Xzar and Montaron - they were both confirmed evil so we killed them and took their stuff. We saved the session for now. We'll head to FAI next session.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 10
The Fields of Slaughter! We've got some rather tough enemies coming up; things get pretty serious after Dragon's Eye and Lord Pyros' Domain. Star's spells are still very dangerous, though, and a bad Fortitude save is all it takes to wipe someone out. I am enjoying the new Disintegrate spell--it's much more fun than the original.
Enemies do have pretty strong Fortitude saves, though, so Disintegrate isn't always reliable. The next enemy priest survives two castings before dying on the third.
Next up is M'darfein the lich. With immunities to pretty much everything, sky-high saving throws, massive spell resistance, strong AC, Improved Invisibility, and tons of Mirror Image spells, M'darfein is pretty much indestructible, and his offensive spells are devastating. Plus, he has constant effect Improved Alacrity.
We chop up the Elven Dread Warriors and Archers after softening them up with Sunbeam, but M'darfein remains mostly untouchable. If we had some more mage levels across the party, this fight would be a lot easier, because Mirror Image can block area-effect damage spells.
But we do not. Mabel and Asriel, our cleric and druid, have no defense against M'darfein's spells. All they can do is spam healing spells.
M'darfein nails Marco with two Disintegrate spells in a row, but Marco makes both of his saving throws and only suffers about 40 damage. Then the lich switches gears and pins down Mabel with a Power Word: Stun spell.
Thankfully, Asriel is our strongest healer, not Mabel. Clerics are better healers overall, but Asriel is much higher level than Mabel. He heals the group and we keep attacking the lich until Mabel recovers. But her next spell gets disrupted and then M'darfein pins her down once again.
Asriel just barely heals her in time to save her life, but things are going poorly. We've made no visible progress against M'darfein and we have run out of our best healing spells.
Unable to rescue Mabel (the lich can see right through invisibility, so hiding her is not an option), we have Asriel cast Elemental Legion and then cover Mabel with a Tortoise Shell.
We flee from the lich's Wail of the Banshee spell, but we cannot draw our elementals to safety.
The exact moment M'darfein shatters the Tortoise Shell and Mabel is finally free, he nails her with yet another Power Word: Stun spell. Our only cleric goes down.
Asriel tries to shut down M'darfein's spellcasting with Insect Plague, but the lich is completely immune.
We're under heavy pressure from a Fallen Bladesinger (undead fighter/mage) who joined the fight late, but M'darfein loses two spells in a row to spell failure--not from Insect Plague, but from Blink. But it's not enough; M'darfein goes right back to spamming damage spells. The party is collapsing.
I don't think we can win this battle. M'darfein probably has lots more spells on hand, and we are running low. I decide to give up on slaying M'darfein conventionally and instead purify the Fields of Slaughter by grabbing the Elven Holy Water from an elf that M'darfein killed before the fight began.
We need to take that vial all the way across the map and drop it in a container, which will instantly kill all the undead in the area, including M'darfein. Asriel tries to make a break for it, but M'darfein targets him with yet another Power Word: Stun spell.
I anticipated this, however, and had Asriel hand the vial over to Marco at the last moment, allowing Marco to make a break for it as M'darfein finishes off our druid.
He makes it! M'darfein goes down!
Only one more fight stands between us and the Severed Hand: Saablic Tan.
Saablic Tan is a high-level mage who comes flanked by two other high-level mages, all three of which have strong defenses like all Tactics mages and attack with Mordenkainen's Sword shortly into the fight. Mordenkainen's Sword has a massive attack bonus of +1 per level (which is actually a nerf!) and 3d6+3 damage per hit that's virtually impossible to avoid. Worse yet, there are four archers, a cleric, and a half dozen fighters on the map, all of which hit very hard, very fast, and very accurately.
But we only need to kill Saablic Tan himself to escape the area. We hit him with a Protection from Magic scroll, fire a few arrows, and then close in on him for a very quick kill.
We're not ready to leave just yet. We're still in excellent condition and the enemy is not that strong without Saablic Tan himself. We paralyze two of their number and bury a third within seconds.
Notice that the party has only suffered a single hit in the few moments since combat began: Dipper has been struck once. Asriel hauls out a pack of elementals and Star wipes out several more enemies with Wail of the Banshee.
Once the main group goes down, all we have to do is stomp on the half-dragons still camping out to the east.
Done! Without that Protection from Magic scroll, that fight could have been extremely dangerous--maybe even worse than M'darfein, who likely would have killed us if we hadn't purified the Fields of Slaughter early with that holy water.
The final chapter of Icewind Dale 2 begins. We march on the Severed Hand.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 11
The Severed Hand.
Crammed with side quests and high-level encounters, the Severed Hand is one of the slower but still interesting parts of the game. We bluff our way through the front door and nail the guards inside with Hold Monster.
Many of the encounters here are not too hard if the party pre-buffs thoroughly. With two fighters on hand equipped with axes and hammers bolstered by luck bonuses, even Slayer Knights of Xvim go down pretty quickly. We get caught off guard by a trap near the throne room, though.
