@Grond0: You're doing great, and once again, I'm amazed that anyone could make it this far with a solo War Hulk. Be careful--ToB is deadly, and I think Burl deserves a spot on the Hall of Heroes.
So the Trio ventured out today and made some good progress. Even got the obligatory death, so Grond0 should be happy...
Our 1st target was the sirines in Shoal's area - we got seen before we meant to, then chaos ensued. Gate70 and Corey_Russell tried to hide and backstab, while Grond0 did the best he could to keep the sirines busy. We ran into some issues, such as low health for Spyder and Siur got dominated. During the battle, Corey_Russell healed Spyder - was a good thing too, as you can see by the following screenshot:
We then worked out the Nashkel mines problem. Backstabs were a bit overkill for kobolds, but the thiefs did it anyways. Was funny as we saved the miner with a snare - so that miner lucked out that time. Corthief XVI's skills were enough for the mines. Whenever he could, Siur would backstab the ghouls - racial enemy? : ) The Trio laid some snares for Mulahey's minions - turned out it was unnecessary - between Siur's backstab and Corthief's arrow of biting, Mulahey died quickly.
On exit the mines, we decided to wipe out the Amazon assassins. Greenstone amulet for Grond0 made him pretty tough, and Siur managed to assassinate one of the clerics, and promptly got held for it. But he was far enough away, that Spyder and Corthief XVI finished off the amazons.
Next up was the baslisks. This went well. Poor Mutamatin faced an assassin who used poison then backstabbed. This one-shotted Mutamatin. We laid some snares for Kirian's group, which did help. Corthief XVI got held, and then Kirian locked on with a lightning bolt and as well as horror, while Corthief XVI was held. Fortunately Corthief's boots of grounding kept him together. Spyder and Siur managed to rescue Corthief from Kirian, as well as mop up the last survivor.
The experience showed Corthief XVI he really needed some better saves vs. spell, so he got the kazagaroth's claw. He has less HP, but if he gets the attention of a strong enemy, he would be dead anyways, even with extra HP.
Now we decided it was time to teach Melium a lesson. The party had quite a few enemies at once, Kobolds, Melium and mummies. But in the end, a nice backstab by Corthief finished off Melium.
Grond0 suggested Durlag's Tower, so we gave that a go. Disaster struck when Grond0 was middle of leveling and then right then Siur talked to the thief upstairs. Grond0's game became unresponsive and Corthief XVI was unable to take control of Spyder. Corthief was trying to de-trap the trap in the upper right, but a ghast attacked. Siur eventually came down to help Corthief XVI, but then two more ghasts joined the fray. Corthief didn't know what to do, and Grond0 said try hiding via the stairs. So Corthief duly followed his group-mates suggestion, but what Grond0 didn't realize is following his advice meant 3 ghasts ate Spyder for lunch. Eventually the thief and assassin avenged their fallen friend.
After collecting the gear, clearly time to resurrect their friend and went to Beregost Temple. The Trio were feeling adventurous and decided to lay some snares for the sirines. We made a mistake and rested though, which meant only Corthief's snares took effect. Chaos then ensued, but the thief's backstabs eventually carried the day.
The last major engagement of the session was the basiliks at Durlag's Tower. This went well, without any mishaps.
The Trio rested at an inn in Beregost, and ended our session here.
After R n R we decided to return to Durlag's Tower where we had few problems. Even when we went downstairs to the wardens. We stashed the wine down there with the result that the wardens didn't turn on us.
Imoen levelled up and upon returning to Beregost bought an exceedingly good bow. We then went north of the FAI and were attacked by a group of 3 ankheg. This resulted in Tenya levelling up.
Nobody else was near to levelling so we sold the ankheg shells and upgraded rings of protection plus one to one ring of protection plus 2. These were then merged with the ring that gives freedom of action.
It cost a lot of gold so we are now poor again.
However, we were strong enough to take on Nicardian and co followed by Tristan unt Isolde. Then went to FAI to rest.
After that either the bandit camp or Northern Tales of the Sword Coast quests. I haven't tried the latter before so that is quite tempting. Of course I may return with my tail between my legs.
EDIT
We went to the field of the dead and completed the task given us in Ulgoth's Beard, however I think that we have just scratched the surface of the problems there.
The demise of Tails Two. I went ahead and tackled the Skinner Murders... or better yet I committed too much! Which I was able to get rid of the Rune Assassins and the Ghast that was there, the Grotesque Creature that IA modded in regenerates at a fast pace and many rounds of Near Death were just a few rounds too many. I am convinced that I have too little melee output although I do admit I did not buff severely enough such as the habit for all IA fights. Nevertheless I think taking Swashbuckler as my main character is not a solid choice. It struggles in the beginning of the game where I do not have the luxury to go with 2 stars in two weapon style or maybe I was too cautious and should glass cannon it until I get more comfortable levels of play.
Tails Two dies at 236128 XP, pre-fight. Only 13% of kills with 18 kills in total and favourite weapon the Grave Binder +2.
More annoyingly, v2.5 hit and it auto-updated the game when I clicked "start game" in Steam by mistake (to check on my final pre-death stats. I need to check whether the mod still works after I reinstall it at v2.5... I am not going back to 1.3, that would be silly. Sigh. I hope this does not make IA incompatible again, that would postpone my game yet again.
I finally got some free time, played around two hours, in which I completed some more low level quests, got Minsc his 2nd level, realized Imoen had her BG2 voice files, so I also edited that, only to end up dying to an Ogre Berkerker because of a miss-click while kiting. I got one Wild Surge out of all the spells I used: it was Sex Change on Minsc when I used my Bhaalspawn healing powers. Ended up having to rest (because I needed Minsc at full HP) but I was rather pleased it didn't summon a Tanar'ri, even if that didn't save me from the clutches of death.