This is what inspired me to fix Stone to Flesh spells and scrolls in semiOverhaul. In the unmodded game, they're extremely unreliable and it's possible for a character to permanently die from petrification (shattering is automatic in IWD2, but doesn't remove the character from his or her slot). Even CTRL-R can fail!
Of course, I used up all of my Stone to Flesh scrolls before fixing that bug, which means we can't resurrect Marco anyway.
High-level spells speed things up in the Severed Hand. Wail of the Banshee can take down almost anyone besides clerics with Death Ward, and Icelance and Chromatic Orb can stun those clerics.
Finally, Star gains her last level of the run, which just so happens to let her choose a new level 6 spell: Stone to Flesh! She brings back Marco and we're back in business.
She also gets an upgrade to her Disintegrate spell by virtue of reaching level 20. It now deals 2d10 damage per level instead of 2d8. Some enemies can still survive it on a failed save, but not by very much.
251 damage. It's the biggest hit I've ever seen in IWD2. In general, Star has crazy damage output.
Disintegrate scales all the way up to level 30, when it deals 60d20 damage on a failed save, or over 600 damage on average.
The biggest threats around here outside of boss fights are the enemy clerics, who will gleefully stun the party with Blasphemy. Only Marco and Star regularly resist the spell because of their strong spell resistance.
Once we collect a Holy Symbol of Xvim for each party member, we sell off 500,000 gold in spare loot, buy a bunch of ammunition, and proceed to Tyrannar Brutai Mar.
Right off the bat, the top cleric in the Severed Hand besides Madae stuns two-thirds of the party and proves immune to Disintegrate for no real reason. The same round, the ghosts of Guthma, Sherincal, the Beastlord Harshom, and a pair of Ruinlords join the fight.
Everyone gets automatic attacks on our most vulnerable party members for a whole round. Right after everyone recovers, Tyrannar Brutai Mar lands a critical hit on Asriel, and our best healer goes down in less than two rounds.
Sherincal applies heavy pressure to Marco, and Guthma starts chipping away at poor Mabel. We're in bad shape and the fight has only just begun.
With very careful positioning, we move Marco out of harm's way so he can shoot down Sherincal with some +5 arrows. Mabel restores him to full health with a spontaneously-cast Heal spell.
Tyrannar isn't doing much, but against the odds, Frisk fails a save against Harshom's Hold Monster and Star fails a save against his Beltyn's Burning Blood spell, disabling our most important character and also our bard. Beltyn's Burning Blood requires a Fortitude save, so it's always been very effective against mages.
Mabel cures them with Remove Paralysis and Exaltation, but then we get bad news. Tyrannar has just begun casting Tremor, an incredibly powerful disabler for which there are no cures and no immunities.
We flee the room and wait until the Tremor is over before rushing in to get some free hits on Harshom (even undead like Harshom's ghost aren't immune to Tremor's unconsciousness effect). When Tyrannar attempts another Tremor, we fall back once more and throw out a Delayed Blast Fireball while we're waiting.
Against all odds, Tyrannar manages to kill Dipper with a Symbol, Death spell, robbing us of our best fighter. We are helpless to stop Tyrannar from casting his Heal spell, but at least Marco can still deal plenty of damage.
Marco lands the final hit on Tyrannar, and the fight is won. Star disintegrates Tyrannar's incoming Gelugon.
Marco and Dipper both choose mage as their last level, allowing them to cast high-level spells like Black Blade of Disaster via scroll. Based on the numbers, Asriel is stuck at level 20 and will not be able to reach the level 21 black dragon shapeshift, which is rather disappointing--I was looking forward to stomping people in dragon form.
Next up is the avatar of Iyachtu Xvim himself, who interrupts our attempt at the purification ritual. He is a solid tank in his own right, spams damage spells, and comes with a small horde of demons. We focus on removing his demons first.
Iyachtu Xvim has extremely high resistances, so we struggle to deal damage to him. Mabel chain-casts Circle of Healing to counter the enemy fire spells.
Xvim is sturdy, but he is also alone and surrounded foes with powerful healing options. He just doesn't have the numbers to stand up to the party's pressure. We banish his avatar and complete the ritual without further delay.
From there, we shatter the Globe of Essence, put down Dracein, Precious, and Vese Nejj through brute force, and proceed to Captain Pudu, who lands two critical hits in a row and kills Dipper in a single round.
I badly underestimated this fight; normally Pudu and the half-dragon Vyxein are no problem. But Mabel holds down Pudu for a moment with Holy Word, and Star saves the day by chain-casting Power Word: Stun until both enemies are dead.
Isair and Madae are close at hand. We're inches away from the final battle.
update: Killed a Dragon by zapping him in his sleep and set prisoners free to remove the bridge guards
we decided to grab the shortsword from its underground safe but we didn't feel like fighting the buggy backstabber so ran out... the squid followed us out of the room so we shut the door on his guards and had an easy battle
recharge the mind locket, ring of invis and both missile necklaces then teleport inside the fort and hand over the spider leg to end the session
Starting again, my aim this time is to avoid taking any casualties - at least up until the end of BG1. Given that my attempts to play safely tend to unravel fairly quickly, I'll probably aim to only play with this party sporadically when I'm more in the mood to avoid risks.
Early action saw Algernon killed for his cloak and that was used immediately to tempt some sirines out of Beregost temple to their deaths.
The decent saves sirines have with LoB and lots of rest ambushes meant that took a while, but there were no problems.
The sirines only got them halfway to a level, but the basilisks were waiting to provide a bigger boost. Endowment purchased PfP from High Hedge and used that to allow an assault. The southern group there weren't quite sufficient, but a few of the northern ones did the job.
Taking on Mutamin without Korax or any spell protections should really have been too much of a risk for this run, given that double damage from high level spells can so easily be fatal. However, under a concerted assault the mage failed to complete a spell .
Kirian's friends were then charmed and drawn away for disposal before Kirian herself failed to survive Korax's poison claws.
A blinded ogre offered easy access to a belt collection on the way to the FAI, where a couple of guards helped sort out Tarnesh (the ones from the external gate are best for this purpose as their AI doesn't make them lose interest in the fight).
Still further north Tenya got her bowl back. I decided the risk of Will being one-shotted by the nearby ankheg was too great though, even with the 54 HPs he had then while enraged, so just dodged the ankheg by running round the house on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. Some real time minutes later and the 103rd attempt at charming Dushai was successful and she was moved away from the village to relieve her of her ring .
Back in Beregost some jobs around town were just a few XP short of triggering a further level for everyone and that was left to a couple of gnolls in Drizzt's area.
Legacy's party then attempted to help Drizzt and looked like being successful when the last gnoll was only able to use his fists to knock Drizzt unconscious. Regrettably he knocked him down into the path of an incoming crossbow bolt ...
With reputation now dangerously low at 3, the party went to help Ardrouine and then Charleston Nib, before getting a lift to Nashkel with Brage. Talking to Oublek and 500 gold of donations to the temple pushed reputation into double figures to allow Legacy to learn CLW. Picking up the ankheg armor also lets Will get AC down to -8. With AC adjustments on top of that, melee combat is starting to look like a more realistic option for him.
I tried to use a tactic out of Grond0's/Gate70's book, but it didn't work for me. I was trying to clear the basilisks, then Kirian spotted us. We were able to defeat her group, though not before poor Imoen bit it. But mustn't let our protection from petrification disappear as its our only one, so we pressed on. Then we were trying to find the greater basilisk without triggering Mutamutin, but we failed at that too. Our protected character was at range, but should have immediately closed to melee once Mutamutin was spotted. Then other mistake was I put up resist fear on my character, but instead should have targeted Heather. So then Heather (who was only one protected from petrification) gets horrored and starts running away. The greater basilisk promptly changed targets to Jeanluc and Jeanluc immediately became a statue.
Luckily, I had the foresight to make a starting save for this group (e.g., save made immediately after character creation). So will load that up and try them again. Will save basilisks for later I think.
Tails has started an Improved Anvil run. She is a halfling swashbuckler with good physical stats and focusing first on daggers, some longsword and club. After she levels up she will get two-weapon fighting, but for now she sticks to buckler.
Overall Irenicus Dungeon starts easy. There are only two Improved Anvil creatures here, both lesser spirit spiders.
The first one is dispatched by a Clan hunter, a summon from the modified Avenger kit that Jaheira has now.
The second one gets a hold off on Tails. Fortunately the immediate response is to have Imoen cast Emotion which easily affects the spider and he dies subsequently.
However, I am uncautious and there dies Tails to the vanilla thief that backstabbed her from the shadows.
Tails Two is about to start from scratch. She will focus on the same weapons except I think I trade out the longsword for shortsword. It is not overly useful to have longsword at this point and you find many good short swords early game.
Comments
Killed a vampire to help a halfling get his shield back then saved some statues and killed the bridge guards
we decided to push underground to help the dwarfs with their paint by numbers lich quest... mostly for the easy experience but a nice anti-lich item may just come in handy later
@Wise_Grimwald If it's a scripted death, then nothing helps. At the Duchal Palace in BG 1, it's like you can have 100% fire resistance, but yet if you say you don't have invitations you die by flamestrike, and your fire resistance does not save you, nor do your HP. I would definitely not count on PfP saving you in no-reload, should be tested in a non-no-reload context.
Traveling with Jaheira, Mazzy, Minsc, Viconia, Aerie
SETUP: BG 2 EE, no mods, Core rules at all times
We managed to save D'Arnise Keep. Most of it went according to plan. We were having trouble killing Torgal, so in desperation Mazzy summoned the genie from the lamp - the Genie immediately did a fireball which DID kill Torgal - it also had the unpleasant side effect of killing Aerie. Luckily, she was not chunked. So Jaheira brought Aerie back and we got her healed up. Next session need to sell and do some of the slum quests which are still waiting for us.
If so, that gives no-reloaders an excellent way to nab Kundane and early Boots of Speed without having to deal with the Warden and his Improved Haste, Time Stop, and Summon Fallen Planetar spells.
You might not remember this little fella—the last time I posted about her was over a year ago, here.