Moving on, now, my next character's going to be a Wizard Slayer->Cleric, according to the list. Here he is. I'll post an update once anything relevant happens. Edit: forgot to convert the image to jpeg before posting, whoops, fixed.
@Grond0: You're doing great, and once again, I'm amazed that anyone could make it this far with a solo War Hulk. Be careful--ToB is deadly, and I think Burl deserves a spot on the Hall of Heroes.
Well, Burl hit a wall when fighting Abazigal yesterday - fortunately he kept banging his head against that until the wall proved weaker than his head. I don't know if he'll continue to be able to do that though ...
Burl {6} - solo War Hulk (update 12) Previous updates:
For Draconis, Burl didn't use any buffs, but just relied on waiting in a hidey hole to regenerate in between nipping out to hit Draconis. That meant it took a long time - each time I penetrated the dragon's stoneskins he recast them. Eventually Burl lost patience and used his simmy. That summoned Ras to attack before evaporating due to being tickled by a wing buffet. Burl took advantage though to get several blows in with Soul Reaver before summoning his own version of Ras. His next blow found Draconis' flesh and the end looked likely to come swiftly, but Draconis found a 5th set of stoneskins before Burl surprisingly fell unconscious for the first time from a wing buffet (despite saving throw of -9 vs breath).
The unconscious state is short though and Burl continued attacking - using two green Pf Acid scrolls. Gradually the impact of Soul Reaver overcame the vulnerability of rage until Burl was only missing with a 1 and Draconis only hitting with a 20.
It wasn't long then until the next time the dragon's stoneskins failed proved fatal.
There were no problems getting through to Abazigal's cave where Burl killed all the salamanders before showing himself to Abazigal. He quickly pierced his human form a few times, using his weapon speed advantage, to get the dragon to show himself. Then he kept out of range while nipping up to stab Abazigal - always watching out for the possibility of a ranged maze. He used his simmy to activate Ras just before being killed by a wing buffet and Ras absorbed one maze. I thought there would be another soon enough, but for a long time it never came while Burl worked through stoneskin after stoneskin. The length of the battle, however, eventually seemed to trigger Abazigal to recover all his spells and he started spamming PW: Blind, prismatic spray etc and continued casting spells continuously for the remainder of the long battle. While Burl was blinded from one of those spells, Abazigal finally slipped in a maze. The fact that Burl couldn't see that coming meant he was vulnerable, but his magic resistance proved good enough anyway.
Another couple of sets of stoneskins later and Burl saw another maze coming, but too late to be able to use his resist magic HLA. This time he failed to resist and had to resort to burning one of his two PfM scrolls to dispel the maze effect.
Burl kept attacking, but by now it was pretty obvious he was faced with infinite stoneskins. He tried attacking in rat form for a while, but the mazes and stoneskins kept coming. He tried a number of firebreath potions, but Abazigal's high magic resistance defeated most of those, despite taking a few hits from The Answerer (the effect from that only lasts 4 rounds, so it's difficult to use that decisively when you only have 1 APR). He tried Bala's Axe, but (rather disappointingly) the miscast magic effect from that was blocked by magic resistance.
Finally his scroll of PfM ran out and he had to bring out the air elemental to provide just enough of a break in combat for him to get back to the Pocket Plane. I hadn't wanted to resort to using PfM via simmy, but couldn't see any alternative to that. The simmy usually died within a round or so (if that bug is fixed in the new update that would make a huge difference to the viability of the War Hulk in ToB), but that was still long enough to put PfM up and Burl tried several different approaches with that active. That included producing summons from his staffs, but that seemed a totally hopeless approach and Burl eventually concluded his best hope was to unlimber Soul Reaver once more. The effect from that on THAC0 lasts 2 turns, so you can get a decent stack from that even with only 1 APR. A first attempt with that seemed promising, but Burl wasn't doing quite enough damage to win before his PfM scroll ran out - despite finally getting a bonus by managing to hit Abby without finding stoneskins in the way (the only such hit in the hundreds he inflicted in the contest).
Coming back again, he used hardiness to keep his HPs up enough to push Abby into needing a critical to hit (his regeneration was then able to keep pace with other damage taken). At that point he alternated between the FoA to do damage and the Soul Reaver to maintain the THAC0 penalty. He also threw in a blast from the Ring of the Ram and the occasional successful blast from the Ring of Energy, while Abby was also taking a bit of damage from his own earthquakes. The PfM scroll must have been nearing its end, but Abby was also deep in trouble. According to my use of ctrl-M he still had 5 HPs left when he called it a day, but possibly the Ring of Energy hit him again at the end without a text message.
War Hulk L40, 458 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 1,370 kills (663 in BGEE/SoD)
The Meatgrinder Challenge - Second Attempt, Update 1
I'm still waiting for the 2.5 Patches for BG1+SoD, so it's time to pass the time with my second attempt at the meatgrinder challenge (completely randomized character creation, no max hp on level-up, insane difficulty). Here's the party provided by my randomization process:
K'awiil, Chaotic Evil Halfling Priest of Talos Stats: 13/16/16/14/10/9 Proficiencies: *Flail/Morning Star, *Sword and Shield Style
It is kind of strange that I rolled another Priest of Talos as my Bhaalspawn, just like I did for my first attempt. This one has good dexterity and constitution, so I'm pretty happy with him overall.
Triple classes are kind of bad for this challenge, as they tend to have extremely low hp. Still, this one has amazing dexterity and great proficiencies, so he will do tons of damage early on. If he makes it to the later stages of the game, the triple class might even pay off.