When I loaded the save, I found Sophie on Beregost. Nighttime. I check my inventory and see one of my bullets stacks only has 14. I should purchase some from the merchant here in Beregost. But oh, his shop is closed. Here the big brained man took the wrong choice: travel to the Beregost Temple of Lathander to sleep for free. This is an awfully bad habit I have, specially when you can sleep for free in Beregost ITSELF. So, I got ambushed by Ogres. Nothing special. But when one of them hit me, my armour broke. Blast it! I slept in the Temple and got back to Beregost, only to find a replacement for such armour was 1800 gold pieces. I didn't buy it. Another mistake.
So we travelled our way down to the Western Cloudpeaks. I had decided to go out get some money, but this is impossible without an armour, because Sophie's spellcasting skills are awful, since I've decided for her to only memorize Wild Magic spells. This proved in a rather amusing solution to an otherwise uneventful encounter that the posters in this thread might appreciate as of late:
Valwen
Imoen
Minsc
Quayle
Jaheira
Aaaand for BG2:
Valwen
Imoen
Minsc
Aerie
Jaheira
Sarevok
I am picking my characters' class according to this post. Install's the same one since 2015, there should be a WeiDU.log around. If anyone's interested I'll link it later.
He returned Joia's ring and then started ankhef hunting. It was difficult at first but became easier after gaining level 3. He eventually gained level 5.
EDIT
After doing some shopping for a pfp scroll and a necklace of missiles he now intends to hunt some Basilisks. Montaron helped him aquire a cloak, some scrolls and some potions, but most important a better hammer as his unenchanted ones were forever breaking. Montaron stayed behind at Ulgoth's beard.Edit: Further testing shows that this is propably just an ordinary flesh to stone spell - SI:Alteration works as well, green scrolls (as expected) do the trick - so any solo character (except wizard slayers I guess) could potentially do this. Basically, anything that would protect you from dying to flesh to stone should prevent you from dying there (though don't quote me on that, I only tested a couple of things, not every single thing).
Edit 2: You can even skip the Warden if your saves are decent enough. You will propably have to make two saves against stone to flesh, before you can get all the way out of this place, but if you have negative saves, you shouldn't even need any protection (though I always like additional safety).
Everything was rather uneventful since I've been cautious; very cautious. Cautious choosing my path to Beregost, cautious stealing Algernon's cloak, cautious backstabbing Karlat to death (it's very easy to kill him doing this unless he rans away (he has a rather low morale score), because every time you exit after stabbing him, he will face the exit again. Besides, he'll never hit you, since he has an axe, which is a rather slow weapon. This makes backstabbing him and going out of the building an ideal tactic to deal with him. If he leaves, just cast Blindness and pelt him to death), and very cautious killing the spiders.
On our way to Nashkel we had the chance to prescence one of the most important occurrence in a hundred years (or not?): Ogrillon wrestling.
So we travelled. We travelled down south. It was completely uneventful, as I avoided every single spawn point down our way to Nashkel, where we recruited Minsc, and found the infamous armour of missile attraction, which Imoen identified for the hefty sum of 500gp. How? you might wonder, well, I will tell you how. Pick up an item then drop it over your character. Boom! If it was cursed, now it's also identified. We were lucky for some reason we could sell that piece of trash for 1250gp, otherwise we would have been in a rather dire economical situation.
We barely visited the Carnival, where we recruited Quayle, and headed to the Gnoll Fortress to "rescue" Dynahair so that Minsc wouldn't complain about it at a later date. What did this amount to? No, I didn't lose this fast, wrong! It amounted to more sweaty purebred Ogrillon action!
On our way to the FAI, I got ambushed by a Vampiric Wolf. Suddendly, an Ogre Mage decided to join the party. Before I could gather my party to be able to even keep venturing, the Ogre Mage casted Sleep. Valwen was unaffected—as expected of an Elf to be honest, 90% resistance isn't a joke—and Quayle somehow saved against it (shorty save boni aren't a joke either???), but both Imoen and Minsc got downed. Directly after the Sleep, I hesitated and wasted a round, the Ogre Mage cast Glitterdust. I turned Quayle invisible, but if I had done the same with my main character, who tanked an MM and was left at 2hp, the others would have died, so I just had her drink a healing potion and knifed Minsc's sleazy butt off the ground (knifed: yes. Always keep a melee weapon on. Doesn't matter if you will actually use it. It's for protection against the unarmed/ranged weapons penalties in close combat). Then I gave Minsc a dart, cause he was the only one that didn't have any debuffs on him, to wake Imoen and finally escape. Total resources used: 1 healing potion, 1 dart. Total characters saved: 4.
After this, we made our way to the Friendly Arm Inn, there, we didn't meet Khalid and Jaheira. We just slept and cleared the first group of Tasloi in the Cloakwood Lodge area. Then we charmed a couple of guards and using Quayle's incredible magiks, we took down Tarnesh without suffering more than 5 points of damage on Minsc, and I'm not even sure from what attack, but it was definitely a mistake from my part since Tarnesh was blind, so that shouldn't have happened. We recruited Jaheira, did some business with the owner of the Inn and I'm off to sleep see you folks tomorrow.
Minsc is a Ranger, he has one on Maces, two on bastard swords, threee on two-weapon style.
Valwen is a Wild Mage, has one on darts. I made her summon a Familiar so she has a substantial amount of hit points for a Mage without any Constitution bonuses.
Imoen's the same as in vanilla, except all of her initial thieving skills points went into hide in shadows and move silently, her first level's went into pickpocketing and her second level's into finding traps and opening locks.
Quayle has one in slings, another one in sword and shield style (I think this is wrong, since he shouldn't be able to get a point in there. I'm going to fix this tomorrow and making him use staves or anything else I doubt he will actually ever make use of).
Called did some of the Northern Tales content, dispatching sirenes, Salamanders, and pyromanaical orc mages. Near the end of the last session however the front girls Branwen & Safana (oddly the ones with low hp as well...) were caught by hold spells and knocked out of commision. As a result Faldorn (Avenger) & Shar-Teel will likely be dropping in say the dice.
Called's character has settled down to being a flashy hero by day, while raiding houses at night. Imoen half helps with this like in Candlekeep, while Kivan turns a blind eye and Khalid hasn't had the nerve to call him on his excuses. After all hadn't Called dispatched the entire thieves guild rather than do the guildmaster's bidding? Called just can't stand being part of a hierarchy y'see, and he really doesn't like Paladins either. Guess because they can see he ain't as shining white as his public relations agent Safana had been saying
Traveling with: Jaheira, Mazzy, Minsc, Viconia, Aerie
SETUP: BG 2 EE, no mods, Core Rules at all times
Party made a lot of progress:
We freed Hendak - much to Viconia's displeasure
Some hostiles in the Copper Coronet sewers were cleared out, giving Minsc a nice sword. We encounter one of the funniest quotes an NPC says here as well.
Some slavers in a moored ship were cleared out. Mostly not too bad, except Aerie got killed by Captain Haegan.
We finally helped Mazzy against the Shade Lord - success! We also took down Thaxxy, though were pretty cowardly about it, using 7 snares.
We had to help Mazzy with Pala, but we successfully brought Barl the servant of the mistress of poison to justice.
The ladies (Viconia, Aerie, Jaheira) are doing a lot of bickering with each other, but I haven't been forced to make a choice yet.
The quest continues...
Edit: Oh, any opinions on the suitability of the 2.5 beta for no-reloads? Assuming the mods install...
No reason not to use the beta for no-reloads. The only problem is that it doesn't work with SoD currently, which (iirc) might force you to have two installations at the same time or change installations mid-run, if you want to include SoD into your run.
He then went to clear all the basilisks and all but one medusa before confronting Mutamin.
The battle was going well. Mutamin was close to death, but then he cast dire charm.
The end.
This is the first time in my years of experience that Mutamin has cast charm spells.
Does anybody know if this is an effect of EE or a mod? If I had been aware of the change, Caedmon would have had protection against charm.
Just before casting it he removed magic. Now THAT is a nasty combination.
Traveling with: Jaheira, Minsc, (Mazzy), Viconia, Arie, (Yoshimo), Imoen
SETUP: BG 2 EE, no mods, Core Rules at all times
The party has made a lot of progress and made a number of group changes. I'll start with the bad news 1st. Just after we saw Mook get killed we got hit with the dreaded Sansuki ambush. It was a mess - Mazzy got level drained and chunked!
We did prevail, though barely. We were almost ready to do the main quest. We are leaving 4 main quests for Imoen - Unseeing Eye, Planare Sphere and Prison, and Firkraag. But we wanted to do Watcher's Keep for the ammo belt and also get better anti-undead equipment.
To that end, Minsc used a protection from undead scroll to get the Daystar. We also did the Sir Sarles quest to get the Illithium. Then we did just enough of Bodhi's Lair to get the mace of disruption, then forged the upgrade.
We then felt confident enough to take on Watcher's Keep. Ended up being a cakewalk, as we didn't get the dreaded vampiric wraiths. Also, Corthief's snares were devastating to the statues. So all in all, a good run here. We only did the 1st level.
We then bought 12 potions of genius. Two Imoen will use to memorize spells we are carrying. The rest we will use in the Illithid lair. One kind of good thing about Mazzy being chunked is now we have a spot for Imoen - I always feel bad about leaving her behind. We recruited Yoshimo before departing for Brynnlaw - might as well, turning in his heart to an Illmater temple is worth 200k experience.
We got a scare when meeting the vampires on the docks - Minsc went berserk (on his own) and took Corthief XIII down to 1/4 health! Corthief XIII ran for his life, with the women trying to heal me. Luckily Minsc found a new target, Yoshimo and Yoshimo was killed. Better him than me as they say.
We defeated Perth the Adept. EE Perth is much more powerful, even fully buffed Minsc could not defeat him and also Chaotic Commands failed to prevent a maze. Must be an EE change. The party had to come in and assist.
I was a little worried about Corthief XIII fighting Bhaal, but fortunately his snares were enough to give him the victory. The 1st two levels of Spellhold have been cleared, we saved our session just before exiting the 2nd level.
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/980290/#Comment_980290
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/981756/#Comment_981756
The Trio have made a bit more progress with just the odd hiccup on the way.