I don't really need this character, but oh well... Might get some early points in set traps, which might help out? At least thief HLAs are great if I make it to the lategame.
Compared to my previous party, this one does lack the powerhouse classes I enjoyed very much in the early game (totemic druid, dragon disciple). However, the overall damage output might be a bit higher, thanks to decent profiencies and dexterity scores for my fighters. This is still very much an above-average party, so there is a chance that they could make it. SoD will be difficult if I make it that far, though.
The group started off making their way to Nashkel without any deaths, using command when faced with ranged attackers. After reaching level 2 with all the early experience, I bought a protection from petrification scroll from High Hedge, having Dido learn it. This allowed me to initiate my first basilisk hunt:
Bless and remove fear helped to take down Mutamin, and with some levels under their belt, the party started hunting for some crucial items (such as the gauntlets of dexterity for Guðrún and a couple of wands and ankheg plates) and experience. After acquiring a wand of the heavens and a wand of frost, the second basilisk hunt was on - using the wands against the battle horrors of Durlag's Tower to gain access to the roof:
On the way back, I encountered my first party death. The dreaded bandit amush occured for the first time, and they all shot at Ilithyia, who has very poor AC anyway:
I also made a huge mistake following that, when I accidentally had Guðrún use the wisdom tome from Durlag's Tower. It was meant for Saraswati, but I had confused their portraits:
At this point, I had access to my first animate dead spells, allowing me to go for high-value targets like sirens, vampire wolves, flesh golems and aventuring parties (though I'm not done with all of those yet). The only close call occured when the amazons managed to hit the party with a glyph of warding, which I really didn't see coming at all:
Oh, and Dido got to use the constitution tome. I just reached cleric levels 6, which means a total of 4 skeletons are available. I think I might go for the Nahskel Mines to increase the number to a full 5 (via Ring of Holiness), which should allow me to easily clear out all wilderness areas.
At Sendai's enclave, Burl tried to one-shot the Woodcutter by using the Impaler for the first time. He needed to do 130 HPs for a kill, but managed a mere 129 . After briefly nipping into the cottage to turn invisible he finished the job.
Entering the enclave he moved through invisibly to find Thelynn'yss - and this time the Impaler got the one extra damage needed for an instant kill.
Burl moved invisibly on to find Odamaron. Any attempted area damage spells he tried were interrupted, meaning Burl and his simmy were able to hack the lich down pretty quickly.
Burl used the Heart of the Damned to upgrade the Short Sword of Mask.
Moving on to Ogremoch I anticipated more possible problems with stoneskins. As I expected earthquakes prevented the simmy from doing anything, but Burl attacked in rat form while wearing Roranach's Horn (making him immune to Ogremoch's damage). Burl managed to get one bite through before Ogremoch's stoneskin contingency fired, but couldn't quite manage to eat through the fresh batch before his rat form ended. Replacing that with hardiness, he continued attacking and a couple of rounds later felt the bite of flesh once more.
PfM meant no risks against Diaytha and the Hive Mother, though Burl did get a bit drained by the Demon Knight there.
Captain Egeissag stumbled back from a power attack and didn't recover before being finished off,
while the liches failed to land a hit.
For Sendai, Burl once more made use of a simmy PfM. That lasted long enough for him to kill all the statues and drow. Rather than attack Sendai straight away though he used invisibility to break off combat and return to the pocket plane.
With PfM renewed he joined the fight again and kept Sendai on the back foot by slowing her and interrupting spells with the FoA. He actually got through her stoneskins once relatively early on, but the PfM scroll must have been nearing its end when he did that again to nearly kill her.
Taking a potion proved an inadequate counter as Burl hit her again to trigger her dialogue.
Back in Amkethran, Burl sought out Saemon to arrange passage into the compound. Once there he ran into the audience hall as soon as ambushers showed themselves. The first bit of work was to run round, avoiding Balthazar, while he killed all the monks to avoid any possible nasty accidents. Then he took rat form and used the Greenstone Amulet. Without stoneskins Balthazar had no answer to some serious nibbling and died in just a few rounds.
Back in the Pocket Plane the Slayer had no answer to run and stab tactics in the 3rd challenge.
Four fire elementals provided enough distraction to kill one of the Favored of Cyric's and Ras accounted for another to leave the final one competing way out of his league.
For the 5th challenge, Burl made himself an easy target by putting on the Human Flesh Armor, but also equipped the Reflection Shield. That meant the Ravager was hurting himself while Burl ran round, but the bulk of damage done was from Burl nipping in on every circuit or so to strike a blow in melee.
The use of the simmy PfM has made everything pretty easy since Abazigal. The long duration of the Melissan combats and the inability to run away during those is going to make that pretty difficult though I think. I suspect Burl will not triumph, but he'll do his best .
War Hulk L40, 458 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 1,426 kills (663 in BGEE/SoD)
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 159 (158) Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
The next random duo have been on the road a few days. With a continued lack of record-keeping, it's going to be a short summary based around screenshots.
A low-level random encounter saw Slider get too chummy with dogs. Her pal Xati managed to drag her to a temple and win a lot of respect for paying the requisite amount of coin.
Clearly we needed to learn fast. School involved basilisks, Blind and Command.
Stinking Cloud and Silence were the next subjects to be studied.
There's always time to pick up a lower level education. Whenever we tried and failed to sleep, Slider would cast it herself.
Xati fancied taking on the sirines, and suggested it. Good idea concurred Slider, although your studded leather armour is a bit on the light side. This worried Xati but he kept his mouth shut and got on with the job. A few spells helped.
Various ideas failed to work in a flesh golem cave so we ended up using invisibility and a long stick.
Slider demonstrated another level 1 spell, chromatic orb.