The session started with going to the Temple area in search of a necklace for Mae'Var. As we arrived during daytime, while the priestess at the temple of Talos was awake, we descended into the sewers to spend a bit of time there. Biff showed no mercy to the rakshasa in an initial encounter.
Mae'Var's remaining tasks didn't take long after Rayic Gethras soaked up a poison arrow and Mae'Var himself was pretty much a walkover.
Next we had a trip to the de'Arnise hold. Peer got some easy kills there with arrows of fire before the others inherited weapons that could kill trolls. TorGal fancied his chances when he noticed Peer sneaking up on him in the shadows - unfortunately for him he didn't notice the reception committee waiting in the next room.
Moving on to Trademeet, Biff had decided he wanted to live more dangerously. He showed himself while unprotected to a couple of genies and then had to settle for an observation role for the remainder of that battle until Peer could dig out the Ring of Earth Control to restore him.
Peer, Archer L10, 111 HPs, 203 kills (188 in BG1)
Hunter, Undead Hunter L10, 127 HPs (inc. 10 from bracers, 5 from helm), 74 kills (119 in BG1), deaths 0
Biff, Barbarian L11, 128 HPs, 146 kills (210 in BG1), deaths 0
Well, even the auto-save didn't have the Wardstone either. So looks like in my install, I can never take Sameon's "ship". So I went to the Underdark Portal. The Underdark excursion was very short - we encountered the Drow War Party and they tore us to shreds. RIP Corthief XIII. Not sure what's next. Feel like playing paladins though.
Traveling with: Sarah (Undead Hunter), Heather (Cavalier), April (Undead Hunter), Forrest (Paladin), Imoen (thief)
SETUP: BG 1 EE, no mods
RESTRICTIONS:
1) Core rules at all times
2) Only paladins and thieves are allowed to join the party. Multi-classed thieves or dual classed thieves are OK.
Jeanluc the Inquisitor is joining the no-reload challenge, here is his character sheet:
And if interested, here are his MP groupmates:
We've made it out of Candlekeep, collected Gorion's things, picked up the diamond. We did detect evil on Xzar and Montaron - they were both confirmed evil so we killed them and took their stuff. We saved the session for now. We'll head to FAI next session.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 10
The Fields of Slaughter! We've got some rather tough enemies coming up; things get pretty serious after Dragon's Eye and Lord Pyros' Domain. Star's spells are still very dangerous, though, and a bad Fortitude save is all it takes to wipe someone out. I am enjoying the new Disintegrate spell--it's much more fun than the original.Enemies do have pretty strong Fortitude saves, though, so Disintegrate isn't always reliable. The next enemy priest survives two castings before dying on the third.
Next up is M'darfein the lich. With immunities to pretty much everything, sky-high saving throws, massive spell resistance, strong AC, Improved Invisibility, and tons of Mirror Image spells, M'darfein is pretty much indestructible, and his offensive spells are devastating. Plus, he has constant effect Improved Alacrity.
We chop up the Elven Dread Warriors and Archers after softening them up with Sunbeam, but M'darfein remains mostly untouchable. If we had some more mage levels across the party, this fight would be a lot easier, because Mirror Image can block area-effect damage spells.
But we do not. Mabel and Asriel, our cleric and druid, have no defense against M'darfein's spells. All they can do is spam healing spells.
M'darfein nails Marco with two Disintegrate spells in a row, but Marco makes both of his saving throws and only suffers about 40 damage. Then the lich switches gears and pins down Mabel with a Power Word: Stun spell.
Thankfully, Asriel is our strongest healer, not Mabel. Clerics are better healers overall, but Asriel is much higher level than Mabel. He heals the group and we keep attacking the lich until Mabel recovers. But her next spell gets disrupted and then M'darfein pins her down once again.
Asriel just barely heals her in time to save her life, but things are going poorly. We've made no visible progress against M'darfein and we have run out of our best healing spells.
Unable to rescue Mabel (the lich can see right through invisibility, so hiding her is not an option), we have Asriel cast Elemental Legion and then cover Mabel with a Tortoise Shell.
We flee from the lich's Wail of the Banshee spell, but we cannot draw our elementals to safety.
The exact moment M'darfein shatters the Tortoise Shell and Mabel is finally free, he nails her with yet another Power Word: Stun spell. Our only cleric goes down.
Asriel tries to shut down M'darfein's spellcasting with Insect Plague, but the lich is completely immune.
We're under heavy pressure from a Fallen Bladesinger (undead fighter/mage) who joined the fight late, but M'darfein loses two spells in a row to spell failure--not from Insect Plague, but from Blink. But it's not enough; M'darfein goes right back to spamming damage spells. The party is collapsing.
I don't think we can win this battle. M'darfein probably has lots more spells on hand, and we are running low. I decide to give up on slaying M'darfein conventionally and instead purify the Fields of Slaughter by grabbing the Elven Holy Water from an elf that M'darfein killed before the fight began.
We need to take that vial all the way across the map and drop it in a container, which will instantly kill all the undead in the area, including M'darfein. Asriel tries to make a break for it, but M'darfein targets him with yet another Power Word: Stun spell.
I anticipated this, however, and had Asriel hand the vial over to Marco at the last moment, allowing Marco to make a break for it as M'darfein finishes off our druid.