So far we've cleared what we want from the gnoll fortress, Durlags Tower and Nashkel Mine. Tranzig is next on the list.
I will just gamble it and install IA on v2.5. This time I installed the no-locks and no-traps mod in order to run IA without a thief. It creates more potential within the party for melee power, something badly missed.
Tails starts as an Avenger druid this time with proficiency in club and scimitar. I modded her to also allow dagger proficiency but did not invest in it yet. IA disables it because it wants to prevent usage of throwing weapons on the Avenger, but it loses too many nice melee daggers so I vow not to use the throwing kind. In any case. I start her up and inside the dungeon the special weapon I find is again the Grave Binder. Maybe along the lines I will get a proficiency in daggers really really quickly.
Sucks that I have to play half-elf or human though. I do not really like those very much anymore. Ah well...
Lyran has reached the Gate, here are some travel pics...
Behold, the terrifying sight of the Finch quadruplets circus act. Will either murder or recruit...
High level Tranzig was tricky. Had to Flamestrike him in the end...
Low rep has occasionally invited bounty hunters, luckily the locals don't take kindly to interlopers.
Closest call so far as Lyran was poisoned by a Phase Spider while webbed, luckily getting free in time.
Tiax has almost been ejected on several occasions- Cloak of the Wolf heals us anyway. Turning some of Ulgoth's hostile is not productive... Mr I can pickpocket...
Probably the first time that I've ever killed Drizzt. Due to some Scales of Balance related probs the scimitars won't get used till SoD.
Davaeron gets cornered. A tough battle against a high level invoker.
@lroumen You can be other races if you have the appropriate mods. Even without them you could create a character and then use EE Keeper to change race, though I suppose that you knew that.
We returned to the fields of the dead and the woods of the dead. We did as much as we can until we reach BG. We then went to the Northern Coast where we tried to help the local fishermen. Upon entering the cave we were attacked by salamanders, so we promptly left.
Only one of them followed us, so we had no difficulty in killing it.
We then knew what buffs were needed and planned a strategy. I and Ajantis got ourselves buffed against fire and also got freedom of action. The others then stood well clear of the cave.
I and Ajantis re-entered and lured most of the remaining salamanders outside whilst Imoen cast web.
With that advantage we defeated all those that had followed us.
We re-entered and discovered that there were only two left. That was when our strategy failed. We attacked them and were promtly fried. Probably the result of a trap. Imoen was killed instantly and her death was promtly followed by that of Tenya when we fled outside.
We were left with just four paladins. We picked up the equipment of the fallen, leaving behind hundreds of arrows and bullets.
We then went to visit Aerie again who again raised our fallen. We rested for 16 hours before returning.
Imoen unlocked the chest in the cave and was rewarded with a sandthief ring.
The fishermen were very grateful and we would have improved our reputation if that had been possible.
The bandit camp proved to be a non-event. We have now arrived in Cloakwood and killed the spiders. We returned Chelak's body and kept the sword. We then upgraded Spiders' Bane and the Mail of the dead. This left us with 54gp.
We returned to the spider area and I killed a dragon single-handed.
So I've been using holy word in my current playthrough, after reading about semiticgod and others using it to good effect. I'm a little bit shocked by how good it is (or seems to be).
In fact, it seems to effectively be 100% spell failure by messing with mage AI scripts and convincing them not to cast at all (other than special abilities).
Am I missing something? That's such a wildly, grossly overpowered spell effect but it gets almost no accolades in any of the "best spell discussions" and seems to have very low awareness for how good it is.
A 1 cast time, AoE, no save effect that shuts down enemy casters and goes through all their spell protections. That's incredibly powerful. It has made every lich fight in the game a joke so far. Slight difficulty once as one of them ability cast a dark planetar.
@Jabberwock: I think the reason Holy Word gets overlooked is because Insect Plague imposes 100% spell failure as well as a strong feat effects and is available much earlier. A druid gets Insect Plague at 90,000 XP while a cleric gets Holy Word at 1,350,000 XP. Thus, when most people think of spell failure options, they think of Insect Plague. But in SCS, Fire Shield blocks the effects of Insect Plague, making it largely useless--creating the impression that trying to impose spell failure isn't a good option in SCS.
Personally, I consider Wizard Slayers to be more effective at dealing with SCS mages because they can inflict spell failure right from the start of the game, even earlier than druids. But Holy Word is a brilliant alternative, and while it takes a little while to get the spell, it doesn't require any special kits to learn; any single-classed cleric can get it at 1.35 million XP. The only disadvantage is that it won't bypass magic resistance, so drow mages and such will often resist its effects.
@Grond0 in your post #12 you mentioned several times you only have 1 APR - is your character not allowed to use haste potions? Also, I do remember @Alesia_BH saying Abazigal has infinite stoneskins (his ability for being part god I guess).
@lroumen You can be other races if you have the appropriate mods. Even without them you could create a character and then use EE Keeper to change race, though I suppose that you knew that.
True, but IA is kind of special in the modding scene so I don't really want to gamble anything there. I could always extend the class but meh, too much work. I'd rather play
Thrasher the human cleric entering no-reload challenge... Traveling with: Minsc, Kagain, Imoen, Dynaheir, Kivan
I'll enter a screenie of the character sheet for Thrasher later, but he's well under way. The party is about level 4 at the moment. I forgot that Kivan demands that you go to the bandit camp early, but we managed to pull it off. Kagain and Minsc gulped a huge amount of blue potions to stay together though. The bandits near Khosahnn were hit with a web and attacked at range and this worked well. Khosahnn broke free and charged, but a few magic missiles from Dynaheir calmed him down. For Tazok's tent, the key was Venkt - Dynaheir did magic missiles, two party members used their MM wands - Venkt couldn't do much before falling, then it was a piece of cake.
Incidentally, poor Mulahey got silenced and that made him a cake walk as well. Silences for the amazons didn't help them either. A protection from undead scroll made short work of the undead in the area. Narcillicus isn't too bad as long as the entire party range attacks him dead, and the jellies weren't much trouble.
We haven't done the harder areas yet (Basilisks, Sirenes, Ankegs), we have explored mostly the bottom two rows of the map. Will keep a it.
Forgot to mention we did get one boon - we ran into an Ankheg on the Amazon Assassins map, so had the Smithy make some armor for us - now entire party that can wear heavy armor is using either Ankheg plate or full plate mail, so that's been good for our defense, as well as using less blue potions.
@Grond0: I've also wondered about Abazigal's Stoneskins. How often did he cast them? It seems like you'd have to spend 10 rounds cutting through a single Stoneskin.
@Grond0: I've also wondered about Abazigal's Stoneskins. How often did he cast them? It seems like you'd have to spend 10 rounds cutting through a single Stoneskin.
He cast them whenever the previous stoneskins were taken down. I reckon I hit him over 300 times and only managed a single hit that wasn't blocked by stoneskins. And yes that did mean it was a long battle - in my installation a round is 3 seconds, but I was probably hitting on average every 4-5 as I wanted to make sure I was attacking in a fresh round to minimize retaliations. With the odd break in the pocket plane and some delays to regenerate after taking damage, that occupied several hours ...
Drasus et al proved to be no problem as I was expecting them. Tylus however was not expected and killed Ajantis. We took advantage of the trip to Beregost to hand in a wyvern skull thus gaining a considerable amount of gold. This was used at the FAI to pay for the creation of a powerful helmet from another wyvern skull. We then returned to the Cloakwood mines. I have been told that gold is no problem in the Sword Coast. You could have fooled me!! Every time that it is necessary to raise a friend it costs me 800 gold pieces!!
... Every time that it is necessary to raise a friend it costs me 800 gold pieces!!
Well then you got it easy. One time I had to pay 10,000 gold to raise Imoen - and this was in vanilla! Apparently the priests from the Temple of Helm were a bit greedy...
@Wise_Grimwald I don't think the sticker shock had to do with alignment, but more a function of low CHA, low reputation, and possibly Imoen's high level - think she was a level 5 thief dualed to mage and was level 9 in mage.
Comments
Corthief XVI - elven thief, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Siur - half-orc assassin (Gate70)
Spyder - dwarven fighter/thief (Grond0)
So the Trio ventured out today and made some good progress. Even got the obligatory death, so Grond0 should be happy...
Our 1st target was the sirines in Shoal's area - we got seen before we meant to, then chaos ensued. Gate70 and Corey_Russell tried to hide and backstab, while Grond0 did the best he could to keep the sirines busy. We ran into some issues, such as low health for Spyder and Siur got dominated. During the battle, Corey_Russell healed Spyder - was a good thing too, as you can see by the following screenshot:
We then worked out the Nashkel mines problem. Backstabs were a bit overkill for kobolds, but the thiefs did it anyways. Was funny as we saved the miner with a snare - so that miner lucked out that time. Corthief XVI's skills were enough for the mines. Whenever he could, Siur would backstab the ghouls - racial enemy? : ) The Trio laid some snares for Mulahey's minions - turned out it was unnecessary - between Siur's backstab and Corthief's arrow of biting, Mulahey died quickly.
On exit the mines, we decided to wipe out the Amazon assassins. Greenstone amulet for Grond0 made him pretty tough, and Siur managed to assassinate one of the clerics, and promptly got held for it. But he was far enough away, that Spyder and Corthief XVI finished off the amazons.
Next up was the baslisks. This went well. Poor Mutamatin faced an assassin who used poison then backstabbed. This one-shotted Mutamatin. We laid some snares for Kirian's group, which did help. Corthief XVI got held, and then Kirian locked on with a lightning bolt and as well as horror, while Corthief XVI was held. Fortunately Corthief's boots of grounding kept him together. Spyder and Siur managed to rescue Corthief from Kirian, as well as mop up the last survivor.
The experience showed Corthief XVI he really needed some better saves vs. spell, so he got the kazagaroth's claw. He has less HP, but if he gets the attention of a strong enemy, he would be dead anyways, even with extra HP.
Now we decided it was time to teach Melium a lesson. The party had quite a few enemies at once, Kobolds, Melium and mummies. But in the end, a nice backstab by Corthief finished off Melium.
Grond0 suggested Durlag's Tower, so we gave that a go. Disaster struck when Grond0 was middle of leveling and then right then Siur talked to the thief upstairs. Grond0's game became unresponsive and Corthief XVI was unable to take control of Spyder. Corthief was trying to de-trap the trap in the upper right, but a ghast attacked. Siur eventually came down to help Corthief XVI, but then two more ghasts joined the fray. Corthief didn't know what to do, and Grond0 said try hiding via the stairs. So Corthief duly followed his group-mates suggestion, but what Grond0 didn't realize is following his advice meant 3 ghasts ate Spyder for lunch. Eventually the thief and assassin avenged their fallen friend.
After collecting the gear, clearly time to resurrect their friend and went to Beregost Temple. The Trio were feeling adventurous and decided to lay some snares for the sirines. We made a mistake and rested though, which meant only Corthief's snares took effect. Chaos then ensued, but the thief's backstabs eventually carried the day.
The last major engagement of the session was the basiliks at Durlag's Tower. This went well, without any mishaps.
The Trio rested at an inn in Beregost, and ended our session here.