He makes it! M'darfein goes down!
Only one more fight stands between us and the Severed Hand: Saablic Tan.
Saablic Tan is a high-level mage who comes flanked by two other high-level mages, all three of which have strong defenses like all Tactics mages and attack with Mordenkainen's Sword shortly into the fight. Mordenkainen's Sword has a massive attack bonus of +1 per level (which is actually a nerf!) and 3d6+3 damage per hit that's virtually impossible to avoid. Worse yet, there are four archers, a cleric, and a half dozen fighters on the map, all of which hit very hard, very fast, and very accurately.
But we only need to kill Saablic Tan himself to escape the area. We hit him with a Protection from Magic scroll, fire a few arrows, and then close in on him for a very quick kill.
We're not ready to leave just yet. We're still in excellent condition and the enemy is not that strong without Saablic Tan himself. We paralyze two of their number and bury a third within seconds.
Notice that the party has only suffered a single hit in the few moments since combat began: Dipper has been struck once. Asriel hauls out a pack of elementals and Star wipes out several more enemies with Wail of the Banshee.
Once the main group goes down, all we have to do is stomp on the half-dragons still camping out to the east.
Done! Without that Protection from Magic scroll, that fight could have been extremely dangerous--maybe even worse than M'darfein, who likely would have killed us if we hadn't purified the Fields of Slaughter early with that holy water.
The final chapter of Icewind Dale 2 begins. We march on the Severed Hand.
Star Butterfly vs. the Legion of the Chimera: No-Reload Icewind Dale 2 Run
Part 11
The Severed Hand.Crammed with side quests and high-level encounters, the Severed Hand is one of the slower but still interesting parts of the game. We bluff our way through the front door and nail the guards inside with Hold Monster.
Many of the encounters here are not too hard if the party pre-buffs thoroughly. With two fighters on hand equipped with axes and hammers bolstered by luck bonuses, even Slayer Knights of Xvim go down pretty quickly. We get caught off guard by a trap near the throne room, though.
This is what inspired me to fix Stone to Flesh spells and scrolls in semiOverhaul. In the unmodded game, they're extremely unreliable and it's possible for a character to permanently die from petrification (shattering is automatic in IWD2, but doesn't remove the character from his or her slot). Even CTRL-R can fail!
Of course, I used up all of my Stone to Flesh scrolls before fixing that bug, which means we can't resurrect Marco anyway.
High-level spells speed things up in the Severed Hand. Wail of the Banshee can take down almost anyone besides clerics with Death Ward, and Icelance and Chromatic Orb can stun those clerics.
Finally, Star gains her last level of the run, which just so happens to let her choose a new level 6 spell: Stone to Flesh! She brings back Marco and we're back in business.
She also gets an upgrade to her Disintegrate spell by virtue of reaching level 20. It now deals 2d10 damage per level instead of 2d8. Some enemies can still survive it on a failed save, but not by very much.
251 damage. It's the biggest hit I've ever seen in IWD2. In general, Star has crazy damage output.
Disintegrate scales all the way up to level 30, when it deals 60d20 damage on a failed save, or over 600 damage on average.
The biggest threats around here outside of boss fights are the enemy clerics, who will gleefully stun the party with Blasphemy. Only Marco and Star regularly resist the spell because of their strong spell resistance.
Once we collect a Holy Symbol of Xvim for each party member, we sell off 500,000 gold in spare loot, buy a bunch of ammunition, and proceed to Tyrannar Brutai Mar.
Right off the bat, the top cleric in the Severed Hand besides Madae stuns two-thirds of the party and proves immune to Disintegrate for no real reason. The same round, the ghosts of Guthma, Sherincal, the Beastlord Harshom, and a pair of Ruinlords join the fight.
Everyone gets automatic attacks on our most vulnerable party members for a whole round. Right after everyone recovers, Tyrannar Brutai Mar lands a critical hit on Asriel, and our best healer goes down in less than two rounds.
Sherincal applies heavy pressure to Marco, and Guthma starts chipping away at poor Mabel. We're in bad shape and the fight has only just begun.
With very careful positioning, we move Marco out of harm's way so he can shoot down Sherincal with some +5 arrows. Mabel restores him to full health with a spontaneously-cast Heal spell.
Tyrannar isn't doing much, but against the odds, Frisk fails a save against Harshom's Hold Monster and Star fails a save against his Beltyn's Burning Blood spell, disabling our most important character and also our bard. Beltyn's Burning Blood requires a Fortitude save, so it's always been very effective against mages.
Mabel cures them with Remove Paralysis and Exaltation, but then we get bad news. Tyrannar has just begun casting Tremor, an incredibly powerful disabler for which there are no cures and no immunities.
We flee the room and wait until the Tremor is over before rushing in to get some free hits on Harshom (even undead like Harshom's ghost aren't immune to Tremor's unconsciousness effect). When Tyrannar attempts another Tremor, we fall back once more and throw out a Delayed Blast Fireball while we're waiting.
Against all odds, Tyrannar manages to kill Dipper with a Symbol, Death spell, robbing us of our best fighter. We are helpless to stop Tyrannar from casting his Heal spell, but at least Marco can still deal plenty of damage.