Diary of Nigretta
After R n R we decided to return to Durlag's Tower where we had few problems. Even when we went downstairs to the wardens. We stashed the wine down there with the result that the wardens didn't turn on us.Imoen levelled up and upon returning to Beregost bought an exceedingly good bow. We then went north of the FAI and were attacked by a group of 3 ankheg. This resulted in Tenya levelling up.
Nobody else was near to levelling so we sold the ankheg shells and upgraded rings of protection plus one to one ring of protection plus 2. These were then merged with the ring that gives freedom of action.
It cost a lot of gold so we are now poor again.
However, we were strong enough to take on Nicardian and co followed by Tristan unt Isolde. Then went to FAI to rest.
After that either the bandit camp or Northern Tales of the Sword Coast quests. I haven't tried the latter before so that is quite tempting. Of course I may return with my tail between my legs.
EDIT
We went to the field of the dead and completed the task given us in Ulgoth's Beard, however I think that we have just scratched the surface of the problems there.Part 2
Part 3
The demise of Tails Two.
I went ahead and tackled the Skinner Murders... or better yet I committed too much! Which I was able to get rid of the Rune Assassins and the Ghast that was there, the Grotesque Creature that IA modded in regenerates at a fast pace and many rounds of Near Death were just a few rounds too many.
I am convinced that I have too little melee output although I do admit I did not buff severely enough such as the habit for all IA fights. Nevertheless I think taking Swashbuckler as my main character is not a solid choice. It struggles in the beginning of the game where I do not have the luxury to go with 2 stars in two weapon style or maybe I was too cautious and should glass cannon it until I get more comfortable levels of play.
Tails Two dies at 236128 XP, pre-fight. Only 13% of kills with 18 kills in total and favourite weapon the Grave Binder +2.
More annoyingly, v2.5 hit and it auto-updated the game when I clicked "start game" in Steam by mistake (to check on my final pre-death stats. I need to check whether the mod still works after I reinstall it at v2.5... I am not going back to 1.3, that would be silly.
Sigh. I hope this does not make IA incompatible again, that would postpone my game yet again.
Moving on, now, my next character's going to be a Wizard Slayer->Cleric, according to the list. Here he is. I'll post an update once anything relevant happens.
Edit: forgot to convert the image to jpeg before posting, whoops, fixed.
Burl {6} - solo War Hulk (update 12)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/987830/#Comment_987830
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/988193/#Comment_988193
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/988472/#Comment_988472
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/988833/#Comment_988833
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/989178/#Comment_989178
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/989394/#Comment_989394
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990117/#Comment_990117
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990324/#Comment_990324
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990551/#Comment_990551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990568/#Comment_990568
For Draconis, Burl didn't use any buffs, but just relied on waiting in a hidey hole to regenerate in between nipping out to hit Draconis. That meant it took a long time - each time I penetrated the dragon's stoneskins he recast them. Eventually Burl lost patience and used his simmy. That summoned Ras to attack before evaporating due to being tickled by a wing buffet. Burl took advantage though to get several blows in with Soul Reaver before summoning his own version of Ras. His next blow found Draconis' flesh and the end looked likely to come swiftly, but Draconis found a 5th set of stoneskins before Burl surprisingly fell unconscious for the first time from a wing buffet (despite saving throw of -9 vs breath).
There were no problems getting through to Abazigal's cave where Burl killed all the salamanders before showing himself to Abazigal. He quickly pierced his human form a few times, using his weapon speed advantage, to get the dragon to show himself. Then he kept out of range while nipping up to stab Abazigal - always watching out for the possibility of a ranged maze. He used his simmy to activate Ras just before being killed by a wing buffet and Ras absorbed one maze. I thought there would be another soon enough, but for a long time it never came while Burl worked through stoneskin after stoneskin. The length of the battle, however, eventually seemed to trigger Abazigal to recover all his spells and he started spamming PW: Blind, prismatic spray etc and continued casting spells continuously for the remainder of the long battle. While Burl was blinded from one of those spells, Abazigal finally slipped in a maze. The fact that Burl couldn't see that coming meant he was vulnerable, but his magic resistance proved good enough anyway.
Finally his scroll of PfM ran out and he had to bring out the air elemental to provide just enough of a break in combat for him to get back to the Pocket Plane. I hadn't wanted to resort to using PfM via simmy, but couldn't see any alternative to that. The simmy usually died within a round or so (if that bug is fixed in the new update that would make a huge difference to the viability of the War Hulk in ToB), but that was still long enough to put PfM up and Burl tried several different approaches with that active. That included producing summons from his staffs, but that seemed a totally hopeless approach and Burl eventually concluded his best hope was to unlimber Soul Reaver once more. The effect from that on THAC0 lasts 2 turns, so you can get a decent stack from that even with only 1 APR. A first attempt with that seemed promising, but Burl wasn't doing quite enough damage to win before his PfM scroll ran out - despite finally getting a bonus by managing to hit Abby without finding stoneskins in the way (the only such hit in the hundreds he inflicted in the contest).
War Hulk L40, 458 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 1,370 kills (663 in BGEE/SoD)
I'm still waiting for the 2.5 Patches for BG1+SoD, so it's time to pass the time with my second attempt at the meatgrinder challenge (completely randomized character creation, no max hp on level-up, insane difficulty). Here's the party provided by my randomization process:
K'awiil, Chaotic Evil Halfling Priest of Talos
Stats: 13/16/16/14/10/9
Proficiencies: *Flail/Morning Star, *Sword and Shield Style
It is kind of strange that I rolled another Priest of Talos as my Bhaalspawn, just like I did for my first attempt. This one has good dexterity and constitution, so I'm pretty happy with him overall.
Cian, Chaotic Neutral Elf Fighter/Mage/Thief
Stats: 10/18/10/14/8/16
Profiencies: *Bastard Sword, *Crossbow, **Longbow
Spells: Friends, Larloch's Minor Drain
Triple classes are kind of bad for this challenge, as they tend to have extremely low hp. Still, this one has amazing dexterity and great proficiencies, so he will do tons of damage early on. If he makes it to the later stages of the game, the triple class might even pay off.
Guðrún, Neutral Good Dwarf Fighter
Stats: 14/13/12/14/14/8
Proficiencies: *Two-Handed Sword, *Katana, *Halberd, *Sling
Very average stats, but I'm happy to have a single-class fighter at all.
Saraswati, Neutral Good Half-Elf Cleric
Stats: 14/13/11/12/13/16
Proficiencies: *Sling, *Two-Weapon Style
Another cleric - ah, what I would give to have a totemic druid instead, as I did in my previous party. No interesting ability scores, sadly.
Dido, Chaotic Good Gnome Fighter/Illusionist
Stats: 12/18/16/16/13/10
Profiencies: *Bastard Sword, *Dagger, *Dart, *Two-Weapon Style
Spells: Blindness, Find Familiar, Friends
Great class for the mid-late game, and with good stats - except for the low strength score. Still, happy to have this one.
Ilithyia, Lawful Neutral Half-Orc Swashbuckler
Stats: 16/12/8/13/14/14
Profiencies: *Quarterstaff, *Short Sword
I don't really need this character, but oh well... Might get some early points in set traps, which might help out? At least thief HLAs are great if I make it to the lategame.
Compared to my previous party, this one does lack the powerhouse classes I enjoyed very much in the early game (totemic druid, dragon disciple). However, the overall damage output might be a bit higher, thanks to decent profiencies and dexterity scores for my fighters. This is still very much an above-average party, so there is a chance that they could make it. SoD will be difficult if I make it that far, though.
The group started off making their way to Nashkel without any deaths, using command when faced with ranged attackers. After reaching level 2 with all the early experience, I bought a protection from petrification scroll from High Hedge, having Dido learn it. This allowed me to initiate my first basilisk hunt:
Bless and remove fear helped to take down Mutamin, and with some levels under their belt, the party started hunting for some crucial items (such as the gauntlets of dexterity for Guðrún and a couple of wands and ankheg plates) and experience. After acquiring a wand of the heavens and a wand of frost, the second basilisk hunt was on - using the wands against the battle horrors of Durlag's Tower to gain access to the roof:
On the way back, I encountered my first party death. The dreaded bandit amush occured for the first time, and they all shot at Ilithyia, who has very poor AC anyway:
I also made a huge mistake following that, when I accidentally had Guðrún use the wisdom tome from Durlag's Tower. It was meant for Saraswati, but I had confused their portraits:
At this point, I had access to my first animate dead spells, allowing me to go for high-value targets like sirens, vampire wolves, flesh golems and aventuring parties (though I'm not done with all of those yet). The only close call occured when the amazons managed to hit the party with a glyph of warding, which I really didn't see coming at all:
Oh, and Dido got to use the constitution tome. I just reached cleric levels 6, which means a total of 4 skeletons are available. I think I might go for the Nahskel Mines to increase the number to a full 5 (via Ring of Holiness), which should allow me to easily clear out all wilderness areas.
Enuhal
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/987830/#Comment_987830
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/988193/#Comment_988193
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/988472/#Comment_988472
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/988833/#Comment_988833
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/989178/#Comment_989178
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/989394/#Comment_989394
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990117/#Comment_990117
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990324/#Comment_990324
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990551/#Comment_990551
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990568/#Comment_990568
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990704/#Comment_990704
At Sendai's enclave, Burl tried to one-shot the Woodcutter by using the Impaler for the first time. He needed to do 130 HPs for a kill, but managed a mere 129
Entering the enclave he moved through invisibly to find Thelynn'yss - and this time the Impaler got the one extra damage needed for an instant kill.
Moving on to Ogremoch I anticipated more possible problems with stoneskins. As I expected earthquakes prevented the simmy from doing anything, but Burl attacked in rat form while wearing Roranach's Horn (making him immune to Ogremoch's damage). Burl managed to get one bite through before Ogremoch's stoneskin contingency fired, but couldn't quite manage to eat through the fresh batch before his rat form ended. Replacing that with hardiness, he continued attacking and a couple of rounds later felt the bite of flesh once more.
PfM meant no risks against Diaytha and the Hive Mother, though Burl did get a bit drained by the Demon Knight there.
For Sendai, Burl once more made use of a simmy PfM. That lasted long enough for him to kill all the statues and drow. Rather than attack Sendai straight away though he used invisibility to break off combat and return to the pocket plane.
Back in Amkethran, Burl sought out Saemon to arrange passage into the compound. Once there he ran into the audience hall as soon as ambushers showed themselves. The first bit of work was to run round, avoiding Balthazar, while he killed all the monks to avoid any possible nasty accidents. Then he took rat form and used the Greenstone Amulet. Without stoneskins Balthazar had no answer to some serious nibbling and died in just a few rounds.
Back in the Pocket Plane the Slayer had no answer to run and stab tactics in the 3rd challenge.
For the 5th challenge, Burl made himself an easy target by putting on the Human Flesh Armor, but also equipped the Reflection Shield. That meant the Ravager was hurting himself while Burl ran round, but the bulk of damage done was from Burl nipping in on every circuit or so to strike a blow in melee.
The use of the simmy PfM has made everything pretty easy since Abazigal. The long duration of the Melissan combats and the inability to run away during those is going to make that pretty difficult though I think. I suspect Burl will not triumph, but he'll do his best
War Hulk L40, 458 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 1,426 kills (663 in BGEE/SoD)
Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
The next random duo have been on the road a few days. With a continued lack of record-keeping, it's going to be a short summary based around screenshots.