Marco lands the final hit on Tyrannar, and the fight is won. Star disintegrates Tyrannar's incoming Gelugon.
Marco and Dipper both choose mage as their last level, allowing them to cast high-level spells like Black Blade of Disaster via scroll. Based on the numbers, Asriel is stuck at level 20 and will not be able to reach the level 21 black dragon shapeshift, which is rather disappointing--I was looking forward to stomping people in dragon form.
Next up is the avatar of Iyachtu Xvim himself, who interrupts our attempt at the purification ritual. He is a solid tank in his own right, spams damage spells, and comes with a small horde of demons. We focus on removing his demons first.
Iyachtu Xvim has extremely high resistances, so we struggle to deal damage to him. Mabel chain-casts Circle of Healing to counter the enemy fire spells.
Xvim is sturdy, but he is also alone and surrounded foes with powerful healing options. He just doesn't have the numbers to stand up to the party's pressure. We banish his avatar and complete the ritual without further delay.
From there, we shatter the Globe of Essence, put down Dracein, Precious, and Vese Nejj through brute force, and proceed to Captain Pudu, who lands two critical hits in a row and kills Dipper in a single round.
I badly underestimated this fight; normally Pudu and the half-dragon Vyxein are no problem. But Mabel holds down Pudu for a moment with Holy Word, and Star saves the day by chain-casting Power Word: Stun until both enemies are dead.
Isair and Madae are close at hand. We're inches away from the final battle.
Killed a Dragon by zapping him in his sleep and set prisoners free to remove the bridge guards
we decided to grab the shortsword from its underground safe but we didn't feel like fighting the buggy backstabber so ran out... the squid followed us out of the room so we shut the door on his guards and had an easy battle
recharge the mind locket, ring of invis and both missile necklaces then teleport inside the fort and hand over the spider leg to end the session
Original post:
Starting again, my aim this time is to avoid taking any casualties - at least up until the end of BG1. Given that my attempts to play safely tend to unravel fairly quickly, I'll probably aim to only play with this party sporadically when I'm more in the mood to avoid risks.
Early action saw Algernon killed for his cloak and that was used immediately to tempt some sirines out of Beregost temple to their deaths.
The sirines only got them halfway to a level, but the basilisks were waiting to provide a bigger boost. Endowment purchased PfP from High Hedge and used that to allow an assault. The southern group there weren't quite sufficient, but a few of the northern ones did the job.
A blinded ogre offered easy access to a belt collection on the way to the FAI, where a couple of guards helped sort out Tarnesh (the ones from the external gate are best for this purpose as their AI doesn't make them lose interest in the fight).
Back in Beregost some jobs around town were just a few XP short of triggering a further level for everyone and that was left to a couple of gnolls in Drizzt's area.
With reputation now dangerously low at 3, the party went to help Ardrouine and then Charleston Nib, before getting a lift to Nashkel with Brage. Talking to Oublek and 500 gold of donations to the temple pushed reputation into double figures to allow Legacy to learn CLW. Picking up the ankheg armor also lets Will get AC down to -8. With AC adjustments on top of that, melee combat is starting to look like a more realistic option for him.
Will, Berserker L4, 53 HPs, 21 kills, 0 deaths
Heritage, Dwarven Defender L4, 64 HPs, 19 kills, 0 deaths
Bequest, Fighter L2 / Thief L3, 27 HPs, 9 kills, 0 deaths
Legacy, Dragon Disciple L3, 23 HPs, 5 kills
Endowment, Fighter L3 / Illusionist L3, 21 HPs, 23 kills, 0 deaths
Testament, Fighter L2 / Cleric L3, 29 HPs, 22 kills, 0 deaths
I tried to use a tactic out of Grond0's/Gate70's book, but it didn't work for me. I was trying to clear the basilisks, then Kirian spotted us. We were able to defeat her group, though not before poor Imoen bit it. But mustn't let our protection from petrification disappear as its our only one, so we pressed on. Then we were trying to find the greater basilisk without triggering Mutamutin, but we failed at that too. Our protected character was at range, but should have immediately closed to melee once Mutamutin was spotted. Then other mistake was I put up resist fear on my character, but instead should have targeted Heather. So then Heather (who was only one protected from petrification) gets horrored and starts running away. The greater basilisk promptly changed targets to Jeanluc and Jeanluc immediately became a statue.
Luckily, I had the foresight to make a starting save for this group (e.g., save made immediately after character creation). So will load that up and try them again. Will save basilisks for later I think.
Overall Irenicus Dungeon starts easy. There are only two Improved Anvil creatures here, both lesser spirit spiders.
The first one is dispatched by a Clan hunter, a summon from the modified Avenger kit that Jaheira has now.
The second one gets a hold off on Tails. Fortunately the immediate response is to have Imoen cast Emotion which easily affects the spider and he dies subsequently.
However, I am uncautious and there dies Tails to the vanilla thief that backstabbed her from the shadows.
Tails Two is about to start from scratch. She will focus on the same weapons except I think I trade out the longsword for shortsword. It is not overly useful to have longsword at this point and you find many good short swords early game.