A low-level random encounter saw Slider get too chummy with dogs. Her pal Xati managed to drag her to a temple and win a lot of respect for paying the requisite amount of coin.
I will just gamble it and install IA on v2.5. This time I installed the no-locks and no-traps mod in order to run IA without a thief. It creates more potential within the party for melee power, something badly missed.
Tails starts as an Avenger druid this time with proficiency in club and scimitar. I modded her to also allow dagger proficiency but did not invest in it yet. IA disables it because it wants to prevent usage of throwing weapons on the Avenger, but it loses too many nice melee daggers so I vow not to use the throwing kind.
In any case. I start her up and inside the dungeon the special weapon I find is again the Grave Binder. Maybe along the lines I will get a proficiency in daggers really really quickly.
Sucks that I have to play half-elf or human though. I do not really like those very much anymore. Ah well...
Behold, the terrifying sight of the Finch quadruplets circus act. Will either murder or recruit...
High level Tranzig was tricky. Had to Flamestrike him in the end...
Low rep has occasionally invited bounty hunters, luckily the locals don't take kindly to interlopers.
Closest call so far as Lyran was poisoned by a Phase Spider while webbed, luckily getting free in time.
Tiax has almost been ejected on several occasions- Cloak of the Wolf heals us anyway. Turning some of Ulgoth's hostile is not productive... Mr I can pickpocket...
Probably the first time that I've ever killed Drizzt. Due to some Scales of Balance related probs the scimitars won't get used till SoD.
Davaeron gets cornered. A tough battle against a high level invoker.
Diary of Nigretta
We returned to the fields of the dead and the woods of the dead. We did as much as we can until we reach BG.We then went to the Northern Coast where we tried to help the local fishermen.
Upon entering the cave we were attacked by salamanders, so we promptly left.
Only one of them followed us, so we had no difficulty in killing it.
We then knew what buffs were needed and planned a strategy.
I and Ajantis got ourselves buffed against fire and also got freedom of action.
The others then stood well clear of the cave.
I and Ajantis re-entered and lured most of the remaining salamanders outside whilst Imoen cast web.
With that advantage we defeated all those that had followed us.
We re-entered and discovered that there were only two left. That was when our strategy failed. We attacked them and were promtly fried. Probably the result of a trap. Imoen was killed instantly and her death was promtly followed by that of Tenya when we fled outside.
We were left with just four paladins. We picked up the equipment of the fallen, leaving behind hundreds of arrows and bullets.
We then went to visit Aerie again who again raised our fallen. We rested for 16 hours before returning.
Imoen unlocked the chest in the cave and was rewarded with a sandthief ring.
The fishermen were very grateful and we would have improved our reputation if that had been possible.
The bandit camp proved to be a non-event.
We returned to the spider area and I killed a dragon single-handed.
In fact, it seems to effectively be 100% spell failure by messing with mage AI scripts and convincing them not to cast at all (other than special abilities).
Am I missing something? That's such a wildly, grossly overpowered spell effect but it gets almost no accolades in any of the "best spell discussions" and seems to have very low awareness for how good it is.
A 1 cast time, AoE, no save effect that shuts down enemy casters and goes through all their spell protections. That's incredibly powerful. It has made every lich fight in the game a joke so far. Slight difficulty once as one of them ability cast a dark planetar.
Am I missing something?
Personally, I consider Wizard Slayers to be more effective at dealing with SCS mages because they can inflict spell failure right from the start of the game, even earlier than druids. But Holy Word is a brilliant alternative, and while it takes a little while to get the spell, it doesn't require any special kits to learn; any single-classed cleric can get it at 1.35 million XP. The only disadvantage is that it won't bypass magic resistance, so drow mages and such will often resist its effects.
Traveling with: Minsc, Kagain, Imoen, Dynaheir, Kivan
I'll enter a screenie of the character sheet for Thrasher later, but he's well under way. The party is about level 4 at the moment. I forgot that Kivan demands that you go to the bandit camp early, but we managed to pull it off. Kagain and Minsc gulped a huge amount of blue potions to stay together though. The bandits near Khosahnn were hit with a web and attacked at range and this worked well. Khosahnn broke free and charged, but a few magic missiles from Dynaheir calmed him down. For Tazok's tent, the key was Venkt - Dynaheir did magic missiles, two party members used their MM wands - Venkt couldn't do much before falling, then it was a piece of cake.
Incidentally, poor Mulahey got silenced and that made him a cake walk as well. Silences for the amazons didn't help them either. A protection from undead scroll made short work of the undead in the area. Narcillicus isn't too bad as long as the entire party range attacks him dead, and the jellies weren't much trouble.
We haven't done the harder areas yet (Basilisks, Sirenes, Ankegs), we have explored mostly the bottom two rows of the map. Will keep a it.
Forgot to mention we did get one boon - we ran into an Ankheg on the Amazon Assassins map, so had the Smithy make some armor for us - now entire party that can wear heavy armor is using either Ankheg plate or full plate mail, so that's been good for our defense, as well as using less blue potions.
Diary of Nigretta
Drasus et al proved to be no problem as I was expecting them.Tylus however was not expected and killed Ajantis.
We took advantage of the trip to Beregost to hand in a wyvern skull thus gaining a considerable amount of gold. This was used at the FAI to pay for the creation of a powerful helmet from another wyvern skull.
We then returned to the Cloakwood mines.
I have been told that gold is no problem in the Sword Coast. You could have fooled me!! Every time that it is necessary to raise a friend it costs me 800 gold pieces!!
Ah I found the old screenshot that proves it: